The Death of Dr. Schwartz

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Speaker 7 Tonight on Dateline.

Speaker 8 You think you can find you did this?

Speaker 9 I think we can, yeah.

Speaker 10 She just said your father's been shot.

Speaker 11 A massacre.

Speaker 9 It was just a puddle of blood.

Speaker 10 This is a horrific way that he died.

Speaker 12 You're not to blame for any of this.

Speaker 11 This is a horrible incident that has happened to you and your family.

Speaker 12 Did you have any suspects?

Speaker 6 It's always nearest and dearest. Ben had quite the criminal history.

Speaker 14 I'm really nervous about talking to you guys.

Speaker 6 There was DNA there that brought our attention to Leo.

Speaker 16 I've been framed. Somehow, I'll be framed.

Speaker 12 A story broke that totally stunned me. There was a very big secret that your dad had.

Speaker 10 Yes, but he never talked to me about it.

Speaker 17 As they say, follow the money.

Speaker 15 Everything kind of started lining up.

Speaker 12 It's like all the bells went off.

Speaker 12 That is it.

Speaker 18 Talk about karma.

Speaker 7 A story of secrets.

Speaker 19 Suspects had them, loved ones had them, and the victim, he had a whopper. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 20 Here's Blaine Alexander with the death of Dr.

Speaker 7 Schwartz.

Speaker 12 It took love and dreams and lots of money to create this sprawling home in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Speaker 12 A place to celebrate, to relax, think about the future. I would imagine, with your dad obviously having a house on the water, it was water special to him.

Speaker 11 He loved the water.

Speaker 21 Yeah, it was this was sort of his dream of a retirement home.

Speaker 12 That is, until one night when his father's wife came home from a dinner party and everything changed.

Speaker 12 It was May 28th, 2014.

Speaker 11 Tarpon Springs Police can help you.

Speaker 22 Hi, my name's Rebecca Schwarz.

Speaker 24 Somebody, I just walked into my house and

Speaker 24 somebody's robbed my house.

Speaker 12 Her bedroom was a mess. Drawers pulled out, watch boxes all over the floor.

Speaker 22 My husband's watches are gone. My jewelry's gone.
Our cash is gone.

Speaker 23 Okay, can you go back outside for me? Yes, sir. Okay, I'm going to stay on the phone with you, okay? When were you in the house last?

Speaker 24 I left about 8.30 this morning.

Speaker 25 Okay.

Speaker 22 And

Speaker 24 my husband was still on bed greeting paper, but I haven't super attended today. He's the physician, so I don't know where he is, actually.
He's one of the hospitals, I assume.

Speaker 25 Okay, what color is your house? Do you know what the outside?

Speaker 24 Well, I will tell you this. It's probably the biggest house in Tarpon.

Speaker 12 She wasn't kidding. The home was nearly 8,000 square feet with a tennis court, a pool, and its own dock.

Speaker 24 I cannot believe this.

Speaker 23 Yeah, that's unfortunate. It's crazy.
crazy.

Speaker 5 As the dispatch gave more and more information, it piqued my curiosity.

Speaker 12 Sergeant Scott Brock arrived a few minutes later. One look at the big house told him it would take more manpower to check all four stories.
So he called in the canine units.

Speaker 5 I explained to them what we had, and they said, yeah, no problem.

Speaker 3 We'll go in.

Speaker 12 But in less than a minute?

Speaker 5 He had called to me both verbally and on the radio to come inside. He had one doubt.

Speaker 12 What does that mean?

Speaker 5 Well, unfortunately, it meant that they had a deceased person inside the house.

Speaker 12 Brock you found the body at the bottom of a short flight of stairs that led to the garage.

Speaker 5 And that's where the victim's body was discovered, was on the floor there.

Speaker 5 It was pretty graphic.

Speaker 12 Could you tell what had happened?

Speaker 5 Well, on its face, it didn't appear that this was an accident.

Speaker 5 And it was one of the few times that I actually felt like this is,

Speaker 3 this is a little spooky.

Speaker 5 There was something that just hit me that day. The size of the house, once we found the victim, I'm like, this is really going off the rails here.

Speaker 12 This is so far from what you expected. Right.

Speaker 12 And just like that, the case had morphed from burglary to homicide.

Speaker 12 Or maybe it was both. More police arrived, including Detective John Dieble, who headed straight for the victim.
As you looked at him, could you tell what had happened?

Speaker 6 I could see that he had had a laceration across his neck, rather large one.

Speaker 12 In fact, the victim was cut multiple times.

Speaker 6 I'm noticing that there's lacerations on top of his head,

Speaker 6 small ones. I looked at the back of his neck, and I could see where he clearly had been shot with a small caliber

Speaker 28 round.

Speaker 12 You see a cut on his neck, cut on his head, and gunshot?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 12 There was a lot done to this man. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Did this look like something that had just happened?

Speaker 6 No. You could tell by the condition of the blood that it was starting to dry.
Some of it had already dried. So he had been there for most of the day.

Speaker 12 The investigators found the victim's ID. Rebecca's husband, Dr.
Stephen Schwartz, wasn't working at some hospital. He was the man lying dead at the bottom of those stairs.

Speaker 12 Now, they had to break the news to Rebecca. And she had initially thought, okay, this is a burglary and I just can't reach my husband.
Now she's being told he's dead inside.

Speaker 6 Right. She put her face in her hands and just started to sob.

Speaker 12 The next day at the police station, Rebecca was still distraught.

Speaker 29 90% of the time, 90% of the time, he leaves before me.

Speaker 29 I'm always, I mean, I'm usually the last to win out because he likes to get it tough on the hospital.

Speaker 31 Then I'm out having dinner.

Speaker 32 That makes me seem like a terrible wife.

Speaker 33 I don't even know where my own husband husband is.

Speaker 28 That's not true.

Speaker 6 You're not to blame for any of this situation.

Speaker 13 This is a horrible incident that has happened to you and your family.

Speaker 12 And at the autopsy, the medical examiner recovered portions of two.22 caliber slugs.

Speaker 12 Armed with that information, the detective started to develop a theory about the final moments of Steven Schwartz's life.

Speaker 12 So this is not the actual staircase where the crime happened or the same house, but it gives us an idea of what happened that day.

Speaker 35 Yes, yes. Okay.

Speaker 12 So walk me through what you believe happened.

Speaker 6 I believe he was at the top of the stairs when he was shot in the back of the neck, which would have caused him to fall down the stairs.

Speaker 6 He had broken his vertebrae, so he was paralyzed from the waist down. He couldn't move.

Speaker 12 That's when he was shot in the head, but it was more of a surface wound. He was still alive.

Speaker 6 Yes, he was still alive.

Speaker 12 Diebel believes the doctor was awake and helpless as the killer finished him off with that cut to the neck.

Speaker 6 That would have accounted for all the blood that we could see.

Speaker 12 It was a lot to take in. A cruel killing, a grieving widow.

Speaker 8 You think you could find your dentist?

Speaker 9 I don't think we can, yeah.

Speaker 12 And as detectives would soon learn, a case and a family with plenty of secrets.

Speaker 6 The crime scene looked staged to make it look like a burglary. Gone bad.

Speaker 12 After he was murdered, a story broke in the papers that totally stunned me.

Speaker 17 I would have never, ever in my life thought I'd run into somebody that could be this devastating to the family.

Speaker 12 As forensic teams combed through the palatial home of Rebecca and Stephen Schwartz, Dr. Schwartz's son, Carter, was half a world away.
He was heading back home from a trip to Asia.

Speaker 12 Well, sneaking back. His father didn't know about the trip.

Speaker 10 He was always pushing me to study more and travel less.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 10 I didn't tell him I was going.

Speaker 18 Typical dad.

Speaker 12 Carter is Stephen's son from a previous relationship. He was 24 and had just applied to medical school.
Ready to follow in his dad's footsteps. He says his father was thrilled.

Speaker 10 My dad said he would not only pay for med school, but pay for every living expense, everything. It would have been the happiest check he ever wrote in his life.

Speaker 12 Carter was nervous as he awaited the acceptance letter, but his dad never had a doubt.

Speaker 10 And he's like, yeah, they're going to get you a letter. Just call me when it happens.

Speaker 12 He was in Taiwan when he got the good news.

Speaker 10 And I got the acceptance. And I tried to call him.
He didn't answer. So I catched the flight at the connecting airport and was Tokyo.

Speaker 3 Try to call him again.

Speaker 21 No answer.

Speaker 12 He finally arrived in the U.S. And that's when his world fell apart.

Speaker 10 And I remember landing, turning my phone on, and my mother calling me bawling that my father had been shot.

Speaker 12 Carter was stunned. Stephen Schwartz was a good father and a great physician.
For people who never had a chance to meet your dad, how would you describe him?

Speaker 10 I couldn't really have asked for a better father or a better mentor, seeing how kind and generous he was with his patients and how patient he was with nurses and just kind to everybody he came into contact with.

Speaker 12 Stephen Schwartz was a a nephrologist, a kidney doctor, with a thriving practice.

Speaker 12 He was 74 and had three kids, Carter, and two other children, a son and a daughter from a previous marriage. Tell me about your dad and his interests.

Speaker 12 What did he love to do, other than, of course, practicing medicine?

Speaker 10 I mean, that was truly his love was medicine. You know, he was very much into baseball.
He loved the Rays and always wanted to go to those games.

Speaker 12 The Tampa Bay Rays. He had season tickets.
You would have loved Dr. Schwartz.
Absolutely loved him. Helen Como ran his dialysis center for years.
He had a good sense of humor, a big heart,

Speaker 12 very caring. For example, if there was a patient or a family that was struggling financially, he would help them out.

Speaker 12 And he would always take his time with them, not just from a physical standpoint, but just to see how they're doing, what's going on. But Dr.
Schwartz also had a little bit of an edge.

Speaker 12 He just had a way of making jokes about things and not only to me, but with others. And one of his favorite expressions was, what do you have?

Speaker 36 For brains?

Speaker 12 Police learned Stephen met Rebecca in the late 90s. She was divorced with two sons.
They started dating, and it wouldn't be long before Rebecca was working at the clinic.

Speaker 12 and then running it all together. 14 years after they met, they got married.
Family friends told detectives Rebecca catered to Stevens' every need, and it all seemed to work.

Speaker 12 He had a helpmate at home and at the office. Not every couple can work together.
It sounds like they both just kind of found a lane where they excelled and were able to do that in the practice.

Speaker 15 Yeah, for sure. You know, Dr.
Schwartz wanted to concentrate on taking care of his patients. Becky was financially motivated and she was all about, you know, kind of

Speaker 15 making decisions.

Speaker 12 Eventually, this man, Kyle Smithy, took over the clinic's day-to-day operations, but Rebecca still helped out. What was her working relationship life with Rebecca?

Speaker 15 We got along well. We spent a good amount of time together outside of the clinic as well.

Speaker 12 She would often invite Kyle to join her for drinks and dinner.

Speaker 15 Just one of the most fun people to be around and so engaging and just kind of, she had this real unique ability when talking to you to really make you feel like seen and heard and just an energy about her that she wanted to, quite frankly, be around.

Speaker 12 She was 20 years younger than her husband, but Carter says his father had his own kind of youthful energy. He remembers reading a story about his dad after he was gone.

Speaker 10 The one that I think would have brought him joy was the article that said a 50-year-old man was found dead.

Speaker 10 I kind of laugh now thinking my 74-year-old father would have been loved being described as the 50-year-old man.

Speaker 12 As detectives learned more about Stephen Schwartz, they had a hard time finding anyone who had it out for him.

Speaker 6 Dr. Schwartz couldn't find one person to say a bad word about him.

Speaker 6 Just nothing but good things. Good doctor, cared about his patients.
Half the time, he wouldn't even charge people.

Speaker 12 A kindly doctor, killed in the worst possible way. Maybe his wife would help solve the mystery.
You okay?

Speaker 8 No, I'm not. You're okay.

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Speaker 12 The day after the murder, the crime scene scene offered investigators a wealth of information.

Speaker 12 Stephen's exact time of death was difficult to pinpoint, but his clothes suggested he was killed that morning.

Speaker 6 He was dressed in a suit, had a kind of a light yellow shirt on, but no tie.

Speaker 12 Sounds like he looked like somebody who was going to work.

Speaker 5 He was going to work.

Speaker 12 While investigators continued to search every inch of that house, detectives were trying to find out what Rebecca knew.

Speaker 8 No, I'm not. Good, okay.

Speaker 42 The questions I have for a couple of them maybe seem a little unnecessary or even invasive.

Speaker 12 She talked about the good times with her late husband.

Speaker 43 How long have you guys been married?

Speaker 12 I actually got married in 2010, but we've been together since 1996.

Speaker 44 Took me a while.

Speaker 12 And mentioned a past failed marriage.

Speaker 44 I got burned.

Speaker 12 We were married 10 years, and when that didn't work out, it was kind of like, wow, you know.

Speaker 12 Back then schwartz is awesome he's 20 years older than me

Speaker 12 but um he kind of grounds me a best bug yeah

Speaker 12 that's the way you referred to me with best friends she was for the most part calm as she answered questions about her whereabouts that day what i'm trying to do now is just establish everybody

Speaker 6 for the day

Speaker 12 Rebecca repeated what she said on her 911 call that when she left the house around 830, Stephen was still in bed reading the the paper.

Speaker 12 She added he was scheduled to start his hospital rounds later that morning. Her day started with errands.

Speaker 29 And stopped at Publix.

Speaker 12 She said she also went to the cleaners and the gas station before heading to work.

Speaker 6 And she was able to provide receipts from every place where she went.

Speaker 45 I probably left around

Speaker 44 six-ish.

Speaker 12 After work, Rebecca hosted a birthday party for their good friend and handyman, a guy named Leo Strawguy.

Speaker 45 I stopped at Total One and got birthday gifts,

Speaker 12 you know, for Leo. She said she didn't really worry when her husband was a no-show at the party.

Speaker 6 Did you just assume he got busy, got tied up?

Speaker 32 If he's able to, he'll call me right then.

Speaker 12 If he's with a patient or

Speaker 12 whatever the thing is, you know, if he's busy on the phone, whatever it is, he kind of forgets about me and doesn't call me back.

Speaker 12 And I mean, it happens more times probably than not.

Speaker 12 She seemed to be looking forward to the future and a long vacation they were planning.

Speaker 29 Had our whole life went out of what we were doing with this six-month cruise around the world. It's making him retire, finally.
Keep saying, you know, you gotta retire.

Speaker 29 We got stuff we gotta do.

Speaker 12 The doctor certainly could have retired. Between his booming practice and dozens of rental homes he owned, Stephen Schwartz was worth millions.

Speaker 12 So it was no surprise he had an elaborate security system. Back at the house, that was one of the first things investigators noticed.

Speaker 6 Of course, you can see the surveillance cameras on all corners of the house.

Speaker 12 And you notice that immediately.

Speaker 6 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 12 You're thinking optimistically, like, okay, we should have video. This should help us kind of bring this to a close pretty quickly.
Yes.

Speaker 12 So you all start to search the house, looking for the footage what do you find well the dvr was was missing the dvr that connected to the security system so no video at all a setback certainly but also a clue because that video recording equipment was hidden away in a small closet above the garage what does that tell you it's an inside job Someone within the family, known to the family, it's been to the house before, knew where that monitor knew where the DVR was.

Speaker 12 And knew their dogs. Rebecca said they'd been closed inside the bedroom all day, the same bedroom where the burglary happened.

Speaker 10 The supposed burglars went into the room where the two very large dogs were and had no issues with these dogs. One of them was a Brazilian mast of over 100 pounds.

Speaker 10 I mean, these are not friendly dogs to people who don't know them.

Speaker 12 And when Detective Diebel looked around the bedroom, he thought something else was off.

Speaker 6 There were several drawers in the bedroom that were pulled out, but it didn't look like anything had been gone through in these drawers. And the drawers were pulled out evenly.

Speaker 6 And then the boxes, there's some jewelry boxes, watch boxes laying in the floor of the master closet, and it just looked like someone just dropped them.

Speaker 6 The crime scene looked staged to make it look like a burglary gone bad.

Speaker 12 The police told Rebecca their theory that the killer wasn't a stranger, but someone who knew the family and the house quite well.

Speaker 7 I'm saying someone that you know, that that dog knows, came in that house today.

Speaker 46 They came in for a reason to possibly take some stuff, and then something else happened.

Speaker 46 You understand what I'm saying?

Speaker 46 That's what we're trying to find out here today.

Speaker 11 You think you can find your dentist?

Speaker 9 I don't think we can, yeah.

Speaker 12 Investigators were looking for someone close to the family and someone who had spent a lot of time at the house. It sounds like his fingerprints are literally all over the crime scene.

Speaker 12 Detectives were just a few days into the murder investigation of Dr. Stephen Schwartz when they caught their first big break, a match on some of the fingerprints they'd found at the crime scene.

Speaker 12 They belonged to Rebecca's oldest son, 33-year-old Eric Nichols, whose prints were on file because he had previously been arrested for driving with a suspended license.

Speaker 12 Eric lived near Portage, Wisconsin, owned a Verizon store there. He was married with a baby on the way.

Speaker 6 His fingerprints come back to the areas that were processed by the crime scene technicians.

Speaker 12 Including a door to the garage close to Stephen Schwartz's body. The door appeared to have been forced open.

Speaker 6 His prints were there. His prints were upstairs in the monitor where the DVR was.
And also his prints were on some of the jewelry boxes in the master bedroom.

Speaker 12 So the forensic evidence comes back.

Speaker 6 And points right at him as being the number one suspect now.

Speaker 6 So I get a team of detectives and we go up to Wisconsin to interview. Eric.
We walked into the store. We did this unannounced.

Speaker 47 So I just need,

Speaker 47 we're talking to all the family members. Oh, yeah,

Speaker 47 it's a murder case. Yeah.

Speaker 47 I'll fully cooperate. We need the DNA or whatever.
When was the last time you were at the house?

Speaker 4 I flew home from my grandfather's birthday party.

Speaker 48 I flew down April 6th, and then I drove back on like the 8th.

Speaker 4 So I'm sure I was at the house at some point in time between those days.

Speaker 12 That was almost two months before the murder. And Eric said he hadn't been to Florida since.
Did you confront him and say, sir, we have your fingerprints all over this crime scene? I did ask him,

Speaker 6 would you find fingerprints in the monitor room? And he goes, yeah, you might, because I've been up there before. So my prints could be there.
Could they be on the door?

Speaker 6 Well, I did take out the trash back in April. My fingerprints could be there.
I said, what about on your mom's jewelry box? No, absolutely not. My prints should not be there.

Speaker 6 So I'm thinking, well, yeah, well, they are. They are.
So we were going to maybe do a second interview, but we started

Speaker 6 doing our background. He had gone to the doctor's with his wife.

Speaker 6 She was pregnant at the time, and we were able to give him an alibi through the doctor and through video that showed his coming and goings at the Verizon store both the day before and the day of the homicide.

Speaker 12 So he was absolutely in Wisconsin?

Speaker 6 He was in Wisconsin.

Speaker 12 Does that kind of take the wind out of your investigative sales?

Speaker 2 It does.

Speaker 6 It does.

Speaker 6 But you just keep plugging away, just following up on leads.

Speaker 12 Over the course of those kind of first few days after the doctor's murder, Ballpark, how many people would you say that you interviewed?

Speaker 6 We talked to, I don't know, had to be at least 50 people, co-workers, you know, other family members, neighbors.

Speaker 12 And they talked to Rebecca's other son, 28-year-old Ben Nichols, who lived in Florida near his mom and stepdad.

Speaker 11 Who would want to hurt this guy?

Speaker 9 Nobody, man.

Speaker 8 Nobody.

Speaker 6 Didn't have any enemies?

Speaker 14 I mean, he wouldn't hurt anybody. You know what I mean? He's a good doctor.

Speaker 12 He's a good man good husband ben worked on some of the schwartz's properties and had a landscaping business but detective deeble had learned something else about him he had actually broken into a previous residence of dr swart

Speaker 12 about five years before the murder he stole his mother's jewelry and stevens watches then pawned them and you orchestrated some kind of a burglary at your mom's house yeah i was i was all up on pills man so he had actually broken to the house to steal items, to support his drug habit.

Speaker 6 But not in for the last couple years. He seemed to be doing better.

Speaker 18 He kind of straightened himself out.

Speaker 6 Straightened himself out.

Speaker 49 Yeah. Did you get any time for that or probation or did you drug court?

Speaker 14 Oh, yeah, man. I went to a drug program.

Speaker 12 I was on probation. And it seemed Stephen had always embraced him.

Speaker 49 I've been in a lot of trouble, and the guy has never raised his voice at me one time. I've never heard him raise his voice to my mom.

Speaker 50 I've never heard him raise his voice, period.

Speaker 12 Ben said on the morning of the murder, he was laying flooring in another county.

Speaker 6 So you were telling me that you left your house at approximately, you said between 7.30 and 8.30 a.m.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 10 And you were in Pasco County at your

Speaker 6 wife's

Speaker 6 brother's house. Yeah.

Speaker 12 In the afternoon, he worked on his landscaping business.

Speaker 6 He was pretty forthright in the information that he gave. He also had a receipt of where he rented some lawn equipment for the day.

Speaker 12 They spoke to people who worked with him and confirmed his story. And at the crime scene, his prints were nowhere to be found.
Did you ever rule him out completely?

Speaker 6 No. No.
There's always ways around because we can never tell when the doctor actually died.

Speaker 12 So he was still on your radar. Right.

Speaker 12 Police learned a lot about Ben and Eric and how close they were to their mom, Rebecca.

Speaker 15 I knew Eric and Ben much better than I knew Carter, because they were in the clinic more often. When we would go and have happy hour or something like that, Eric and Becky were very close, very close.

Speaker 12 But Ben's problems often put him on the outs.

Speaker 15 We'd go through these kind of phases where he was sort of ostracized. And after a period of time,

Speaker 15 he'd be back around.

Speaker 12 But if Rebecca was conflicted about her youngest son, the same could not be said about another man in her life, a a kind of surrogate son. You became close with the Schwartzes pretty quickly.

Speaker 13 Yeah, very, very close.

Speaker 12 Police were convinced the killer was someone close to Stephen and Rebecca.

Speaker 12 They had looked at Rebecca's two sons, and they soon learned about another man who was close to her and knew the family and the house well Leo Strawguy how did Leo come to be on your radar in the sense of someone to talk to well he had been in the house several times um he worked with them um so he was well known to both for rebecca and dr swartz the handyman he didn't like to be called ebba yeah what did he like to be called well he

Speaker 6 because we referred to him as handyman and he would tell me i'm not a handyman i'm he does construction the house that Dr. Schwartz and Rebecca lived in, he had helped remodel.

Speaker 6 And they had like 30 other properties that he would maintain and remodel and take care of.

Speaker 12 It had been a long journey from Leo's home country of Albania to Tarpon Springs, Florida. How did you come to live in Florida?

Speaker 50 Well, I left my country when I was a little kid.

Speaker 20 I was 14 years old when I left.

Speaker 50 I went to Greece, then I went all over Europe, a little bit in Canada, then in the beginning of 2000, I was in Detroit.

Speaker 12 He lived there with his cousin. One cold winter day, he decided he was ready to see a warmer part of America.

Speaker 50 I tell him, man, I just bought a convertible car.

Speaker 20 Let's drive to Florida.

Speaker 50 And as soon as I reached that bridge, in Tampa Bay, I told my cousin, listen, I'm going to live in Florida.

Speaker 30 I'm never, never going back to Michigan.

Speaker 12 Leo started working. Odd jobs at first, then remodeling houses.
And eventually, Rebecca Schwartz hired him to help maintain their many rental homes. Tell me your first impressions of Rebecca.

Speaker 12 What did you first think of her when you met her?

Speaker 3 She's a great lady.

Speaker 34 Very wild.

Speaker 12 Wild? Yeah, very wild.

Speaker 20 Like,

Speaker 2 okay, let's do this now.

Speaker 46 We'll buy 30 houses in one week.

Speaker 12 So very spontaneous.

Speaker 13 Yes, let's do this. Let's grow the business.

Speaker 12 Rebecca was also generous. She bought Leo and his wife a house and a truck.

Speaker 50 She even started calling me son.

Speaker 18 Or like I would go to every occasion party or, you know, they had.

Speaker 12 So you became close with the Schwartzes pretty quickly.

Speaker 13 Yeah, very, very close.

Speaker 12 Whatever the label, handyman, contractor, surrogate son.

Speaker 26 Have a seat right there.

Speaker 12 About two weeks after the murder, Detective Dieball asked Leo to come in for a chat.

Speaker 6 How long have you known

Speaker 7 the Swartz?

Speaker 20 Probably four years or so.

Speaker 37 Four years?

Speaker 9 All right. Maybe a little more, but close four years, I think.

Speaker 6 How'd you get to know them?

Speaker 16 Through a customer of mine.

Speaker 12 Leo said he wanted to help police any way he could.

Speaker 6 He was very friendly, very cooperative, wouldn't hold anything back.

Speaker 34 Who do you think is involved? Who do you think did it?

Speaker 38 It's really hard.

Speaker 54 I mean,

Speaker 34 to be honest, we're all scratching our head.

Speaker 12 Like the detectives, Leo thought it had to be someone close to Dr. Schwartz.

Speaker 34 Somebody who knows me, who knows them. I know somebody who knows us.
Probably shaved my head every day.

Speaker 6 And whoever did this needs to be arrested and put in jail for the rest of their life. Wouldn't you say so?

Speaker 28 Oh, oh, my God.

Speaker 34 Arrested?

Speaker 28 death penalty right away. Yeah.

Speaker 34 It should. I mean, not him.
Come on.

Speaker 28 Not him.

Speaker 34 It was done for money. Get the money up.

Speaker 34 Don't do this.

Speaker 12 And Leo said he would never harm the doctor.

Speaker 6 Or do you really liked you? He goes. He lied to you.
He respected you because you were a hard worker.

Speaker 28 Oh, my God.

Speaker 34 He loved me.

Speaker 28 That that guy was.

Speaker 50 He took care of my

Speaker 50 everything.

Speaker 34 My family. I mean, basically,

Speaker 34 he supported my family and not paying him.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he was a very giving and kind guy.

Speaker 34 Every time I saw him, he'd sit down. Hey, Leo, sit down.
Because I have a problem with my knee. And all the time, he grabs my knee and fix it.

Speaker 12 They asked Leo the same question they'd asked everyone. Where was he on the day of the murder? At home, Leo said, then at a work site.

Speaker 6 And what time did you get to that day?

Speaker 31 Maybe 9,

Speaker 9 close to 9, 9 something, maybe, I don't know.

Speaker 12 And so he said that he was working on a house all day and was nowhere near Schwartz home.

Speaker 12 And that night, he was the birthday boy at that party Rebecca hosted for him. He turned 37.

Speaker 20 They got a little birthday cake.

Speaker 50 They brought some gifts.

Speaker 12 Just your basic birthday dinner.

Speaker 13 Yeah, just a simple.

Speaker 12 Police were able to verify his story. Leo answered their questions and gave a DNA sample.
As you talked to him, did he seem to wonder why he was there?

Speaker 6 No, no, he just

Speaker 6 knows that we're doing our job talking to everybody involved.

Speaker 12 Investigators were hitting a wall. Months went by with few answers.

Speaker 12 Then new information came out. It would change everything they thought they knew about the doctor.
What he did,

Speaker 12 it was horrific.

Speaker 12 Was Dr. Schwartz's murder payback for something that happened decades before?

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Speaker 12 Seven months after the murder, Helen Como was reading the newspaper when she saw a jaw-dropping headline about her boss, Dr. Schwartz.

Speaker 12 After he was murdered, a story broke in the papers that totally stunned me.

Speaker 15 Shocking doesn't even begin

Speaker 15 to describe it.

Speaker 12 The article focused on a different murder 50 years earlier in Hobbes, New Mexico.

Speaker 12 Home to a remarkable sculpture. dedicated to people who served in the military.
People like Victor Cook, a local dentist who served in the Army in World War II. James Cecil knew him well.

Speaker 12 In your 93 years, Mr. Cecil, you've seen a lot of things.

Speaker 27 I've seen a whole lot.

Speaker 12 But what happened to Dr. Cook? Will you ever forget that?

Speaker 27 Oh, no, I'll never forget it.

Speaker 2 It's just been sort of part of my life.

Speaker 26 He went to Baylor.

Speaker 12 Susan Nutting is Dr. Cook's niece.
This is his dental class. Yes.
Oh, my goodness. Right here.

Speaker 35 Uncle Doc.

Speaker 35 Right there.

Speaker 12 Susan says her uncle uncle was a generous man and known to carry a lot of cash if someone needed some money he'd give it to them but he'd pull out this money he would pull it out and anyone who was standing around could see it's a lot of money he's got there

Speaker 12 someone had their eyes on that money it was november 21st 1961

Speaker 12 In the middle of the day, a 21-year-old college student walked into the doctor's office. He was carrying a 25-caliber Beretta.

Speaker 12 And that's when Uncle Doc turned around and he saw this gun on him. And he told him, put that thing away and go home.

Speaker 27 Cook told him, he said, I'm not giving you my money. He pushed him back and said, turn around.

Speaker 3 He said, no, I'm not turning around.

Speaker 12 And my uncle evidently told him, he said, no, I want to be facing you.

Speaker 21 when you shoot me.

Speaker 27 And they got in a scuffle and the gun went off and it hit him.

Speaker 20 The blood was coming out of his head.

Speaker 18 Uncle Doc fell.

Speaker 12 The shooter pushed him under his desk.

Speaker 27 And then he took his bill fold and left out the back door.

Speaker 12 Dr. Cook was dead, robbed of $400.

Speaker 12 Who killed Dr. Cook? What was his name?

Speaker 3 Stephen Schwartz.

Speaker 12 We found out it was a man named Stephen Schwartz.

Speaker 12 Stephen Schwartz.

Speaker 12 The man who became a beloved doctor, who also gave money to those in need, was a murderer. While he did confess, it was never clear why he needed the money.
He's sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 18 But a decade later,

Speaker 12 1971, he's released on parole. What did you think? Well, how could this be?

Speaker 45 How could he already be out?

Speaker 12 Who came up with this idea? You know?

Speaker 12 For reasons unknown, the governor of new mexico granted stephen schwartz a full pardon he moved to italy earned his medical degree then came back to the u.s to start his practice helen como had always wondered about that career path i would read the degrees that were on his office wall and i was kind of curious as to why he became a doctor so late in life he even kept his own son in the dark There was a very big secret that your dad had.

Speaker 12 Yes. And now you're faced with learning this.

Speaker 10 I am. I remember the phone call.
My mother told me about it, and it's going to come out, and you're going to find out.

Speaker 10 You know, he did what he did. He never talked to me about it.

Speaker 12 This is your dad, loving, generous, loving you. But on the other hand, he's a murderer.
How do you wrap your mind around those two things as a son?

Speaker 3 It's difficult.

Speaker 10 It's something that I wish him and I could have talked about, but I don't think it was in his nature.

Speaker 12 When news of Dr. Schwartz's murder made its way back to Susan Nutting, she didn't know how to feel about the fact that her uncle's killer met the same fate.

Speaker 18 Talk about karma.

Speaker 12 I hope he had become a good person.

Speaker 12 So I don't want to say

Speaker 12 I'm glad he was murdered. I don't want to say that.

Speaker 12 I don't feel that. But still, you look at that

Speaker 12 and you feel that that's karma.

Speaker 12 They say what goes around comes around sometimes.

Speaker 12 Now, police wanted to know: was Dr. Schwartz's murder an act of revenge for a decades-old crime?

Speaker 12 As soon as I heard that, it's like all the bells went off. It was like, that is it.

Speaker 12 So the secret was out. The late Stephen Schwartz was himself a convicted killer.
And people just had to wonder.

Speaker 10 There had been something floated that, oh, this is connected to his New Mexico thing when he was a young man.

Speaker 12 As soon as I heard that, it's like all the bells went off. It was like, that is it.

Speaker 6 It was rather shocking

Speaker 6 because they know that he committed a murder did not seem to be in his character.

Speaker 12 You know, with your investigative hat on, you hear this, that he committed a murder years ago. Are you thinking,

Speaker 12 maybe this is in some way connected? Maybe it's someone coming back to seek retribution.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 6 I pretty much ruled that out right away. Oh, it had been like 50 years ago.
So it had been a long time ago. His character now was unapproached.
You know, it was impeccable.

Speaker 12 Almost like this was a completely different man from Becky.

Speaker 6 Definitely somebody turned her life around.

Speaker 12 Once investigators were sure there was no connection to that decades-old crime, the search for a killer continued.

Speaker 12 They interviewed dozens of people and were eventually able to clear Rebecca's son, Ben. And fortunately, they had taken DNA from everyone they could think of.

Speaker 12 Fortunate because a lab tech spotted something in a crime scene photo that seemed, at first, kind of innocuous.

Speaker 6 Well, he noticed that

Speaker 6 the doctor's shirt he was worn that was crumpled around the chest area.

Speaker 12 As if someone had grabbed it.

Speaker 6 He goes, let's do some touch DNA there and see what we come up with.

Speaker 12 They also swabbed his pants pocket. where Stephen usually carried a wad of cash.

Speaker 12 Almost a year after the murder, those DNA results came back they got a match it wasn't perfect but it was awfully close to one person

Speaker 6 that person was leo straw guy his touch dna was on the shirt and on that right pocket

Speaker 6 sorry it's kind of just leo

Speaker 12 they arrested leo and he swore insisted he was innocent i've been framed Somehow, I've been framed.

Speaker 9 I don't know how.

Speaker 6 You guys are supposed to figure it out.

Speaker 8 Well,

Speaker 6 we believe we did figure it out.

Speaker 54 We found your DNA

Speaker 28 on

Speaker 54 part of the crime scene that you had to be there and touched that area and have been involved with this doctor's death. Okay, Leo.
There's no freaking way it's my DNA and his buddy.

Speaker 54 There is no way in hell my DNA will be in his body.

Speaker 12 This went on for an hour and a half. They took a break, and when they came back, Leo had a new story to tell.
And the star of that story was his dear friend, Rebecca.

Speaker 26 She came to my house that day, early in the morning.

Speaker 12 Leo said it was the day of the murder.

Speaker 6 What time do you remember?

Speaker 33 Well, I don't know, it was

Speaker 13 6:30, 7.

Speaker 33 I don't know. It was very early.

Speaker 50 She said, I need you to do me a favor.

Speaker 12 She said, I need you to do me a favor. Yes.

Speaker 20 She said,

Speaker 50 I had an argument to Stephen and I left my bag over there. I need to go to pick up my bag, please.

Speaker 12 Leo said he did as he was asked, but when he got to the house, he found Dr. Schwartz lying in a pool of blood.

Speaker 9 When I see his face, I saw blood and grabbed and shaken him. Okay, I saw more blood.

Speaker 6 Why did you grab Anto?

Speaker 34 Just to see if he's okay. I mean, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 43 He's Dr. Schwartz.

Speaker 34 He wasn't my doctor for years and years and years. And he was the best man I know.
He was the best man I know.

Speaker 54 He didn't go

Speaker 54 touch anything else on his person,

Speaker 54 go into any of his pockets or anything. No, no, hell no, I wouldn't go into his pockets.

Speaker 12 Leo said he saw a leather bag on the kitchen counter.

Speaker 53 Opened it up,

Speaker 50 see some jewelry boxes in the end and a knife.

Speaker 12 Knife?

Speaker 50 Yeah, it was a knife in there.

Speaker 6 At that time, did you think Rebecca was involved in something?

Speaker 13 Of course. Why do you think that? Because she sent me purposely.

Speaker 13 She sent me right there.

Speaker 12 He said he grabbed the bag and sped back to Rebecca.

Speaker 53 I just pulled in and started screaming right away, cussing out.

Speaker 50 Why did you do this? Why you put me through this?

Speaker 18 What the hell did you do?

Speaker 37 What is she saying?

Speaker 12 Is she just looking at you?

Speaker 50 At first, saying nothing. And then she started like,

Speaker 50 I did it, you know, and started screaming.

Speaker 12 She said, you know why I did it?

Speaker 54 Yeah, you know why I did it.

Speaker 12 Leo said he didn't call the police because he was afraid of being deported. Plus, Rebecca owed him tens of thousands of dollars from an investment they'd made together.

Speaker 50 And she said, if you say a word, you're never going to see house, money, or nothing. I'm thinking also immigration told me any involvement with the police.

Speaker 13 We're going to deport you right away.

Speaker 50 The biggest mistake of my life is

Speaker 54 not calling the police that day.

Speaker 12 Did you go to any other parts of the city?

Speaker 50 No, I didn't know.

Speaker 50 Not one step.

Speaker 12 Leo said his day got even worse, ending at that birthday party that night hosted by Rebecca.

Speaker 12 You were sitting there at that dinner and you knew that a person that you loved, that had given you and your family an opportunity, was lying dead at the bottom of stairs.

Speaker 12 And you still pushed through that celebration. How did you sit through that? It was how could you...

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was painful. It was really painful.

Speaker 12 How was she acting that night?

Speaker 13 She was tap sissy, loose, like always.

Speaker 12 Did she seem stressed? Upset?

Speaker 9 Not at all.

Speaker 50 And this is the last time I ever saw her again.

Speaker 12 During your interrogation, police asked you if you had any knowledge of the murder, if you had been there. And you swore on your mother's life you weren't at the house.

Speaker 12 You swore on your child's life that you knew nothing about it. And that was not true.

Speaker 2 That was a lie.

Speaker 3 Well, I know that.

Speaker 12 Are you telling me the truth right now?

Speaker 2 I am. I am telling the truth.

Speaker 50 Now I have no reason to lie about it. You didn't force me to give this interview.

Speaker 54 Nobody forced me.

Speaker 12 I want to ask you directly, Leo. Did you kill Dr.
Stephen Schwartz?

Speaker 13 Actually,

Speaker 50 no.

Speaker 12 Did you have anything to do with trying to cover up his murder?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 50 The only thing, like I said, grabbed that bag.

Speaker 50 and didn't call the police. That was the only thing I had to do with that murder.

Speaker 12 Police still didn't think Leo was telling them everything.

Speaker 12 Maybe Rebecca had shot her husband, but they believed he was involved, that he had staged the burglary because Rebecca had threatened to cut him off financially.

Speaker 6 He wasn't worried about the doctor he supposedly loved and cared for. He was worried about getting his money.

Speaker 12 And you think that was his motivation?

Speaker 6 That's his motivation for the actual committing the murder. I think he went there thinking that the doctor was already dead, but when he got there, the doctor did see him.

Speaker 6 Now he's got to cover his tracks. He can't let the doctor live.

Speaker 12 Diebel also thought Leo was the one who delivered that fatal slash to the doctor's neck. They charged him with first-degree murder.

Speaker 12 After they were done with Leo, police let his wife come into the room.

Speaker 29 Right now, I know you didn't kill him.

Speaker 32 I know you did not kill him. That I know.
But I need no few.

Speaker 32 that they made you clean up, did she had something on you?

Speaker 32 Tell me the truth.

Speaker 11 Honey,

Speaker 32 honey, tell me, did she make you clean up or something?

Speaker 32 You need to tell me her truth. We need to make sure if there was a presence.

Speaker 12 She, of course, is Rebecca. And as it turned out, since the very beginning, Rebecca had been at the top of nearly everyone's suspect list.

Speaker 21 I think that she's the one with means, motive, and opportunity to have done this.

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Speaker 12 For Carter Schwartz, it's impossible to look at this stunning house and feel anything but sadness.

Speaker 21 You know, obviously, knowing what happened there makes it difficult to come back.

Speaker 12 On the Antcloed River, in front of his dad's old home, Carter talked about his father's murder and the man accused of killing him, Leo Strawgei.

Speaker 12 You said that you believe that police partially got it right

Speaker 52 in that he was involved somewhat.

Speaker 21 I'm not saying he

Speaker 21 was without blame in any of this, but certainly the lion's share of blame and the actual act itself of taking my father's life, I don't think rests on Leo's shoulders.

Speaker 12 Carter believes someone else either killed his dad, orchestrated the murder, or both.

Speaker 12 That person, he says, was his stepmother, Rebecca.

Speaker 21 I think that she's the one with means, motive, and opportunity to have done this.

Speaker 12 In Carter's mind, it came down to one reason, money. Rebecca knew she would inherit every dime of her husband's millions.

Speaker 38 She got so greedy and so sure of herself that she was taking just immense sums of money.

Speaker 38 And I think my father had finally gotten wise to it. I think that he

Speaker 3 was finally fed up with being played for the fool.

Speaker 12 He says Rebecca was secretly spending a fortune on her two sons, Ben and Eric, paying for their lavish weddings and buying them homes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Speaker 10 She was telling my father, oh, they got a mortgage, they got all this, they got this. And I remember my father's comment was, they couldn't have a mortgage.

Speaker 10 They don't have two nickels to rub together.

Speaker 12 So about a year before his dad's death, Carter and his wife did their own investigation.

Speaker 10 We had gone to...

Speaker 10 the online property appraiser, which is all public record.

Speaker 2 We typed in the addresses, and sure enough, they were in her children's name with no mortgage and free and clear titles.

Speaker 10 And we showed my dad that.

Speaker 12 You've got literal receipts showing him this.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 10 And then that's when he says, I have business to take care of at home. Never told me what he did about it, never told me anything.

Speaker 12 Carter pleaded with his dad to get a financial expert and figure out what was going on.

Speaker 10 He refused to hire a forensic accountant. He said, I'm not throwing good money after bad.

Speaker 12 So he said, why waste the time trying to chase it down? Right.

Speaker 10 And at this point, it's very clear he knows something is going on.

Speaker 46 I told him, I said, Dad, you got to leave.

Speaker 10 He didn't give me an answer one way or another.

Speaker 12 So you told him you got to divorce this woman. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Detective Dieball discovered that along with buying her sons' homes and paying for their weddings, Rebecca had given her sons hundreds of thousands of dollars more to start their own businesses.

Speaker 6 There was a lot of moving of money around of the doctors,

Speaker 6 not to Carter, to the the to rebecca's two sons when you say moving money what is kind of under the radar without the doctor's knowledge she funded a uh for rising cell phone shop in portage wisconsin for her first son a brewery for for ben and some other businesses that had had failed

Speaker 12 It was a stark contrast to how Carter says Rebecca treated him over the years. Between the two of you, there was never

Speaker 12 loving stepmother vibes.

Speaker 12 After his father's murder, Carter says Rebecca cut him off financially. Like when he asked for some help to pay for med school.

Speaker 10 I had gotten the acceptance letter to med school the day he died.

Speaker 10 And you have, whatever it was, 10 days, two weeks, something to go down and give him a check to hold your spot. $1,500.
I sent her a text and I said, hey, I need a deposit. Can you help me?

Speaker 10 And the reply back was, you need to get a job.

Speaker 33 I don't know what we're doing.

Speaker 12 So she refused to give you the money.

Speaker 10 Refused to give me $1,500 to hold my spot at med school.

Speaker 15 This is terrible, but she'd always refer to Carter as the bastard. And she'd come to me.
The bastard. The bastard.

Speaker 12 There was a time when Kyle Smithy liked Rebecca Schwartz, but as the years went by, his opinion changed as he watched her verbally attack Stephen's son and then Stephen himself in the worst possible way.

Speaker 15 One of her kind of go-to lines was always, I could just kill him. I could just kill him.
And just the look on her face and just how frustrated and she just like would

Speaker 15 physically, you know, kind of alter and just so angry.

Speaker 12 What was she mad about?

Speaker 15 It could be anything from, you know, having handed out money to patients to, you know, having written a small check to Carter.

Speaker 12 That's why on the very night the doctor was murdered, Kyle believed Rebecca was involved.

Speaker 15 I call and she answers

Speaker 15 and she she sounds tired. I said, Becky, what's

Speaker 15 what's going on? And she says, well, they can't confirm it's him. They won't let me in the house, but we know it's him.

Speaker 12 Kyle had an immediate sinking feeling.

Speaker 15 She finally did it.

Speaker 12 She finally did it.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 12 You felt that she was the one who had killed him.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it just, you know, everything kind of started lining up.

Speaker 12 Helen Como also wasn't surprised. She thought at times Rebecca could be evil.
When I heard that he was murdered, nobody else came to mind. I didn't even so much as think, gosh, did a burglar break in?

Speaker 12 Nothing else came to mind other than Becky. It's something Detective Diebel heard over and over again.

Speaker 6 Just confirmed my suspicions all the more.

Speaker 6 She's involved in this murder. She murdered him.

Speaker 12 But suspicions are not evidence.

Speaker 6 Tried everything that I could, had more witnesses come forward, but nothing that was enough was a lot of hearsay.

Speaker 6 Nothing that I could bring it forward to the state attorney for prosecution.

Speaker 12 The biggest issue was Leo. Even though he had implicated Rebecca, police didn't think he would be a strong witness.

Speaker 6 He's not credible. He's not a credible witness because he lied so much.

Speaker 12 Carter and his family were convinced Rebecca was getting away with murder. So they took the only step they felt they could and filed a civil wrongful death lawsuit against her.

Speaker 12 Have you ever worked on a case quite like this?

Speaker 43 This one takes the cake.

Speaker 12 In 2015, the year after the murder, Will Florin and Tommy Roebig agreed to represent the family. Police had investigated this and said, there's not enough to bring criminal charges against her.

Speaker 12 What made you think that you could win in a court of law?

Speaker 37 We worked hard on the case. We worked the details of the case.
I think we came to the conclusion she murdered him and we could prove it.

Speaker 12 How does she, in your telling, become someone who kills her husband?

Speaker 43 Greed, selfishness, narcissism.

Speaker 43 That's how

Speaker 12 they would spend years building a case against Rebecca. Meanwhile, she had built a new life with new friends and a new profession.
What kind of doctor did she tell you she was?

Speaker 17 Nephrologist.

Speaker 12 While Leo Stragai sat in jail, Rebecca Schwartz had already left Florida for a fresh start in Lodi, Wisconsin.

Speaker 12 A small town flanked by farms and picturesque fields. A great choice if you need to just get away.

Speaker 12 Maybe that's what Rebecca was thinking when she moved there a few months after the murder. What was her personality like?

Speaker 17 She seemed very bubbly and she seemed genuine and concerned, you know, thoughtful.

Speaker 12 Sue Mashick first met Rebecca at her son's home.

Speaker 17 She said, well, I had to get out of Florida. She said, after my husband was murdered, all the docs were asking me to cover their shifts.
at the hospital and I just couldn't take it anymore.

Speaker 12 Rebecca told her and others she was a doctor, had been for decades. So she says this and you know nothing about her, nothing about her background.

Speaker 17 No, and I believed what I was being told, you know, that's what she said.

Speaker 12 What kind of doctor did she tell you she was?

Speaker 17 Nephrologist.

Speaker 12 A kidney doctor, just like Stephen. She wasn't, of course, but Sue believed her and was impressed.

Speaker 12 It wasn't long before Rebecca became close to her entire family, including her son and daughter-in-law.

Speaker 12 If you're around your son and his family for a while, Did you think that she was getting too close too fast to your son and his family?

Speaker 17 Yes, I did after a while, yes.

Speaker 12 All her fears came to a head one day at her grandson's football game. She spotted Rebecca and her son Aaron alone.

Speaker 17 I turned around to say something, and she was consoling him, holding his hand and looking up at him and just...

Speaker 17 It was something that I knew was kind of over the top.

Speaker 12 You see them together at the game, you're thinking, that's not right. Your mama's radar was going off about Rebecca.
Right. Did that just make it sound even louder?

Speaker 2 Oh, yes, for sure.

Speaker 12 And this mama's intuition was spot on. 10 months later, Aaron told his mom he was divorcing his wife.
And it wasn't long before Aaron revealed he was in love with Rebecca.

Speaker 12 Rebecca is 15 years older than Aaron. As a mom, how did that age gap hit you?

Speaker 17 Oh, I didn't think it would be a good thing by any means.

Speaker 12 Then came 2018. Two years later, the couple invited Aaron's parents to a Cinco de Mayo party, supposedly.

Speaker 17 They came walking out, and she had a very fancy full dress on, and he had like a tux suit on. I thought, wait a minute, this is not a Cinco de Mayo, you know.
And they got married.

Speaker 11 A new tag.

Speaker 12 Here are the happy newlyweds.

Speaker 44 Nobody, how do you see it? It's part of it.

Speaker 11 I love it.

Speaker 12 And the surprises kept coming. The family initially thought Rebecca had only been married once before to Dr.
Schwartz.

Speaker 12 Aaron later told his mom he found out Rebecca had actually had three previous husbands.

Speaker 17 She said, well, I was just so embarrassed. I didn't want to have to tell you that.

Speaker 12 Life was good for the couple. With the help of Rebecca's money, they lived in a beautiful home on Lake Wisconsin, bought a small plane, and went went on exotic vacations.

Speaker 12 Like a trip the entire family, including Sue, took to Alaska. First class, of course.

Speaker 17 We're in the air, and they're announcing that they need a nurse or a doctor. Could they please come back to coach?

Speaker 12 There was a medical emergency.

Speaker 17 A medical emergency. And I looked over at her and she just kept sitting there, you know.

Speaker 17 After about the third time that I'm looking over at her, she gets up and goes to the back and she's treating somebody back there.

Speaker 12 Treating someone?

Speaker 17 Treating someone.

Speaker 12 The passenger was fine. It wasn't a medical emergency after all.
Eventually though, the truth caught up with Rebecca.

Speaker 17 I had a friend who was considering going into dialysis because he was in kidney failure.

Speaker 12 So Sue asked Rebecca to give that friend medical advice.

Speaker 17 And after about five minutes, I discovered I knew more about kidneys than she did.

Speaker 12 It became apparent very quickly that she did not have a medical degree or a a specialty in kidneys her son is the one that finally let that out of the bag he said mom's no doctor you know and i thought oh really even after learning the truth aaron stayed with her

Speaker 12 that is until the letter was delivered how did you hear about the letter

Speaker 17 all my neighbors people were coming and uh telling us i'm just curious how did they even describe the letter

Speaker 17 Frightening. The one says, I don't know if I should read it or burn it.
She said, I don't know what to do with this thing.

Speaker 12 About five years into their marriage, the couple's relationship blew up. Rebecca caught Aaron cheating.
That's when she wrote a blistering two-page letter, seemingly, to everyone.

Speaker 17 She went to the neighbors and taped it onto their garage doors and such, all the neighbors in their neighborhood.

Speaker 12 Included in the packet, her petition for divorce, graphic sexual details, and a picture of her husband's alleged lover. Plus, plenty of unkind words like these.

Speaker 12 I will always wonder why I wasn't good enough.

Speaker 12 And Erin chose a white trash, ugly 50-year-old who looks like she had been rode hard and put away wet for 35 years with teeth out of Jurassic Park that has literally nothing over me.

Speaker 12 The letter landed in mailboxes all over town.

Speaker 17 We counted here at least 60-some people that she sent that letter to.

Speaker 12 What did you think when you read that?

Speaker 17 I thought she's flipping crazy.

Speaker 12 Aaron told us Rebecca closed him out of their joint bank accounts, transferred ownership of their multiple homes to her sons, and then locked him out. He's now living with his mother.

Speaker 17 I want people to know that there are people like her in this world. I would have never, ever in my life thought I'd run into somebody that could be this devastating to the family.

Speaker 12 It wasn't long after those divorce papers were filed that the phone rang at Florin and Roebig. You get a phone call completely out of the blue.

Speaker 1 Unexpected, out of the blue.

Speaker 12 Who was it?

Speaker 1 Aaron Maschick.

Speaker 12 Rebecca's husband said he was ready to turn the tables on his soon-to-be ex-wife and he was willing to testify against her at trial.

Speaker 12 But before that could happen, Rebecca would find herself in the hot seat. Amos Schwartz, will you please raise your right hand?

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Speaker 12 Long before Rebecca's cushy new life with her younger husband went up in flames in Wisconsin, something was happening in Florida.

Speaker 12 Attorneys Will Florin and Tommy Roebig had been building a case against her. A legal battle that would take years.

Speaker 12 Their goal, claw back every dollar of the doctor's vast wealth that Rebecca now controlled. What was his net worth after he died?

Speaker 43 North of $30 million.

Speaker 12 It's a very strong estate.

Speaker 43 He had a very successful dialysis clinic that he sold for a lot of money. Millions and millions of dollars.
They own, you know, 40 or so rental properties.

Speaker 62 Adam Corey Porter, if you could please swear in the depot.

Speaker 12 Because this was a civil case, Rebecca had to sit for a deposition.

Speaker 62 Could you tell us your name, please?

Speaker 63 Rebecca Schwartz.

Speaker 12 So in 2016, for the first time, she faced the Schwartz family attorneys.

Speaker 62 You were present, were you not, in the home at the time of Dr. Schwartz's murder and took part in the murder of Dr.
Schwartz, did you not?

Speaker 31 Fogged.

Speaker 63 I reassert my rights under Article 1, Section 9 of the Florida Constitution.

Speaker 12 Only she didn't answer any of their questions.

Speaker 43 Well, I got about 75 pleas against self-incrimination as a reason for not answering a question.

Speaker 3 She just took the fifth.

Speaker 50 Over and over and over again.

Speaker 12 Even so, it gave Florin the chance to ask Rebecca this.

Speaker 62 You have been convicted

Speaker 62 of a felony, have you not?

Speaker 63 I reassert my rights under Article 1, Section 9 of the Florida Constitution.

Speaker 12 Rebecca was a convicted felon.

Speaker 43 In the early 90s, she went to work for Mothers Against Drunk Driving up in North Florida. And the reason is because she lost a two-year-old son to a drunk driver.

Speaker 12 After becoming president of that local mad chapter, Rebecca embezzled more than $7,000 from the charity.

Speaker 43 She was arrested, pled guilty, was put on probation for four counts of stealing from mothers against drunk driving.

Speaker 12 What type of person steals money from mothers against drunk driving? Exactly.

Speaker 37 Someone without conscience, that doesn't care, that's narcissistic, and wants whatever they want at all costs.

Speaker 12 As they prepared for trial, attorney Sean Cummings spent many hours trying to track down Rebecca's Rebecca's fortune, money the firm believed she was hiding.

Speaker 6 We always suspected that she was moving the assets to keep us off the trail.

Speaker 12 She created a number of limited liability companies, or LLCs, normally one way to protect assets from lawsuits. This begins video number one in the deposition of Rebecca A.

Speaker 52 Schwartz.

Speaker 12 By 2024, seven years after her last deposition, the attorneys got a judge's order compelling her to testify.

Speaker 6 It allowed us to force Rebecca Schwartz to provide testimony about her finances.

Speaker 12 This time, she couldn't claim the fifth. Ms.
Schwartz, will you please raise your right hand? Under oath, Rebecca painted a surprising financial picture.

Speaker 25 What do you estimate your current total net worth to be?

Speaker 44 Well, let's see.

Speaker 45 About $10,000.

Speaker 12 $10,000.

Speaker 12 She later added she she also had some furniture and a car worth an additional $15,000.

Speaker 6 When she told me her assets were $10,000, I mean, I just knew it wasn't true. I knew that she had millions in property and boats and condos and businesses.

Speaker 12 Rebecca testified she transferred almost everything she owned into trusts that were now controlled by her two sons, Ben and Eric. She said they gave her an allowance to live.

Speaker 45 They They give me $500 a month.

Speaker 25 How do they give you that $500 a month?

Speaker 45 Benjamin hands me $500.

Speaker 12 Her sons were also brought in for depositions.

Speaker 43 This begins video number one, the deposition of Benjamin Nichols.

Speaker 12 But when asked about the different LLCs under his control, Ben often gave the same answer. He didn't know much about them.

Speaker 48 You know, I trust you guys, lawyers, and stuff like that.

Speaker 65 So if you guys put something in front of me, I just sign it. So I don't know exactly what it is that I'm signing or why I'm signing it.

Speaker 12 But there was one LLC Ben did seem more familiar with. It was titled GFYCS and AM.

Speaker 25 Who came up with that name for that LLC?

Speaker 65 My wife and I.

Speaker 47 Okay.

Speaker 25 And when the two of you came up with it, did you discuss what GFYCS and AM stands for?

Speaker 65 Yeah, do you want me to say it on record?

Speaker 25 I do.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I'm not going to.

Speaker 25 Does it stand for Go Yourself, Carter Schwartz, and Aaron Mashick?

Speaker 65 Yes, it does.

Speaker 12 Go F yourself, Carter Schwartz.

Speaker 10 And Aaron Mashick, which is the soon-to-be ex-husband. Wonders never cease.
And at this point,

Speaker 10 there's nothing that would be surprising of this family.

Speaker 12 Just the name of that LLC.

Speaker 12 There are some pieces of this that just seem so beyond belief.

Speaker 10 I think there's a level of

Speaker 10 invincibility and hubris that just exceeds any rational explanation.

Speaker 25 And why would you call that company Guil Yourself Carter Schwartz and Aaron Mashuk?

Speaker 65 For obvious reasons.

Speaker 25 I need you to explain to me what the reason is.

Speaker 65 Well, I'm in this mess because of Aaron Mashick.

Speaker 25 And Carter Schwartz?

Speaker 65 He's also behind it.

Speaker 25 All right. And when you say you're in this mess, what do you mean?

Speaker 65 I'm sitting here talking to you in a deposition.

Speaker 12 And Rebecca's other son, Eric, said he also didn't know much about the assets under his control.

Speaker 12 Do you have any documentation or lists or anything that you keep so that you know what assets that you own or don't own?

Speaker 59 No.

Speaker 6 Let me ask you this way.

Speaker 25 If you died tomorrow and your wife needed to figure out which property was left to her and your children, how would she do it?

Speaker 33 Don't know.

Speaker 25 Does that worry you?

Speaker 2 It does now.

Speaker 6 I think the purpose of taking assets out of your own name and moving in someone else is it would make it more difficult, in her mind at least, for us to try to get those assets back and put them where they belong, which was with Dr.

Speaker 6 Schwartz's children.

Speaker 12 While Rebecca's sons supported their mother, her daughter-in-law would be a very different story.

Speaker 62 Would it be a fair statement, then, that you've come to the conclusion that your mother-in-law, Becky, is evil?

Speaker 63 Yes.

Speaker 12 So, as all this is happening, I mean, you're digesting this live in this this deposition room.

Speaker 35 What are you thinking?

Speaker 43 There's my star witness.

Speaker 12 Only one person was ever criminally charged in Stephen Schwartz's murder. Leo Strawge.

Speaker 12 Six years after his arrest, prosecutors offered him a deal. He pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact.

Speaker 50 They seen all the evidence and they seen everything.

Speaker 20 They knew I was not the guy who killed Dr.

Speaker 12 Schwartz. In 2022, he was released from prison and deported back to his homeland of Albania.
Did you ever think that you would end up here in Albania because of what happened in Florida?

Speaker 53 Yeah, I knew I would come back. I knew I would come back one day.

Speaker 12 Leo started a new life, but the old grudges still linger. How would you describe Rebecca Schwartz today?

Speaker 8 Evil.

Speaker 35 Evil.

Speaker 50 I'll take her life in a heartbeat.

Speaker 50 And I won't regret it.

Speaker 12 You say that.

Speaker 13 You'd admit that.

Speaker 53 She took everything I had.

Speaker 12 If you were face to face with her today.

Speaker 50 I'll take her life in a heartbeat. I'll say it anywhere.

Speaker 50 I'm not afraid.

Speaker 20 She destroyed me.

Speaker 12 Whether or not Leo's threat is believable, he's not allowed to return to the U.S. until 2032.

Speaker 12 Back in Florida, the wrongful death civil lawsuit against Rebecca began in February 2025.

Speaker 10 For me and for our family, this isn't about money. This is about justice.
And unfortunately, the civil trial was the avenue available to us, despite what we may want.

Speaker 12 The trial started off with a win for the defense.

Speaker 12 The judge ruled jurors wouldn't hear that Rebecca stole money from mothers against drunk driving. Roham Kansari is her attorney.

Speaker 46 We did have to litigate that issue at length, but we were successful in keeping it out.

Speaker 12 The plaintiffs knew they faced other challenges. What do you need to prove to the jury to win this civil case?

Speaker 37 Well, obviously we need to prove that she caused the death of Dr. Steve Schwartz.

Speaker 12 Prove she participated or killed him herself. If they won, they could seek monetary damages, potentially stripping Rebecca of everything she owned.

Speaker 37 If you are the murderer, you cannot profit by that behavior.

Speaker 12 The plaintiff's theory, Rebecca killed her husband because he was about to end their marriage and cut her off from his money.

Speaker 13 Dr.

Speaker 37 Schwartz had made it known that he was going to divorce her, and had that happened, she would be destitute.

Speaker 12 One of the witnesses called to testify was a neighbor of the Schwartzes.

Speaker 64 I was to the left of them.

Speaker 12 April Cox told jurors about an argument she witnessed a few weeks before the murder. This is the audio from her deposition.

Speaker 64 Dr. Schwartz was in the living area and he either received a phone call or email or something that disturbed him.

Speaker 64 And she went to speak with him and then she came into the kitchen and she goes, please don't tell Dr. Schwartz that I bought Eric a business in Wisconsin.

Speaker 12 Rebecca had given her son Eric money to open that Verizon store. The plaintiffs argued it may have been the final straw for her husband.

Speaker 37 Don't tell him about the Verizon store.

Speaker 37 And so conversations must be happening, obviously, behind the scenes where he is unhappy. And this is escalating.
And it's a drumbeat, and it's coming. And then it ends at the bottom of those stairs.

Speaker 12 And while the murder weapons, a knife and gun, were never found, Kyle Smithy's deposition was played in court. And he testified about Rebecca bragging about knowing how to shoot.
Did she own a gun?

Speaker 15 She told me repeatedly that she owned a gun.

Speaker 12 Did you ever see her gun?

Speaker 15 I never saw her gun. She'd specifically referenced that it was a Saturday night special.

Speaker 12 A Saturday night special or a small caliber gun like the one used to kill Dr. Schwartz.

Speaker 37 We know she had a.22 because she's shown it to people. She carried it.

Speaker 37 She bragged about having it.

Speaker 12 They also showed jurors Leo's deposition taken while he was in jail he stuck to his story that rebecca had set him up she can pull

Speaker 12 in my driveway and i went to the window over the window and she said i need you to go to my house and get my purse then came bombshell testimony from rebecca's fourth husband aaron mashick After Rebecca filed for divorce and sent that letter around, he offered to testify for the plaintiffs.

Speaker 25 One of the statements that she made to me was.

Speaker 12 During his deposition, which jurors saw, he admitted that he and Rebecca purposely moved assets to protect them in case she lost this lawsuit.

Speaker 46 What was the purpose behind setting up those LLCs?

Speaker 25 Rebecca wanted to hide

Speaker 25 any assets from the civil case. Has Rebecca Mashick, formerly known as Schwartz, made any statement to you ever regarding her potential involvement in the death of Dr.

Speaker 25 Schwartz and having gotten away with her involvement in that. Yes.

Speaker 25 And what did she say to you in that regard?

Speaker 25 She said a couple of different things.

Speaker 8 I've gotten away with this before.

Speaker 30 I can get away with it again.

Speaker 25 That was, I believe, in reference to the

Speaker 60 murder of her prior husband.

Speaker 12 He also said that might have been a reference to moving assets to keep them from him.

Speaker 12 But perhaps the most surprising testimony came from Rebecca's daughter-in-law, Dana Nichols, Ben's wife at the time.

Speaker 37 When Dana testified at the trial in the courtroom that day, it was electric.

Speaker 12 Her testimony was similar to what she said in this deposition. She and Ben worked for Rebecca and lived in a house she bought for them.
But Dana said her mother-in-law could be vindictive.

Speaker 12 Like the time Dana invited the wrong person to her own baby shower.

Speaker 63 She got mad at my baby shower

Speaker 63 because I invited my other mother-in-law, Ben's stepmom.

Speaker 63 And she doesn't like her. And so she fired us

Speaker 63 and

Speaker 63 threatened to take away our house and our health insurance. when I was eight months pregnant.

Speaker 12 The couple were later rehired. But Dana said that and other experiences convinced her Rebecca could be ruthless.
She had no doubt her mother-in-law had something to do with the killing.

Speaker 62 When was it that you first suspected that she was involved in the murder of Dr. Schwartz?

Speaker 63 The night that it happened.

Speaker 62 Were you able to talk to anybody that night about the concerns?

Speaker 63 No, because I was scared.

Speaker 62 In fact, you've told your friends, at least one of them, that you're afraid of Becky Schwartz because you fear for your daughter,

Speaker 62 for your daughter's safety.

Speaker 62 Yes?

Speaker 63 Yes.

Speaker 62 What is it about Becky Schwartz that

Speaker 62 makes a nice young lady like you afraid for the safety of her daughter?

Speaker 63 Because she only cares about herself

Speaker 63 and she doesn't care who she

Speaker 33 will hurt or has hurt

Speaker 63 to protect herself.

Speaker 12 In her deposition, Dana read an email she sent to a friend and gave similar testimony at trial.

Speaker 63 I want justice for Dr. Schwartz and Becky to pay for all the wrong and evil things she has done.
She doesn't deserve to be living it up and enjoying life.

Speaker 62 Would it be a fair statement then that you've come to the conclusion that your mother-in-law, Becky, is evil?

Speaker 63 Yes.

Speaker 12 It's pretty striking.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 From your own family.

Speaker 43 From your own family.

Speaker 12 It was devastating testimony, but the defense was about to reframe the entire case, arguing the real killer had already been caught.

Speaker 46 The only physical evidence that was there showed that Leo Straga was involved.

Speaker 12 For more than a decade, Rebecca had been dawned by allegations she was responsible for her husband's death, even though she was never criminally charged.

Speaker 12 Now, as part of a civil suit, her defense insisted she was innocent. Rebecca's attorney, Roham Kansari.
Where were some of the holes in the plaintiff's case?

Speaker 46 The lack of physical evidence.

Speaker 30 They had no physical evidence tying my client to the murder. There was no murder weapon that was retrieved.

Speaker 12 What's more, he said, someone else had already admitted to playing a role.

Speaker 46 The only physical evidence that was there showed that Leo Straga was involved.

Speaker 12 Not only was Leo's DNA found on Dr. Schwartz's clothing, he also admitted he didn't tell police the truth.

Speaker 26 No, I swear, I swear, I swear, I swear, no, I wasn't involved.

Speaker 46 He initially lied to law enforcement about being in the house altogether. And then later, when they confronted him with it, he was ultimately charged with murder.

Speaker 12 The plaintiffs in this case have said Leo had no motive, that he was working for Dr. Schwartz, he was making a good living, and that essentially his life stood to get worse with Dr.

Speaker 12 Schwartz not in the picture. So why would he want to kill Dr.
Schwartz?

Speaker 46 I don't necessarily know what his motive was, but I do know that the only physical evidence that was on the scene tied him to being there and having his hands or any other DNA in his pants pockets.

Speaker 12 As for Rebecca's alleged motive, her attorney said there was no evidence to show her husband was planning to leave her. You think their marriage was going to keep going?

Speaker 46 I'm not saying it wasn't rocky, but to just jump to the conclusion that it was on the cusp of a divorce and that's what led to this murder, I think is a big jump.

Speaker 12 Kansari also said there was a reasonable explanation for Rebecca and her sons moving assets around after the doctor's death. It was to keep them away from her fourth husband, Aaron Mashick.

Speaker 48 After Aaron got caught cheating on my mom is when,

Speaker 48 you know, we decided that we, you know, my brother and I, you know, we all sat down and decided that we should probably protect her.

Speaker 25 You moved all those assets out of your control into someone else's control to prevent Mr. Mashick from getting them.

Speaker 32 Prevent for him laying clang to him.

Speaker 38 Yes, sir.

Speaker 12 The defense called only one witness, witness, a medical salesperson who visited the doctor's office. She testified she saw a loving relationship between Rebecca and her husband.

Speaker 12 The one witness you did call, why did you feel that testimony was important?

Speaker 46 I felt that the jury needed to hear that there was somebody out there that felt that she was a good person and that she is a good person.

Speaker 12 If there were multiple witnesses on the plaintiff's side, who said terrible things about Rebecca's character, why should the jury believe one person who says positive things about her versus the many who lined up to say negative things about her?

Speaker 46 Well, the focus should be on whether she committed the murder or not. I went to great lengths to say you don't have to like her.

Speaker 46 Just because she said all these things and potentially did all these bad things doesn't mean that she killed her husband.

Speaker 12 So you were trying to draw a line that even if she is a bad person, not the greatest individual, that doesn't make her a murderer.

Speaker 38 Correct.

Speaker 46 And juries need to set their feelings aside.

Speaker 12 He also reminded jurors that she was on trial for her husband's killing, not for alleged financial misconduct.

Speaker 12 Finally, it was in the jury's hands. Unlike a criminal case, in a civil trial, the bar is lower for jurors to find against the defendant.

Speaker 12 Now the jury has the case. How are you feeling?

Speaker 1 Strong.

Speaker 28 Good.

Speaker 37 Yeah, we proved our case.

Speaker 12 After two and a half hours of deliberations, they reached a verdict.

Speaker 12 She was found liable for likely being involved in the murder, and the family was awarded quite a large sum.

Speaker 12 The jury found Rebecca Schwartz liable for intentionally killing or participating in her husband's death.

Speaker 37 The court system guarantees you a chance at justice. It doesn't guarantee you justice.
It doesn't happen all the time. When it happens, it's

Speaker 3 glorious. glorious.

Speaker 12 As for the amount of money jurors awarded Carter and his family,

Speaker 10 they listed out different line items. Well, this is how much we believe you lost in support.
This is how much is pain and suffering. This is how much the estate is.

Speaker 10 And in total, it was just shy of $200 million.

Speaker 12 $200 million.

Speaker 12 It's hitting her in the pocketbook. And that has got to be devastating for someone that

Speaker 12 is so greedy you hear the verdict you hear the dollar amount what did you think they were sure of themselves we're gonna go get it

Speaker 12 and they're well on their way the attorneys know they'll never collect the full 200 million dollars but so far florin says they've frozen about six to ten million dollars in rebecca's assets and they're looking for more including money from a yacht that Aaron Mashick sold in violation of a judge's order.

Speaker 12 Rebecca now lives back in Florida. Following the advice of her lawyer, she declined our request for an interview.

Speaker 12 For more than a decade, the criminal investigation into Stephen Schwartz's murder remained open and unsolved. But in May of 2025, two months after the civil verdict, Detective Diebel retired.

Speaker 12 and the Tarpon Springs Police officially closed its case. The police chief says it could be reopened if new evidence is discovered.
I mean, you've looked at Rebecca any number of possible ways.

Speaker 12 She's never been arrested, never been charged. Could it be because she's innocent? That she didn't do this?

Speaker 38 I don't think so.

Speaker 6 I know so. She's involved.

Speaker 12 As for Carter, he's now Dr. Schwartz, a nephrologist.
Just like his dad. He says while their family is grateful for the civil judgment, money, any amount, only goes so far.

Speaker 10 Finally,

Speaker 10 the latest development in getting this verdict at this trial is a step towards justice.

Speaker 10 But she is still walking around. She is still free.
And

Speaker 10 I would trade every dime to see true justice served.

Speaker 19 That's all for this edition of Dateline. And check out our Talking Dateline podcast.
Blaine Alexander and Keith Morrison will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode.

Speaker 19 Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 Central.
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.

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