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CHAPTER 2

Please, for the kids’ sakes, give them both to us and I promise we will comply with everything you want us to do. Give them a break, and David and myself a chance to prove we can make a difference and change their lives for the best.

—Jessica Schwarz

Andrew J. “A.J.” Schwarz was born to David Schwarz and his first wife, Ilene, on April 24, 1983. Ten years and eight days later he was dead.

When David met Ilene Spence in 1980, she already had a baby girl named Patsy. There was no father’s name listed on Patsy’s birth certificate, only the notation that he had “left before she was born.” Therefore, her last name was Spence—her mother’s maiden name. David and Ilene were married in 1982 and their son was born the following year.

According to David, Ilene kept the children—and the apartment—clean. But after she “kicked him out” and they were divorced in 1986, she “worked nights as a stripper, had many lovers, and abused drugs and alcohol.”

He saw A.J. and Patsy every weekend. Even though Patsy was not his own child, he loved her and did not want to separate the two children.

David lived alone for a short time until he met Jessica. A former truck driver, traveling from New York City to Miami, she had sold her truck and moved to Florida.

A.J. was three years old when he first visited with both Jessica and David. Jessica would later say that the children were “malnourished, dirty, and dressed poorly.” She also claimed that A.J. could not talk, was shy or frightened, that he would hide his face, and was totally inarticulate. She also said that he did not use tableware and acted like a sick animal.

David’s words were similar: The children were “kept poorly, dirty, thin, and ragged.” The children told him that Ilene’s lovers had beaten them.

In 1987, A.J. became ill and was hospitalized. HRS was called in because A.J. had bruises on his back and claimed he had been beaten “with a stick.”

Shortly after that, Ilene, along with the children, disappeared, and David did not see them again until November 1989, when he—by chance—met them on the street. They again disappeared and he did not see them until HRS called him in 1990.

At the initial HRS medical exam, A.J. was diagnosed as hyperactive. He also could not hear well, suffered from asthma, and his front teeth were rotten. He was a mess.

Jessica and David were given temporary custody of the children—although they remained under protective custody of the state. Both of them were sickly when they arrived and had lice and ringworm.

Jessica had sent a letter to HRS, which read in part:

Please, for the kids’ sakes, give them both to us and I promise we will comply with everything you want us to do. Give them a break, and David and myself a chance to prove we can make a difference and change their lives for the best.

Shortly before noon on Sunday, May 2, Michael Waites interviewed thirty-six-year old David Schwarz at the sheriff’s office. Still quite distraught, his voice echoed the genuine disbelief and shock that he was feeling:

Waites: I just need to—real quickly—go over what happened this morning. Start with dinnertime last night—how A.J. was acting up until he goes to bed. David: He was fine. He ate dinner with everybody else. No, he ate in his room. Uh, chicken—just like everybody else. Fine. Offered to do the dishes. So he did the dishes. Fine. Girls were in playin’ Nintendo. And, uh, he finished up the kitchen. Did some schoolwork in his room. ’Cause he hadn’t been to school—he hadn’t been feelin’ good. And around nine o’clock or so, he came in and said “good night.” Went to the bathroom and went to bed. I watched TV until about midnight. Checked on all the kids and I went to bed. This morning the wife said, “A.J.’s gone.” I said, “What?” The door was open. The garage door was locked. Front door was locked. She was looking in the backyard. I looked in the backyard. Saw him in the pool. I noticed the ladder was up on the pool.

Waites: Uh-huh.

David: Ladder was up. I said, “Oh, shit!” I looked in and there he was. Jumped in and carried him out. Arm was stiff. . . . I told the wife, “911.” Came in while she was on the phone and I said, “He’s stiff. I don’t think there’s any way they’re gonna revive him. Paramedics came. I covered him with a sheet. That’s the extent . . . Waites (after a slight pause): You were saying earlier that there had been some problems with the neighbors? David: From what my wife’s been sayin’ . . . I have, myself, no problems with the neighbors. I’m not there during the week. I work twelve, thirteen hours a day. I come home. I eat there and I’m in the house. Just from what the wife says . . . I mean . . . I don’t have any problems myself with any of the neighbors.

Waites: Have the neighbors ever called HRS or anything like that?

David: Someone has.

Waites: In the past?

David: Yeah. They don’t tell us who does it. I forget how many times, but it’s been cleared each time. Waites: Uh-huh. Okay.

David: With no problems.

Waites continued after a long silence: And when—either you or your wife—aren’t out by the pool . . . the ladder’s normally kept away from the pool, so that your kids or neighborhood kids don’t get into it?

David: Right. The ladder’s only put up when they’re going in to swim. That was our thought for safety—along with the fence. The ladder was kept on the ground against the house till we got this puppy and he likes to chew things. So we put it up on that table.

Waites: The door that was open that you talked about—that was his bedroom door?

David: Yes.

Waites: He normally sleeps with that closed?

David: Yeah. The kids do sleep with their doors closed, because I like to watch TV at night and Jessica gets up once in a while to get something to eat. And this way, they don’t get bothered. The dogs can’t go in their rooms. The dogs sleep with us in our room.

Waites: One of the neighbors told one of the detectives standing out there that they saw A.J. out walking the dog—after midnight last night. Is that any way possible? I mean, you just said the dogs sleep with you.

David: Yeah. The dogs weren’t out after midnight.

Waites: Okay. That’s just what one of them said as one of the detectives was walking to his car and it kind of struck me as odd because I can’t see—

David: What? We don’t walk the dogs.

Waites: I’m just telling you what someone said. I’m just trying to make sure I’ve got everything cleared up. David (exclaiming): Lord Almighty!

Waites: I mean, once you’re in at night—unless the dogs wake you up—they’re in with you, right?

David: If they wake me up, I put them out the back.

Waites: The back? Okay.

David: Once in a while, the girls would walk them around the block.

Waites: Uh-huh. But that’s going to be daylight hours—it’s not going to be after midnight....

David (distressed): Yeah! Good God! I’m gonna be sick. He was not out walking the dog after midnight!

(The detective waited several moments before continuing the questioning, allowing David to regain his composure.)

Waites: The problems that your wife had with the neighbors . . . ?

David: Uh-huh.

Waites: And I realize again that you’re not home during the day with the hours that you’re putting in working. Do you think it could have been—normally, she talks kind of in a loud voice . . . ?

David: Yeah.

Waites: Well, I don’t have a problem with that. Did you ever think, like, if she may have been just yelling at one of the kids or something—just with her being naturally loud-natured—that they may have misinterpreted it? That it may have resulted in HRS being called? Or people may have seen her out yelling at the kids not to do something and just thought something else?

David: She doesn’t yell unless she’s out the back door or in the house. She doesn’t go out front yelling. Waites: Okay.

David: But, yeah, she does raise her voice. I raise my voice. The neighbors raise their voice.

Waites: It’s normal? Well, normal to kids.

David: Yeah. Well, Jessica has a loud voice to begin with. Waites: But there was never anything that someone might consider excessive punishment? That’s ever gone on?

David: All right, on Thursdays, A.J. would get up early and go out and collect cans. And someone thought that was punishment.

Waites: Because he went out and collected cans? David: Yeah.

Waites: Would he do this before school?

David: Yeah. And HRS came and asked about this shit. Punishment? Punishment is taking away the TV; not letting him go in the pool.

Waites: HRS just came out because someone called and said you had your kid out collecting cans on Thursdays? David: No, they didn’t come out for that. The guardian ad litem brought that up—that someone called him on it. Waites: Did he say if there was anything else said other than just out picking up cans or . . . ?

David: Yeah. They (HRS) come over, woke all the kids up, looked at their bodies . . . nothing—nowhere. They get spanked—of course.

Waites: Yeah.

David: We can’t do much more than that because they can call on us. The kids themselves can call on us.

Waites: Yeah. True.

David: I mean, excessive punishment would be grounding—can’t go out and play. That may be excessive.

Waites: But nothing excessive, as far as physical? I mean, I agree with you. A slap across the butt is a slap across the butt. Every once in a while a kid’s going to get one.

David: I’ve used my belt on them a few times. Waites: Now . . . and again.... I mean, I was raised that way, you know?

David: I was too. But you can’t do that—well, you’re not supposed to do that nowadays.

Waites: It’s not like you’re standing over them—over one of the kids and hitting on them for five or six minutes. I mean—

David: They’d be in the hospital if I did that.

Waites: Exactly.

David: I’m not a little guy.

Waites: The cans—he just liked collecting them? Is there any particular reason that he told the guardian when they asked him about it?

David: Just collecting them for Mommy (Jessica), that’s all. He might’ve said something. He’s—he was a little A.D.D. His mama (Ilene) hit him in the head with a frying pan—deaf in one ear. Had him carrying drugs and stuff—and he was molested. So he’s—was not completely straight in his head. He’d give you the shirt off his back—he was a good kid.

Waites: If somebody asked him—saw him one morning and asked A.J., “Why are you out collecting cans?” would he make up something? Exaggerate something? David: More than likely. I can’t say. The neighbors came over and said some stuff he said and then he denies it. He’d tell a lie quicker than the truth—that’s for sure. Waites: But that all relates back to the stuff he went through with his natural mother?

David: I’m sure of it. It has to. One thing we did expound on with the kids—tell us the truth. He just had a very hard time doing that.

Waites: Was he a fairly good swimmer?

David: Yeah. From what I seen . . . in the pool . . . at the beach....

Waites: Your wife told me he’s been going to counseling and had a guardian and so forth for some period. And, I guess, he even was when he was still in Fort Lauderdale, before he came up to live with you—from the problems that he’d had down there.

David: Right.

Waites: Do you think this all could have resulted just in finally being too much pressure from all that?

David: I don’t know. The psychiatrists have all said that he’s got a lot of hurt inside. And I don’t know. I can’t say. I have no idea. Like I said, he wasn’t depressed or nothing that I saw, in the last couple days. So I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what happened. Wife woke me up—found him in the pool. I can only speculate. I don’t know. The water was awful cold.

That afternoon, HRS workers removed A.J.’s stepsister, Lauren, and half sister, Jackie, from the Schwarz home and put them in protective custody. They were placed in the home of their grandparents—Jessica’s mother and father.

Records showed that sheriff’s deputies had been called to the Triphammer Road residence fourteen times since May 1990—for such incidents as battery, petty theft, and “neighbor trouble.”

In June 1991, deputies arrived at the house—after being called about a fight—and found Jessica Schwarz being pinned down in their driveway by her husband. David Schwarz explained that she had been drinking at a neighbor’s house and when he tried to take her home, she started hitting him, then broke the windshield on his car.

Jessica informed the deputies that if they did not take her away, there would be more fighting. She was arrested, pleaded guilty to battery, and was sentenced to time served.

On Monday, there was a guidance counselor and a school psychologist present at Indian Pines Elementary School to help students deal with their feelings about their classmate’s sudden and tragic death.

That morning, Detective Restivo studied his notes from the interviews with David and Jessica’s neighbors. It was all too clear that there was something terribly wrong in the Schwarz home.

First he had interviewed Eileen Callahan, the neighbor who had told him that A.J. was severely abused—to the point that she had called HRS and made a complaint. She had seen A.J. with two black eyes and what appeared to be a broken nose. Even though he told everyone who asked him that he had fallen off his bicycle, Callahan had found that hard to believe, since the child was never seen riding a bicycle.

In fact, it seemed that A.J. wasn’t allowed to play at all, and was “constantly cleaning the garage” and had even been seen washing his father’s truck—with a toothbrush.

Callahan also told the detective that every Thursday morning for the last couple of months—between 5:00 and 6:00—she saw A.J. collecting aluminum cans from the garbage in front of each residence on the street. She further claimed that this was a provision (community service) for a probation of some type that was imposed on Jessica Schwarz—but she wasn’t sure what the charges had been.

Another neighbor, Jim Ebenhack, had also seen A.J. collecting cans very early on Thursday mornings and taking them back to his house. He also told Restivo that the stepmother was constantly verbally abusing the child, including—but not limited to—calling him “a useless piece of shit.”

Louis Steinhauer—yet another neighbor—had seen the boy’s black eyes and possibly broken nose. A.J. was in the company of his sister Jackie when Steinhauer asked what had happened. Jackie turned to A.J. and warned, “Remember what Mom told you to say!” A.J. replied, “Yes. I fell off my bike.”

Although the parents drove Lauren to school, Steinhauer stated that A.J. was made to walk. He had actually seen the parents drive away with the girls in the car while A.J. started walking to school.

About two weeks earlier, Jessica had gone to school, taken A.J. out, and brought him home where “she beat him because he forgot to feed the cat.”

The weekend before his death, A.J. was seen walking back and forth, in the front yard of his house, saying, “I’m no good; I’m a liar.” Steinhauer said he could hear the stepmother and father from inside the dwelling, shouting, “Can’t hear you!” And A.J. would then scream the words even louder.

He had also seen the young boy being made to edge the lawn with regular household scissors.

As Detective Restivo was canvassing the neighborhood, a thirteen-year-old girl approached him and asked if she could speak with him. Jamie Falk explained that she was a friend of A.J.’s sister Patsy. She told the detective that Jessica was “always mean to A.J. and would not let him play.” One day when she was over there—a very hot day—Jessica made A.J. go to his room, where there was no air conditioner—with the windows closed. She made him stay there for hours at a time.

That same day, Michael Waites contacted South County Mental Health and verified that the victim, Andrew Schwarz, had indeed been treated there.

At 12:30 that afternoon, Waites, along with Detective Calloway and Sergeant Deischer, met with several members of the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. Terry Neuenhaus, Sandra Owen, Sandy Warren, Richard Lyles, and Jim Koubla met with the investigators at the PBSO Crimes Against Persons Unit.

On May 19, 1992, the reports indicated that Jessica Schwarz had been the subject of an HRS investigation involving crack cocaine use, sale of crack cocaine, and physical abuse on Andrew Schwarz. The case was closed by HRS without classification. Detective Ole Olsen, of the PBSO, had also investigated the charges, which were determined to be “unfounded.”

On January 25, 1993, Jessica Schwarz was again investigated by HRS and the PBSO because of the injuries Andrew Schwarz had suffered to his nose, which caused both of his eyes to swell. It was feared that Jessica Schwarz had broken the child’s nose. HRS closed the investigation without classification. Detective Chris Calloway had closed the criminal investigation as “unfounded.”

HRS had ordered a psychological evaluation for both Jessica and Andrew Schwarz at the conclusion of their investigation.

At 3:30 in the afternoon, Detectives Waites and Schoenstein were in attendance as Dr. James Benz, the chief medical examiner for Palm Beach County, performed the autopsy on Andrew Schwarz.

On A.J.’s head, Dr. Benz found a large area—about 5 inches long and 1¾ inches wide—covered with “a bluish-green dye containing glitter.” And he found recent mild scratches behind each of his ears and a long recent abrasion on the right side of his nose, mild recent abrasions on the inside of his upper lip, the corner of his mouth, and his face. There were recent abrasions on his right elbow, a recent scratch on his left forearm.

He found multiple old, discolored bruises under his chin, on his torso, on his buttocks, and on his thigh. He also observed brown, yellow, and purple bruises of various sizes and age on almost every part of A.J.’s body.

Dr. Benz’s opinion was that the cause of death for Andrew Schwarz was the result of drowning—the manner of death undetermined.