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CHAPTER 1

No more pain ... no more humiliation ... no more fear ... it was finally over. No one could ever hurt him again. In the cold, still water, in the middle of the spring night, he had finally found peace.

David Schwarz struggled to wake up enough to understand what his wife was saying to him — and why she was shaking him. After a moment, he realized that Jessica was telling him that his ten-year-old son, A.J., was missing. Now wide-awake and alarmed, he stumbled to the kitchen, with his wife right behind him — insisting that she had already looked everywhere and he was nowhere to be found.

As he passed by the patio door — still trying to comprehend what was happening — he glanced outside and noticed that the ladder was hanging on the side of their aboveground swimming pool. Could it be? Was it possible that A.J. had gone swimming? At this hour? It was barely daylight — the sun had just come up.

David rushed to the side of the pool, which was located about five feet from the patio door, and saw the boy under the water about halfway down. But something was terribly wrong. He quickly jumped into the pool and lifted his son out of the water.

It was heartbreakingly obvious that A.J. was dead. David shouted at Jessica to call 911, and then gently laid his son's cold, stiff body on the ground. Disbelieving — and stunned — he went into the house to get a sheet to cover him. Then he sat down in a chair at the patio table — a few feet from his son's body — to wait.

The beautiful Sunday morning of May 2, 1993, was clear and dry with the promise of becoming very hot, with the temperature already in the low seventies. Within minutes of the 911 call, sirens screamed in the distance as paramedics and law enforcement officials approached the area from different directions. Their destination was a residence on Triphammer Road in the Concept Homes Development, a low-to-medium-income neighborhood near Lantana, Florida.

As soon as the officers from the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office (PBSO) — who were working the graveyard shift — arrived, they cordoned off the ranch-style house with yellow crime-scene tape. Neighbors started filtering out of their homes — some still in their nightclothes — trying to find out what had happened.

Corporal Bobbie Hopper, the responding officer, walked around the house and entered the backyard through a wooden gate located on the west side of the house. A six-foot-high privacy fence surrounded the entire area.

The octagon-shaped swimming pool was centered in — and completely dominated — the small yard. It was no more than four feet deep and there was a white plastic ladder on the outside of the pool and another on the inside.

The victim was lying on the grass under a flowered bedsheet next to the north side of the pool. When the officer removed the sheet, she saw that the young boy was on his back and was naked.

His right arm was bent at the elbow and lying across his chest, and his left arm was bent at the elbow near his side — his forearm outstretched. The tips of his fingers on both hands were bent inward, not quite — but almost — balled into fists, therefore suggesting a struggle might have taken place. Both his legs were bent at the knees and the heels of both feet rested on the ground with his toes pointed upward.

And he was covered with bruises. They were everywhere, on his arms, his legs, his neck, and his face. A deep abrasion scored the right side of his nose. Another feathered away from his mouth. The underside of his chin was clearly bruised. The neck, chest, and abdomen were nicked and abraded. A patchwork of bruises ran down his hips and his legs.

Oddly enough, there was a blue-and-green-colored stain — along with some sparkles in his hair — on the left side of his hairline.

Detective Michael Waites was awakened by the shrill ringing of the telephone at 6:25 that morning. The police dispatcher on the other end of the line requested that he respond to an apparent drowning. After being informed that the victim was a child, he was in his car and on the road within minutes.

Sergeant Ken Deischer, of the PBSO's Homicide Unit, met him in front of the house and briefed him: The victim was a ten-year-old white male. He had been discovered floating facedown in an aboveground swimming pool in the backyard. Nude. And covered with bruises.

Michael Waites would be the lead investigator. He had been a homicide detective since 1987 and a member of the SWAT team since 1985. Quiet, easygoing, and thorough, he listened more than he spoke.

Several detectives, including Jimmy Restivo and Chris Calloway, were en route to conduct a canvass of the neighborhood. They could only hope that if there had been child abuse — or anything suspicious — that the neighbors would be willing to talk to the investigators.

Deischer and Waites circled around to the backyard and Waites examined the body. He anticipated that the cause of death was drowning. The manner of death, on the other hand — whether it was from natural causes, suicide, accident, or homicide — was something he hoped the medical examiner would be able to determine.

Corporal Hopper provided him with the victim's name and date of birth: Andrew J. Schwarz, born April 24, 1983. She added, "But everyone called him A.J. He lives ... lived here with his father, stepmother, and two stepsisters." They would later learn that the older one was A.J.'s stepsister and the younger one was actually his half sister.

Waites entered the house through the patio door that led into the extremely cluttered kitchen. Among other things, there were empty beer cans everywhere.

David Schwarz, a big man with an untamed beard and a look of disbelief and shock on his face, was seated at the kitchen table. It was easy to see why everyone — as the detective would later learn — called him "Bear."

Waites introduced himself and immediately began assessing the father's state of mind, searching for signs of shock: the onset of grief, anger, and loss.

David, struggling to speak, said that A.J. went to bed around 9:00 the night before and was fine. He said that he had stayed up, watching TV, until around midnight — maybe 12:30 — and that Jessica had gone to bed sometime prior to that. Before he went to bed, he had checked on the kids. All three of them were sound asleep in their bedrooms — including A.J.

The next thing he remembered was his wife waking him up with the news that A.J. was missing. She informed him that A.J. wasn't in his bedroom or anywhere else in the house.

Waites asked him what time that was and Bear said it was around 6:00 — maybe a little after. He went on to say that he was standing in the kitchen when he noticed that the ladder was in the pool, and he remembered removing the ladder from the pool late the previous evening. When he stepped into the backyard to investigate, he saw his son's body in the pool.

David Schwarz was seriously shaken. He could have been acting, but Waites didn't think so. The detective asked what A.J. had been wearing when he went to bed, and Bear replied, "Ninja Turtle sweatpants and a T-shirt."

And now he was naked next to the swimming pool.

Waites asked David Schwarz to sign a "consent to search" for the house and curtilage and he agreed.

When Detective Doreen Schoenstein, of the Crime Scene Unit, returned to her vehicle to obtain the items necessary for the investigation and the search, she noticed that several of the neighbors who had gathered outside their homes were very upset and speaking in hostile tones about Jessica and David Schwarz.

When Schoenstein went into the house, Detective Waites told her that he was attempting to speak with A.J.'s stepmother. Due to the suspicious circumstances surrounding the child's death, Jessica and David had been kept separated until they could be questioned.

Hopper and Schoenstein accompanied Detective Waites to the other side of the house and found Jessica, along with her daughters, in the younger girl's bedroom. It was a cheerful room with posters and pictures on the walls and cluttered with dolls and toys.

When Hopper knocked on the open door, Jessica was stretched out on the bed and looked ill when they entered the room. Waites wondered silently if she was hungover and made a mental note to inquire about the couple's drinking habits.

Jessica Schwarz was a heavyset woman — 5' 2" tall and weighing 175 pounds. Her state of mind was not as easy to read as her husband's. She appeared to be dazed and the first thing she said was that she couldn't believe this was happening. The next was that she felt sick to her stomach.

Detective Waites asked for some time alone with her and Hopper took Jessica's two daughters, four-year-old Jackie Schwarz and ten-year-old Lauren Cross, to another bedroom.

Schoenstein left the room to continue her investigation. First she went to the backyard to examine the pool and found that the water was fairly clean — except for a few leaves in the bottom — and cold to the touch. After collecting a water sample, she returned to the house through the patio door. She examined and photographed the sliding door and noticed that the lock was broken. She determined that the Schwarzes were in the habit of securing the door by placing an old cane in the track.

David Schwarz told her he couldn't remember whether the sliding door was open or not, prior to finding A.J.'s body.

Her next stop was A.J.'s bedroom: a dungeonlike room on the northeast corner of the house, directly off the kitchen, and attached to the garage. There was no doorknob. Instead, there was a piece of cloth — or rag — pulled through the knob hole and tied. And a lock — on the outside of the door.

On the inside of the door was a note from A.J.'s teacher — a progress report dated "4-2-93" that indicated that he and his teacher had had a very good day.

"Bleak" was the word that came to mind when she entered A.J.'s room. There was a simple twin bed along one wall and, on the opposite wall, a dresser that appeared to be used for storage with boxes — marked "Christmas decorations" — stacked on top of it. The window covering was a floral sheet, and there was a door leading to the attached garage.

And, on a desk, there was a piece of notebook paper with a child's handwriting on it. "I have a big stupid mouth, I don't know when to shut up" was written over and over again.

Black trash bags filled with clothing were on the floor, and several socks were scattered around.

Poorly lit. The room smelled of stale urine. There were no posters on the walls. No photographs. No Nintendo. No stereo or radio. No books. On a bookcase under the window, there were a few toy action figures and toy cars. In the center of the room — on the floor — were a turquoise sleeping bag, a dark T-shirt, and a pair of Ninja Turtle sweatpants. And inside the pants, a pair of boy's underwear.

The clothes A.J. had worn to bed the night before.

On a small table, Schoenstein found two bottles of Easter-egg coloring — blue and green — but both of them were empty.

When she went back through the kitchen and entered the living room, she saw several pictures of the girls displayed, but did not see any photographs — not even one — of A.J. anywhere in the room. Or anywhere else in the house.

Next she went to Lauren's room and — like Jackie's — it was bright and cheerful with pictures and posters on the walls and dolls and toys scattered around. A color television. A Nintendo game. And a stereo system.

Meanwhile, after everyone else had left the room, Waites asked Jessica, "How was it that you found out that A.J. was missing?"

"I just woke up out of the blue. I never wake up that early on a Sunday. But I was thirsty. So I went to the kitchen for a drink of water and there was A.J.'s door open. I mean, he always sleeps with it closed, so I looked in his room and he wasn't there. I even looked under the bed. Uh-uh. I checked everywhere, in the garage — in the bathroom — in the family room — everywhere. ... When I couldn't find him, I figured I better wake up Bear. And he found him in the pool a couple of minutes later."

Without prompting, she began to describe the abuse that A.J. had suffered at the hands of his natural mother, Ilene Logan (who had — after her divorce from David Schwarz — married and then divorced a man named Timothy Logan). It was that abusive situation, Jessica told him, that led to A.J.'s placement with her and Bear.

If Jessica had seemed upset when Waites first came into the room, she didn't now. She appeared agitated and aggressive, but not overwhelmed with the grief or disbelief that Bear had demonstrated.

She went on to tell him that A.J. had been treated for hyperactivity — and also received therapy for the past abuse — at South County Mental Health. He also had spent six weeks at the mental institution, located in Vero Beach, the previous year. She explained that he had presently been "in between counselors."

Detective Waites later informed Doreen Schoenstein that A.J. had been under the care of a psychiatrist and had been in protective custody. He had also been taking a medication known as imipramine, a drug used to relieve symptoms of depression.

Jessica had told him that she was the one who personally administered the medication to A.J., but now she couldn't find it. Nor could she find it the day before. She claimed she did not know "what happened to it."

Schoenstein searched the residence, but she was unsuccessful in locating the medication.

It was after 8:00 when Waites returned to the backyard. Before the body was removed, he studied it again. What about an errant dive into the pool? Could A.J. have gone for a swim and knocked himself out? He examined A.J.'s forehead, looking for the full bruising that is consistent with such a hypothesis, and couldn't detect it.

Could A.J. have gone swimming, cramped up, and gone under? Possible, but the pool wasn't that deep. As he looked from the body to the pool, he realized that A.J. was tall enough to stand up, no matter how severe the cramps. That led to another question: do ten-year-old boys go swimming naked?

As he looked at A.J.'s face, he wondered if the boy could have inexplicably decided to go snorkeling in the middle of the night. Gotten up, taken off his Ninja Turtle pants, gone outside, and put the ladder up next to the pool? Could he have taken in water through the snorkel, panicked, and wrenched off the mask with enough force to cause such lacerations and bruising? Not likely. Still, he walked back to the swimming pool and searched the bottom. There was a mask, but no snorkel.

Could he have been electrocuted? Doubtful, given the condition of the body, but he made a note to check any electrical problems around the house. Could he have been climbing the ladder, slipped, and hit his head against the wood railing that framed the pool? That was a real possibility, but it didn't explain the abrasions on his neck and shoulders — or the bruises on his chest and legs.

No one from the medical examiner's office had arrived and Waites was informed that they wouldn't be coming. Forensic investigator Doug Jenkins had been contacted and he advised that he would not respond to the scene, but would send Professional Removal Service (a body removal service contracted by the county) to transport the corpse to the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office.

The attendants, David Grant and Don Scott, finally arrived at 8:35 and — after checking for signs of recent trauma — removed the body. An autopsy was scheduled for the next afternoon; Detective Waites would be there.

An extraordinary scene had developed in front of the house. Besides the official vehicles, investigators, and neighbors, members of the press and curiosity seekers now had converged. The detectives who had been conducting the neighborhood canvass began to check in.

Jimmy Restivo — a huge, burly man — was a transplant from New York, and his twenty-two years with NYPD had done as much to solidify his cynicism as it did to sharpen his skills. He consulted the scribbles on his notepad and said, in his heavy New York accent, "Wait'll you hear this. The kid was out walking his dog at one-thirty last night. One-thirty this morning! Guy next door saw him. Name's Ron Pincus Junior. He's pulling in from work and here's A.J. wandering the streets with his dog."

Waites looked at Restivo. "He sure it was one-thirty?"

"Positive. He'd just gotten off work."

Waites responded, "Mr. Schwarz says the boy was sound asleep when he went to bed at twelve-thirty."

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Excerpted from ""No One Can Hurt Him Anymore""
by .
Copyright © 2005 Carol J. Rothgeb & Scott H. Cupp.
Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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