Kill for a just cause. That was the only thought running through Kyle's head as he rang the doorbell of his victim, the father of his best friend Clara's. According to the young woman, her parent mistreated her physically and psychologically and she needed to get rid of him. Only in the world of fantasy could she get it: her role-playing game. That idea, that of murder, entered the mind of the murderer, who did not hesitate to show up at Robert's house to undertake bloody revenge. But this time, in real life.
As soon as the man opened the door, Kyle asked him inside: he was meeting his daughter. Robert agreed, even though she wasn't there. After a few minutes, the boy took out a large sword that he hid under his coat and began the carnage. Robert died riddled with more than forty stab wounds to his body. Clara had achieved her purpose, getting rid of her father, and Kyle had become her most loyal henchman.
Four years before the murder, Clara Jane Schwartz, in her teens, suffered one of the hardest blows of her life: the death of her mother from sudden cancer. The woman was the one who emotionally held her family together, or at least that's what our protagonist thought. Because, from that moment on, the young woman began to develop a strong animosity towards her father, Richard Schwartz.
Born in Leesburg (Virginia) in 1981, Clara was the youngest of three siblings and only felt understood by her mother, with whom she created a strong bond. Therefore, her mental health cracked after her loss. "She had many emotional problems," said her paternal grandfather in an interview.
Both in her high school years and in her university years at the James Madison College, Clara stood out for being an intelligent student with good grades. In addition to her, those who knew her describe her as a friendly girl, although somewhat reserved, melancholic, and even rebellious.
The young woman expressed this disobedience through a different physical appearance than usual: she wore dark, gothic-style clothes, listened to heavy metal, and surrounded herself with more alternative people. In addition, she began to develop interests to a certain degree dark: she became obsessed with vampires, magic and esotericism, role-playing games, and everything related to the world of crime and murderers.
Added to this was the alleged bad relationship with her father, whom she accused of physically and psychologically mistreating her, of disapproving of her aesthetics and tastes, and of even poisoning her. Clara came to assure her closest friends that Robert had tried to intoxicate her more than a dozen times.
However, the father, a renowned scientist in the field of biometrics and DNA research and a founding member of the Virginia Biotechnology Association, was away from home all day working overtime to support the family.
None of these accusations was ever refuted or denounced and Clara's brothers always denied any situation of violence in the family. That was only in Clara's head.
One of the people who did believe Clara's version was her friend Katherine Inglis, to whom she even narrated some of the beatings and drowning she suffered in the pool, and to whom she clearly expressed that "she wished [her father] were dead." She even noted that the day she died she "would inherit a third of a million dollars from her father." Now all that remained was to find an acolyte to manipulate to perpetrate the crime.
The first attempt was with Patrick House, a boyfriend she dated in the summer of 2001 and tried to convince to participate in a fantasy role-playing game that she had invented herself. It was called Underworld (the Underworld). In this game, Clara was Lord Chaos (the Mistress or Priestess of Chaos) and Patrick, an assassin under the orders of her mistress.
A third character also appeared in the game, the so-called Old Guy (the Old Man). This is Richard, "the evil father" of Lord Chaos. Now the action considered the different options of the assassin to kill Old Guy. Here, Lord Chaos was offering to give him various clues. For this reason, Clara investigated the efficacy of certain poisons: she needed death to "seem natural" and that nothing could be related to her.
At Clara's insistence to make her fantasy game come true, Richard decided to end the courtship: there was something about the girl that did not quite convince him. However, he never thought that those game inventions would ever come to fruition. He was wrong.
A few months later, in November 2001, Clara saw in Kyle Hulbert, a 19-year-old boy with a long history of mental illness (schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) whom she had met at a local renaissance festival, her most faithful lackey. The young man fell under the spell of the computer science student and, after learning about the episodes of family violence, he called himself her protector.
The story of those episodes of abuse added to a role-playing game where he believed he was a warrior in search of justice, led Kyle to embrace that fantasy world to kill his friend's father. His perception of reality was non-existent.
"If I were to 'tay' [they used this term to indicate killing], would you be mad at me?" Kyle asked Clara in a text message. "No. Just don't do it now," she begged. "Maybe in a month?" the young man proposed. “If you do, all I ask is that you don't track me,” Clara replied.
Later that same month, the instigator sent Kyle $60 by express mail. It was money that the murderer used to buy a hat, gloves and to pay for gasoline to the Schwartz house in Leesburg. On the night of December 8, Kyle made good on his promise: to kill the scientist.
Clara planned the crime conscientiously: she stayed at the university, in full view of all her classmates, so that no one would link her to the events, and she asked Katherine and her boyfriend Michael Pfohl to drive Kyle to the house where her daughter was staying. father. The plan seemed perfect.
That night, in the middle of a storm, the three young men reached the vicinity of the Schwartz property, but the vehicle got stuck in the mud. While Katherine and Michael called a tow truck to get them out, Kyle walked to the house to confront Richard about his alleged abuse of his daughter.
Once inside, a heated argument ensued, Kyle drew a two foot sword and stabbed the man up to 45 times. Next, and after verifying that the victim was dead, the murderer fled the house, got into the car that had already been towed away, and wrapped the sword in several towels. Three days later, a neighbor discovered the mutilated body of the scientist in a large pool of blood.
The police investigation initially focused on the family and the closest circle of the deceased. This is how they discovered incoming and outgoing calls the night before, as well as a note in Clara's bedroom where she listed the names of her role-playing game, as well as its purpose.
Some neighbors of the Schwartzes also reported seeing three young men who had gotten stuck in the mud and had asked the road service for help. This information helped to identify the owner of the vehicle, Michael Pfohl, one of the accomplices in the scientist's crime.
On December 11, investigators went to the apartment shared by the driver and his girlfriend Katherine to find out more details about that night. This was when her friend broke down and pointed to Clara as the true architect and instigator of the murder of her father.
"In the bottom of my heart I knew that he was going to do that," Clara told the agents when they asked her about the perpetrator of the murder, Kyle Hulbert. The young woman was arrested in February 2002 accused of the first degree murder of her father, as well as the charges of conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation of murder.
Regarding the material author, he wrote the following confession: “I always told Clara that I would protect her. She couldn't kill him without just cause. If she wasn't defending myself or someone else, she couldn't kill." That was his justification.
In October 2002, the Loudoun Court began the trial against Clara Schwartz for killing her father. Prosecutors argued that the young woman, using her manipulative arts and the Underworld role-playing game, convinced her friends to carry out the macabre plan.
Since she couldn't recruit her boyfriend Patrick at first, she looked for another more impressionable sidekick, Kyle. "He had hated his father for a long time," the prosecution said. However, the defendant's defense denied the facts and used the fantasy context of the game to justify her participation. "He never intended for anyone to kill his father," the killer simply misinterpreted his words and acted on his behalf.
Throughout the process, witnesses, investigators, and family members took the stand. But it was the testimony of Clara's brothers, and children of the victim, the most overwhelming of all. “It has been nothing but a nightmare since the first day I found out. It's already hard that it was my father, but on top of that having my sister commit such a horrible crime," Michele testified crying.
For his part, the accused's uncle, Christopher Schwartz, wanted to break a spear in favor of his niece and excuse his actions. He said her hyperthyroid condition made him confused and paranoid, stating, "She was a good person, but she had these demons."
Those words of encouragement or the defense of her lawyers were useless, Clara's ex-boyfriend made clear the criminal intentions of the young woman towards her father. She also did not help the testimony of Kyle, who took the blame and asked the Schwartz family for forgiveness. "I let myself be poisoned by Clara," he blurted out. "Not a day goes by that I don't think about what I did," she was ashamed.
Meanwhile, Clara remained undaunted, with a cold and distant attitude and no emotion on her face. In fact, when Judge Thomas D. Horne granted her the last word, the defendant herself simply said “nothing that hasn't already been said”.
On October 16, 2002, after four hours of deliberation, the jury returned its verdict finding the defendant guilty on all counts. Clara Schwartz was sentenced to 48 years in prison and sent to the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.
During the reading of the sentence, the judge addressed the murderer and told her “we are responsible for our actions. We don't blame others." That paternalistic tone did not have any impact on Clara's countenance either. After several resources, she could be released from prison in November 2043.
As for Clara's three friends, Kyle Hulbert was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for being the material author of the crime. After all, "she was the puppeteer and Kyle Hulbert was the puppet." Michael Pfohl was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while Katherine Inglis to just one year for conspiracy to commit murder.
Until now, Clara has never expressed any remorse for her father's murder. However, her grandfather still has a silver lining that something like this will happen: "She had freedom of choice, but her choices were always the wrong ones."
