Fatal Fantasy | 2. Mud
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What leads investigators to Dr. Schwartz's driveway?
He was a young Marine. She didn't care about convention. They made a life together. Then one night, the Marine died. And then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected, and utterly bizarre turn. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Trace of Suspicion, an all-new podcast from Dateline. Search Trace of Suspicion to start listening now.
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Most seasoned investigators will tell you that murder investigations, regardless of how bizarre, extreme, or even brazen the crime might appear, almost always follow the Occam's razor theory. That the simplest explanation is the most likely explanation. How could a car, in other words, get stuck in the mud at the top of Dr. Schwartz's driveway on the night of his murder, near the time of his murder, and those in the vehicle not have some sort of a connection? Which is why detectives follow the evidence, no matter where it takes them. As the investigation headed into the second day, Schwartz's coworkers were trying to cope with not only losing a colleague, but a friend. One of the major courses of Dr. Schwartz's research focused on what we know today as forensic genetic genealogy.
23andMe, Ancestry.com, and so on. Those companies collecting DNA from anyone willing to send it in, which can be later used to help solve murders and identify Jane and John Doe's. As his work colleague and friend Terry Woodsworth says, Dr. Schwartz was greatly interested in how DNA and the internet might work together.
The thing that made Bob special was more than just his being who he was. As important as his early work was in the science side on the DNA and DNA sequencing and how that could tell us something about the evolutionary history and all that stuff.
And so, as word of his murder trickled out, confusion and disbelief followed.
We were stunned. I was stunned. I mean, it was like, what in the world?
Thinking about who could be behind his brutal murder, Detective Greg Locke held steadfast and followed his gut instinct of the simplest answer being the likeliest answer. Find the kid who had gone to the neighbors to call a tow truck and rule him in or out of the murder.
There were markings in the mud that would be indicative of the vehicle attempting to have turned around.
So it appeared as though a random vehicle had gotten lost, pulled in, and was turning around when it got stuck. How could it be a coincidence that this car of kids was at the scene of a murder close to the time Dr. Schwartz had been killed in the driveway of the victim and they did not have anything to do with the crime? Most importantly right now though, who were they and where were they?
My name is M. William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and the New York Times bestselling author of dozens of true crime books. From Sony Music Entertainment and M. William Phelps, LLC, you are listening to Fatal Fantasy. This is episode two, Mud.
Mud.
The day after the body was found, detectives Locke and DiBenedetto headed out to James Madison University, over 100 miles southwest of Leesburg, to locate Schwartz's daughters, both of whom lived on campus, to inform the girls in person of what had happened. It's one of the most difficult and heart-wrenching tasks a cop has. Telling loved ones their father or wife or sister is not only gone, but their life was snuffed out by a murderer.
We knew there were two daughters that were both students at the university. Michelle was the older daughter and she lived in an apartment with some other students. So we were going to go down and let her know about it. We went there first and she was not home.
Michelle and Clara could not have been any more different. Michelle was prim and proper, dressed trendy, highlighted her dark brown hair, kept it long and straight, and had an active social life on and off campus.
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