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The Strange Life of Dr Schwartz | Full Episode
The full 48 Hours episode, 42 min: the case told start to finish in one sitting.
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What happened
Robert Schwartz was a nationally recognized scientist in biometrics and DNA research. In 1978 he co-authored a key paper in *Science* with Margaret Dayhoff providing the first experimental evidence for Lynn Margulis' theory of the symbiogenetic origin of cellular mitochondria and chloroplasts. In 1992, he was a founding member of the Virginia Biotechnology Association. He was the father of three children, including Catherine Michele, Jesse, and Clara Jane Schwartz.
On December 8, 2001, Robert Schwartz was killed at his farmhouse in Leesburg, Virginia. Michael Pfohl drove Kyle Hulbert to the Schwartz residence, accompanied by Pfohl's girlfriend, Katherine Inglis. Schwartz let Hulbert into the house, and Hulbert stabbed him to death with a two-foot sword. Schwartz's body was discovered two days later.
Police identified Pfohl through a car that had called for a tow truck near the house around the time of the murder, and brought Pfohl and Inglis in for questioning. On December 11, 2001, Inglis told police that Schwartz's daughter Clara had discussed the murder with the three of them beforehand, and that the stated motive was that Schwartz had allegedly hit Clara and that she believed he had tried to poison her. Clara Jane Schwartz, then a sophomore at James Madison University, was charged on February 2, 2002, and formally indicted on March 31, 2002, for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation of murder. Inglis, Pfohl, and Hulbert had each been indicted previously in connection with the killing.
Clara Schwartz was the first of the four co-defendants to stand trial, in October 2002. Prosecutors, including Jennifer Wexton, argued that Clara used a role-playing game called Underworld to manipulate her friends into killing her father, asserting that she had long hated him and wanted him dead. The defense contended that Hulbert had taken Clara's in-game directives out of context and that she never intended for anyone to actually kill her father. A witness referred to as Patrick testified for the prosecution that Clara had increasingly spoken of killing her father, researched herbal poisons to make his death look natural, discussed the inheritance she stood to gain, and grew frustrated when he did not act, eventually finding a willing participant in Hulbert.
On October 15, 2002, a jury convicted Clara Schwartz of first-degree murder, and on February 10, 2003, she was sentenced to 48 years in prison. She has pursued multiple unsuccessful appeals, the most recent affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on March 9, 2010. Kyle Hulbert was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole; Michael Pfohl received eighteen years; Katherine Inglis served one year for conspiracy to commit murder.
