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