No One Can Hurt Him Anymore. Scott Cupp
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.”
Restivo shook his head. “Uh-uh. That doesn’t fit either. Pincus says he noticed a light on in the Schwarz living room and the TV on. Same time—one-thirty.
“Two weeks ago, Pincus overheard the stepmom shouting at the kid that if he ‘doesn’t straighten up,’ she’s going to ‘tie him up and run him over.’ Heard her say she hates him. Pincus says it goes on all the time. Guess what the stepmom calls the kid? She calls him ‘Jeffrey Dahmer.’ You believe that?”
Another detective added: “She’s been heard calling Andrew everything from a ‘stupid loudmouth’ and a ‘slut’ to a ‘piece of shit’ and a ‘bitch.’ ”
“You’ve got names and addresses on all these people?” Waites asked.
“Every