No One Can Hurt Him Anymore. Scott Cupp
Lord Almighty!
Waites: I mean, once you’re in at night—unless the dogs wake you up—they’re in with you, right?
David: If they wake me up, I put them out the back.
Waites: The back? Okay.
David: Once in a while, the girls would walk them around the block.
Waites: Uh-huh. But that’s going to be daylight hours—it’s not going to be after midnight....
David (distressed): Yeah! Good God! I’m gonna be sick. He was not out walking the dog after midnight!
(The detective waited several moments before continuing the questioning, allowing David to regain his composure.)
Waites: The problems that your wife had with the neighbors . . . ?
David: Uh-huh.
Waites: And I realize again that you’re not home during the day with the hours that you’re putting in working. Do you think it could have been—normally, she talks kind of in a loud voice . . . ?
David: Yeah.
Waites: Well, I don’t have a problem with that. Did you ever think, like, if she may have been just yelling at one of the kids or something—just with her being naturally loud-natured—that they may have misinterpreted it? That it may have resulted in HRS being called? Or people may have seen her out yelling at the kids not to do something and just thought something else?
David: She doesn’t yell unless she’s out the back door or in the house. She doesn’t go out front yelling. Waites: Okay.
David: But, yeah, she does raise her voice. I raise my voice. The neighbors raise their voice.
Waites: It’s normal? Well, normal to kids.
David: Yeah. Well, Jessica has a loud voice to begin with. Waites: But there was never anything that someone might consider excessive punishment? That’s ever gone on?
David: All right, on Thursdays, A.J. would get up early and go out and collect cans. And someone thought that was punishment.
Waites: Because he went out and collected cans? David: Yeah.
Waites: Would he do this before school?
David: Yeah. And HRS came and asked about this shit. Punishment? Punishment is taking away the TV; not letting him go in the pool.
Waites: HRS just came out because someone called and said you had your kid out collecting cans on Thursdays? David: No, they didn’t come out for that. The guardian ad litem brought that up—that someone called him on it. Waites: Did he say if there was anything else said other than just out picking up cans or . . . ?
David: Yeah. They (HRS) come over, woke all the kids up, looked at their bodies . . . nothing—nowhere. They get spanked—of course.
Waites: Yeah.
David: We can’t do much more than that because they can call on us. The kids themselves can call on us.
Waites: Yeah. True.
David: I mean, excessive punishment would be grounding—can’t go out and play. That may be excessive.
Waites: But nothing excessive, as far as physical? I mean, I agree with you. A slap across the butt is a slap across the butt. Every once in a while a kid’s going to get one.
David: I’ve used my belt on them a few times. Waites: Now . . . and again.... I mean, I was raised that way, you know?
David: I was too. But you can’t do that—well, you’re not supposed to do that nowadays.
Waites: It’s not like you’re standing over them—over one of the kids and hitting on them for five or six minutes. I mean—
David: They’d be in the hospital if I did that.
Waites: Exactly.
David: I’m not a little guy.
Waites: The cans—he just liked collecting them? Is there any particular reason that he told the guardian when they asked him about it?
David: Just collecting them for Mommy (Jessica), that’s all. He might’ve said something. He’s—he was a little A.D.D. His mama (Ilene) hit him in the head with a frying pan—deaf in one ear. Had him carrying drugs and stuff—and he was molested. So he’s—was not completely straight in his head. He’d give you the shirt off his back—he was a good kid.
Waites: If somebody asked him—saw him one morning and asked A.J., “Why are you out collecting cans?” would he make up something? Exaggerate something? David: More than likely. I can’t say. The neighbors came over and said some stuff he said and then he denies it. He’d tell a lie quicker than the truth—that’s for sure. Waites: But that all relates back to the stuff he went through with his natural mother?
David: I’m sure of it. It has to. One thing we did expound on with the kids—tell us the truth. He just had a very hard time doing that.
Waites: Was he a fairly good swimmer?
David: Yeah. From what I seen . . . in the pool . . . at the beach....
Waites: Your wife told me he’s been going to counseling and had a guardian and so forth for some period. And, I guess, he even was when he was still in Fort Lauderdale, before he came up to live with you—from the problems that he’d had down there.
David: Right.
Waites: Do you think this all could have resulted just in finally being too much pressure from all that?
David: I don’t know. The psychiatrists have all said that he’s got a lot of hurt inside. And I don’t know. I can’t say. I have no idea. Like I said, he wasn’t depressed or nothing that I saw, in the last couple days. So I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what happened. Wife woke me up—found him in the pool. I can only speculate. I don’t know. The water was awful cold.
That afternoon, HRS workers removed A.J.’s stepsister, Lauren, and half sister, Jackie, from the Schwarz home and put them in protective custody. They were placed in the home of their grandparents—Jessica’s mother and father.
Records showed that sheriff’s deputies had been called to the Triphammer Road residence fourteen times since May 1990—for such incidents as battery, petty theft, and “neighbor trouble.”
In June 1991, deputies arrived at the house—after being called about a fight—and found Jessica Schwarz being pinned down in their driveway by her husband. David Schwarz explained that she had been drinking at a neighbor’s house and when he tried to take her home, she started hitting him, then broke the windshield on his car.
Jessica informed the deputies that if they did not take her away, there would be more fighting. She was arrested, pleaded guilty to battery, and was sentenced to time served.
On Monday, there was a guidance counselor and a school psychologist present at Indian Pines Elementary School to help students deal with their feelings about their classmate’s sudden and tragic death.
That morning, Detective Restivo studied his notes from the interviews with David and Jessica’s neighbors. It was all too clear that there was something terribly wrong in the Schwarz home.
First he had interviewed Eileen Callahan, the neighbor who had told him that A.J. was severely abused—to the point that she had called HRS and made a complaint. She had seen A.J. with two black eyes and what appeared to be a broken nose. Even though he told everyone who asked him that he had fallen off his bicycle, Callahan had found that hard to believe, since the child was never seen riding a bicycle.
In fact, it seemed that A.J. wasn’t allowed to play at all, and was “constantly cleaning the garage” and had even been seen washing his father’s truck—with a toothbrush.
Callahan also told the detective that every Thursday morning for the last couple of months—between 5:00 and 6:00—she