WARNING: Readers may find the content of this story deeply disturbing.
This story is part of a true crime series by The Palm Beach Post.
Victim: A.J. Schwarz, 10
Killer: Jessica Schwarz, 38
Where: west of Lantana
Date: May 2, 1993
This evil stepmother was real for a 10-year-old boy who suffered cruelty and degradation beyond the imagination.
Jessica Schwarz abused 10-year-old Andrew “A.J.” Schwarz for nearly three years by forcing him to edge the lawn with scissors, eat dinner from a plate next to the litter box, run down the street naked and spend hours in the yard, shouting, “I’m no good! I’m a liar!” while she yelled back, “Louder!”
In the name of not following her rules, Jessica made A.J. wear a T-shirt in public that said, “I’m a worthless piece of s***, don’t talk to me.” She wouldn’t let him brush his teeth, leaving them rotten. His sweet smile was always close-lipped.
Jessica Schwarz would then murder the boy.
A.J. died on May 2, 1993, at his home in the Concept Homes development west of Lantana. The third-grader at Indian Pines Elementary was found floating facedown and naked in the family’s above-ground swimming pool. His body was racked with 38 to 40 cuts and bruises.
Child welfare workers were supposed to protect A.J. Not only did they not, but they also threatened those who tried to.
It was a systematic destruction of a child, not only physically but emotionally.
“The effect of this constant cursing, being put down, belittled, degraded was that he learned he was garbage,” a psychologist testified at Jessica Schwarz’s trial.
A child crimes prosecutor shaken to the core
The chief prosecutor, Scott Cupp, head of the crimes against children unit at the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office, was so shaken by the case that when the murder verdict arrived, he lay his head down on the prosecution table, tears filling his eyes. He’d had recurring nightmares as he tried the abuse case.
Cupp would relive the heart-wrenching, horrific crime by writing a book about it, “No One Can Hurt Him Anymore”.
“I may not be able to define evil for you … but I can say without equivocation that I know it when I see it, and Jessica Schwarz will forever personify it in my eyes,” Cupp said in the book.
“It was the look on her face — part amusement, part vindictive, part raptorial,” he went on, “that conveyed the message that A.J. had gotten exactly what he deserved, and that she was happy as a clam that she was the one who saw to it.”
A.J. loved school, but stepmom would keep him home to punish him
The small, thin boy loved watching professional wrestling. A.J.’s favorites were Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair. He was crazy about Ninja Turtles and the action-packed Steven Seagal movies.
A.J. and his half-sister lived in the home with a daughter of Jessica’s from a previous marriage and a daughter Jessica and A.J’s biological father David had together. A.J. and his half-sister had moved 2½ years earlier out of the Fort Lauderdale home of their biological mother, where they reportedly had been abused.
Inside Jessica and David’s home, the girls played in a tidy, well-kept room with a TV and toys. Neighbors would testify that they never saw A.J. play and that his room was the size of a closet without windows.
Neighbors said that A.J. cleaned and did chores from morning till night and they never saw the girls work on anything longer than about 15 minutes. A.J. would clean the garage almost daily. One neighbor recalled Jessica approaching the boy there, picking him up with her hands around his neck and lifting him off the ground to show him a place he’d missed. He didn’t fight her, just let his arms hang limply.
A.J. idolized his father, David “Bear” Schwarz, but he was a long-haul trucker and often wasn’t home. David had been portrayed as “cowing” to his wife. He would end up not attending the boy’s funeral.
An occasional refuge at school
A.J. loved school. It was the only place where he was safe, the only place where he was shown love.
He had a hard time staying on task, but was described by teachers as polite and kind. They said he was desperate for love and attention, which they gave him.
Jessica would keep him home from school as punishment. When he was allowed to attend, he walked to school while Jessica drove past him on the way with the girls in her car.
She spoke with his third-grade teacher on the first day of school. She told Mary Idrissi that A.J. was a liar and recommended she be “wise to his tactics and head games,” Idrissi testified. Jessica would not allow A.J. to have textbooks or school supplies, saying he would lose them and she wasn’t going to pay for them. He couldn’t attend class parties or go on field trips.
All the time Jessica spoke, A.J. stood by her side, head down.
“Andrew said nothing,” Idrissi said. “His little eyes never left the floor. He was humiliated.”
Those who wanted to help A.J. were rebuffed, threatened by child welfare workers
Some people tried to help A.J. — a guardian ad litem, neighbors — but workers from the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services turned them away. (That state agency is now the Department of Children and Families.)
Not only that, but those neighbors seeking to help A.J. faced peril.
One who repeatedly reported the abuse was threatened by a social worker with removal of her own children. The worker ended up charged with extortion by threat, a felony. Another worker who responded to a report that A.J. had a broken nose and black eyes told the neighbor to leave the family alone.
The social workers all appeared to believe the abuse complaints from neighbors stemmed from A.J.’s biological mother trying to make trouble, and testimony showed that sometimes supervisors sent the workers out with that thought in mind.
One person tried to help A.J. and offer some hope. A retired pediatrician, Dr. Richard Zimmern, was A.J.’s guardian ad litem and visited the child 17 times. He brought A.J. and his siblings Easter baskets and birthday gifts for the child.
Zimmern wanted to push to get A.J. out of the house but had decided to wait until the end of the school year because school was such a refuge for the child. Zimmern testified to feeling tremendous guilt about not pressing sooner.
“No one can hurt him anymore,” Zimmern wrote in his notes after A.J. died. It became the name of Cupp’s book. “In the end, we all failed him. I should have saved him; now I must live with my failure.”
Taunting prosecutor Joseph Marx, who’d just lost his wife
On the other hand, Jessica Schwarz was unrepentant. She taunted one of the prosecutors in her second-degree murder trial.
Joseph Marx, later to become a judge, had just lost his wife in a deadly shooting at her Fort Lauderdale law office. Karen Starr-Marx, pregnant with their first child, had been fatally shot during a deposition in 1994. Jessica stuck a sharp needle into his wounds.
After a caustic comment in private from her, Marx challenged her on the stand.
“Do you remember saying, ‘Why don’t you join your wife? I’ll see you out on bond?”’ ” Marx asked. Schwarz remembered the exchange but denied threatening him.
The sad life of a little boy
A.J. was hospitalized in January 1992 at the Psychiatric Institute of Vero Beach. He’d been riding his bike into traffic, jumping off the high rungs of ladders and trying to drown his younger half sister. He spent six weeks there where he sucked his thumb, hid his face and was diagnosed with PTSD.
He was so critical that health care workers checked him every 15 minutes. Jessica and David Schwarz visited him twice in six weeks.
Then it was back to the horror for the third-graders.
Jessica called A.J. “Jeffrey Dahmer” in the final two weeks of his life.
In the murder trial, neighbor Laura Perryman testified that Jessica Schwarz said she was going to kill A.J.
“I kept saying, ‘You don’t mean that.’ She says, ‘I do mean it,’ ” recalled Perryman. “He was so quiet and polite. Whatever I saw of him was the sweetest kid.”
At her murder trial, Jessica Schwarz wore sundresses and lipstick and claimed she was the victim of the neighbors. She was tried and convicted twice in two separate trials — once for the abuse and once for murder. Between the two, judges slapped her with 70 years to serve in prison.
She died in 2014, having served 20 years.
A.J. is buried in Lauderdale Memorial Park in Fort Lauderdale. A plaque in his honor was installed at Indian Pines Elementary.
“It’s no mystery that (she) killed A.J.,” Cupp said in his book. “She probably enjoyed it.”
If you suspect abuse, neglect or abandonment of a child or vulnerable adult, you can call the state abuse hotline at 800-962-2873 or report it online at www.myflfamilies.com/services/abuse/abuse-hotline.
Holly Baltz, who has a passion for true crime, is the investigations editor at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hbaltz@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Best True Crime: How little A.J. Schwarz suffered, died at the hands of an evil stepmother
Reporting by Holly Baltz, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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