Fatal Fantasy | 2. Mud

Investigators catch a break when a neighbor reports a car stuck in the mud in Dr. Schwartz’s driveway two nights before his body was found. A tow truck driver, caught in a lie, then decides to step up, busting the case open. Binge all episodes of Fatal Fantasy ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. From serial killer nurses to psychic scammers – The Binge is your home for true crime stories that pull you in and never let go. Join our free newsletter at Patreon.com/TheBinge. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. Fatal Fantasy is brought to you by Sony Music Entertainment and M. Williams Phelps LLC. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Listen to all episodes of Fatal Fantasy ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page, or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge: Feed your true crime obsession.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Most seasoned investigators will tell you that murder investigations, regardless of how bizarre, extreme, or even brazen the crime might appear, almost always follow the Occam's razor theory: that the simplest explanation is the most likely explanation. How could a car, in other words, get stuck in the mud at the top of Dr. Schwartz's driveway on the night of his murder, near the time of his murder, and those in the vehicle not have some sort of a connection? Which is why detectives follow the evidence, no matter where it takes them.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  As the investigation headed into the second day, Schwartz's coworkers were trying to cope with not only losing a colleague, but a friend. One of the major courses of Dr. Schwartz's research focused on what we know today as forensic genetic genealogy, 23andMe, ancestry.com, and so on. Those companies collecting DNA from anyone willing to send it in, which can be later used to help solve murders and identify Jane and John Does. As his work colleague and friend, Terry Woodsworth says,

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Dr. Schwartz was greatly interested in how DNA and the internet might work together.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  The thing that made Bob special was was more than just his being who he was. As important as his early work was in the science side on the DNA and DNA sequencing and how that could tell us something about the evolutionary history and all that stuff.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  And so, as word of his murder trickled out, confusion and disbelief followed.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  We were stunned. I was stunned. I mean, it was like, what in the world?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Thinking about who could be behind his brutal murder, Detective Greg Locke held steadfast and followed his gut instinct of the simplest answer being the likeliest answer. Find the kid who had gone to the neighbors to call a tow truck and rule him in or out of the murder.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  There were markings in the mud that would be indicative of the vehicle attempting to have turned around.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  So it appeared as though a random vehicle had gotten lost, pulled in, and was turning around when it got stuck.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  How could it be a coincidence that this car of kids was at the scene of a murder close to the time Dr. Schwartz had been killed in the driveway of the victim? And they did not have anything to do with the crime? Most importantly, right now, though, who were they? And where were they?

• 4:35Speaker 01

  My name is M. William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and The New York Times bestselling author of dozens of true crime books. From Sony Music Entertainment and M. William Phelps, LLC, you are listening to Fatal Fantasy. This is episode two, Mud.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  The day after the body was found, Detectives Locke and DeBenedetto headed out to James Madison University, over 100 miles southwest of Leesburg, to locate Schwartz's daughters, both of whom lived on campus, to inform the girls in person of what had happened. It's one of the most difficult and heart-wrenching tasks a cop has. Telling loved ones their father or wife or sister is not only gone, but their life was snuffed out by a murderer.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  We knew there were two daughters that were both students at the university. Michelle was the older daughter and she lived in an apartment with some other students. So we were going to go down and let her know about it. We went there first and she was not home.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Michelle and Clara could not have been any more different. Michelle was prim and proper, dressed trendy, highlighted her dark brown hair, kept it long and straight, and had an active social life on and off campus. She went about her studies in a studious way and excelled. And whenever she could spare a moment, she checked in on her father. Clara had more of a rebellious attitude. She told people she had an IQ of 190, which is profoundly rare and considered to be in the gifted category. Based on photographs and also, as Clara's friends would later tell me,

• 7:00Speaker 01

  she came across kind of frumpy, homely looking. She wore Little House on the Prairie-type dresses she'd bought at a thrift shop, full-skirted with fabric up to the neck. So needless to say, this made her a bit of an outcast. Both girls, despite their differences, even if they didn't know it yet, could probably help with the investigation.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  We wanted to go find Clara, who did live on campus. And so we went first to the campus police department, which would be normal protocol when you're coming on to the campus. So we picked up an officer who then led us over to the Psychological Services Unit on campus to pick up their on-duty psychologist to go with us for the notification.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  People respond in a variety of ways to being told a loved one has been murdered. Shock and disbelief, denial, anger, fear. Some relatives demand information, others need psychological support, and many more will have a visceral reaction.

• 8:11Speaker 04

  We went to Clara's dorm room, which was on the other side of the interstate highway, rather secluded from the campus. It was an old motel, Howard Johnson's, that had been converted into a dorm. Rather lonely, it seemed like, so we went over there to notify her.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Cops have to gauge their response and decide from there how far to take questioning them.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  What I recall from that is the four of us got out of the vehicle, went up to the door and knocked on it, and Clara opened it. She appeared to be concerned. She didn't open the door all the way. I think Greg said, you know, "Are you Clara Schwartz?" And she said, "Just a minute," and she closed the door.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Lock and D Benedetto looked at each other. Here we go.

• 9:00Speaker 04

  And we were kind of standing there wondering. She was gone for a few seconds, and then she came back to the door and opened it up, and she had her ID. She handed it out to Greg.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Clara invited them in.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  The other thing that I remember about being in that room was it was completely disheveled. I mean, it doesn't look like she ever put anything away in the closets or drawers. Everything was just all over the place. There was hardly an inch on the floor that wasn't covered with something. It just looked like a total mess.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Clara's hands were shaking. There it is, that visceral reaction I had mentioned, perhaps to the shock of three cops and the school psychologist showing up at your door.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  She sat on the bed, and he said something to the effect of, you know, "I've got some bad news. I'm afraid your father has died." She seemed to take a pause for a second, and then she didn't look up, she didn't gasp, she didn't... All she said in a quiet voice was "How."

• 10:10Speaker 01

  It was all she could manage to get out. Here was a young woman, just 20 years old, shell shocked, blindsided by the worst news imaginable.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  It was somewhat unusual to me that there was no follow up. There was just one word, "how." Not when, not where, but how.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  After the news settled, they asked if she knew where her sister, Michelle, was. They could not find her and needed to inform her as well.

• 10:44Speaker 04

  She was gonna go help us try and find her, go over to Michelle's. And then she told us that Michelle was at the library studying. So we asked her to go over there with us. So we went outside, she got ready and came out and joined us and we drove over to the library first with her. Started looking in the library. I remember going up some stairs into an area where there's some cubicles that are set up for studying. And we weren't in the library very long when we got a call saying that Michelle was now at home.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  By "home," the detective was referring to Michelle's apartment just on the outskirts of James Madison's campus.

• 11:27Speaker 04

  So we drove on over there.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Then something odd took place.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  Michelle already knew, and that puzzled me. Michelle was already distraught and hugged her sister and she was crying.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Dee Benedetto and Locke made a mental note of Michelle knowing before they had even told her. It was kind of strange. How could she know? Maybe Clara had sent her a message. After Dr. Schwartz's oldest daughter collected herself, they asked if they could have a more private chat. First thing they noted was how different the two sisters came across. Michelle's apartment was spotless, everything in its place.

• 12:22Speaker 04

  The way they dressed, acted was just night and day. Greg asked to speak to them and sat in the living room with them, began asking some questions. And Clara was the one who was basically being asked and was answering these questions. She became a little more talkative.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Dee Benedetto stood off to the side and listened as Locke spoke to the girls.

• 12:46Speaker 04

  Greg was talking about doing a follow-up interview with them when they got home, but he wanted to give the girls time to grieve and talk with their family. So he was going to see them in another day or two up at home, I believe. They'd do another interview with them and members of the family.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Locke and Dee Benedetto left. You want to let tragic and traumatic news settle. Give them time to process it all, then go back and begin to unpack what they might know. Questions still on the table were, had either of them spoken to their dad on Saturday? Had they seen him? How was he the last time you were with him? And, of course, would you know anyone who might want to kill your father?

• 13:52Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer, an old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Greg Locke is one of those detectives among the hundreds I have interviewed with the patience of an oyster, allowing the evidence and information to develop slowly, like a pearl. Sometimes, your greatest asset in a murder investigation is to simply sit back and wait. While Locke and D. Benedetto were informing the Schwartz family of their father's murder, other Loudoun County investigators were making headway in locating the young drivers who needed a tow truck pull out of the mud. Hell, for all they knew at this stage, the tow truck driver himself could be involved.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  The investigators were able to locate the tow company and subsequently the tow truck operator. And in speaking to the tow truck operator, he stated that he remembered the individuals very well because they had stiffing for pulling them out and towing them.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  This could have thrown a wrench in the spokes of the investigation, but it ended up being a break. In digging for more information from the driver, it became apparent that his story was not adding up. At one time, he said they had paid him. Later on in the same conversation, he said they did not. It all seemed very sketchy. Eventually, they figured out that the driver had, in fact, been paid. But he had lied to his employers when he said they had burned him, effectively pocketing the money. A real scumbag move.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  I don't believe his employers were very happy when they learned that he was actually paid. And this certainly adds an issue of credibility on his part, but it also provided us an early on lead.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Sometimes the most basic, unimportant revelations break murder cases wide open. A serial killer I once investigated had fudged one entry out of 300 on a mileage log he kept. He was a traveling salesman. That one entry wound up placing him at the location where a body had been found, which led detectives to finding his DNA on the victim.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  So no detail is too small or insignificant this early in an investigation. Just keep following the breadcrumbs.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Once the tow truck driver admitted he'd stiffed the company he worked for, investigators realized he was more of a thief and liar than a killer. But he did remember that night and provided details about the timeline.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  And he requested payment. The individuals informed him that they didn't have any money, they would have to go to an ATM.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  The photographic evidence from the ATM ended up being crucial. One young guy, a disheveled-looking hippie-like dude with long hair and a mustache, goes up to the ATM and withdraws the money for the tow guy. Then he hands it over. Up until now, investigators didn't know who these kids were, but the camera had caught not one, but two of them. What's more, as I went through the images, a strange bit of information emerged. Another unknown, younger-looking male, kind of cagey and tall and skinny with very dark

• 18:14Speaker 01

  hair, wearing what appears to be all black, walks up and takes the debit card out of the ATM slot.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  So it certainly appeared from the images that were obtained from the ATM that we now had persons of interest that showed up related to that particular vehicle. So certainly these individuals could be persons we could speak to that might have information.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  This second guy in the ATM photographs had to be either the person who'd gone to the neighbor's house, or the driver of the car stuck in the mud. Locke asked the tow truck driver about the vehicle. Primarily, "Did you at least write down the license plate number?"

• 18:58Speaker 03

  "I did," the driver said. "So at this point, with the information from the neighbors, the information from the tow truck operator, the information from the ATM, it certainly added several pieces to our puzzle, but we still didn't have a picture."

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Now they could find and speak to the three individuals who may have been the last people to have seen Dr. Schwartz alive. The dude they were hot on now, the driver of that car, lived two hours away from the Schwartz house. Why in the hell was he so far away from home in the driveway of a man who was murdered on that night? And why hadn't he gone to the Schwartz house and asked to use his phone? Why walk in the rain and mud a half mile away when all you had to do was trek 50 yards down a driveway?

• 19:59Speaker 03

  "So with the information we received on the license plate, we were able to send persons to observe the residence where the vehicle came back to be registered in Prince William County, which is an adjoining county to Loudoun County."

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Locke stayed behind while Dee Benedetto headed out to Prince William to conduct surveillance on the house where the car was registered.

• 20:26Speaker 04

  "At this point, we didn't have search warrants or anything along those lines, but we just wanted to stake out the house, see who was coming and going. We went down there and sat in a driveway a couple of houses down from there, just watching the house for a few hours."

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Turns out, the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office also put out a BOLO, be on the lookout for the plate number of the vehicle stuck in the mud.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  The vehicle initially was not observed at the residence, but subsequently was observed in Prince William County and stopped by Prince William County Police, where two individuals were occupying the vehicle. The two individuals were noted to be a young male and young female, which would somewhat meet the description of one of the males noted in the ATM photo. Both of the individuals were informed that they were not under arrest, that they were free to leave at any time, that we just wanted to ask them some questions.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Although they now had two of the three in custody, that third person, along for the ride that night, was still a mystery.

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• 22:07Speaker 05

  Still haven't started? Hey, better late than ever. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Detective Greg Locke rushed to Prince William County to question both persons of interest. See what, if anything, they knew and could remember from that night, or if they had seen anything out of the ordinary. He also wanted the name of the third person with them. The kid they now knew had sat with Schwartz's neighbor and actually drank hot tea and ate biscuits with them while waiting for the tow truck. They had shown the neighbor a photo of the one kid they had in custody, and the neighbor indicated it wasn't the same person he had met.

• 23:30Speaker 03

  At the police station in Prince William County, both individuals were separated. They were identified as Katie Ingles and Michael Foal, and both of the individuals lived at a residence there in Prince William County together.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Katie Ingles and Mike Foal were actually dating. Locke and his fellow investigators discussed the idea that perhaps they proceed with caution, just in case the kids were involved. They also needed a warrant before they could go into Mike's home and poke around. As the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office waited for word on the warrant, they needed to exclude or include Mike Foal and Katie Ingles, along with the third, still unnamed person with them on that night. I dug deeply into these two myself, interviewing friends and sifting through documentation about their lives.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Mike was 21 and had this disheveled look about him. He wore a scraggly mustache, a bit of a goatee. He had dark, bushy eyebrows and long, stringy hippie hair that 1970s Led Zeppelin look, and would have fit right in with Charles Manson's helter-skelter group of misfits. He had been sleeping in the basement of his parents' house.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Mike's girlfriend, 19-year-old Katie Inglis, had a wiry look. She did her best to come across as the girl next door. Her brown eyes were wide and globe-like underneath big-framed glasses. She kind of looked like the mashup of a librarian and a girl on the run from something. Her dirty blonde hair was straight and flat and wild. Shy, she didn't say much of anything, except maybe after being pressed. I spoke to a friend of Mike and Katie's over the phone.

• 25:43Speaker 06

  Katie is your prototypical, you know, blonde airhead. Uh, no offense to any of the, you know, blonde airheads who might actually be listening, but she's the reason the cliche exists.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  As for Mike, he added,

• 25:56Speaker 06

  he was happy to go along with pretty much anything, you know? He was, he enjoyed being part of something. I mean, and that was, you know, what it was, what, you know, that knowing what it was wasn't as important as just being part of something.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  During their interviews with Locke, Mike and Katie were fairly forthcoming about their movements the previous Saturday.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  They did say they had gone there and that they had gotten stuck and that they had gone to a neighbor's house.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  But their reason for being there took the investigation in a whole new direction.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  So during the interview, they indicated that they were friends with the daughter of the victim, Clara Schwartz, and that they had gone there that evening to visit her.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  In other words, these kids, who just happened to be at the Schwartz's house on the night the man was murdered, were friends with Schwartz's youngest daughter and had gone to the house to see her? It placed them not only at the scene of the murder, but also left them with a question. Why hadn't Clara, Schwartz's daughter, mentioned this to them in her messy dorm room?

• 27:18Speaker 01

  This was a connection that had to be explored. One of the problems Locke encountered while interviewing Mike and Katie was their demeanor. It was a little unusual and difficult to grasp.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  I got the impression that Katie was somewhat oblivious if she had been involved in this. With that said, that she didn't understand the magnitude of what had happened. I believe Michael was more nervous and anxious.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  While it's nerve wracking being compelled to answer questions from police, both Mike and Katie still seemed able and willing to talk and, so far, had not asked to have an attorney present. Of course, the main question became, who was the guy who spoke to the neighbors?

• 28:15Speaker 03

  His name was Kyle Halbert, and he certainly became a person that we needed to speak to.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  They were all friends. None of them went to college or worked. So they kind of hung around all day and indulged in games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Magic.

• 28:37Speaker 03

  There were some different role-playing games that they played.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Dungeons and Dragons is a romantic, fantasy-filled, medieval world type of game. Players have to evade monsters, fight dragons, and rescue damsels in distress. It's a form of fantasy escapism that appeals to the kinds of kids who love Lord of the Rings and Conan the Barbarian. Often, it's played with pieces on a board and driven by the roll of dice.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  As Mike and Katie talked, however, they mentioned how their group of friends dressed up and played Dungeons and Dragons in real life sometimes. At the beginning of the 2000s, online gaming was in its infancy. But Mike, Katie, Clara, and this other young man, Kyle Hulbert, were wrapped up completely in that fantasy world. You might even say it was their chosen lifestyle. Dungeons and Dragons wasn't the only role-playing game the group liked.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  They played a game called Underworld.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  That game, The Underworld, was created and scripted by Clara Schwartz. Instead of studying hard at James Madison University, Clara had spent her time making up characters and scripting storylines for her and her friends to act out.

• 30:08Speaker 03

  So in this particular game Clara was the Lord of Chaos, and the Queen, if you will, and she pretty much doled out orders to different people who participated in the game.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Clara was struggling at university with schoolwork and the pressure to succeed. Some people turned to drugs and alcohol, food, sex. Clara lost herself in writing and playing The Underworld. Still, how well did she know these three? Mike, Katie, and Kyle? I couldn't help but think of Clara and how she'd lost her mother to cancer and now her father so violently. She was suddenly parentless, unmoored yet again. Mike and Katie did not seem capable of such a gruesome murder.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  The couple came across, honestly, as stoner types who played fantasy games and could not likely plan a Scooby-Doo caper. Better yet, a brutal crime like the one that took place. But never judge a book, as they say.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  We were interviewing Katie and Mike. There was another team of investigators in Prince Win County Police that actually were executing a search warrant, which is where Michael Foal and Katie Inglis were residing together.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  With many searches, you never know what will turn up until you look. Do you recall where you guys found it?

• 31:46Speaker 03

  It was wrapped up in a cloth in a closet.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  It being a bloodied Samurai sword. The exact type of weapon the coroner suggested caused the savage fatal wounds found on Dr. Schwartz's body.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  And forensics would soon confirm with DNA and blood evidence that this weapon was...

• 32:17Speaker 03

  The sword that was used to kill Dr. Schwartz.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Next time on Fatal Fantasy. As those involved start talking, they begin to describe a group of role-playing gamers, the bonds they formed, and the secrets they shared.

• 32:50Speaker 07

  Kyle always kept playing the hero. He always wanted to be the hero.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  But it ain't all hobbits and cuddly little elves.

• 32:59Speaker 08

  I call it myself Wiccan. If I use a term to describe myself religiously, it's pagan. Practitioner of witchcraft.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  And then another domino falls.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Based on information obtained from Katie Inglis and Michael Foal, an arrest warrant was issued.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress? A hoodie slips beneath a blazer? An old cap finds a new scarf? Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Fatal Fantasy is a production by Sony Music Entertainment and M. William Phelps, LLC. Written and executive produced by me. From Sony Music Entertainment, the executive producers are Jonathan Hirsch and Catherine St. Louis. And our production manager is Samantha Allison. Jeremy Adair is my senior producer and script consultant. And Matt Russell, my sound engineer. I use Epidemic Sound for music and SFX.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly, the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress? A hoodie slips beneath a blazer? An old cap finds a new scarf? Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer, until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.