marylandmissing
01-23-2005, 09:10 AM
The second life of Larry Swartz: Florida friends remember murderer as 'God's gift to life'
He lived on a narrow street with ranchers and carports, where trucks park on the lawns and working-class people scrape by.
There is a lake across the street where on a good day the kids can catch catfish or bass. Neighbors often gather for a cigarette and a beer, talking long into the night about their kids and their problems with work.
It could be anywhere in middle America, but this is outside Orlando, Fla., the home of Disney World. Life here is anything but a fantasy of animal characters and amusement rides.
It was the last of many homes for Larry Swartz, who at age 38 had found the happiness that eluded him most of his short life.
Larry died near his Florida home on Dec. 29, nearly 21 years after murdering his adoptive Cape St. Claire parents. His crime, which later became the subject of a book and made-for-television movie, is one of the most remembered in county history.
Behind Larry were many foster homes filled with rejection, cold prison cells, homeless camps and raunchy apartments. The lost teenager who committed an unfathomable crime had finally turned his life around, only to die before fully appreciating it.
Neighbors, friends, coworkers and two wives never knew Larry Swartz, the murderer. They only knew a generous man with a big heart, who bought bait and tackle for the neighborhood kids, took in stray animals, checked in on elderly neighbors during hurricanes and knew how to talk to people from all walks of life.
Most of his friends knew his criminal history, but it didn't matter to them.
"I knew everything about him," his wife Christy says. "He experienced a whole childhood of hurt, but he was accepted and loved for who he was."
Greg Ogiste, like Larry, drove a delivery truck for 84 Lumber. Choking back tears, he says, "I wish there were more people like Larry. He was God's gift to life."
In the last two years of his life, Larry found what eluded him as a castaway child - a family of his own. The boy rejected repeatedly by adults became a man who rejected nobody.
Larry was born in New Orleans, the illegitimate son of an East Indian pimp and a runaway teen. Abandoned at 20 months, he spent six years in four foster homes, many abusive, whose parents returned him to Social Services because of his frequent temper tantrums.
Finally, at age 6 he was adopted by Kathryn and Robert Swartz, a devoutly Catholic couple who eventually adopted two more children, Michael and Ann.
Friends admired the Swartzes for their love and devotion to their adopted children. But life in the Swartz home was not easy, especially for a popular teenager who was not allowed to date or even watch movies with friends.
A handsome Broadneck High School athlete, Larry learned to control his temper tantrums out of fear of being rejected yet again.
His fear was well-founded. One day he came home to find a caseworker escorting his 15-year-old brother, Michael, from the Mount Pleasant Drive house.
Inside, his parents said they had given up on Michael and suggested Larry would be next if he didn't work harder on his grades. They vowed to give Larry the discipline they failed to give Michael - and that started the next day.
On a snowy Jan. 16, 1984, Kathryn asked Larry how he did on the two tests he took that day. He thought he did well on one, but not the other.
His mother made a sarcastic comment, and the rage he had learned how to control exploded like a volcano.
He struck his mother in the head with a wood-splitting maul and then stabbed her seven times with a steak knife. He then turned the knife on his father, emerging from a nearby computer room.
Although Michael was initially suspected of the crime, Larry confessed eight days later. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 12 years in the Patuxent Institution in Jessup.
Ron Baradel, the lawyer who represented Larry and became his legal guardian, remembers entering the Swartz house after the police left. On the table were Larry's adoption papers.
Did Larry think that, like Michael, he was about to be kicked out of another home?
Throughout the investigation, Larry never said anything bad about his adoptive parents, so the answer eluded Mr. Baradel for 20 years.
But he got his answer shortly after the funeral, when Larry's wife, Christy, said, "Larry told me he was going to be the next one sent to the pound. That's why he snapped."
Ann was adopted by family friends and went on to lead an anonymous life on the Eastern Shore. Through Mr. Baradel, she declined to be interviewed for this story.
Michael was convicted in 1990 of murdering a Crownsville man over a jar of coins and is still serving time in the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown.
Starting over
In 1993, Larry emerged from prison with a high school diploma, two years of college education and hope.
In what remains a mystery, the 26-year-old was adopted for the second time by a Silver Spring family. He took their last name and looked for anonymity, but the relationship broke up.
He met his first wife in late 1993 or early 1994 while shopping for eyeglasses and the couple moved to Florida, where he fathered a child.
The daughter is unaware of her father's criminal history and to protect her identity, The Capital is not disclosing her name or her mother's. His first wife and sister declined to talk.
The next several years were tumultuous for Larry. He was thrown out of an apartment by squatters who befriended him and lived in his truck until it was impounded by police for parking in an illegal space.
After breaking into the impounded truck to retrieve his wallet and clothes, he was arrested and spent three months behind bars.
Without his truck or a place to stay, he lived with the Orlando homeless. It was here, around the fire and cardboard shelters, where Larry found acceptance.
"Even after we married, Larry would occasionally go back to the homeless camp to talk to his friends," Christy says. "It worried me, but then I understood he felt at home there. No one asked questions, no one cared about his past. He really had a heart for those people."
Eventually, Larry saved enough money to share an apartment with a friend and it was through him that he met Christy, a pretty green-eyed, red-haired woman 13 years his senior.
He moved into her home on the lake and, surrounded by friends, married her about a year and a half ago in a ceremony in their back yard. His sister Ann attended. He was at his happiest.
The couple stayed up late at night talking or playing chess. His daughter, now 8, visited on the weekends and slept in a room just for her. Barbecues were frequent; a backyard fire pit drew many friends. Larry was into the home life - the one he never knew as a child.
"He said if won $20 million in the lottery, he wouldn't leave this house," Christy says.
He was loved by the neighborhood children who would run down the street at the sound of his red truck and beg for a ride.
Eight-year-old Tyler Tetreault, who lives with his parents next door, went fishing with Larry every day. Larry bought him a net, tackle box and pole for his birthday.
The only day he didn't go fishing was the day he lost his eyeglasses. That was also the day he died.
Reciting his bedside prayers that night, Tyler's mother heard him say, "I know Larry is going to heaven because he's a really good person."
His friends shared his interest in fishing and poker, but it was Larry's compassion that attracted them to him.
One of those friends was neighbor Matt Ellis.
"I was having a problem with my little girl and Larry said you have got to fight for what you love, live for that next day. He should have been mad at the world, but he wasn't. I never heard him say a bad thing about nobody."
Between tears, Chad Selers says, "I never had anyone open the door to me. If he had two beers, he'd give you one. If he had two cigarettes, he'd give you one. If he had two quarters, he'd give you one. He'd give you the shirt off his back."
'Set things straight'
Larry had broken off contact with his sister Ann and Mr. Baradel while he was homeless. But shortly before last Christmas - just days before he died - Larry decided to dig into his Maryland roots and call the man who had ushered him through his tortured years.
Recalls the attorney, "We made small talk. He said he was happy and he wanted me to meet his wife and daughter. I said maybe I could come down for a visit in the spring. That was it."
It was the last time he would talk to Larry.
He ponders what motivated Larry to call at this point in his life. "Did he have a premonition or was he trying to set things straight?" asks the former guardian.
Christy recalls their last long conversation the night before he died: "He felt God was protecting him because He still had something for him to do. When he was homeless, he said he told God, 'I'm yours.' He didn't want to give it up."
Dec. 29 began like any other day. Christy went off to work as a registered nurse at a local hospital, and Larry later woke up not feeling well. He couldn't find his glasses and called Christy at work. She had mistakenly grabbed his instead of hers.
When he described his chest pains and sweat, she insisted that he go to the emergency room. But he declined. He told Scotty and Tyler, the neighbor kids, he would pick up his glasses and bait, then take them fishing.
When he arrived at his wife's hospital, he was rubbing his chest. Alarmed, Christy insisted again he stay for an EKG, but he left with his glasses saying he was feeling better.
He was discovered minutes later by police, slumped over the steering wheel of his parked 1986 Jeep Comanche, his foot hard against the accelerator and the engine smoking.
The autopsy showed Larry had died of a massive heart attack.
The bait was on the seat beside him. The kids were waiting in front of his house, listening for the sound of a truck that would never come.
Larry's Lake
The sun shined brightly on Jan. 4 for Larry's funeral at the Gospel Tabernacle Church. Christy insisted on driving his battered red truck to the service.
All of his friends and coworkers were there. So was his first wife, his daughter, Ann and Mr. Baradel. His friends, most leading troubled lives, sat sobbing for hours beside a casket surrounded by photos of Larry.
Says Mr. Baradel, "I saw guys who didn't seem to have a tear duct in their heads crying, bent over his coffin."
During the funeral his friends took to the microphone to speak of Larry. One pointed to Mr. Baradel as the man "who saved Larry." Others just cried.
A couple of weeks later, Christy continues to struggle with her loss. On the couch in her living room, she strokes Highway, a dog found alongside a Florida interstate. The couple's two dogs and three cats were abandoned in life but found in Larry someone who offered love no matter what their pedigree or past.
She is surrounded by candle-lit photos of Larry and posters the neighbors made for the funeral. His ashes are in an urn in her bedroom.
She copes with her loss by talking to Larry through the diary she is writing. She thinks about writing a book about him. Neighbors are putting together a sign to rename the lake, "Larry's Lake."
Friends check in to make sure she is all right; her phone constantly rings. The red truck sits outside, his Timberland boots - a birthday gift from his wife - tossed on the passenger seat.
The peeling blue canoe - Larry's classroom where he spent hours with his daughter and the neighborhood kids - sits idle across the street. No one is fishing or waiting for the red truck to rumble down the road.
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Published January 23, 2005, The Capital (/), Annapolis, Md.
Copyright © 2005 The Capital (/), Annapolis, Md.
He lived on a narrow street with ranchers and carports, where trucks park on the lawns and working-class people scrape by.
There is a lake across the street where on a good day the kids can catch catfish or bass. Neighbors often gather for a cigarette and a beer, talking long into the night about their kids and their problems with work.
It could be anywhere in middle America, but this is outside Orlando, Fla., the home of Disney World. Life here is anything but a fantasy of animal characters and amusement rides.
It was the last of many homes for Larry Swartz, who at age 38 had found the happiness that eluded him most of his short life.
Larry died near his Florida home on Dec. 29, nearly 21 years after murdering his adoptive Cape St. Claire parents. His crime, which later became the subject of a book and made-for-television movie, is one of the most remembered in county history.
Behind Larry were many foster homes filled with rejection, cold prison cells, homeless camps and raunchy apartments. The lost teenager who committed an unfathomable crime had finally turned his life around, only to die before fully appreciating it.
Neighbors, friends, coworkers and two wives never knew Larry Swartz, the murderer. They only knew a generous man with a big heart, who bought bait and tackle for the neighborhood kids, took in stray animals, checked in on elderly neighbors during hurricanes and knew how to talk to people from all walks of life.
Most of his friends knew his criminal history, but it didn't matter to them.
"I knew everything about him," his wife Christy says. "He experienced a whole childhood of hurt, but he was accepted and loved for who he was."
Greg Ogiste, like Larry, drove a delivery truck for 84 Lumber. Choking back tears, he says, "I wish there were more people like Larry. He was God's gift to life."
In the last two years of his life, Larry found what eluded him as a castaway child - a family of his own. The boy rejected repeatedly by adults became a man who rejected nobody.
Larry was born in New Orleans, the illegitimate son of an East Indian pimp and a runaway teen. Abandoned at 20 months, he spent six years in four foster homes, many abusive, whose parents returned him to Social Services because of his frequent temper tantrums.
Finally, at age 6 he was adopted by Kathryn and Robert Swartz, a devoutly Catholic couple who eventually adopted two more children, Michael and Ann.
Friends admired the Swartzes for their love and devotion to their adopted children. But life in the Swartz home was not easy, especially for a popular teenager who was not allowed to date or even watch movies with friends.
A handsome Broadneck High School athlete, Larry learned to control his temper tantrums out of fear of being rejected yet again.
His fear was well-founded. One day he came home to find a caseworker escorting his 15-year-old brother, Michael, from the Mount Pleasant Drive house.
Inside, his parents said they had given up on Michael and suggested Larry would be next if he didn't work harder on his grades. They vowed to give Larry the discipline they failed to give Michael - and that started the next day.
On a snowy Jan. 16, 1984, Kathryn asked Larry how he did on the two tests he took that day. He thought he did well on one, but not the other.
His mother made a sarcastic comment, and the rage he had learned how to control exploded like a volcano.
He struck his mother in the head with a wood-splitting maul and then stabbed her seven times with a steak knife. He then turned the knife on his father, emerging from a nearby computer room.
Although Michael was initially suspected of the crime, Larry confessed eight days later. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 12 years in the Patuxent Institution in Jessup.
Ron Baradel, the lawyer who represented Larry and became his legal guardian, remembers entering the Swartz house after the police left. On the table were Larry's adoption papers.
Did Larry think that, like Michael, he was about to be kicked out of another home?
Throughout the investigation, Larry never said anything bad about his adoptive parents, so the answer eluded Mr. Baradel for 20 years.
But he got his answer shortly after the funeral, when Larry's wife, Christy, said, "Larry told me he was going to be the next one sent to the pound. That's why he snapped."
Ann was adopted by family friends and went on to lead an anonymous life on the Eastern Shore. Through Mr. Baradel, she declined to be interviewed for this story.
Michael was convicted in 1990 of murdering a Crownsville man over a jar of coins and is still serving time in the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown.
Starting over
In 1993, Larry emerged from prison with a high school diploma, two years of college education and hope.
In what remains a mystery, the 26-year-old was adopted for the second time by a Silver Spring family. He took their last name and looked for anonymity, but the relationship broke up.
He met his first wife in late 1993 or early 1994 while shopping for eyeglasses and the couple moved to Florida, where he fathered a child.
The daughter is unaware of her father's criminal history and to protect her identity, The Capital is not disclosing her name or her mother's. His first wife and sister declined to talk.
The next several years were tumultuous for Larry. He was thrown out of an apartment by squatters who befriended him and lived in his truck until it was impounded by police for parking in an illegal space.
After breaking into the impounded truck to retrieve his wallet and clothes, he was arrested and spent three months behind bars.
Without his truck or a place to stay, he lived with the Orlando homeless. It was here, around the fire and cardboard shelters, where Larry found acceptance.
"Even after we married, Larry would occasionally go back to the homeless camp to talk to his friends," Christy says. "It worried me, but then I understood he felt at home there. No one asked questions, no one cared about his past. He really had a heart for those people."
Eventually, Larry saved enough money to share an apartment with a friend and it was through him that he met Christy, a pretty green-eyed, red-haired woman 13 years his senior.
He moved into her home on the lake and, surrounded by friends, married her about a year and a half ago in a ceremony in their back yard. His sister Ann attended. He was at his happiest.
The couple stayed up late at night talking or playing chess. His daughter, now 8, visited on the weekends and slept in a room just for her. Barbecues were frequent; a backyard fire pit drew many friends. Larry was into the home life - the one he never knew as a child.
"He said if won $20 million in the lottery, he wouldn't leave this house," Christy says.
He was loved by the neighborhood children who would run down the street at the sound of his red truck and beg for a ride.
Eight-year-old Tyler Tetreault, who lives with his parents next door, went fishing with Larry every day. Larry bought him a net, tackle box and pole for his birthday.
The only day he didn't go fishing was the day he lost his eyeglasses. That was also the day he died.
Reciting his bedside prayers that night, Tyler's mother heard him say, "I know Larry is going to heaven because he's a really good person."
His friends shared his interest in fishing and poker, but it was Larry's compassion that attracted them to him.
One of those friends was neighbor Matt Ellis.
"I was having a problem with my little girl and Larry said you have got to fight for what you love, live for that next day. He should have been mad at the world, but he wasn't. I never heard him say a bad thing about nobody."
Between tears, Chad Selers says, "I never had anyone open the door to me. If he had two beers, he'd give you one. If he had two cigarettes, he'd give you one. If he had two quarters, he'd give you one. He'd give you the shirt off his back."
'Set things straight'
Larry had broken off contact with his sister Ann and Mr. Baradel while he was homeless. But shortly before last Christmas - just days before he died - Larry decided to dig into his Maryland roots and call the man who had ushered him through his tortured years.
Recalls the attorney, "We made small talk. He said he was happy and he wanted me to meet his wife and daughter. I said maybe I could come down for a visit in the spring. That was it."
It was the last time he would talk to Larry.
He ponders what motivated Larry to call at this point in his life. "Did he have a premonition or was he trying to set things straight?" asks the former guardian.
Christy recalls their last long conversation the night before he died: "He felt God was protecting him because He still had something for him to do. When he was homeless, he said he told God, 'I'm yours.' He didn't want to give it up."
Dec. 29 began like any other day. Christy went off to work as a registered nurse at a local hospital, and Larry later woke up not feeling well. He couldn't find his glasses and called Christy at work. She had mistakenly grabbed his instead of hers.
When he described his chest pains and sweat, she insisted that he go to the emergency room. But he declined. He told Scotty and Tyler, the neighbor kids, he would pick up his glasses and bait, then take them fishing.
When he arrived at his wife's hospital, he was rubbing his chest. Alarmed, Christy insisted again he stay for an EKG, but he left with his glasses saying he was feeling better.
He was discovered minutes later by police, slumped over the steering wheel of his parked 1986 Jeep Comanche, his foot hard against the accelerator and the engine smoking.
The autopsy showed Larry had died of a massive heart attack.
The bait was on the seat beside him. The kids were waiting in front of his house, listening for the sound of a truck that would never come.
Larry's Lake
The sun shined brightly on Jan. 4 for Larry's funeral at the Gospel Tabernacle Church. Christy insisted on driving his battered red truck to the service.
All of his friends and coworkers were there. So was his first wife, his daughter, Ann and Mr. Baradel. His friends, most leading troubled lives, sat sobbing for hours beside a casket surrounded by photos of Larry.
Says Mr. Baradel, "I saw guys who didn't seem to have a tear duct in their heads crying, bent over his coffin."
During the funeral his friends took to the microphone to speak of Larry. One pointed to Mr. Baradel as the man "who saved Larry." Others just cried.
A couple of weeks later, Christy continues to struggle with her loss. On the couch in her living room, she strokes Highway, a dog found alongside a Florida interstate. The couple's two dogs and three cats were abandoned in life but found in Larry someone who offered love no matter what their pedigree or past.
She is surrounded by candle-lit photos of Larry and posters the neighbors made for the funeral. His ashes are in an urn in her bedroom.
She copes with her loss by talking to Larry through the diary she is writing. She thinks about writing a book about him. Neighbors are putting together a sign to rename the lake, "Larry's Lake."
Friends check in to make sure she is all right; her phone constantly rings. The red truck sits outside, his Timberland boots - a birthday gift from his wife - tossed on the passenger seat.
The peeling blue canoe - Larry's classroom where he spent hours with his daughter and the neighborhood kids - sits idle across the street. No one is fishing or waiting for the red truck to rumble down the road.
Next Top Story (/cgi-bin/read/2005/01_23-17/TOP)
Top Stories Page (/cgi-bin/read/TOP)
Subscribe to The Capital (https://www.capitalonline.com/cgi-bin/dynsubscribe.pl?SEQ=COMBINED&STEP=START&LCODE=NAVGROUP)
Published January 23, 2005, The Capital (/), Annapolis, Md.
Copyright © 2005 The Capital (/), Annapolis, Md.