WASHINGTON — Court records offer a chilling look at an argument that led an 85-year-old Washington, D.C., man to fatally stab his wife during an argument over pancakes.
Steven Schwartz was charged with second-degree murder in the Sunday morning death of Sharron Schwartz, 81, in their home. According to documents, Steven Schwartz also stabbed himself but survived.
Metropolitan Police investigators allege that Steven Schwartz said his wife was trying to get him to eat so he could regain the weight he’d lost after a stroke he’d suffered a couple of months before the slaying. The couple had been married for about 40 years.
“She doesn’t deserve this. I deserve it; she does not,” Schwartz said while being treated for his wounds, according to an arrest affidavit. “I killed her. Oh my Lord. I don’t remember … it was a crazy fight.”
Officers responded around 4 p.m. Sunday to the Schwartzes’ home in the 1300 block of Corcoran Street NW, where they found Sharron Schwartz lying on the floor with a stab wound to the back. She was transported to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead a short time later.
Investigators learned that neighbors had contacted Sharron Schwartz’s two sons and asked them to do a welfare check on their parents after they heard “screaming and tumbling” coming from the duplex-style apartment. One son, who visited his mother and stepfather each Sunday to check on them, told officers he arrived at the home and found his mother lying against the front door, conscious but struggling to breathe.
Initially, the man said he thought his mother had fallen down the stairs. When he asked if she was OK, she attempted to speak but no sound came from her mouth.
An autopsy later determined that Sharron Schwartz’s stab wound punctured both her heart and her left lung, the affidavit states.
The neighbors told detectives they heard when the son arrived and heard him find his mother. A few moments later, he addressed his stepfather.
“Dad, what did you do?” he repeated several times, according to one of the witnesses.
Read court documents in the case below.
The son later told police that Steven Schwartz admitted stabbing his wife and himself. The younger man took a knife from his stepfather, who then went upstairs.
When officers responded to the son’s 911 call, they found Schwartz on his knees in the home’s living room, a second knife in his hands. As the officers tried to de-escalate the situation, Schwartz used both hands to stab himself in the abdomen.
An officer used a stun gun to disarm the injured man, and he was taken to the same hospital as his wife, the court records state. The severity of Schwartz’s wounds was not clear in the records.
During questioning at the police department, Schwartz told detectives that his wife had been trying to help him get back up to 180 pounds following his stroke, which severely limited his mobility in the months that followed. He also suffered from an aversion to food that made returning to his previous weight difficult, the records allege.
The morning of the stabbing, Sharron Schwartz made her husband pancakes, which he said he initially believed he could eat.
“(Steven Schwartz) said that the decedent was a bit of a taskmaster, but that she was doing it for his benefit,” the affidavit states. “The decedent would tell him to get his (expletive) out of bed, but (defendant) thought she was top shelf, and when she did something, she did it right.
“The decedent loved him so much that she wanted (him) to be well, and she wanted her partner and protector back.”
According to Schwartz, he agreed to try eating a pancake but found that he couldn’t. He told the detectives that his wife grew frustrated and threw the plate against a wall.
That’s when he grabbed a carving knife, the document alleges. Schwartz told the investigators that his intention was to kill himself, not his wife.
He described himself as “cagey” and said he did not let his wife know what was on his mind because “if she knew, she would just tell him that he was going to get well,” according to the court documents.
Schwartz’s statement indicates some apparent confusion at that point, with him contradicting himself multiple times on what he remembered and what he didn’t. He told detectives that he had suffered from depression and paranoia since his stroke and that he would lose track of time.
He recalled seeing his wife lying on the floor and bending to kiss her.
“(The defendant) said that it was a beautiful kiss that he would never forget,” the affidavit states.
Schwartz is being held without bond pending a Jan. 2 preliminary hearing.
