Fatal Fantasy | 4. The Springtime War

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Helen, this is a pre-paid call from... I am the Kyle. Unininate at Virginia Department of Corrections, Buckingham, Correctional. To accept this call, class zero. To refuse this call, hang up or press.

Once he was locked up, Kyle Eubert began calling and talking me through his version of what happened. It's more or less what he also confessed to loud and county investigators. Incidentally, Kyle's signature way of introducing himself, as you heard, I am the Kyle, is his rather narcissistic way of saying there is only one Kyle in this world and that he is that person.

By December 12, 2001, Kyle, his best friend, Mike Foll, and Mike's girlfriend, Katie Angliss, or Incustity. Kyle was the last of the three to be picked up by investigators and hadn't revealed a whole lot about what happened that night. Then, as I mentioned in the last episode, Katie decided to fully cooperate and cut a deal,

which kind of pissed Kyle off. Because of the way she talked and the way she made out by she and Michael knew everything, and this is one of the things I wanted to get clear on the record. This is one of the things I really want you to make sure that you air for people.

First thing she did when she found out she was in trouble, she made it deal with people.

So as you got the incentives, you come up with whatever bullshit that sounds convincing to them, to secure their case so that she doesn't get any fucking time. Talking to investigators, Katie said on that night, Kyle was dressed in his signature black trench coat, with a samurai sword tucked in a scabbard attached to his hip, and that the three had driven to the house, but that Kyle approached the Schwartz's front door by himself.

Katie went on to say his motive partly had to do with his concerns about Clara's volatile relationship with her father. Apparently both Kyle and Mike were convinced that Dr. Schwartz was hurting his daughter. To deal with it, Clara had written in her father as the villain in the underworld game, an arch nemesis they all called the OG or old guy. I asked the associated press journalist Heather Greenfield about this.

So she referred to him both in the role playing games and in real life as the old guy,

“but I mean I think that's typically nicknames like that are meant to dehumanize people,”

unfortunately. That Clara made him the villain of her game brought up a lot of questions about her actual relationship with her dad. It sounded like they had a lot of conflict. There was a lot of yelling back and forth. If you look at both the relatives and what she was telling her friends, it sounded like kind of a higher level than the average trouble between a teenager and their parent. Kyle told me one of the reasons he was so moved by Clara's complaints about

her father was that he also had a bad relationship with his father whom he accused of bullying

and abuse. Here's what Kyle told investigators really happened. It began with what Mike,

Katie and Kyle referred to as an event, Clara had named the Springtime War, a major narrative plot point in the underworld game. I remember a lot of critic references to people that I

“imagine were part of the game, but like so and so will be key to the closer eye on so and so,”

this one might be an agent for the other side. By agent Kyle took it to mean a fictional bad guy within the game. At this time, Kyle was struggling to differentiate fantasy from reality. He'd

was a place where he could be that night in shining armor. He'd always aspire to be and also

“the kind of bomb he'd long been for his younger sister in the face of a difficult father.”

When Clara asked Kyle to play the underworld, a game that had names and places mirroring actual life, he wasn't totally sure any more what was real and what was fantasy. What was clear was how Kyle desperately wanted to be the kind of Prince Charming to swoop in and save the Princess. The guy who helped people in need, they hero. When he met Clara, Kyle already had the samurai sword, he bought the day after he was emancipated. She knew he wore that sword on his hip

24/7 and was eager to use it.

Befriending Clara and the others, Kyle told me, solidified his purpose in life.

“He said not long after they met, Clara took him out to dinner one night, not fast food,”

but an entree at a sit down restaurant. During dinner, she'd bend his ear about her troubles. As they waited for their meals, Clara brought up her father, specifically, how much she loathed the guy. Then her stake arrived at the table. And something weird happened. She took a bite and then she was like, this is something wrong with us.

She was convinced that something had been done to it. She wanted to send back.

Poison, she whispered to Kyle after the waiter left. My father as a scientist, it would be easy for him to poison me. She had such a hold on Kyle and the others that they actually took her seriously. At one point in November, just weeks before the murder, Clara convinced Kyle to sleep in his tent on the Schwartz property because, according to him, she was scared the OG was going to do something to her that weekend. With Kyle now designated as her protector in the underworld,

he also needed to be there in case Clara called on him. Kyle went along with the game. While out in the woods, Kyle came up with a plan to confront Dr Schwartz. With Kyle that morning, our two of his childhood friends, Sabah and Nicodemus. And what about Sabah and Nicodemus? What are they telling you about it? Sabah and Nicodemus began to taunt Kyle. Wake her up. He's hurting her. That convinced Kyle that Clara's father was doing something filthy to her and he needed to step in

and confront the man. So with his sword secured safely in its scabbard on his hip, Kyle took off running toward the Schwartz residence. The night on the move to rescue the princess. With Sabah and Nicodemus

“following close behind. So you, you know, you show up at the door. I mean, what does he say?”

It's interesting. It's interesting. What? And looking at it now, it's like, yeah, I just got woke up seven o'clock in the morning after a week of working from this street, booking creepy fucker at my door. Yeah, I'm not going to be in the best happy had to choose to wait and move to the, like, I guess he saw me with, like, clearly you're one of her friends. You know, kind of ideal at the link. He is just, there's more than looking at that. I'm,

I'm here to, you know, my usual, you know, under Kyle, you know, chirp itself. I'm here to pick a player, you know, and that's like, she's still sleeping and then I'm like, oh, okay. I guess I'll come back later. Dr. Schwartz stared into Kyle's eyes, a steely gaze, this intense squint and posed a question. That's sort on your hip. What in the hell is that all about? I told my character with me everywhere. It's not like it's hidden. It's right there. All my hip words be seen.

Saba and Nicodemus are there at the door with Kyle as well. They are telling him to turn around. Leaf, don't do it. Yeah, they're not doing good about this. There's a lot of danger here. There's a lot of factors that we can't control. Dr. Schwartz couldn't see Saba or Nicodemus, however, because, well, after all, they are not real. Both our voices inside Kyle's head,

Kyle sometimes gets the help he needs as a diagnosis gets a frenic, like medication,

“but at this point in his life, he has refused to take his meds. So the voices are very real to him.”

And right now, Kyle was arguing with those voices over what to do next. How am I doing this? What is this supposed to be?

You know, because I don't know. I mean, in my mind, this was the first real thing I've ever done.

No, I'm actually protecting somebody. Standing in front of Dr. Schwartz, Kyle took a deep breath and realized, now is not his moment. He told the good doctor, once again, he'll be back later to pick Clara up. Any left? It's 11 days before Kyle will return to confront Dr. Schwartz, one final time. My name is M. William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and the New York Times best-selling author

of dozens of true crime books. From Sony, music, entertainment, and M. William Phelps, LLC,

you are listening to Fatal Fantasy, episode four, the springtime war. [Music]

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“It's 1955, and a British army major is found floating face down in the dark waters of the”

Devon Coast. His death is written off as an accident. The gangplank hadn't been fixed down. But two weeks later, a stranger will knock on his widows door and rip her life apart. He said, "Don't trust your closest family." I'm Eugene Henderson, and this is called "Nam Badgear," a story of secrecy, espionage, and control. "What is true and what's false?" Listen to code "Nam Badgear," wherever you get your podcasts.

As investigators listen to Kyle explain his relationship with Clara Schwartz, they wonder if Kyle is trying to sell her out. So far, all he said is that Clara was a child who had issues with her father, none of which, Kyle had any tangible proof of. Investigators asked themselves, "Why trust his word? What evidence do they have against Clara having anything to do with this plot to kill her father?" What they do know is that Kyle might have

killed this prominent scientist and Clara Schwartz was actually 200 miles away. The investigation into the savage murder of Dr. Robert Schwartz had already taken many turns in

its first week. While Kyle had decided to give them a complete confession hinting that Clara Schwartz

was also involved, investigators tried figuring out if these three young people acted alone or Clara had prior knowledge of what went down that night. Then, out of nowhere, a new witness stepped forward, blowing this case wide open. "Young man, Patrick Kals, who had dated

been a participant in this underworld game, which Clara was the Lord of Chaos in the Queen,

“and that she often assigned different tasks to members playing the game, and that one of the”

tasks that was assigned to Patrick was to take, which was Clara's word for kill, the OG, which Clara referred to as either the old guy or the old geezer." I reached out to Patrick for both my book and this podcast and he showed no interest in talking to me. Patrick was 20 years old, straight-laced, shortly cropped the brown hair, clear, pale skin. He came across more as an accountant

than a medieval role-playing gamer. Patrick met Clara through Mike after Mike bumped into Patrick

inside the office waiting room of a psychiatrist one day in 2000. Later, their paths crossed again at Walmart and they started hanging out. Clara would tag along. Clara found Patrick a bit odd,

“like her, and they seemed to bond over a shared interest in the gaming world.”

Patrick once spoke of how he cast a spell that had killed 13 people who were trying to kill him, reporter Jason Churcus wrote in a Washington City paper article. When Clara heard that, she realized Patrick was speaking her language. In the underworld game, he had been selected to be the Queen's assassin, long before the group had even met Kyle. When they began playing Clara's underworld game, Patrick viewed it as nothing more than make believe, a fantasy to deal with the

stressors of reality. But as time went on, Patrick noticed that Clara became more serious whenever she talked about her father. In fact, one day, while speaking to Mike, Patrick said,

“"I'm going to kill Clara's father." Clara despised her father and wanted him out of her life forever.”

And had a good reason she told Patrick. Here's Detective Greg Locke. Clara claimed that her father was physically and mentally abusing her and more specifically that it involved me, steak, and that he was poisoning the steak to poison her. Loud and county investigators had not found any evidence of this whatsoever. Patrick told them that, as the Thanksgiving holiday approached, Clara began pressuring him, asking, "Not hinting anymore for help in getting rid of her father.

Knowing her as well as he did, Patrick considered that maybe her comments weren't just part of the fantasy she'd created in the underworld but that she had actually wanted him to kill her father." Clara sat in her dorm room, day after day, without leaving. From her computer, she'd directed everyone in the game, initiating plotlines she had written, facilitating the ongoing narrative of the underworld through instant messaging. She'd scripted a general narrative in a journal

and would then talk through it in person with all of them. But for the most part, she expedited the game via her computer. Patrick showed investigators emails and instant messages with Clara from earlier in the year. The chatter focused on taking out the OG. Here is one example Patrick shared with Detective Locke, and although I am having an actor, read Clara's instant message chats and journal entries, all of the words you'll hear throughout

the podcast are taken directly from Clara's texts. "If a guy puts hemlock in a drink and drinks it, will police think it's suicide or murder?" There is a pause in the message as Patrick kind of struck by what she just said doesn't answer. So, Clara continues, sensing his concern perhaps, while trying to reel the comment back in. "What question? Not sure whether I was imagining something,

or whether it was a vision." Well, according to modern law, Patrick finally taps back,

suicide is murder one. Does it make a difference? Clara taps back immediately. "Let's do

So, in Patrick's mind, as the game progress, he believed that Clara was serious about killing

“the OG, her father, and this was no longer a game.”

At the time, Patrick playcates his girlfriend, suggesting that with all the mental fury the OG as caused her, Clara could make his death look natural. This is Patrick stepping away, realizing she is serious about wanting her father dead. Clara continues. "Okay, have you found a natural way?"

"I may have Patrick says." "Interested. Go on." "No, I am not going to tell you how

Patrick writes back." "Okay, any hints?" "I am not going to tell you," he says. "Okay,

“guess it's better than I not know. I just wish he'd go away. I'm so sick of fighting."”

Days later, after coming up with a new idea, Clara gives Patrick a direct order in the form of a new underworld narrative she just created. "Have there's someone who should put a gun to

him to tell him to write the note, then put it in the drawer of the desk and point a gun at him while

he pours the vile in his milk and drinks it, watches him die and then leaves. "Path was Patrick's name in the underworld Clara had come up with. In her dorm a few days after that instant message exchange, Clara tells Patrick her father will be from that point on known under a new codename. The target." She further explains there is now no separation between the underworld OG and the real OG, no more fuzzy lines or ambiguous references. Clara is not the Lord of Chaos

asking Path to fulfill his role in the game. She is the girlfriend asking the boyfriend to murder her father. She no longer appeared to be inside the game. It appeared to be all reality to her by then, Patrick tells Detective Locke. Clara has one final question for Patrick during that specific exchange. Patrick is heard enough. He stops messaging with her. The relationship is over. For investigators, Patrick coming forward changes everything. His story fits with Mike,

Katie, and now Kyle's version of events leading up to the night. Dr. Schwartz was murdered, and Clara Schwartz, the doctor's own daughter, now becomes their number one mark as the master mind. Behind, Dr. Schwartz's murder. Jacqueline Furlin Smith, a 40-year-old former Canadian military trainer, moves to Costa Rica to follow her dreams, but in the summer of 2021, vanishes without a trace.

“How can a woman just go missing and ask, could I all that effort to find her and she's still missing?”

I'm David Ridgen and this is someone who knows something. She's in ten. The Jacqueline Furlin Smith case. Available now on CBC Listen and wherever you get your podcasts. The problem investigators faces that all of these people knew one another, and so, at least in theory, they could be ganging up on someone they now disliked for whatever reason.

forward entirely changed the narrative. We also found that once Patrick Howe said somewhat

“distance himself from Clara, and she later met Kyle Holbert in October that she started telling”

Kyle the same things that she had been telling Patrick Howe's in the sense that her father was trying to poison her, he was physically abusive, he was mentally abusive again unfounded. What it looks like is that when Patrick Howe's retreated and ran from Clara, the moment he realized, this was no damn fantasy. Clara simply found another stooge and Kyle and used

Kyle's insecurities and mental illness to manipulate him.

It had been given to her to know that they would send somebody into her circle, and that he would not be me. From there Clara started telling Kyle the O.J. with sneaking

“to her room, but she was at home and, quote, "finger her," never taking it any further than that,”

sexually. Then she made it seem like her father was a pedophile who regularly, downloaded child pornography, both allegations, factually disproven by law enforcement, and I need to say, in no way true. By then, Kyle had told Clara that he had been sexually abused himself, so her allegations enraged Kyle. He felt for her and had no idea she was lying. One night after Clara showed Kyle several journal entries in which she describes in graphic detail,

the alleged sexual abuse, Kyle slammed the journal shut and proclaimed, "I'll protect you." They were no longer playing a game. This was for real. After Patrick Howe's came forward, Detective Lock went back to Katie English and asked her additional questions. Katie tells them about a conversation she had with Clara just a few days before the murder. I just wish he'd leave me alone and let me live my life. Clara tells Katie.

I wish she was dead. Katie doesn't know what to say. Clara then tosses out. I stand to inherit

a third of a million dollars, but I can only get it after he's dead. By December 6, 2001,

just two days before the murder, Clara amped up the urgency to get it done. She called Kyle.

“"You need to take care of this," she said. "Now."”

When she tells me, I just had a fight with my, you know, dad, and OG, as far as she said it, he told me that when we go to the Virgin Islands for Christmas vacation, you can make sure I didn't come back. The investigators would be able to confirm that Dr. Schwartz had reservations for all of his kids and himself to spend Christmas in the Virgin Islands. She's destroyed, and this is just, I see you imagine hitting all the right buttons for me is, you know, "Oh my God, I have to protect her."

And she tells me, "I have to protect her, I can't let him hurt her." Remember those being her words, you know, "You have to protect me, Kyle, you can't let him hurt me." When she named up, I put on a phone, and I'm sitting there trying to figure out, "Okay, this is just escalated from abuse to threats of actual bodily harm." I'm not sure what to do. Part of me wants you to go over there right then and have it out with them.

Michael and I and Katie planned to get together that weekend, so I figured, "Well, at the very least, I can go there, and if he's actually this kind of bully, if I go there and I intimidate him and I threaten him to leave her alone, that somebody knows what's going on, it'll leave her alone." The turning point comes. Kyle explains to Clara that he needs money.

Okay, she says, "How much?" $60. Clara herself admitted this early in the investigation.

and I inquired what the check was for, and she said a phone card, but on further elaboration,

“it came out that it was also for gloves and a do-ragg. Clara overnighted a check”

written out to Kyle along with a note, handwritten in all caps, what's needed and expected.

Kyle was firm about saying he never asked Clara for money to kill her father. After all,

$60 is not exactly a murder for higher number. He claimed he told Clara the money was a payment for a porn site he liked. I've been involved in true crime for over 26 years. Kyle can tell me all day long the money wasn't a payment going toward the murder, but come on, Clara overnighted the check and they cashed it the day before the murder. What is the talk among you and Katie and Mike? Nothing really. I mean, I don't remember

being much any conversation about anything in particular. I knew I needed to go to the

shortsist place to get her notebooks. Notebooks? Money for a porn site? How much are these people really believing what they are telling themselves and in turn telling the cops? In my opinion,

“they knew exactly what was going on here. All three of them. She told you you need to go get my”

books at the house. It was, I knew that I wanted to go to, I wanted to try to confront him. That statement I think tells us Kyle knew exactly why he was headed to Dr. Schwartz's house on the night of December 8th. Mike Full was easy prey for investigators. All they had to do was keep a boot on his throat, dangle life behind bars, or possibly with the potential murder for higher aspect now involved a death sentence. If they did all of that, Mike would tell them everything.

Kyle explained to investigators that he told Mike Clara had instructed him to go to the house to grab her notebooks. Mike instead told Lock he was fully aware of what was about to go down, putting it into kind of a bizarre, almost childish manner, telling Lock, Kyle went up to Schwartz's house. I stayed outside the house and prayed for Mr. Schwartz's soul to go to heaven. You can only get to heaven if you're dead. Mike? No. I meet up with a Katie and Michael. I have to go here

and I played out the conversation in my head up billion times, you know, like I just every possible

permutation of that I can think of of how that conversation would go. It's raining as they head

“to Schwartz's house in Mike's car. Important to know, I think, is that Clara? Is that James”

Madison University in her dorm? Hello. It wasn't pouring down rain like it can thunder like a good horror movie should be, but it was overcast and sprinkling throughout the day. We're up to that night and the only thing I've gotten concrete my head is I asked to go here. I asked to confront him. He needs to know that somebody knows what's going on and that can't get away with it. And I know it's at the timing statement, but it's true. I did not go there to kill him. I went there to

confront him, but there was parts of either knew that like it became down to it, you know, her life or his, there was no contest. Katie writing shotgun with Mike driving in Kyle in the back seat, a approach Schwartz's driveway. Kyle tells Mike to stop. It's a long driveway. Kyle insists Mike and Katie wait inside the car there near the road. I'll walk the rest of the way he tells them. As Kyle sits with his hand on the door handle, preparing to step out and walk down the driveway,

his mind races. I don't know how to describe you this sense of not knowing. It's like you're standing at a hit in the doorway, you're in the light and the room on the other side is pitch black.

voices now sending him warnings. The best I can say is an indirect say, I guess something I did.

He was taking up on things that I wasn't paying attention to. Holds in her story, so falls in the way things were going, just how perfectly this all fit together. Kyle tells Mike and Katie he'll be right back. And then he begins walking down the driveway, placing one hand on his sword attached to his head and the other, locking the driving brain hitting his face. Then he reaches Dr. Schwartz's door and knocks.

We're here now. We're at the night. This is where I cross a line that can't be

“unhaulsed. This is for better or worse. This is my Rubicon. After this night, my life is going to be”

defined in two terms. Before this, the match of this.

Next time on fatal fantasy. As Kyle Eulbert steps inside Dr. Schwartz's house, we hear him describe in great detail what to place. And he just smiles at me. I'm going to die here tonight. We catch him with an elbow. I taste blood. As he is fighting with Schwartz, the vampire Kyle claims to be seems to come out. Clara was in danger. I remember fighting, viable vampires.

And then a shocking shift in the investigation.

“Jesus' disciples are extreme followers. They drank his blood and ate his flesh,”

which made them all vampires and cannibals. I look at satanic cults and see the future. Great and promising. [Music] Don't want to wait for that next episode. You don't have to. Unlock all episodes of fatal fantasy. Add free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. Search for the Binge

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on Apple Podcasts or getthebinge.com to learn more. Vatal fantasy is a production of 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. Our production manager is Samantha Allison. Jeremy Adair is my senior producer and

script consultant Matt Russell my sound engineer. I use Epidemic Sound from Music and SFX. I want to tell you guys about a podcast that is near and dear to my heart and I can't believe it already came out a year ago and you can all go listen to it. Add free by subscribing to the binge podcast channel. What podcast current? Tell us. Oh, it's called Blink J. Candle Story. I created it about a man named Jake who I met who is the only survivor of a terminal brain

illness brought on by heroin use, but there is a lot of mystery and medical malpractice and true crime elements that are very shocking and surprising and even some supernatural elements.

So, this is definitely an amazing story as your unique did such an incredible job telling the story

and sharing it with the world. So, if you have not listened to it, my goodness, wherever you been because Blink is so freaking good. Thank you. Search for Blink wherever you listen and subscribers to the binge. We'll get the entire season ad free. Plus, you'll get exclusive access to the over 60 other true crime stories on the binge podcast channel. Hit subscribe on Apple podcasts or head to getthebinge.com.