Larissa Schuster Trial Blog, Day 17, Nov. 14, 2007

The judge walked into the courtroom at 9:48 a.m., after spending close to 20 minutes with the attorneys in chambers. After Tuesday's motion hearing, the judge said his previous ruling may need additional consideration. Yesterday the judge denied the defense's motion to restrict questions the prosecution can pose to Larissa Schuster. Defense attorney Roger Nuttall believes the prosecution should not be allowed to ask questions that assume James Fagone's confession or testimony are fact.

Alternate juror number three overheard media members in the elevator talking about why this case is being heard in Van Nuys. The judge called the alternate juror into the courtroom to talk about what she heard. She advised a deputy of the information this morning. She didn't hear details, but she felt uncomfortable and wanted to bring it to the attention of the court. The juror will remain on the alternate panel.
Just as the jury walked into the courtroom at 9:56 a.m., James Fagone's family entered the courtroom. Larissa Schuster approached the witness stand at 9:57 a.m. She said she's been in custody for more than four years. She acknowledged being the widow of Timothy Schuster. 9:59 "Did you kill your husband?" "No, I did not kill my husband." She said she's heard all of the testimony in this trial. She described where she grew up, Clarence, Missouri. She lived there until after high school. Her family consisted of her parents and two brothers, a younger brother and an older brother. One year before she moved to California, her younger brother passed away. She started to tear up.The prosecution objected. The objection was sustained. While living in Clarence, Missouri, they lived on a small family farm. They raised livestock. They also had row crops. The judge handed her a box of Kleenex. She thanked the judge. Larissa Schuster said she enjoyed going to school in Clarence, because she graduated with the same people who she started school with. The prosecution continued to object, non-responsive. The judge encouraged defense attorney Roger Nuttall to move along. She said she was a straight A student. She said there was no doubt she'd definitely go to college. After she got her driver's license, she worked at a hospital. While at college, she started as a biology major. She had to work while she went to college. She had to pay her way through school. She worked at one of the major hospitals in Columbia, which was an hour away from home. She attended the University of Missouri, at Columbia. She attended school fulltime, but then took a break two years into the program. She said the stress of the ciriculum and personal issues caused her to take time off. While in college, she had personal relationships with men. At first she thought she had a good relationship, but then it turned into an emotional and abusive relationship, which caused her to have to go home. 10:09 a.m. "It affected my self esteem and my self image. I didn't feel good about myself at all." After a while, she went back. She saw that as her only choice. She graduated in 1983 with a major. She graduated with honors. She was inducted into an honorary agriculture fraternal organization. In the course of going to college, she met Timothy Schuster. She worked at one of the local hospitals in the intensive medical care unit. That's where she met Tim. Most of the units are like family. They would spend social time together. They were the only two single people. There were a lot of match makers who threw them together. Eventually they started dating and got engaged. The judge called a break immediately. Everyone had to clear the courtroom. Media were allowed back in first. As we re-entered the courtroom, we were each scanned for metal. The deputies inspected everyone's purse. James Fagone's family members were forced to sit in the very back row. Testimony resumed at 10:25 a.m. Nuttall displayed a picture of Larissa Schuster and her mother on her wedding day.

10:26 a.m. The picture was in her mother's bedroom on a side table. She saw it last several years ago. When she married Timothy Schuster, his job at the time was a registered nurse, while she was completing her degree. During those early years of their marriage, they got along very well. He was raised in Golden, Illinois. They had mutual goals. Objection. Sustained. Her goals were to finish college, and raise a family. He shared in those goals. She had given up the idea of going to medical school. She switched her major to bio chemistry. She worked at the University of Missouri. She worked on cell membranes. While they were married, he was a registered nurse and had aspired to an assistant head nurse in the cardiology department. She worked at the same hospital before she got her degree. Then she worked at the university. Objection. Sustained. Nuttall asked for a sidebar. The judge said no. He said he'd like to talk about the time they were in Missouri, what jobs they had. As a chemist, after she left the hospital job, she went to a company in Columbia. It had a good reputation across the country. It was a research laboratory, where they worked with FDA and EPA products that would be regulated by those two agencies. They could have been agriculture or pharmaceutical products. She was with that company 1985 to 1989, close to five years. They called it ABC Laboratory for short. Ojection. Sustained. During that time the couple had Kristin, their daughter. Ojection. Sustained. In terms of their relationship, she said the birth of their daughter was important. During those years before moving to California, they were happy and got along well at that time. They moved to California after Larissa Schuster was recognized at her company as an overachiever. A man in California wanted someone to run his company. She was recruited and selected for the job. The owner of the company was Phil Jones, Pan-Agricultural Laboratories. At the time it was only a field operation. Her job was to build a group, analyze samples. It would be a chemical laboratory. In terms of working for Pan-Ag, it was very similar to working for ABC in Missouri. The products tested were samples ranging from soil, different crops, vegetables, fruits, leaves of plants, cotton, cotton oil, etc. In this particular job, she supervised around 25 people. Objection. Sustained. These jobs that she would do were for major agricultural companies. They would contract with her company if they didn't have the equipment and expertise to do the testing themselves. Some regulations require an independent assessment. The government agencies are very sensitive to companies that do their own testing and collect their own data. Objection. Sustained. She said the studies they conducted were very expensive. On Nov. 29, 1990, the couple's second child was born, Tyler Schuster. The couple's relationship changed during that time.

10:43 a.m. objection. Overruled. About two years after Tyler was born, she noticed some drastic problems in their intimacy. She said she was very unhappy about that, and wanted to address it. She told jurors it's a sensitive area, and she asked them to bare with her. 10:44 a.m. She said Timothy Schuster suffered from impotency and premature ejaculation. She said there was nothing satisfying in that area of their relationship. Objection. Overruled. She said she tried to address it with her husband. She said it was worthwhile to address it, but nothing happened. He didn't address it on his end. Objection. Overruled. Nuttall asked what he did, if anything. She said, he said he'd check into it, but she never had any evidence he did.

10:45 a.m. Over time, the intimacy issues became increasingly troublesome to her. She said other issues developed during that time between the couple. She said Timothy Schuster was never supportive or encouraging of her. She said she was blamed for his intimacy issues, and reminded of being like her grandmother or her dad, it just had to be her problem. She felt like she was always to blame for the sexual problems, rather than admitting it was his problem.

10:47 a.m. objection. Sustained. She said there were a few times that he reminded her that he made more money than she did, even though she had a higher education, "that made me feel really bad." During the early years in the 1990s, Timothy Schuster was always helpful with the children when they were babies, toddlers and pre-teens, according to Larissa Schuster. Objection. Sustained. She said she thought about taking action, but didn't. "I wasn't ready to toss away something we invested that much time in." She believed they still loved each other. 10:50 a.m. In the early to mid-90s, there came a time when Larissa Schuster left Pan-Ag. That was in 1997. That created a career change for her. In the context of their marriage, the couple was active socially. They had outside interests they shared together. They were involved in the Masonic organization. She joined the Order of the Eastern Star. He was initiated as a free mason. There was reference made in the prosecution's case to baskets. A morning recess was called.

Testimony resumed. Nuttall asked about the strains on the Schusters relationship. Larissa Schuster said when their daughter was 15-years-old, she noticed a lot of changes in her. She constantly changed her group of friends. As a mother she sensed something, and tuned into that a lot. She said there were promiscuity problems, and her daughter was doing drugs, and going to fraternity parties. She discovered a letter while cleaning her room. The couple confronted Kristin. As a mother, objection. Overruled. "I was absolutely devastated that my daughter was partaking in something of this nature. It was totally against my values and what I believed."

11:29 a.m. objection, leading. Overruled. Larissa Schuster said her husband accused her of just trying to control Kristin. Objection, leading. Sustained. Objection, relevance, overruled. She said, her husband said the mother should be the disciplinarian. She said she felt she needed his help but didn't get it. During this time that she was observing Kristin and the difficulties, there was a change in living arrangements. This was around 2000, 2001, they moved. She was running her company CCRL at the time. Nuttall showed a picture of the house of where they moved. The home was on Vermont Ave. They closed on the house in February 2001. She was asked to describe the house. She said it was a 4,000 square foot home, with a large area upstairs. It was 14 rooms, beautiful home, she did her own decorating and furnishing. She was asked how they came to buy the home at that particular time. She was thinking about remodeling the kitchen of their previous home, but the cost was too high, so they decided to get a new home. She said their accountant encouraged them to build a larger home. During that time, the marriage wasn't doing any better. She saw the house as a temporary band-aid to their relationship. Objection. Sustained. Objection. Sustained. Larissa Schuster said Kristin was still having troubles. In 2001, she said her health started to suffer. She said she was at work, and noticed one day that she was having fluttering feelings in her chest. She said she'd have one or two every couple of hours. She said they got progressively worse, until she had three or five per minute at one point. In 2001, with respect to the marital difficulties, the couple did not seek counseling. She had to take action with respect to Kristin. Timothy Schuster caught her coming into the house at 4:30 a.m., so they decided with Larissa's parents, that they would have to do something about her. They moved her out of California. She moved to Clarence, Missouri with her grandparents. They obtained guardianship because of school issues. She said she loved her daughter,

11:38 p.m. Larissa started crying, when she talked about her daughter. She said it hurt her very much to see the decisions Kristin was making. She said her husband played more of a passive role in the parenting of Kristin. She said her parents were helpful to give Kristin a second chance. Objection. Overruled. Larissa said when they made the final decision to move Kristin, it was a shared decision. Objection. Sustained. Until the year 2002, the circumstances of the marriage did not improve. She said she was very unhappy, and didn't believe the relationship wasn't very good at all. She said it was more like a brother, sister relationship.

11:41 p.m. objection, leading. Sustained. She said the marriage was very strained. She said he wasn't doing anything to improve their relationship. 11:42 a.m. "he was totally neglecting me." In the beginning of 2002, she did not see any hope of saving the marriage. She made the decision to speak to him about the marriage. She said he didn't give her the response she wanted. In 2002, she said she wanted to divorce and separate. They tried to have a discussion about the marriage, and what aspects of the marriage they enjoyed. She asked how they rated the marriage on a scale of 0-100. He said 95. She said all of the reasons were very materialistic. She asked him to describe the intimacy. He said it needed a little work. A few days later they had another discussion about it. She said she latterly felt like she was an employee he was trying to fire. She said there was "no I love you, you're my wife." She said she thought in her head he doesn't really love her. She felt like she fell out of love with him. 10:45 a.m. She said, "that was the icing on the cake for me." She said that was the day and the event when she decided to file for divorce. Court broke for lunch at noon.

Testimony resumed at 1:40 p.m. Larissa Schuster said the couple had a child custody mediation hearing. Tyler, Kristin and Larissa's mother came out for the hearing as well. The four of them went to Missouri the next day. Custody of Tyler had been resolved. Larissa would have custody of Tyler, and Tim would have visitation. She and Tyler would stay at the primary residence. When she left for Missouri, she didn't expect community property would be taken. Tyler's piano was taken when she returned from that trip. She said it was a pretty big surprise. When she returned to California, she placed numerous calls to Timothy Schuster. She left angry messages on his answering machine. The jury heard these phone calls. She said she isn't proud for having made the phone calls, but she acknowledged she made them. She said Tim was never willing to talk to her about the property taken. She said she was irate, and more than frustrated. She talked to Ms. Plumley, one of her neighbors on Vermont Ave. The neighbor told her she just received a call from Tim about 30 minutes before Larissa arrived. He asked if Larissa was home yet, because she would be really mad at him. Ms. Plumley was considered a good friend to Larissa. Interms of their relationship, Larissa had confided in her regarding problems in the marriage. The Plumley's were from the Missouri area. They did social activities together. Being a woman, one of them had been through a divorce before. Larissa sought her out to talk about the emotions she was having at that time. She asked Plumley if it was offensive to her to talk about the problems. She felt there was nothing inappropriate about their conversations. Sometimes they went to church together. There was some testimony about Larissa taking Tyler and her son to Disneyland. Larissa said the Plumley's didn't express any hesitation about letting their son go with her. In August of 2002, after she came home and discovered that Timothy Schuster had left, she learned where he had moved to. There was a time that he went on a trip. In August of 2002, Tim went to Illinois to pick up Tyler from his grandmother's home and return him back to California. While he was gone

1:50 p.m., she went to his home and broke into the home and took items that were community property. She said she did it out of retaliation. She wanted him to feel how awful it was to come home and have things missing. She wanted to bring them back to where they belonged until the division of property was decided. She said she did not find any separate property at Tim's house. She went with the assumption that he took some items that belonged to her. She said he would never answer the phone, so she left many messages. Their communication was impossible. She said he would never talk to her or decide anything with her unless California law decided it.

1:54 p.m. She said after he moved out, there was no face-to-face conversation. In the summer of 2002, before school started, Larissa and Tyler took a trip to the coast. They stopped and made a purchase. Tyler took his remote control car, and took it out of the car, but locked the keys in the trunk. She called AAA to get the keys out of the trunk. That didn't work. She said she learned her husband had just cancelled her AAA membership. Somebody helped her at that time. James Fagone helped her.

1:56 p.m. This was August 2002. As of that date, Nuttall asked how Fagone was involved in Larissa and Tyler's life. She said she knew Fagone at that time for about four to six months. She said that's just a guess. She came to know him through her husband. Tim introduced her to James Fagone's parents. Fagone's parents mentioned their son was looking for work. Larissa encouraged them to have James bring a resume by. She was looking for someone to wash glass and the lab, and run errands. She said he began working there around 2001, 2002. He came and worked for her for less than a year. She said when he first started, he didn't have access to the lab. Later on she said he had access to the lab. He gained the abililty. He demonstrated she could trust him with the facility. He was still going to school, and he wanted to work hours when they weren't normally there. She didn't mind, as long as the work got done.

2:00 p.m. She said she had no reason not to trust him. James came to know Tyler. James also helped her with Tyler. James was a babysitter. There weren't any young girls to watch Tyler. James and Tyler got along very well. They enjoyed each other's company. Tyler adored him. He thought he was cool, he rode motorcycles and played video games. At that time James Fagone was 20-years-old. He took Tyler places. He came to the house quite often. He had a key because he would do things around the house for her. James said he had a hummingbird study he wanted to do for a class. He did that during the day at her house. Because she trusted him, when she traveled for the business and back home, he watched the house and the two dogs. He made sure things were ok when she was not there. She paid him for his service. Going back to the incident on the coast when she got locked out of the car, James came to her aid. She didn't have anyone to call, so she called James to find her key to the car. He drove a car to Larissa and brought the key to her. She was in the central coast area. During the latter part of the summer in 2002, Kristin was still living in Missouri. There came a time when Larissa and Tyler traveled to Missouri to see her. At that particular point in time, Kristin was primarily supported by Larissa. Funds were sent to Larissa's parents to take care of Kristin. Larissa said Tim didn't contribute anything. Kristin needed a computer, Larissa said she asked Tim to split the cost, but she says he said he didn't recall the attorneys filing papers regarding that. She said Tim was not supportive of her taking Tyler out of Fresno. She said he would interfere with the visits. Dennis Peterson objected twice. Overruled. She said Tim called the police on her for taking Tyler out of California. In 2003 she said she had to show police a copy of the custody order. In November 2002, she took a trip out of the country. She went to Dublin, Ireland over the Thanksgiving holiday. She recalled hearing on Tim's voicemail tapes messages she left for Tim. She said she made about a half dozen calls. When those calls were made, she was in Ireland on that day. She called him that day to speak to their son. She said no one ever answered the phone, so she had to leave voice mails. She said she was concerned about Tyler's well being. She said her mother was staying at her house. She said Tim called her and threatened to call the police on Larissa. Larissa's mother was in California to spend time with Tyler. She said her relationship with Tim was not getting any better.

In 2003, Larissa said Tim continued to interact with Tyler in a limited way. She said he wouldn't attend his sports and school functions. Peterson made additional objections. On Easter Sunday in 2003, Larissa said something happened regarding her daughter Kristin in Missouri. The day after Easter, her mother called her upset about Kristin. She said, her mother told her that there were multiple things going on, including disobedience and utter disrespect for Larissa's parents. At that time, Kristin was a senior in high school. She had just turned 18 in February. Larissa questioned her mother about how severe the problems were. She said she asked her mother what she wanted her to do. Larissa said she needed to get back to Missouri right away. She caught the last plane out of Fresno to Kansas City. It was a three and a half hour drive from Kansas City to Clarence. She said she took Tyler with her. That was the time her trip was reported to police. She said Tim told her he would call the police on her and have her arrested. She said she called him after she called her mother. She said initially they had a very civilized conversation. She said she asked him if he could take care of Tyler. She said he laughed at her and commented she was trying to control Kristin. He was supposed to have a visit with Tyler the next day at 6 p.m. When Larissa got to her parents' home in Clarence, Nuttall asked what happened. Objection. Overruled. Larissa said Kristin was not obeying the house rules of coming in after curfew. She said her daughter wasn't there when she arrived. While she was there, and Kristin arrived, there was a confrontation. She said she made some very ugly comments to Larissa and her mother. Police showed up later. Tim apparently called the police. Larissa said she tried to take Kristin's hand, and Kristin swung at her, and she got a black eye. Larissa slapped her for what she said to her mother and herself.

2:23 p.m. She looked up at Larissa's mother and said, "I hate your _ucking guts." Larissa said Kristin said the same thing to her, and she slapped her. Criminal charges were filed against Larissa for the incident. The charges were filed by Kristin. At that point, Kristin was still in high school. After that, she packed her things and left. This was in April 2003. Nuttall asked her how that made her feel. Objection. Sustained. "It was devastating to me, it was one of the lowest points in my life." She said she didn't give up on her daughter. Objection. Sustained. As far as that particular trip was concerned, she was contacted by police because Timothy Schuster had reported this to them when she left. Police were called before she left town. She had to provide a police agency with a copy of her custody order. Objection. Sustained. In May 2003, Larissa went back to Missouri for Kristin's high school graduation. She went to that. Larissa said the problems with Kristin were not resolved at that point. Objection. Sustained. Larissa said she learned there was another alleged custody violation reported to police. She said she learned this from dispatch at the Clovis Police Dept. She said she called her estranged husband. "This man was harassing me every time I took my husband anywhere."

2:29 p.m. She said the dispatcher recommended she come by the police department and bring a copy of the custody order. At this point in time, the divorce in terms of the property settlement, hadn't progressed at all. She said that was one of the reasons she changed attorneys. She said she was not communicating with Tim directly at that time. It wasn't effective, and it always become hostile, she said. In May and June 2003, her health was not good. She had lost about 50 lbs. She said some of it was intentional. Her hair was falling out and she eventually had to wear full wigs. She said her heart problems were getting worse. Her emotional state, she said she was wiped out, "I was under tremendous stress."

2:32 p.m. She said she was emotional distraught. In terms of her mental state, she was still taking Zoloft, since 2002, without interruption. During the month of June 2003, she planned to take her son on a long trip. Tyler didn't go back to Missouri that summer, so they were going to take a summer vacation. They looked into places to go in the middle of June. He wanted to go to a water park in San Antonio. She said they could go visit some other places. He also wanted to go to Florida. He helped plan the trip. At some point, she finalized the arrangements for that trip. In terms of an itinerary, the dates for the trip were going to be July 13, and they'd be gone for two weeks. They were first going to go to San Antonio, and then visit Missouri because she had a 25 year class reunion, then they'd fly to Florida, and then return to California. She said the trip was extremely important to both Larissa and Tyler. It was a dream vacation for him, he got to plan it.