Larissa Schuster Trial, Day 21, 11/27/07
The judge took the bench at 9:41 a.m., outside of the presence of the jury. One jury member is not at the courthouse yet. Defense attorney Roger Nuttall said he wanted to take something up on the record before testimony continued. He said he wanted to reflect on a certain question which he did not object to on Monday. The question was something like, “was there some reason Terry Lopez would offer these statements against you?” Nuttall sited case law, that says the government should not solicit questions that call for speculation. The question was an attempt to get Larissa Schuster to speculate why Lopez would want to lie on the stand. Schuster gave an answer. Nuttall moved to strike the question and answer. Peterson said he asked the question to find out if Schuster believed Lopez had motive to lie. He said he believed the question was proper. He also said there’s an issue of timeliness. Peterson said isolating that proposed question and answer would not serve any useful purpose and could confuse the jury. Judge Wayne Ellison said the defense is correct about the general principal of the law that neither side is allowed to ask witnesses about the veracity of other witnesses. Ellison said to ask a witness if there’s a reason another would want to lie is not improper. The judge said he’ll read the case law and make a decision at a later time. The court finished the discussion at 9:49 a.m. One juror was still missing. The judge asked if there was anything else they could take up. Peterson looked up the case law Nuttall sited. They further discussed the matter.
The judge took the stand again at 9:54 a.m. He said juror #1 is late again. Nuttall said he wants to keep the juror on the jury. Peterson said it might be time to replace her. The judge said that’s not grounds to dismiss her. The jury entered the room at 9:55 a.m.
Re-direct began a short time later. Nuttall asked Schuster about the extensive cleaning she said she was going to do at her lab involving large amounts of acid. Objection. Overruled. Nuttall showed Schuster photos of the acid in the lab. The acid had labels that showed when the chemical was received. July 11, 2003 the acid was received at the lab. That was the Friday before she went to the Clovis Police Dept. Nuttall asked if she remembered logging in the particular bottle. He asked her if she was at the lab that day. She said she was. Nuttall showed her additional photographs. They showed the log of acid and the labels applied to each of the bottles, where she signed and dated. The date stated July 11, 2003. Schuster said she recognized there was an open box or case of the acids. If the glue seal was broken on the box, the lab policy was to log the individual bottles. Another bottle of acid had the date of July 12, 2003, even though they were from the same box. She believed she entered the wrong date by accident. The other bottles had the July 11 date. She said she doesn’t recall if there would have been any reason to label the bottle July 12.
Nuttall asked, “you’ve been on the witness stand for sometime?” “yes.” Nuttall reminded Schuster that yesterday Peterson asked her about a number of phone calls she had made to Jams Fagone. Nuttall asked, “Are you denying that those calls were made?” “Absolutely not.” “Is it just that you can’t remember them. ““Yes.” 10:08 a.m. “We conversed by phone quite a bit.” She said they talked about Tyler, things regarding him, and odds and ends, looking after the dogs, that she relied and depended upon him with.” She said it’s very difficult to remember all of the details.
Nuttall then asked her about the running of her lab. When she started the lab, some time ago, she used a large amount of acid to clean her lab. She received a supply of unused chemicals when she first started the lab. She said at the time there was another lab in operation that offered her glassware and chemicals. It was the location of her first lab, CCRL. She said she got chemicals from another lab in town. She said another lab offered her more chemicals, which included largely acids. The process of massive cleaning is potentially dangerous, asked Nuttall. She said there are some important safety precautions that need to be taken. She said while preparing to do the cleaning, she looked into that. She said you need to protect your body tissue.
10:19 a.m. Larissa Schuster started to tear up when she described her relationship with her mother. She said she considered her her best friend and would discuss her life with her. Schuster’s mother started to cry. Timothy Schuster’s best friend Robert Solis shook his head and got up and left the courtroom.
10:22 a.m., She said she was waiting for anytime for her arrest to happen. She said she vaguely remembers talking to her mother about being afraid that she would be arrested. While she was in Texas, she learned from a client Ellsworth Stuart that Timothy Schuster’s body was found. 10:23 a.m. She thinks she called him. She was returning a call. She said he had left a voice message for her.
On July 12, when she said she learned from James Fagone that he had moved the body into the lab. She said he said he needed a truck and she had to get it for him. She said she went to his house in the morning. She said she didn’t know specifically what she was going to do about getting the truck, or where he was going to have to move the body. She said she was concerned about getting the truck. She said she didn’t decide about a location. She said it was important that he got the body out of the lab. 10:25 a.m. She ultimately told him to take it to the storage unit because there was an odor. She said she couldn’t have it in the lab because she believed she was being followed. “I could not have that body in the lab.” 10:25 a.m. She doesn’t remember exactly when she made the decision that the body needed to be moved. She said when she was at the lab trying to get checks written, she said that’s when she decided to use the storage unit. Nuttall asked why there. She said it was a temporary fix for her at the time. She said it wasn’t a wise decision, but she had to get it somewhere other than the lab. She said he assured her he would find another location. “To dispose of it?” “I suppose, yeah.” 10:27 a.m. During this time Larissa Schuster said Fagone had access to everything that she did. She could use her cars, the storage unit, the lab. He had a duplicate set of her keys. “I counted on him a lot yes,” “did you trust him?” “yes. I had no reason not to.” 10:28 a.m. She said she didn’t know anything about the alleged conversations James Fagone had with other people regarding Timothy Schuster.
10:29 a.m. Nuttall said she made a lot of statements that she wished her husband was dead, “I feel horrible, numb about that. I know I said a lot of things that I didn’t mean. People do. They say things they don’t necessarily mean. I’ve prayed a lot about this. God knows my heart. He knows I sincerely regret ever making such statements.”
Regarding James Fagone, the break-in at the Woodlawn house, Nuttall asked if there were any items she thought had been taken from her home that she couldn’t find at Timothy Schuster’s house. She said there were items her father had given her, that belonged to her grandmother. She didn’t know where they were. She said that fueled her anger. Larissa Schuster testified Monday that James Fagone wanted to move out of his parents’ house. She said she gave him an advance for a home in the Tower District, “that’s how I made it clear to him.” She said Fagone was paid pretty well, because she needed him to tell her. She said she didn’t have anyone else to rely on at that time. She recalled advancing him $2,000 in cash. She said she didn’t follow up with him on the money, but she assumed he was using the money to rent a house.
Nuttall then moved on to talk about her use of aerosol cans in the lab on the evening of July 12. She purchased cleaning items, she said because of the odor of Timothy Schuster’s body. She said she wasn’t worried about contaminating the lab, even those aerosols were not generally allowed in the lab. She said her concern was to make sure she got rid of the odor, so there wouldn’t be any suspicion that there was a body there. 10:34 a.m. She said looking back, those concerns were not realistic. When she learned what had happened, “I should have called the police.” 10:35 a.m. “I just don’t believe I was thinking logically about the whole situation. Emotionally, I was in a frame of mind, whatever I was doing didn’t make sense.” She said she felt if she called police she would have been detained or arrested. She said she believed it would have devastated her son Tyler. In terms of this trip Larissa Schuster was planning with her son, objection. Sustained. Nuttall finished his re-direct.
Prosecutor Dennis Peterson began cross examination at 10:37 a.m. He started with questions regarding the bottles of acid she received at the lab. Peterson displayed a picture of a label on one of the bottles of acid. She said she wasn’t in the lab on the 12th in re-direct, Peterson pointed out on that date, she had testified before that she was at the lab on that date to meet Leslie Dobbs. He said this would have been within 11 hours of finding out Timothy Schuster had been killed. “There were several bottles of this case that were logged in on the 11th, the day before…it doesn’t make sense…I believe I made an error.” 10:40 a.m.
Peterson then moved on to the $2,000 payment given to James Fagone. He asked her if there was any record of this cash payment. She said she doesn’t believe there was any record, other than the bank statement when the cash was withdrawn from the bank. Peterson asked if that money was given in June 2003. She said she can’t recall exactly when that money was “advanced.”
Peterson then asked about the conversation she had with Carlos Jiminez. She said she can’t recall when the conversation took place.
Then Peterson asked her if Fagone received the money before or after she went to the storage unit. She said once she gave Fagone a check for $100 to house sit. She said she gave him $20-$40 or extra to babysit for her. “For $2,000, how many hours of babysitting or house sitting?” She said she didn’t think how far out that money would stretch. She said she wanted it to go toward any house sitting or babysitting. Peterson asked her if it was for continued cooperation, “I didn’t make any kind of statement like that.” 10:44 a.m. She said she never had any intention of buying the house for him and renting it to him. She said she only advanced him a first month and security deposit. She said she had no intention of sustaining him for a long period of time. Fagone had lost his part-time job at a pet store prior to this. When she gave him the money, he had no employment other than the small tasks he did for her. She said he talked about being a motorcycle instructor. He worked at Cycle Gear at some point. She said she didn’t really think about his employment. He apparently quit that job in early 2003. She said she thought that was a part-time job at that point. She said she didn’t think he totally quit it. Peterson asked if she expected repayment for the $2,000. She said she didn’t expect anything back from him, other than babysitting and house sitting. Peterson asked how many hours he babysat for her. She said she didn’t know. She said they spent a lot of time together.
10:54 Peterson asked about the custody of Tyler. If she was going to go out of town for a week, he asked her if Tyler would stay with Timothy Schuster and not James Fagone. She said it all depended on various things. The questions surrounded the advance Larissa Schuster says she paid Fagone. Peterson tried to demonstrate that Fagone would have to work for her for a long time to get to the $2,000 payment amount.
Peterson finished cross –examination at 11:28 a.m. Nuttall began asking his final questions. She said sometimes she got jealous that Tyler wanted to spend so much time with James Fagone. She said Fagone was very respectful. Around the time of her daughter’s high school graduation, Larissa Schuster said she saw a doctor in Missouri because she was having pain in her wrist. She said she and Tyler had been skating at a skating rink, and she had fallen on her left wrist. During 2003, if Tyler were visiting over night or over a period of time with his father, and she was out of town, sometimes James Fagone would still stay at her house to watch her pets and house. She said she relied heavily on him to do so. Nuttall finished his questions at 11:30 a.m. Her testimony was concluded.
ROY MILLER, COMPUTER EXPERT
The next witness to take the stand was Roy Miller. He’s a software developer for the Internet and basic computer operations. He also does computer forensics. He described his background that qualifies him as an expert.