Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 31, 1992 TAG: 9201310297
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Long
HEARINGS BEGIN IN MOTHER'S DAY SLAYINGS
When police caught up with Kenneth Stewart outside a bar near Cleveland last May, he told them he wanted to return to Bedford County and stand trial for the killing of his wife and 5-month-old son.Stewart, who had been missing since his family was found shot to death three days earlier, apparently wanted to die, too.
"I just want to go on back to Virginia . . . and hopefully the judge will have mercy on me and give me the death penalty," Stewart told the Bedford County investigator who had traveled to Ohio to interrogate him.
Stewart may get his dark wish when he goes on trial Tuesday for the Mother's Day killings.
The 37-year-old Huddleston man is charged with capital murder, murder and two firearms violations and could be sentenced to death in the electric chair if he is convicted.
It was just before dark last May 12 when Ruth Schultz dropped by her daughter's Huddleston farmhouse on Virginia 739 for a visit.
Schultz, who lives in a lake subdivision a few miles away, had chatted with her daughter on the phone that afternoon.
When no one answered the door, Schultz went inside.
There she followed a bloody path from her grandson's playpen on the ground floor up the stairs.
In the bedroom, Schultz found the body of her grandson, 5-month-old Jonathan Edward Stewart, in the arms of his mother, Cynthia Schultz Stewart.
Both had been shot twice in the head with a .25-caliber pistol.
The baby was lying in his playpen when he was shot, according to prosecution documents.
The boy's body was then carried up the stairs and placed in the arms of his dead mother, the documents say.
Nowhere to be found that night was Cynthia Stewart's gold Ford Escort or her husband.
Authorities searched for Kenneth Stewart, an unemployed plumber, in his native North Carolina and in Pennsylvania, where he once had lived.
Three nights later, Stewart was found collapsed outside a bar in Parma, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland.
Local police charged him with being drunk in public, but they dropped that charge when they found out what else he was wanted for.
Stewart waived his right to fight extradition the next day and was brought back to Bedford County.
The Stewarts met at an Alcoholics' Anonymous meeting in Williamsport, Penn., according to relatives. They got married in 1986.
They followed her parents to Smith Mountain Lake a few years later and, on Dec. 10, 1990, Cynthia, a secretary, gave birth to Jonathan Edward.
A couple of months later, though, the Stewarts separated.
Cynthia Stewart told Kenneth Stewart that she was filing for a divorce and he moved in with friends in Moneta, according to Kenneth Stewart's mother, Jelene Rauch.
That was a few weeks before the killings.
Bedford County Commonwealth's Attorney James Updike would not comment about the case Thursday, but prosecution documents suggest he will raise the couple's separation as a possible motive.
A poem, addressed to "Cindy," signed by "Ken" and dated 10 days before the killings, has been filed in Bedford County Circuit Court:
"A new morning of a new
life without you . . . Much finer,
much mine-er. And until
then there is me. And because I treated you
well, I like me better.
Also, the sun rises.
Always
Love
Ken
P.S. God Love You and So do I"
Stewart's defense attorneys, Webster Hogeland and Steven Grant, also declined to comment.
Court documents have not made it clear what their defense will be - and a thick stack of defense motions filed in the case does not make it any clearer.
They have not notified the prosecution of an alibi for their client, nor of an intention to claim insanity as a defense.
Court rules would require them to have already done so if they planned to use either defense.
The defense has notified Updike that it intends to bring in testimony from an expert witness and has filed more than $4,000 in bills for tests and evaluations by a Charlottesville doctor.
Among other pretrial motions Thursday before Circuit Judge William Sweeney, defense attorneys asked that statements Stewart made to authorities in Ohio and later in the Bedford County Jail not be allowed as evidence before Stewart's jury next week.
Small portions of Stewart's statements were read from transcripts during Thursday's hearing, but the bulk of them were not.
In an earlier hearing, an investigator described his interrogation with Stewart the day he was arrested in Ohio.
Stewart said he recalled arriving at his wife's house in Huddleston on Mother's Day, holding the baby in his lap and being rejected when he urged his wife to take him back, according to Bedford County Sheriff's Sgt. C.R. Mayhew.
Stewart also remembered carrying a .25-caliber pistol in his boot, he told Mayhew.
After that, he said, he blacked out.
He said he did not come to his senses until he found himself cruising down a road in New York, Mayhew said.
Arguing Thursday that the statements should not be allowed as evidence, defense attorney Grant alleged that Stewart asked for - but was denied access to - a lawyer before one of the police interviews.
Stewart, a gaunt man with glasses and mousy brown hair, testified at the pretrial hearing about his conversation with Mayhew.
"He informed me of my rights and, you know, right after that I asked to talk to an attorney," Stewart said quietly.
Asked about the tape-recorded portions of his conversation with Mayhew on May 15, Stewart said, "Mr. Updike, to be honest with you, I had been under the influence of alcohol and drugs for the past three days and I really don't remember what I said to Mr. Mayhew."
Sweeney decided to allow Stewart's first statement into evidence and has yet to rule on statements Stewart made in the jail months later.
The defense also has filed motions asking that the trial be moved to another locality, that jurors be questioned individually and that television cameras be barred from the courtroom.
Bedford County is one of three circuit courtrooms in Virginia where television cameras are allowed to film proceedings under a General Assembly experiment begun in 1987.
Hogeland, who described the television coverage as "mental harassment" of Stewart, said he agreed with a report released this week by the Supreme Court of Virginia.
In it justices said that the "overall impact" of the television experiment had been negative.
Sweeney denied the defense motion to keep cameras out.
Stewart has yet to enter a plea.
He could plead as early as today, when another pretrial hearing is scheduled.