Disabled Dog’s Remains Led to Murder Suspect

When the skeletal remains of a woman were found buried in a septic tank on the outskirts of this desert community last August, authorities had only two macabre clues to help identify them.

Bundled in a blanket with the victim were the bones of a small dog and an odd-looking little cart.

According to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Det. Joseph Martinez, it was the body of the handicapped dachshund that helped him and other investigators learn that the body left in the septic tank was that of Barbara Weston, a 51-year-old Oklahoma native who supported herself as a truck driver. It also helped them find her alleged killer.

Many of Weston’s neighbors--if residents of the sparsely populated area can be called that--had told detectives they were unaware of a woman living on the property where the body was found. But almost everyone remembered her dog.

“The doggy wheelchair was the key,” Martinez said. Neighbors “didn’t really remember Weston until we showed them the wheelchair. One person had her own name for him. She called him ‘Wheels.’ ”

Less than two weeks after the body was found, sheriff’s deputies arrested Weston’s boyfriend, 42-year-old Steven Swaim. He was taken into custody about 15 miles from where he allegedly buried Weston and her dog, Willie, in August 1993. Authorities say they have been unable to pinpoint the exact date of death.

Swaim has been charged with murder, and his trial is scheduled to begin March 20. The suspect, who has pleaded not guilty, has been incarcerated since his arrest and is being held without bail.

During questioning by sheriff’s deputies, Martinez said, Swaim admitted killing Weston.

Swaim’s lawyer, Patricia Charleton, would not comment on the case, except to say that she will argue in court that the killing was in self-defense.

Swaim told authorities that he killed Weston after she shoved him during an argument, Martinez said.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Mills disputed the claim of self-defense. “We don’t believe that was the case,” Mills said.

Martinez said Swaim broke a knife sharpener over Weston’s head and then delivered four more blows with a pipe wrench as she lay helpless on the floor.

Swaim then allegedly turned the pipe wrench on Weston’s dog, whose rear legs were paralyzed.

The killings took place, Martinez said, in a trailer that Swaim and Weston shared on property that belonged to Swaim’s mother.

Swaim allegedly buried Weston and the dog in a septic tank he had dug himself on the property in the 9800 block of Avenue S-14. No one else knew about the septic tank’s existence, Martinez said.

Afterward, Swaim moved to his father’s house in Lake Los Angeles and told Weston’s friends that she had moved back to Oklahoma, Martinez said.

By all accounts, Weston led a nomadic life, never staying in one place too long. She traveled often between California and Oklahoma, where her children and grandchildren live.

In fact, Weston had planned to leave California. She sent her diary to her children and told friends she had found work in Oklahoma just before her death, detectives said.

Many of the regulars at the Cactus Inn, the bar where Swaim and Weston met 10 years ago, said her abrupt behavior wasn’t unusual. “She was a free bird,” one man said. “When she wanted to leave, she just left. A lot of people are like that here.”

Inside the bar’s main room hangs a noose and pictures of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. A sign warns customers, “You shout, you fight, you leave.”

Several people, who asked to remain anonymous, recalled nights when Swaim danced on the bar feigning a striptease, and Weston’s singing. “She sure had a sweet voice,” one man said.

The pair also had volatile tempers, according to their bar companions and Martinez, who said Swaim and Weston were once arrested together on theft allegations but never convicted. Swaim told authorities that during one of their fights, Weston shot him in the finger with a handgun. He then rammed her home with his truck and burned it down, Martinez said.

But Weston was always tenderhearted toward Willie the dog. When he lost the use of his hind legs several years ago, she refused to put him to sleep, friends recalled, and instead bought the little sling attached to wheels that enabled him to pull himself around.

Swaim’s father, Doyle, remembered the extravagance.

“I always told her she put too much money into putting that dog on wheels.”