Fear Creeps Into Haven

Set among rising mountains, sycamore trees and narrow, winding roads, a tragic mystery has violated the tranquillity of this rural haven.

A month after the bloodied, almost naked body of 73-year-old Jean Schwartz was dumped along a nearby road, neighbors who moved here to find peace from the trials of big-city living now face grief, anger and a lingering fear over the unsolved killing.

“This crime has just made the community up in arms,” said Marylin Felling, a nurse and a neighbor of Schwartz’s. “Jean knew so many people in so many realms that we can’t all know each other. She was loved by this community--the woman had no enemies.”

Homicide investigators have few clues. And in the absence of facts, there is much speculation.

One man points his finger at local workers. Another accuses a quick-tempered neighbor, someone with a reputation for hard drinking. Citing two bodies found along Topanga Canyon Boulevard in May, others even fear that Schwartz’s death may be on the leading edge of a serial killer’s rampage.

“I’ve heard so many stories that I don’t believe any of them anymore,” said Leigh Bloom, owner of Topanga Mail & Message Co.

Police say Schwartz was killed at her home sometime between the night of Sept. 24 and the next morning. She lived near the top of Monte Vista Drive--a private, quarter-mile, one-lane cul-de-sac off Old Topanga Canyon Road. The secluded location of her five-acre estate has led police to believe the attacker may have been an acquaintance of Schwartz, a chilling prospect to longtime neighbors.

The morning after the slaying, Schwartz’s housekeeper discovered blood spattered throughout the bedroom. Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives quickly connected Schwartz’s disappearance to a body found on a turnout off Mulholland Highway, about three miles east of Las Virgenes Road.

Police told neighbors that repeated blows to the head left Schwartz’s face almost unrecognizable. Coroner’s officials say she was strangled. Investigators are awaiting laboratory test results to determine if Schwartz was sexually assaulted.

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Sgt. Barry Wish, one of the investigating deputies, said there was no sign that anyone had broken into the house. And so far, there is no motive for the slaying. Nothing was stolen.

“Everybody’s a suspect at this point,” Wish said.

Schwartz was the third person found slain in Topanga this year--a small number compared to Los Angeles, but a shocking number in this cloistered community. Also, in March, hikers found a human skull in a dry riverbed deep in Topanga State Park. Los Angeles County coroner’s officials say they have not yet analyzed the remains.

Two months later, the bodies of Jose Manuel Vizcarro, 41, and Carlos Alberto Ibarra, 21, were found along Topanga Canyon Boulevard. Both had been bound and shot. Authorities suspect the deaths were related to drugs or drug dealing.

Investigators say those deaths are unrelated to the killing of Schwartz. The two men, who were not local residents, were probably killed elsewhere and their bodies dumped in Topanga.

Lt. Frank Merriman, commander of the LAPD homicide unit, sees little cause for alarm. Between 1991 and 1996, there were only two suspected homicides in Topanga, both unsolved.

“Three homicides in a year is an anomaly,” he said. “Most of these are body dumps--we’re talking happenstance here. It’s remote, and you can go a lot of places up there where there’s nobody around.”

Such explanations offer little comfort to Schwartz’s friends and neighbors, who met with Sheriff’s Department officers for a crime prevention meeting Thursday at the Topanga Community House.

Bob Fortier owns a house on Monte Vista Drive and a condominium in Boston, where he has stayed since Schwartz’s death.

“I got mixed feelings about coming back out there. I think I’m going to sell my place,” said Fortier. “There’s a killer in the neighborhood somewhere.”

Jean Schwartz and her husband moved from Brentwood to Topanga Canyon in 1971 to give Royal Rain, their Arabian racehorse, plenty of room to roam. They named their new home Rancho Vida Nueva, the New Life Ranch, and started a modest horse-breeding business.

Schwartz would hold a “Course on Miracles” at her home, weekly discussion and meditation sessions based on Christian and new-age beliefs.

She regularly volunteered for arson patrols and served soup to the homeless in front of the local post office, friends said. She was widowed last year by the death of her husband, Steven Schwartz, a prominent psychiatrist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

She was the mother of two daughters--both of whom declined to be interviewed for this story.

“I was the last person to see her alive,” said Madeleine McNeil, 54, a close friend who dined at Schwartz’s home the night of the slaying. “We had a wonderful evening--we talked about her daughters and how proud she was of her mother,” who is 101 and lives in the San Diego area. Schwartz had planned to visit her mother the day her body was discovered.

McNeil recalled sitting with Schwartz on her patio overlooking Topanga Canyon and Schwartz telling her that she was just beginning to recover from her husband’s death.

“She was more at peace that night than in a year and a half after her husband died,” said McNeil. “She’d found a deep peace with herself and everything was just starting to feel good again.

“I’m very angry about this--a lot of people are very angry,” McNeil said.

In this rural community, where residents give their phone numbers in four digits--most Topangans have a 455 prefix--it is easy to forget the sprawling metropolis to the south. But Schwartz’s death has been a painful reminder that crime is not limited to large cities.

“A 70-year-old woman at home should be safe,” said Patricia Moore, 51, a neighbor of Schwartz’s. “Topanga is such a rebellious group of people. We are anti-development, anti-modern, we’re always trying to stay traditional.

“When I put up a wrought-iron gate, my neighbors complained and told me I shouldn’t do it because it looked like I was trying to be exclusive. They said up here in Topanga everyone should be free to move around and go wherever they want.”

Moore said she worries that this killing may drive increasing numbers of residents to hire security firms.

“Topanga is kind of a fantasyland,” said Bloom, who sells espresso and organic-cotton jerseys along with other items at her shop. “We all say, ‘I don’t lock my doors,’ but we really do, and have for a long time.”

Schwartz, a resolute Topangan, really didn’t lock her doors, friends say.

Homer Slade, 74, a neighbor and the president of the Monte Vista Road Assn., said he often chided her for being so trusting.

“She was very open about everything,” he said. “We used to ask her, ‘Why don’t you lock your door or lock your gate?’ She said she didn’t want her doors locked because somebody might need her.”

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Ventura County

1. Two bodies found in mid-May

2. Body of Jean Schwartz found on Sept. 26