Man Pleads Not Guilty in Killing

The suspected killer of a 73-year-old Topanga Canyon woman whose body was dumped along a remote road last fall pleaded not guilty to murder charges Wednesday in Santa Monica Superior Court.

For months the death of Jean Schwartz, a longtime Topanga resident, baffled investigators and worried neighbors who wondered whether a killer was at large in the community. But authorities say the assailant was Antonio Rodriguez, 18, a caretaker who lived in a trailer on Schwartz’s five-acre hilltop estate.

Rodriguez was arrested Jan. 6 after forensic tests detected Schwartz’s blood in the bed of his pickup truck, sheriff’s deputies said. The testing process took so long after the September killing because the sheriff’s crime lab was being moved and blood samples taken from the bed of the pickup had to be sent to an outside lab in Maryland for analysis, deputies said.

Investigators alleged Rodriguez used the truck to haul Schwartz’s body from her home at the top of Monte Vista Drive off Old Topanga Canyon Road to a turnout along Mulholland Highway, about three miles east of Las Virgenes Road.

She had been badly beaten and her body was clad only in underwear, authorities said.

“The motive was sexual in nature,” said Sgt. Barry Wish, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “There is evidence that she was raped.”

If found guilty, Rodriguez could be sentenced to death.

Schwartz was pummeled with what Wish described as a “hard cylindrical object” in her bedroom shortly after midnight on Sept. 25.

“She was hit hard enough to cause bleeding,” Wish said. “It wasn’t enough to be a fatal blow, but it could have rendered her unconscious.”

She was then choked to death, coroner’s officials said.

Later that morning Schwartz’s housekeeper found blood spattered throughout the bedroom and called authorities. Schwartz’s body was found shortly thereafter.

For more than a year before the slaying, Rodriguez had cleaned Schwartz’s horse stalls, taken care of the grounds and lived in a trailer in front of Schwartz’s home. Schwartz had previously employed other members of Rodriguez’s family in a similar capacity and also housed them on her estate, Wish said.

“It’s been kind of like a family thing that she’s had over the years with this particular family,” Wish said, adding that Rodriguez, a Mexican citizen, had no known criminal history.

Schwartz’s death shocked residents of this community known for its granola culture, upscale homes and winding, hillside roads. Schwartz, an equestrian, moved to Topanga to raise racehorses and soon became a mainstay of the community, regularly volunteering for Topanga’s arson patrol and serving soup to the homeless in front of the local post office.

“It’s nice to know that somebody was arrested,” said Marylin Felling, a close friend of Schwartz. “I don’t think a lot of people were surprised.”

Another longtime friend of Schwartz, Peggy Savage, 65, described Rodriguez as a very quiet young man.

“It was hard to tell whether he was friendly or unfriendly,” she said. “He was always so shy.”

Sheriff’s deputies say “body dumps” have become relatively common in Topanga because of its remote location, but that most of those homicides occur elsewhere.

Only two of the people found slain in Topanga between 1991 and 1996 were actually killed there, deputies said.