Divorce just would not get job done
Rich wife put hubby in barrel full of acid with help from pal
On the night of July 9, 2003, Timothy Schuster left a friend’s house after a visit and vanished. Among the first people police wanted to talk to was his wife, biochemist Larissa Schuster, 43, of Clovis, Calif.
Nothing odd there. Spouses are usually on the top of the list when a person goes missing or dies violently. In Larissa’s case, though, there were many reasons to think she might have something to do with his disappearance.
A bitter divorce and battle over custody of their son, Tyler, 12, were just part of it. Larissa founded and built a multimillion-dollar chemical research laboratory. In a divorce, her husband, who could never keep up with her professionally, would get half her money.
Also, in the months leading up to his vanishing, Larissa made no secret of her feelings for her estranged husband. She screamed profanity-laced threats on the phone and spoke freely to the people around her about her hopes for his future. One later quoted her as saying:
“I would be better off if I was widowed instead of divorced.”
“Every night I go to bed, I pray that he would die.”
“I wish he was just dead.”
On July 10, Timothy, 45, failed to show up to discuss his termination at the hospital that had recently let him go. Friends worried that his troubles might have proved overwhelming and that he might have harmed himself. They reported him missing.
Police called Larissa in to talk. She admitted that their relationship was on the rocks but insisted she had no idea where he was. There were inconsistencies in her statement, but no reason to hold her.
After the interview, she and her son immediately took off for a previously planned vacation to visit Walt Disney World in Florida and then to her family in Missouri. Police, meanwhile, continued the hunt for her missing ex.
At his home, detectives found his pickup truck in the garage, as well as his wallet, keys, and cell phone, with angry messages from Larissa.
“You are such a wimp. You have no spine. I hope to God you burn in hell one of these days, and you will,” she screamed in one message.
And in another, “This is going to come back to haunt you. You just wait. It’s coming, sweetheart.”
Cops learned that she had rented a storage unit a few blocks away from her business. Inside, in a blue 55-gallon drum filled with hydrochloric acid, they found what was left of Timothy. In life, Timothy was a large man, 6 feet tall and about 220 pounds. The drum contained about 100 pounds of bones and flesh.
All that remained of the upper body was a couple of forearm bones, no teeth or skull. The coroner’s medical team had to wear hazmat suits to conduct an autopsy.
It took DNA to identify the partially dissolved corpse as Timothy Schuster. Tissue analysis also found chloroform, a chemical known for its knock-out power.
Police zeroed in on one of Larissa’s employees: James Fagone, 21, who worked as a lab assistant and sometime babysitter for her. In an interview a few days after Timothy vanished, the one-time church-going honor student said that Larissa asked him to help her burglarize Timothy’s apartment.
Larissa Schuster didn’t just want a divorce from her husband, Timothy (inset right), he had to be disposed of. So in 2003 she got James Fagone (inset left) to help knock him out and put him in a barrel of acid. lured her husband out of the house by saying that their son was sick. Then Fagone knocked him down with a stun gun, and Larissa held chloroform-soaked rags over his face. Together, they bound his feet with zip ties and later stuffed him headfirst into the barrel.
Fagone insisted that until Larissa started to pour the acid, he had no idea that murder was on her mind. He also said that the victim may have been alive when he was stuffed in the barrel. “I heard something like breathing,” he said, adding that the body was “real floppy.”
Fagone said that he agreed to help because she offered him $2,000.
Detectives arrested Larissa as she got off a plane in St. Louis with her son.
Fagone and Schuster were tried separately for Timothy’s murder. Jurors watched Fagone’s videotaped interview at his trial, which started in November 2006. On the stand, Fagone told the jury that Schuster terrified him. “She said she had friendds who were criminals,” he said. “I was scared to death of her.”
The verdict was guilty, and the sentence was life without the possibility of parole.
The trial of the “Acid Queen” started in October 2007. Fagone’s videotape could not legally be introduced in Schuster’s trial, and he did not have to testify. Prosecutor Dennis Peterson told the jury they would be faced with a “puzzle of circumstantial evidence.” This included her abusive phone calls and, because of her profession, her easy access to the chemicals used in the murder. Her story was that Fagone accidentally killed her husband during a robbery. Schuster insisted she knew nothing about it until it was over and she certainly had not planned it.
The jury found her guilty, and she, too, was sent to jail for life without the possibility of parole. Over the years, her story has provided fodder for documentaries and books with titles like “Snapped,” “Deadly Wives,” and “California’s Deadliest Women.”
In 2017, she was also mentioned in a “Chemistry World” video in which a scientist tried to determine if hydrochloric acid is the most efficient way to dissolve a body.