They had a charmed life and one of the most spectacular waterfront mansions on Florida‘s Gulf Coast.
Dr. Steven Schwartz, a prominent kidney doctor, 71, lived in the sprawling 8,000-square-foot home with his wife, Rebecca. She was 21 years younger.
The physician had a thriving practice and was highly respected by his patients and staff, often helping those who were struggling financially to access the medical care they needed.
He also owned dozens of rental properties and was worth a substantial amount of money. However, his seemingly perfect life took a sinister turn.
On May 28, 2014, Dr. Schwartz was found dead at the bottom of the staircase of his sprawling million-dollar home, with his throat slashed and two gunshots to his head.
At first, it appeared to be a robbery until police quickly determined that it was a homicide and that the victim knew his killer, or killers.
Dr. Schwartz had an elaborate security system in place. Detectives discovered that the connected DVR was missing. There was no video of the night of the murder, but more clues began to surface.
The video recording equipment was hidden away in a closet above the garage. When Dateline reporter Blayne Alexander asked Detective John Diebel with the Criminal Investigations Division of the Clearwater Police Department ‘What does that tell you?’
The detective told her with confidence, ‘It’s an inside job.’
The NBC Dateline episode ‘The Death of Dr. Schwartz’ airs on Friday at 9 pm. The segment also features interviews with Dr. Schwartz’s son, Carter Schwartz, Sgt. Scott Brokew, suspect Leo Stragaj, and others.
Dr. Steven Schwartz, a prominent kidney doctor, 71, lived in the sprawling 8,000-square-foot home with his wife Rebecca
The couple met in the late 1990s; she was divorced with two sons. They began dating and married in 2011, and each had children from previous marriages. Rebecca managed his medical practice while he attended to his patients.
The mystery of Dr. Schwartz’s death began on the day his wife, Rebecca, called the police and reported that her home had been robbed and all the cash, jewelry, and watches in their bedroom were missing.
She told police that she left the house at 8:30 am that day and that her husband was reading the newspaper when she left.
When officers arrived, they found the body of Dr. Schwartz on the floor near the garage, and a knife had been missing from the butcher block in the kitchen.
Anton Leo Stragaj worked for the doctor and his wife as a handyman. Rebecca would purchase homes that needed repair, and Stragaj would do the renovations.
When Dr. Schwartz learned how much of his money his wife was spending on purchases for her children, he threatened her with divorce, and that was when the blackmail began, according to a wrongful death suit filed in 2016 by his children who were hoping to recoup some of the money she inherited, the Miami Herald reported.
Rebecca was never formally charged in her husband’s death, but was ordered to pay his children $200M as part of a civil suit. She was found in civil court to have ‘unlawfully and intentionally killed, or participated in procuring the death’ of her husband, according to Fox 13 News.
According to the lawsuit, Rebecca had previously been convicted of embezzling from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the news outlet reported.
During a deposition, Rebecca’s daughter-in-law gave damning testimony about what she said was her mother-in-law’s greed and how she feared for her child’s safety.
About a year after Dr. Schwartz’s death, police arrested Stragaj. Detectives found his DNA on the doctor’s shirt, and his cell phone records didn’t match up with his alibi.
Stragaj later told investigators that Rebecca ‘set him up’ and that she had confessed to him that she was the one who killed her husband.
The handyman, an Albanian citizen, said he considered calling the police but feared that if he did, it would endanger his work visa.
Schwartz’s surviving children are satisfied with the civil suit’s outcome but still want to see their stepmother charged and convicted of their father’s murder
Anton Leo Stagaji spent eight years behind bars after he was convicted of being an accessory to the murder after the fact, and was deported to Albania after his release
Defense attorney Wil Florin said Rebecca often carried a ‘Saturday Night Special’ in her purse, a colloquial term in the United States for a small, cheap pistol.
In his closing argument, he said that Rebecca was the one who pulled the trigger and that Stragaj ‘cleaned up’ the crime scene. That theory would explain how Schwartz’s DNA ended up on his shirt.
‘She shot him twice in the back of the head as he was leaving for work,’ Florin told the Tampa Bay Times. ‘He fell down the stairs. He was paralyzed from the neck down and knocked unconscious from the shots. He hadn’t yet died, but he appeared dead.’
A jury in a wrongful death civil lawsuit deemed Rebecca, now 64, responsible for Dr. Schwartz’s May 2014 murder, but she was never charged in her husband’s death.
She has denied killing her husband and police were once convinced that Anton Leo Stragaj, who often did repairs on the couple’s Tarpon Springs home, was the killer.
Stragaj later pleaded guilty to one count of accessory after the fact and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
He was released in September 2022 and was deported to Albania.
In the absence of a conviction, Schwartz’s three children sued Rebecca in 2016, aiming to expose her allegedly erratic behavior before the murder and to reclaim access to their father’s vast fortune.
Wil Florin, the children’s lawyer, said in court that Rebecca spent much of her husband’s $30 million following his death and moved the rest into offshore bank accounts.
Florin said the verdict will allow Schwartz’s kids to get at least some of their rightful inheritance.
‘I don’t expect that there’s $200 million out there to get,’ he said. ‘But I think there’s tens of millions out there. I really do.’
Florin explained that the ‘last straw’ for Schwartz came just days before he was killed, when he found out that his wife bought a Verizon Wireless store for one of her two sons to operate.
‘They’re getting divorced, it’s only natural that (after) a three-and-a-half-year marriage, he’s not going to leave her as the beneficiary of his will. But if he dies, she’s the beneficiary of his will,’ Florin said.
‘It’s one of those situations, the classic, he’s worth more to her dead than he is alive. She was about to lose it all.’
Father and son: Dr Steven Schwartz and his son Carter went to medical school and became a kidney doctor like his father
Carter Schwartz, followed in his father’s footsteps, and is a doctor in Louisiana
The $200 million verdict for Schwartz’s surviving children would not have been possible if Rebecca’s fourth husband hadn’t reached out to the family, Florin said.
In November 2023, this man revealed to Florin the web of LLCs and offshore accounts he and Rebecca had used to hide Schwartz’s money.
That was when the judge froze all her assets and put them into a constructive trust.
Florin said the doctor’s eldest son, Carter Schwartz, admired his dad and wanted to take over his practice one day.
Carter followed in his father’s footsteps and is now a practicing kidney doctor in Louisiana.
‘Dad was always a role model to me … and what I’ve always told everyone, “If I could be half the physician he was, that would be a successful life,”‘ he told CBS News in 2017.
Schwartz’s surviving children are satisfied with the civil lawsuit’s outcome but still want to see their stepmother charged and convicted of their father’s murder.
While she has not been charged, the Pinellas state attorney said the investigation remains open, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Watch the full episode of Dateline on NBC at 9pm on Friday
