Legal Briefs

Unexpected Discovery and Disclosure in the Stidham Murder

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DR. BRADLEY A. SCHWARTZ, SNAKE CHARMER

Dr. Bradley Schwartz has lost his hold on the ladies. Soon after his arrest on charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the Oct. 5 slaying of Dr. David Brian Stidham, Schwartz received fan mail from a former patient at his ophthalmology practice and from his onetime girlfriend.

Linda Bescript, the former patient, and Kristin Leigh Pedersen, the former lover, don't have much nice to say about Schwartz now. Both say they've cut him off. Bescript says Schwartz is evil and that he tried to enlist her support in a clumsy attempt to pin the murder on someone else. Pedersen says her gushy letters were designed to boost Schwartz's spirits.

Letters they wrote were included in those swept up by police who searched Schwartz's cell after they learned of the alleged attempted frame-up. At the bottom, Bescript responds to Schwartz, forced to leave his python behind when he got busted on Oct. 15. But first, Lourdes Lopez, the Tucson lawyer who was going to marry Schwartz but now is a key witness against him, notes the snake in her interview with a detective three days after Stidham, once a Schwartz employee, was killed.

Lopez: I don't want you to get the wrong impression. I mean, I, I have, I've tried to, to stay as much away from him as possible, but we are like intertwined in some weird, I mean, the furniture you see in here.

Det. Jill Murphy: Mm hm.

Lopez: He gave it to me, but it's, it's his.

Murphy: Right.

Lopez: Do you know what I mean?

Murphy: Yeah.

Lopez: He helped us set up our office, you know. I help him with his Quickbooks. I take care of the kids. He has Daniel, my son, come over to his house so that he can see him feed the python that he had, you know, and ...

Murphy: Mm hm.

Lopez: ... it's like I tried to completely break it off, and I couldn't do it.

Murphy: Um.

Lopez: Because it's, you know, there's just something wrong with me on that level.

Bescript, on Feb. 15 wrote: I hope your dog is in a good home ... rescue dog. That's how I ended up with King and Max. I like snakes. Long ago I knew someone who had a boa constrictor. We would let it crawl on us, which wasn't the brightest idea since it was 12 feet of muscle and liked to constrict! I wouldn't mind having a snake except Max would probably turn it into a toy.