The Priestess of High Chaos

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Before his brutal murder, Robert Schwartz
was highly successful and well known in the

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scientific community. After his wife passed
away, he was left a single father

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to three children, Jesse, Katherine, Michelle, and the youngest Clara Jane.

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It was the eighth of December two
thousand and one when a car full

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of people arrived outside the farmhouse in
Virginia where Robert lived. The driver was

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twenty one year old Michael full and
his two passengers were his girlfriend, nineteen

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year old Katherine Inglis, and Kyle
Hulbert, an eighteen year old friend of

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Clara Jaynes. Clara herself was not
in the car. She had chosen to

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remain in her dorm at college,
while Michael, Katherine, and Kyle made

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the journey without her. Kyle had
met twenty year old Clara at a Renaissance

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festival earlier that same year, and
the two had quickly bonded over their mutual

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love of role playing games, the
goth culture, fantasy, and the occult.

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They were both fascinated with magic,
but by many accounts, Kyle had

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taken this a step too far.
He was diagnosed with both by polar disorder

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and schizophrenia, which blurred the lines
of reality for him and sometimes made him

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believe that he was much more powerful
than he was in fact. Before meeting

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Clara, he had been a psychiatric
patient a total of seven times for his

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paranoid delusions and suicidal tendencies. And
Kyle's head he was a warrior, and

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his role was to protect Clara Jane, who he'd quickly become very close to.

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He described Clara as his closest,
most dear friend and a sister as

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well. Clara, who studied computer
science at James Madison University, was known

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on campus as someone who both dressed
and acted in an alternative way. She

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was into the goth fashion and referred
to herself as the nickname Priestess of High

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Chaos. This was thought to be
a reference to the works of fantasy writer

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H. P. Lovecraft, in
particular the Cthulhu mythos, where chaos magicians

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are magic wielding individuals who don't follow
a particular moral code or set of rules.

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For chaos magicians, their only belief
is that nothing is true and everything

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is permitted. This meant that in
her own eyes and Kyle's eyes, there

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were no boundaries to Clara's power When
Kyle approached the door of the farmhouse on

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the cold, rainy night of December
eighth. Robert Schwartz recognized the teenager as

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a friend of his daughters and invited
him inside. Shortly afterwards, Kyle revealed

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the two foot long sword that he'd
brought with him. Quote, I know

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about your plans, he said,
you won't get away with it. He

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then stabbed and slashed at Robert more
than forty times, fatally injuring him.

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Leaving Robert's mutilated body where it fell. Kyle walked back to the car,

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where Katherine cleaned the blood off the
sword and wrapped the weapon in its howl.

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It took two days for the crime
to be discovered. Police were aware

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that an unknown person had made a
call to a tow truck company in the

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same window of time that Robert had
been killed, and the caller's car had

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been part close to the farmhouse.
As well as this, phone records showed

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that Clara had called Kyle shortly before
her father was killed. Although Clara had

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lied to the police, telling them
that she had not made or received any

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phone calls that night, there was
one other thing that Clara couldn't or wouldn't

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explain to the police. It was
a note in her dorm room addressed to

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the pseudonyms that she, Kyle,
Michael, and Katherine used in their role

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playing games, asking for true honor
to be bestowed upon their souls by high

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Chaos. Investigators believed that the note
was a thank you to her friends for

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carrying out the murder. The car's
driver was quickly identified as Michael full and

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police ordered Michael, Katherine, and
Kyle to come in for questioning. During

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Katherine's interrogation with law enforcement, she
made several statements that implied that Robert's own

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daughter, Clara Jane, had been
involved in the planning of his murder.

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According to Katherine, Clara had discussed
killing Robert on multiple occasions, reportedly because

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Clara believed that her father had tried
to poison her as well as domestically abusing

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her. Above all else, Clara's
motive for wanting her father dead was incredibly

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shallow. The two of them just
didn't get along that well. He didn't

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like the alternative goth clothing that she
wore, and he didn't approve of the

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fact that she spent so much time
alone in her room role playing and shutting

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herself away from the real world.
On the second of February two thousand and

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two, Clara Jane Schwartz was officially
indicted for her father, Robert's murder,

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and also faced charges for both solicitation
of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

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Katherine, Michael, and Kyle were
also indicted for their involvement in the killing.

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Kyle's family members were devastated, believing
that their mentally ill son had been

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taken advantage of and manipulated. They
described the hallucinations that Kyle suffered from,

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as well as his suicidal ideation and
desire to be accepted by others. His

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mother said quote, if Kyle sees
someone who needs something, if he can,

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he gives it to them. Out
of the four accomplices, Clara was

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the only one to go to trial. The prosecution described Clara as the ringleader

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of the group, a young woman
who was not afraid to manipulate others to

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get what she wanted, and in
this case, what she wanted was her

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father's death. She had previously tried
to have Robert killed by instructing one of

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her other friends to murder him,
but this plan had failed. According to

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prosecutors, Clara hated her father so
much that when the initial plan didn't come

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to fruition, she immediately began to
concoct a second plan to have him killed,

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and that's how Kyle Holbert became involved. Both of Clara's siblings made statements

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about how their father's murder had effected
their lives. Her brother, twenty five

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year old Jesse, told the jury
that he couldn't escape from daily thoughts of

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his father being brutally killed on his
sister's orders. Clara's older sister, Michele,

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shared that she now had a fear
of knives and suffered from nightmares where

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she's forced to watch her father die. Michele said, quote, It's been

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nothing but a nightmare since the day
I found out. It's hard enough that

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it was my father, but on
top of that, to have my sister

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committing such a horrible crime. Both
the prosecution and defense leaned heavily on Clara's

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obsession with a role playing game called
Underworld. According to prosecutors, Underworld had

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played a large role in Clara convinced
Kyle to carry out their murder, but

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the defense disagreed, saying that Clara's
instructions for her father's murder had been given

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in the context of role playing,
Kyle had been the one to take the

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game too far by attacking and killing
Robert in real life. The prosecution's rebuttal

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against this claim relied on a specific
witness, Patrick, the friend of Clara's

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who she had previously asked to murder
her father. Patrick took to the stand

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and shared with the jury that Clara
was obsessed with the idea of murdering her

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father, talked often about the large
sum of money she would inherit from his

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will, and on multiple occasions she
had researched natural toxins and chemicals that she

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could use to cause his death without
suspicion. Patrick had taken part in Underworld

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role playing with Clara, where he
had played the role of an assassin.

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Clara's character had asked Patrick's character to
assassinate her father. It didn't take long

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for the jury to come to their
conclusion. On the fifteenth of October two

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thousand and two, Clara Jane Schwartz
was found guilty a first degree murder and

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was sentenced to a forty eight year
prison sentence. Since then, she's tried

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to appeal her conviction or shorten her
sentence on many different occasions, but for

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now her release date is set at
November second, two thousand and forty three.

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As the accomplice who actually carried out
the murder and with an actual sword,

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no less, Kyle Holbert received a
life sentence without parole. Kyle's lawyer

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gave a statement to the public shortly
after his sentence was revealed where he said

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Clara was the puppet master and Kyle
Holbert was the puppet a people pleased her

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until the end. Kyle had elected
to plead guilty to the charges against him

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so that Clara's family would not have
to go through the trauma of sitting through

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a second trial. Michael full was
sentenced to eighteen years in prison, and

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Katherine Inglis received the shortest sentence of
the group, only one year of jail

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time for conspiracy to commit murder.
Clara Jayne's grandfather and Robert's father summed up

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Clara's actions perfectly in just one sentence. She had free choice, he said,

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and her choices were always the bad
ones. That's ten minute murder for

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