275. The Acid Lady - The Murder of Tim Schuster
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Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. Does a walla sponsor you? No. You got that set up perfectly for the camera. No, they don't. I feel like I should turn it because... Yeah, turn it. Could be anything. Could be my own cup. Take that. Take that, everybody. Hi, everyone. Hope everyone is doing great. Having a fantastic Monday. Welcome back to another episode.

If you're watching on YouTube, I just got back from golfing, so that's why I'm dressed like this. And if you're listening on audio, then get ready for another case. Reminder, we have bonus episodes, ad-free content over on Apple subscriptions or Spotify or Patreon. You can check it out there. We actually just dropped a bonus episode. Did we just drop the bonus episode? Yeah, I mean, I don't have too much for my 10 seconds. I've just been golfing quite a bit.

Pickleball golf, summer, working. We've been hanging out. We're trying to make plans for 4th of July, seeing what we're doing. Huh, anything else? Nothing too crazy? No, Garrett got our... Our daisies bloomed. They did. Our daisies finally bloomed. We have daisies planted in our yard. You would never guess why. And they all bloomed. I've been waiting. Yeah. Because Garrett fixed the sprinklers. Sprinklers are fixed. We're good to go.

grass is getting green yeah i didn't do great today at golf you said you did good i did good but i mean like i got i shot an 86 which isn't amazing but i'll take it solid day of golf um and i actually did count every single ball did cheat counted everything played it how it's supposed to be played it was a fun day nice you good you ready to go you ready to hear the story yeah i'm ready

Okay, our sources for this episode are NBCnews.com, MuddyRiverNews.com, CEN.ACS.org, ABC30.com, FresnoBee.com, Caselaw.FindLaw.com, Morbidology.com, Findagrave.com, Medium.com, and Murderpedia. The power dynamics in a relationship can definitely be tricky, especially in a marriage and especially in one that you've been in for a long time. A

A lot of the traditional marital roles are no longer being practiced. Things like the mother staying at home to raise a family while the husband goes off to work. These days, women are just as successful. They make just as much money, even sometimes more money than their partners. It just kind of depends on the relationship.

But sometimes that sort of power imbalance can lead to things like resentment in long-term relationships. Feeling like one is doing more than the other, has more worth than the other, is entitled to more than the other. And when years go by and that resentment festers, it can start to get ugly. Resentment is powerful enough that it can put an end to what seems like even the strongest marriages.

And today's case shows resentment can actually grow so out of control that it can become a motive for murder. So for today's story, we are headed to central California to a town just out of Fresno called Clovis. This is where in 2003, 45 year old Tim Schuster has been calling home for some time. I feel like we could just cover another case from here recently.

From Clovis? Yeah, I don't know why. I don't think so. It sounds familiar for some reason. All I know is Tim Schuster is like Will Schuster on Glee, the teacher. Have you never seen Glee? Not ringing bells in my head. Oh, you've never watched Glee? I mean... What were you doing back then? What were you watching? Sports. Boring. I wasn't really a Glee person. Anyone who's watched Glee...

All I got to say is Will Schuster and you know. You know. Okay, so 45-year-old Tim Schuster has been calling this place home for some time. Tim had moved to California back in 1988 from Columbia, Missouri. Before that, he had been working in a few hospitals as an emergency medical technician. But he

California would be a new chapter for Tim. He completed his degree in nursing at Chapman University and worked his way up over time to the role of manager at the cardiac catheterization laboratory at St. Agnes Hospital. All to say, Tim was smart, compassionate, and driven. But even before achieving a lot of that, Tim actually met a woman that he thought he would grow old with.

In 1982, he met Larissa Foreman. Now, Larissa also came from Missouri, growing up on a small farm in the town of Clarence.

And like Tim, she was also very intelligent and driven, going on to study biochemistry at the University of Missouri. She was working as an aide at a hospital in Columbia when she met Tim Schuster. And the two honestly fell for each other fast. They were married by the end of that same year. So now in 1985, the two welcomed their first child together, a girl named Kristen. And it was four...

four years after that, that they moved to the Fresno area. So they get married, they welcome their first child, and then they moved to California. Now, Tim took that manager job at the St. Agnes Medical Center at that point in California, but they were really there for Larissa, who had been offered a prestigious job working as a biochemist for an agricultural research lab.

A year after that, in 1990, they welcomed their second child, a boy named Tyler. And for the next few years, Larissa's job really took off at the lab in California. She was making great money. She was the clear breadwinner for the family. It was enough to buy them a beautiful home in the suburbs of Fresno in the more residential town of Clovis. So soon after that move where they're really close

establishing themselves they bought a better house larissa was ready for the next chapter she decided she wanted to open her own laboratory called the central california research laboratories nearby in fresno you know that reminded me of that not dexter yes dexter well not dexter but his name is dexter

right yeah how do you say it laboratory no but he says like laboratory well what is this it's the cartoon network show i don't think it's called dexter is it is that his name yeah yeah it's the name of the show wasn't the power powder puff powder puff girls what about them power puff are they power puff or powder puff i feel like i'm having mandela effect right now i don't know

Laboratory. Okay, anyway, sorry. They were in a lab too. But for Tim, that meant letting his own work take a backseat while he did more of the parenting because Larissa was working tirelessly to get the labs staffed and running. So Tim became the one to make sure the kids were getting off to school, eating dinner, getting to their sports or doctor's appointments on time. And the dynamic really did seem to work well between the two of them for a while.

And that might be because Tim had to sort of dim his light a bit with Larissa. People who knew him both professionally and personally said at work, Tim was a different person than he was at home. At work, he was a leader. He was someone who wasn't afraid to speak their mind and take charge.

And at home, he was a little bit more introverted, quiet, submissive. It was very clear to the outsiders, this is their words, not mine, that Larissa ran the show. And maybe that was due to the fact that Larissa was making more money than Tim at the time. She was actually making double his salary.

But over time, Larissa demanded more and more from Tim. Her standards and expectations for what he and the kids were supposed to do and how they were supposed to behave got higher and higher. And when their daughter Kristen became a teenager...

it kind of started to reach a breaking point in the dynamic in this family. So Kristen began defying a lot of her mother's rules. She started sneaking out of the house to meet up with boys, typical things teenagers would probably do. But when Larissa found out about it, the punishment she gave her felt severe, especially to Tim, her father.

So Larissa decided she was going to ship Kristen off to Missouri to stay with her parents for a while. And this is something that Tim thought was over the top. And when Tim stood up to Larissa about this parenting decision, it caused major tension between the couple. Tension that really started to boil over to the point of exploding over the next several months.

So eventually Larissa went to Tim and told him, you need to pack your things and move out of the house. And then she files for divorce. So that was in February of 2002. Okay. But Tim wasn't going to stand for Larissa any longer. He told her, I'm not leaving this house. He said, I'm going to continue to live there. And if you want to live separately, you can leave.

He also hired a lawyer to help him fight for custody of their now 12 year old son, Tyler, because he felt like he had been the primary parent in Tyler's life. And of course, Larissa wasn't going to budge either, which meant even through their separation and divorce, they lived under one roof because neither of them would give up the house. And Tim slept in one of the guest rooms. Now, meanwhile, the hatred and resentment as they are separated, uh,

But going through a divorce and living under the same roof only escalates from there. Interesting. That would be, I mean, that'd be hard, right? Living under the same roof, but you're. I think some people can make that work. Yeah, some people can, but like if you're really not wanting to be together anymore. If you're divorcing because you low-key hate each other and not because you're just ready to move on. Yeah. I don't know if that dynamic is going to work well. So at

At this point in their relationship, Larissa would tell her friends how much she hated Tim, that she was having an affair, that she felt Tim wasn't a real man, that he never wanted to have sex with her. And this is all during like the separation slash divorce. Jeez, man. And then Larissa wins everything.

in court. She got primary custody of their son, Tyler. - Wow, okay. - She got awarded the family house because she was taking care of the kid. And so Tim not only lost primary custody, but he was also forced to move out. - Wow. - But it wasn't until Tim was gone

that Larissa started to realize how much work Tim had actually been doing for her all these years. Because remember, Larissa is running a really large company on her own. She's gotten used to Tim taking care of everything around the home, including their children. So when she now finds herself... So then what the freak happened in court? I think they just tend to side.

With the mother usually. Unless they were lying and she was saying she was taking care of the kids. I mean, I don't even know the dynamic of that. Like what was their case. Yeah, what happened. Okay. Anyways. So when she now finds herself a single mom in charge of a 12 year old son on a day to day basis while also being a full time working mom, she realizes this is a lot of work.

And that's when she finds a solution. She recruits her 21-year-old lab assistant named James Fagone. She said, hey, James, I'm going to not only have you be my assistant at work, but you're also going to be my 12-year-old son, Tyler's babysitter, and now my personal assistant because I need help.

So meanwhile, Tim's having his own problems living on his own. Not only is life a bit lonely without his family around on a day-to-day basis, it's sort of taken away his purpose and it's also made him a bit vulnerable. Because in August of 2002, a month after he moved out of the home, he shared with Larissa...

Tim's new condo was robbed and a bunch of his things were stolen from the place. This is not going well for him. Right. This is the last thing he needs, but he still continues to try to get this new life in order. He refocuses on his career and is looking towards the future and a life without Larissa now in it. And I think this is something, you know, even when you hit your breaking point and you decide to get divorced and move on, even if you hate that person,

When you have lived so long a life like waking up every single day kids it's just the same routine every single day that's going to shake anyone no matter how bad you want out of it. Like eventually that adrenaline is going to wear off and your life is going to feel different and that that will be just transition right. So the next year or so goes by with the occasional jabs and digs from Larissa but for the most part Tim really does seem to be doing well moving forward and

Until July 9th, 2003. So this is a year after he moved out. Because that day, he hears he's actually being laid off from his job. Oh, gosh. At St. Agnes Hospital. Bro. He was...

He has this dinner with his friends that night. It's another coworker who got let go named Mary, her husband, and then a third friend. And at that dinner, Mary makes plans for her and Tim to get brunch the next morning to figure out their next steps. She's like, hey, I got let go. You got let go. We work in the same field. Let's meet and figure out if we can like navigate this together. And Tim agrees it's a good idea. So they pick a spot. The night ends. The next morning comes and Tim doesn't show up.

show up to meet Mary. What is going on? Now, Mary knows this. Also, divorce. Think of the kids. Robbed. Robbed. Loses his job. Yeah. Hit after hit.

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So now Mary, his friend and coworker knows this isn't like Tim to just ditch her and not say anything. So she calls a mutual friend of theirs who lives close to Tim's house and says, hey, can you just drive by, stop and check on him? Like he didn't show up and I just want to make sure he's okay.

And when this friend gets to Tim's condo, he does see Tim's truck is still in the garage. And so he decides to let himself into the house, which is seemingly unlocked. It's either that or he has a key because they don't clarify. But either way, he easily gets into the house.

And when he goes in, he finds Tim's cell phone sitting on his dresser, but there's no Tim. So this is alarming because his phone and his car is there, but he's not. So this friend goes back to Tim's car and decides to look through it. And there's Tim's wallet sitting in the glove box with all of his credit cards, his ID. And when Mary hears this, the coworker he was supposed to meet with, she and her husband decide to call the police.

They also tell the officer, and by the way, Tim bought a handgun after a break-in that he had last year at his new apartment because that's what they're thinking. Maybe with these layoffs and everything that was happening with his family over the last year, was Tim mentally in a bad place and contemplating suicide? Yeah.

Now, maybe because the police sort of agree with them, they don't actually bring Larissa in for questioning right away, despite the fact that she's the spouse. But I do believe if these roles were reversed, he would have probably been brought in right away. No, I think so, too.

Though people in Tim's life actually told the police that he didn't really see or hear from Larissa, really. Like, it's not like they were still involved in each other's lives very much. They really only communicated through their kids or their lawyers. But Tim's other friends say, on top of that, we really don't think he would have died by suicide. We just...

We don't think he was that broken up about the divorce. He was moving on, and sure, the job was certainly a pitfall, but they didn't feel like he had reached that point to make that drastic of a decision, especially since Tyler, his son, was still in his life. And slowly, the police start learning from the same people again,

that Larissa and Tim's divorce really wasn't pretty. They start to, the police start to get the full picture of this divorce, that there was bad blood there and that the couple never really cleared the air with one another. So after speaking to everyone, but Larissa police decide, okay, let's get her in here next for questioning. They still can't find him. No.

Now, when the Clovis police first speak to Larissa, she says the last time she heard from Tim was on July 8th. It was a short and sweet text saying he'd be by on July 10th to pick up Tyler at around 6 p.m.

But Larissa says when she heard about the layoffs on the afternoon of the 9th, she tried calling Tim to check on him. And when he didn't answer, she claims she actually went over to his house and knocked on his door that same night at around 1030 p.m. So he's done with his friends. He's going home planning to meet Mary. She says she comes over at 1030 p.m.

And when he didn't answer the door either, Larissa says she just gave up. Like she was like, hey, well, apparently he doesn't want to hear from me. I'm trying to be nice and like offer some condolence for the layoff, but he doesn't care. So she didn't try to call him. And then when Tim doesn't show up the next day to come retrieve Tyler, like he had texted her saying he would, she doesn't report him missing.

So she goes, can't find him the night before. The next day he doesn't show up to pick the kid up and she doesn't call police. So police quickly learn, okay, Larissa, this seems sus and we don't actually think you're telling the truth. And so they look into Larissa's records, her phone records, and they discover that she did call Tim after she left at 1030 when she says, I just went home and never tried again.

It was around 2 a.m. that morning that she placed a call to Tim. Okay. But Larissa has an answer for that. She's like, oh, well, I didn't, I swear I didn't talk to him. I must've just butt dialed him. I have him on speed dial. Like he's,

the father of my child. And when the cops are like, okay, prove it. Like show us your phone, show us that he's on speed dial. She gets really weird about it. Like she won't just pull it up and show them. I'm sure she won't. So instead of doing that, she changes her story and says, okay,

Wait, I mean, maybe it wasn't a butt dial. Maybe I did call him to make sure he was going to come get Tyler. Oh, instantly just guilty. Just guilty as charged. So here's what's even more interesting, though. That's so funny. When Larissa is asked by police whether she thinks Tim might have wandered off and died by suicide, she says no. She's like, no, I definitely don't think he would have done something like that.

So the phone calls are sketchy, but then police are like, why wouldn't she set up a perfectly like reasonable scenario if she did this for why Tim would be missing? So they don't have enough to hold her. They let her go. So what she does next is arguably even more suspicious than anything she's done so far.

So that day after she's questioned, this is July 12th. Larissa goes to see her friend and coworker, Tammy. She leaves police, goes to Tammy. And she says, hey, I just talked to the police and I think they think I did something to Tim. Tammy's like trying to calm her down. I doubt that's the case. If they did, they would probably get a search warrant for your home and business.

And that's when her friend Tammy sees Larissa's gears start turning. And Larissa immediately says, hey, can you actually keep an eye on Tyler for me for a few hours? I have to go to my office and take care of some stuff. Now, Tammy finds this strange because it's a Saturday, but it's her friend. So she does her the favor and watches her kid. But Larissa doesn't come back to pick Tyler up for hours. Okay. And then the next day,

Larissa spontaneously takes Tyler on a trip to Disney World in Florida with a stop after to see her family in Missouri. Now, remember, they live in California, so they travel all the way across the United States. I'm just trying to figure out, Larissa killed him. Why? Like, what was in it for her at that point? Like, she had the kid. She was making more money.

Like it can't be a money motive. She was just mad that they were divorced. Like, I'm really curious to see where this motive ends up because it obviously murder never makes sense, but this doesn't make sense. Yeah. I think when a motive doesn't have like a logic to it, it is hard to more hard to understand.

But I do think anger and rage and resentment is also a common motive that we just interesting. It seems like he should be the one that has more resentment than her in this situation. Right. So now it's two days later, it's Monday. Tammy goes to the office for work and keep in mind, Larissa is talked to by the cops and then the next, and then drops her kid off, disappears for hours. And then the next day travels all the way across the United States.

So Tammy goes to the office for work and she speaks to this woman named Leslie. And Leslie casually mentions to Tammy, like not on purpose. Oh, I was here on Saturday when Larissa came in and she told me to do something kind of strange. So now Tammy's like kind of digging and learning about what was happening when she was watching Tyler.

Tammy's like, okay, what? And Leslie goes, Larissa had me rent her a U-Haul, but use my name. Oh my gosh. Oh,

And even weirder though, Leslie says, but this actually isn't the first time something like this has happened. Larissa came to her a year ago or so to say she wanted Leslie to rent out a storage unit in her own name as well that she could use. Larissa would pay the bills, but she had a few personal items she wanted to hide from Tim. So he didn't try and take them. She's like, Hey, we're getting divorced. Like I need you to do this in your name. So he doesn't know about it.

Oh, and one other thing. Leslie told Tammy that when Larissa came back from using that U-Haul that she had her rent in her name, she had cuts and scrapes all over her body and she looked dirty. Like she looked like she had just...

not gone out to eat with the U-Haul. She had been doing something. So Lindsay didn't report this or say anything to anyone because Larissa owns the lab she works at. She's her boss. She's a very intimidating woman. She's going through a divorce and she uses that as an excuse for this kind of strange behavior. But now that she and Tammy are talking about it, they are becoming little true crime investigators. They are putting two and two together, comparing stories, talking about how weird this timeline is, talking about what they're doing

intimidating kind of scary boss was doing they're getting suspicious and in the meantime the police have found someone else of interest to speak to since larissa has just up and left the state and that's larissa's 21 year old personal assistant james fagon yep

Now, Larissa wasn't the one to tell the police about James. In fact, he wasn't even on their radar until they searched Tim's condo and found a notebook with James's name in it. And then when they searched the name and learn that he was kind of Larissa's errand boy and that he kind of did pretty much whatever she told him to, whether that was assisting her around the office, babysitting her son or even possibly breaking into her ex-husband's house.

So yeah, remember how I mentioned earlier that Tim had his condo broken into a month after he moved out of the house? That was actually James and Larissa who broke in. Wait, how did they not catch them?

I don't know. But that's why she actually had asked her colleague to rent out the storage unit so she could put some of the things she stole from his house in there. Apparently, there were a few items he got in the divorce that she just didn't want him to have. And it sounds like she really just wanted to mess with Tim's head, maybe scare him a little bit.

According to Tim's friends, he kind of always suspected who broke into his house. He knew it was Larissa and her new henchman, James, but he didn't press charges. He didn't want to add any more drama. He couldn't, he didn't really have any proof. He just wanted Larissa out of his life at that point. He wanted the torment to stop.

Apparently, Larissa wasn't shy about it either. She told several of her own friends that she and James had broken into Tim's condo, stole stuff and trashed the place. She even told her manicurist all about this after it happened. And she said she went back and broke into Tim's house a few more times after because the feeling was, quote, better than sex.

So she's telling her now, lady, I actually get a rush out of breaking into my separated, hopefully divorced husband's

What did they take? What did they do? She just likes the feeling. I mean, they took stuff that he got, but she just kind of kept going back and doing it. Okay. She's a little obsessive. Okay. I see. And then on top of that, Larissa had been openly telling friends how much she hated Tim and that she wanted Tim dead. How she had been leaving him threatening voicemails, calling him a spineless wimp who should burn in hell. Why? Okay. Why is she so mad? Like, why is she so upset?

Who is this person? Rage, anger. What a loser. So the police learn about all of this. Obviously, it starts to come out as they talk to more people. This is how they finally get James in the hot seat. They're like, hey, remember that guy's house you broke into last year with your boss? Well, he's actually missing now. And we think you and your boss, Larissa, probably did it. And that's all it takes for James to cave.

He says, all right, look, I was at Tim's house the night he disappeared. All right. Look, wow. He really, I mean, he's young. Yeah. He's like, okay, fine, fine, fine.

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So James says on the night of July 9th, Larissa told him she needed her help. First, James says he agreed because he was scared of his boss, Larissa. But then he says she was offering to pay him $2,000 extra for this job. So James is like, I do what I'm told. He goes out and purchases a stun gun on Larissa's orders. And then the two went to Tim's house together. Remember, they've done this before. This is after Tim got home from that final dinner with his coworker and friends.

James waited in the bushes while Larissa knocked on the door and demanded Tim come outside. When he answered, James popped out of the bushes and tased him with the stun gun and Tim collapsed to the floor. That's insane. That's insane. According to James, Larissa then got on top of Tim with a chloroform soaked rag just to make sure he remained unconscious.

James said he then helped Larissa drag Tim out of his own house and back to her place. A place that Tim had lived in for years with her and their children. Okay, I don't... James, the guy that's helping her? Yeah. He's just like, oh yeah, I'm just going along with it. I mean, he tells police he's very afraid of her, but yes, I don't think... Come on, man. So...

I'm sure that there's been some grooming and manipulation involved. I get that. I understand that, but... So he says that once they get to the house, they bound Tim's hands and feet with plastic zip ties. This is just like honestly making me... Like this story makes me nauseous because the fact that he's back to a house where he raised his kids and was the best dad he could be and they're just tying his hands and feet up with zip ties. Horrible. This is so sad. Yeah.

But the next day things got unimaginably worse. So they don't kill him that night. They bring Tim to Larissa's labs where they placed the now conscious, but bound Tim into a blue barrel that was filled with hydrochloric acid. And they just, I don't want to go like into detail, but kill them alive basically with chemicals. They're just mixing like, yeah.

So. Okay. This is insane. Yeah. It's gross. This is crazy. I don't know. I understand. Like I can fathom hating someone. But you were married to this person at one point. Like I understand that love goes away and love can even turn into hate. But to hate.

Kill a conscious person in that way, in a barrel. James must be insane too. Cause how do you just go along? That's not like that would make a, I feel like that would make. Grow up. I am using quote it like normal. What's normal, but a normal person throw up like that is not something you could watch. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's gross. And then according to James, no, it gets, according to James, it's,

Once he had been murdered, Larissa couldn't seal the barrel shut, like with all the chemicals in his body. So she used a handsaw to remove his feet so that she could get him further. Anyways, now as James is giving this confession to the police, Larissa's coworker, Leslie, calls the police. This is the one who rented the U-Haul and the storage unit for her. And she says, hey, um,

I've been talking to some of my coworkers and now I'm starting to think that my boss's behavior is strange considering that Tim Schuster is missing.

And she says, I think I have some information for you. She tells them all about the weird behavior she saw from Larissa in the days after Tim went missing. She tells them about the U-Haul and the storage unit that was purchased in her name. And with that information, police are thinking she probably moved that barrel from the lab to the storage unit. Oh, 100%. So the police get all the info about that unit and they like they are headed down there immediately.

Sure enough, open the storage unit and inside is the 55 gallon barrel that James had described in his confession, literally just barely. And when they open it up, they find the remains. I'm mind blown right now that she, that this is disgusting. I'm just mind blown. I don't understand. I don't understand how someone can do that. That's just bad. Like, and I know again, a lot of people are going to disagree with me, but

Okay, life in prison. I don't think no one... Oh. Life in prison, no. That's not cutting it these days. It's just not. It's not cutting it. It's obviously not cutting it anymore because people aren't scared to go to prison for life. Like, I truly think that people aren't scared to go to prison for life. So we gotta up this stuff. We gotta up it. I don't know how else to say it. Eye for an eye. I hear your thoughts. I kind of just think that...

And I know a lot of people are going to disagree because Peyton disagrees. However you kill someone, you should just be killed back. Eye for an eye. Very aggressive, but we can keep moving on past that. And I hope you guys know.

There's no like tension between us that we disagree on that. We're totally good with it. Yeah, I don't care. I mean, just the barrel that they found even is still has chemicals, but also remains half dissolved remains. So a day later on July 16th, 2003, police now have a warrant for Larissa's arrest. But remember, she has left town with her son. She's actually in Missouri now with her family and police track her down there and end up arresting her in the St. Louis airport that day.

She is transported back to California where she is charged with first degree murder. Meanwhile, she's not denying anything. And by the way, James, he's also charged with first degree murder. And when people hear that her assistant slash babysitter,

helped her commit murder it starts sparking rumors in the area that was there more to this relationship or the two romantically involved but when police look into it it seems like he just was kind of terrified of her but also kind of worshipped her because she was his boss and larissa maybe like i said used a tad bit of manipulation kind of turned him against tim in a way but also he had obviously full choice of what he was doing

So as prosecutors are building their case against Larissa and James, they do uncover a few more things that confirm James's confession. They find the stun gun he used, which he said he threw into a random porta potty. It was still in there when police went to locate it. And over at Larissa's lab, they confiscated files and computers, including Larissa's computer that a month earlier had searched for terms like

acid digestion tissues acid digestion animal tissues and sulfuric acid a month i'm gonna be meditated this is kind of sidetracked i'm not making fun of anything but if paint never died don't check my chat in gpd history you're gonna look sus not sus i just i'll i look up like anything and everything i'll just look up random shiz

And nothing, none of it has to do with murder. I'm just sure they'd be like, why are you looking this up? Well, I think random stuff. I'll be like, Oh, I wonder what this, I think the difference here is like, it's one thing to just be looking stuff up and then it's another for your spouse to go missing and be found in a barrel. And your, your little evil sidekick also helped you do it and said you did it. And then they find this. I just can't believe James went along with it. What a horrible person too. They also find six empty acid bottles that had been thrown away in the lab's trash. Yeah.

In James's house, they find an empty glass bottle, which James confirmed held the chloroform that they used to render Tim unconscious after he stun gunned him in the kidnapping. And they also found that Larissa had ordered the chemical resistant barrel back in April. So this is now three months before killing Tim. Yeah, I mean, it's first degree murder. She'd been planning it. So premeditated. So while Larissa might have been a brilliant chemist, she was kind of a pretty lousy criminal.

All signs, witnesses, and physical evidence point in her direction. However, James's trial comes first. And this was actually a strategic move because prosecutors were hoping that James would actually just take a plea deal and then they could use him to testify against Larissa. Only that didn't happen. James maintained his innocence. So in November of 2006, James maintained. Yes, he confessed and then was like, nevermind. I'm not pleading guilty.

So James had his own trial and his defense was that he was only an accessory to murder. So he said, I'm not pleading guilty to first degree and that Larissa was the mastermind behind it. They also argued that James was forced to help Larissa under duress and that she had threatened his life.

Problem was, like I said, James had already confessed to the crime and the details that he said were more than accessory to murder. And he had no problem accepting the $2,000 cash that Larissa gave him after they did this, which is why the jury found James guilty of first degree murder. He was later sentenced to life in prison without parole. I don't feel bad. I don't feel bad, James. Me either. It wasn't until almost a year later that Larissa's trial began in October of 2007.

And because of how much media attention the case was getting in the Fresno area, they actually moved the trial to Los Angeles. Now, the defense argues that it was James and only James who killed Tim, that he was obsessed with her. And after hearing how many problems she was having with Tim, he wanted to help her out. So she comes forward and is like, actually, James was just in love with me. So he killed my ex-husband. Please put this woman in prison for life.

The prosecution says there's absolutely no way. And in order for them to prove this, they show a bunch of really awful text messages that Larissa had sent Tim through their separation and divorce. And they are like so horrible. I'm not repeating them. Maybe one of the biggest pieces of evidence though was the proof that Larissa herself had purchased a huge supply of hydrochloric acid through her company. Oh, and the fact that

at trial it comes out Larissa had apparently tried to hire a hitman before she murdered Tim. Oh my gosh. And then as for motive what is stated at trial is that Larissa was the breadwinner and apparently Tim's life insurance policy was only 30k and was meant to be set aside for kids in a trust anyways so money was obviously not the primary motivator although she did benefit from his death. She just hated him.

Yeah, because now she wouldn't have to go through like... Not even that. She's just messed up. Yeah. She's a bad man. Honestly, Larissa's biggest motive, it seems, was just her resentment and hatred of Tim. Crazy. Perhaps the most explosive part of the trial, though, was when Larissa herself took the stand. The defense painted her, like, before she testified, as this God-fearing woman who went to church regularly, who was a great mother, cared for her family, and...

When she gets on the stand, Larissa herself acted level-headed and calm and cast most of the blame on James, as expected. She said it wasn't until she got home that night and James was at her house babysitting Tyler that he actually admitted to her that he had done all of this by himself and killed Tim. And it seems like Larissa's manipulative personality was actually kind of benefiting her. Like for, it's very rare.

But her testifying seemed to help her defense because as Larissa stepped down from the witness stand after five days of testifying, by the way, one of the jurors gave her a thumbs up. And then even more shocking, that judge didn't dismiss the person from the jury.

They were like, yeah, it's fine. Let them keep serving. How's that possible? I don't know, but it seems they won't, they won't put me on the jury because I've had true crime podcast, but people can be thumbs up and people. Well, that's honestly, it doesn't really seem to matter. Apparently the rest of them swayed that one person who gave her a thumbs up.

On December 12th, 2007, the jury came back and declared Larissa was guilty of first degree murder. In May of 2008, Larissa was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And at that sentencing hearing was a pretty surprising attendee, Larissa's daughter, Kristen, the one she had sent away to live with her parents in Missouri. And her dad had fought so hardly for her to stay so much that that was like the main crack in

Apparently this was the first time Kristen had seen her mother in person since her father's murder. And let's just say she did not show up to the sentencing hearing to defend her mother. Kristen told the judge that that day that life in prison was not enough punishment for her mother. She called her mother a disgrace and a pitiful excuse for a human. And she ended her speech by saying, I,

I pray that you are continually haunted at night by the sight and sound of my father fighting for his last breathing moments on this earth. Oh my gosh. Good for her. And that is the case of Tim Schuster. Good for her.

Poor girl that she has to live with that. And that's really hard, but good for her. I think this case might seem odd to people because I feel like when we see cases like this between a husband and wife, usually the roles are reversed.

I'm going to be honest. I feel like the last four, three cases we've done about a husband and wife, it's been the wife. Yeah. I've tried to like kind of implement that just because those crimes do happen. You guys are crazy. No, it's just that I don't want to not represent the fact that men are also victims of homicide, of domestic homicide. I mean, it can happen to anyone is the bottom line. Like it can happen to anybody. Yeah. And I think that

the motive honestly feels like it's coming at least from the same route for both male and female. It's like this anger and rage and resentment and just hatred. Like you, I cannot have you live. I can't stand it. All right, you guys, that is our case for this week and we will see you next time with another one. Don't forget to check out our bonus content. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye.