‘Deadly Wives’ Reality TV Series – ‘Very Devoted Christian’ Woman Who Held Bible Studies Drowned Her Husband in a Pool of Hydrochloric Acid
As I’ve said many times on this blog, there are times I am glad I have never married. After watching this show a few times, I definitely feel that way.
Here is a link or two about the show:
(Link): Deadly Wives: Acid Lady
(Link): Deadly Wives: Crime and Investigation
(Link): Deadly Wives
(Link): Deadly Wives TV Show
I caught a couple of episodes the other day on LIFEtime channel or whatever it’s called of a reality series called “Deadly Wives.”
Usually, it seems abuse and crimes in marriages are male- on- female, but in this show…
It’s a show about women who murder their husbands, female- on- male violence.
The first episode I saw was about a woman who killed her husband by giving him horse tranq via drops in his mouth from a Visine bottle, then she buried him in a vineyard.
The second episode I saw disturbed me far more than the first.
It was about a woman named Larissa, a chemist, who was married to Tim. She knocked Tim out with chloroform, and when he was only partially knocked out (he may have still been alive), she had a male accomplice named James stuff Tim into a large, blue barrel, where upon she dumped about four gallons of Hydrochloric acid on him.
I’m not a scientist, and I’m not familiar with how all these chemicals work, but I can only assume it’s painful to be stuck upside down in a barrel while four some odd gallons of acid are dumped on you.
Far as I was able to determine from the TV show, Larissa had no good reason to kill Tim, and certainly not in such a cruel way.
The show said there was no known abuse – Tim was not emotionally or physically abusing Larissa. As one site put it:
Successful business woman Larissa Schuster was tired of her dependent, Mr. Mom husband, Tim, and resented his partial ownership of her company. Though she ranted about him openly, no one suspected just how far she would go to take back what was hers. (source)
The show also interviewed a few cops who investigated the murder, and they talked to one or two of Tim’s friends who all said he was a decent, nice guy. And they could not figure out why Larissa seemed to so suddenly turn on Tim – she became vicious and abusive to him before finally killing him.
The only motive I can gather for why she killed him is that she held contempt for him and resented him. I think she was the high-achiever in the marriage, and she resented being married to a man that she felt was a wussy.
You can read more about this disturbing case here:
(I have many more comments below these excerpts; as it turns out, some pages say that Larissa was a member of her church’s choir; please continue reading):
(Link): Murderpedia: Larissa Schuster
Excerpt from that page:
After 21 years, the Schusters’ marriage was on the rocks as well. Larissa complained of Tim’s impotence and would later admit to having had an affair in 1993.
Family friends Bob and Mary Solis say the Schusters drifted farther apart as Larissa’s laboratory business continued to grow and she spent more time on the road for work. Friends and neighbors recalled Larissa as the assertive half in the relationship and that Tim was content to be the meek, accommodating husband.
–end excerpt–
That link above said “his unconscious body” (was put into the barrel) – from the TV show I saw, that may be inaccurate. The show indicated that Tim may have been partially awake or aware while the psycho-bitch of a wife, Larissa, poured acid on him.
From that page:
At roughly 2 a.m. Friday morning, Larissa and Fagone pulled up outside Tim’s home. Larissa called Tim from her cell phone.
Fagone would testify that he crept up to the house while she told her estranged husband that Tyler [Tim and Larissa’s son] was sick and she needed Tim to come to his front door immediately.
Tim did so, and was met there by Larissa and James. James jolted Tim with the stun gun while Larissa chloroformed him and then tied a plastic bag over his head. They bound Tim’s arms and legs with zip-ties.
They drove Tim’s body to Larissa’s home for the next step in her plot: disposing of the body. With Fagone’s help, Larissa stuffed Tim into a blue 55-gallon plastic drum and poured in jug after jug of hydrochloric acid.
In one account to police, Fagone said that Tim might still have been alive at the time he was doused.
Either way, Tim Schuster was by the end of the night dead in the barrel and his body was likely soon to be entirely eaten away in his acid-filled, blue plastic coffin, leaving no identifiable trace of his remains.
…[The cops later found the barrel in a storage unit]
Donning protective jumpsuits and headgear, police pried open the top of the barrel and were repulsed by the smell of death, and by what they had found: the half-dissolved remains of a human being. Tim Schuster’s arms, head and torso had been entirely dissolved in the acid only his trunk and legs remained.
[Farther down the page, it says…]
Inside the storage unit was a blue 55-gallon barrel that contained human remains.
They were subsequently identified, through DNA testing, as those of Timothy.
Only the lower half of the body remained; it had been placed into the barrel head down and was floating in fluid that contained hydrochloric acid.
The body was in a state of early decomposition, with the time of death possibly being July 9 through 11.
Tissue samples tested positive for chloroform, an anesthetic type of substance that can cause rapid loss of consciousness and incapacitation.
The cause of death was the probable combined effects of acute chloroform exposure and hydrochloric acid immersion, although it was very possible that death resulted solely from the chloroform.
It could not be determined whether Timothy was alive when he was placed in the barrel.
–end excerpt–
Same page, from the defense’s side:
Nuttall also called psychiatrist Stephen Estner, who expounded upon his opinion that Larissa Schuster suffered from battered spouse syndrome caused by Tim’s passive-aggressive behavior and by a previous abusive relationship.
Estner recalled that in his jailhouse interviews with Larissa she spoke incessantly about how Tim had done her wrong: she expressed unhappiness about their relationship “as if he was still alive.”
To Estner, this indicated lingering signs of battered spouse syndrome. Estner explained that Larissa Schuster’s mental health had worsened in the later years of the marriage, leading her to take anti-depressants. Estner described Tim and Larissa’s personalities as diametrically opposite, leading to terrible strain: “My impression was that Mrs. Schuster was a very direct and assertive person, and Mr. Schuster was a more passive and nurturing personality. And I think they started butting heads over that.”
–end excerpt–
The jury gave Larissa a stint in jail, rather than the death penalty. I find that very unfortunate. If anyone deserved the death penalty, it was this psycho-bitch.
Anyway. I see stories like this and think, maybe getting married is a dangerous and bad idea.
Another excerpt from that (Link): same page that I just saw:
Schuster told her manicurist that she prayed every night that Timothy would die. She asked Fichera if Fichera’s boyfriend knew anyone who could rough up somebody.
Schuster told a fellow member of her church choir that she would do everything in her power to keep Timothy from getting the business.
She asked the barbecue repairman if he would go to Timothy’s house, stun him to the ground with a stun gun when he answered the door, and then flag her down, where she would be waiting a couple of houses away.
–end excerpt–
And from a Dateline page:
But Larissa’s defense attorney, Roger Nuttall, said his client had been misjudged.
Roger Nutall: She– she’s– she’s a very devoted Christian woman. She– she headed up the Bible studies within the jail during the time that she was awaiting trial.
–end excerpts–
Whoa, whoa, whoa. This bitch went to church on a regular basis? And she was a member of the church choir???? She led Bible studies while in jail??? The mind boggles.
See, this “Equally Yoked” stuff Christians teach people is absolute buttsh*t.
Good lord above, this psycho-bitch Larissa probably felt she was a Christian, or any single man that ran into there at church, may have gotten the idea that she is a Christian just from mere fact she was a church choir member.
I know I was told often by both my parents that the best place for me as a Christian single to meet another Christian with the goal of marriage in mind was to try attending church.
I would rather marry a non-murdering, non-believing Jew, a non-murdering atheist, or a non-murdering Buddhist, than a church-going “Christian” who is going to knock me out a bit, stuff me in a barrel, and douse me in acid.
Did this psycho-bitch, in all the time she went to church, never hear a single sermon at that church about showing love to one’s enemies, forgiving people, and that it’s wrong to murder people?
How can you sing songs about the love of Jesus every Sunday, and then turn around, whack your husband out, stick him head first into a barrel and drown him in acid?
And let such news stories be a reminder that the common Christian belief or propaganda that marriage is necessary to make a person godly, loving, responsible and mature is a bunch of bullsh*t.
Obviously, being married did not do didley squat to make Larissa into a loving person towards her spouse.
By the way, if you are that unhappy with your spouse, as she was with him, you just divorce the guy and move on with life – you do NOT quasi-knock the guy out, stuff him alive into a barrel, and pour acid over him, my god.
Also, it’s not true you have to achieve some level of perfection or maturity before you can get married, or before God will send you a spouse, as some Christians teach.
I may have some flaws and have made mistakes in my life, but shoving apparently live people head first into a barrel and pouring acid over them to kill them ain’t one of them. But this bitch got a husband (who she took for granted), and I’m still single? Really?
So all those Christians can get out of here with their, “Well if you’re still single at Age X it’s because God is trying to work your imperfections out” dating advice (I’ve seen them write and say these things in their books or articles for singles when I was younger), or the “you need to BE the right person, not LOOK for the right person” garbage.
Other links:
(Link): Larissa Schuster, Wikipedia
(Link): Bad Chemistry, Dateline
Excerpts (comments by people who knew the couple):
Bob and Mary Solis: It was obvious that– she [Larissa] didn’t– she didn’t mind embarrassing him [Tim] in front of his friends. She didn’t mind that at all.
In fact, she took relish in that at times.
And then the friends that we hung with– also noticed it. And they made the same comment. You know, “Is there something going on with– with Tim and Larissa?” “We don’t know. Tim never said anything.”
What was going on? Increasingly, Larissa told her friends she was fed up with Tim, that he was not a real man. She’d even had an affair and she hated his passive/aggressive response.
She even let it get around that he wouldn’t have sex with her.
She wanted out. Tim seemed despairing.
–end excerpts–
More commentary from that page, including interviews by detectives with Larissa’s male accomplice James:
James Fagone: I helped her prop up the barrel and then she put him in and, uh, she poured some solution in there.
Detective: What kind of solution?
James Fagone: It was really caustic–it was–it was fuming and uh and–and you know honestly she was like you know–I was messed up…she was like –it was too, uh– it was too, uh, burning my lungs.
Then, said Fagone, he helped Larissa transport the body first to her house and then, the next day, to her chemical lab, where he watched her pour even more acid over Tim’s remains. Oh, and something else. Something he could not stop thinking about:
Vince Weibert: The fact that he was potentially alive when the acid was poured on him.
Jim Koch: That’s not something that you forget right away.
By the time they heard and checked out Fagone’s story, detectives had also found evidence of Larissa’s true feelings for her ex-husband. Tim, it turned out, had saved phone messages from Larissa: messages filled with loathing.
“I hope to God you burn in hell one of these days, because you will,” “I’ll tell you what, this is going to come back to haunt you,” “You talk about me alienating your kids, you’re doing a damn good job yourself. And you just wait, it’s coming, sweetheart.”
….So, what was left, without Fagone? Well, of course there were those nasty messages Larissa left on Tim’s telephone message machine.
“You pathetic bastard a—— I tell you what, I am so glad I’m getting divorced from you because I can’t stand your f—— guts!”
Sgt. Koch: Tim had saved all the audio tapes that she had left messages for him that were rude, vulgar, and disgusting.
“You a——, I hate your f—— guts so bad I can’t even stand you, I hope you burn in hell.”
….Sgt. Koch: She said things to him that just actually shocked the jurors. You could see it in their faces. They were absolutely amazed that a lady would talk to a person like that.
And one of Larissa’s former employees testified that Larissa seemed to have some evil intent toward her ex-husband.
Witness: Once, I was auditing in the lab and there was a news on the TV that a woman ran over her husband and then Larissa she said that she’ll do the same thing if she can get away with it.
…But Larissa’s defense attorney, Roger Nuttall, said his client had been misjudged.
Roger Nutall: She– she’s– she’s a very devoted Christian woman. She– she headed up the Bible studies within the jail during the time that she was awaiting trial.
—end excerpts—
Obviously this bitch didn’t pay attention to the church hymns or sermons she heard during all the months or years of time she spent in her church’s choir.
(Link): Woman Convicted in Husband’s Acid Murder Death
(Link): Ex-lab aide gets life in acid killing
This may not be here nor there, but if you run a Google image search on Larissa’s name, photos of her turn up, including this (Link): wedding photo of her.
This is not an attractive person. She was not attractive in her youth, nor in her 50s (view photo of here here, in her 50s). (Of course, she is unattractive on the inside as well.)
I just puzzle at how someone so physically unattractive managed to snag a husband.
And that anyone at any point wanted to have an affair with her, given how unattractive she is (the TV show or some article said she had an affair or two on her husband.)
So, there you have it. Another news story that makes it look as though staying single is safer and to be preferred to being married. Yikes.
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