[N]EWPORT — The husband of the Orleans woman who was fatally shot as she spoke to a 911 dispatcher, pleaded not guilty in Orleans Superior Court on Monday to a single charge of second-degree murder.
Randall Swartz, 58, was charged in the May 15 shooting death of his wife, Thea Swartz, 54, in their home in Orleans.
Swartz was arraigned on a fugitive warrant on May 23 by video at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center where he was being treated for a gunshot wound to the torso. He was discharged from the hospital on Friday, taken to the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, and then to Newport for Monday’s arraignment.
Monday was the first court appearance by Swartz on the second-degree murder charge in the shooting death of his wife of many years.
On the evening she was shot, according to a Vermont State Police affidavit included in the court record, a woman identifying herself as Thea Swartz made a 911 call from the Swartz home, at 42 Irasburg Street in Orleans. She told the dispatcher “My husband is pointing a pistol at me and he’s drinking.”
Her last words, other than giving her name to the dispatcher, were “What’s that.” According to the affidavit, there was “an audible gunshot” and a woman’s scream.
The phone line remained open, and about four minutes later there was a second gunshot, and a man’s scream.
Police arrived at the house shortly after, and found Randall Swartz lying on his side, on the living room floor, alive but unresponsive. Thea Swartz lay across the living room, face down. She was pronounced dead at the scene. A subsequent search of the house turned up a .38 pistol.
Swartz made no comment during the proceedings. His attorney, Richard Goldsborough, asked that he be released on $100,000 bail, citing his age and his responsibilities, his lack of any prior criminal record until now — “one act of physical violence against one person.”
Orleans County Deputy State’s Attorney Todd Shove asked that Swartz be held without bail, given the gravity of the offense, the potential prison sentence — if convicted Swartz could face life in prison — and the clear evidence in the case.
In the police affidavit, police said both the son of Thea Swartz and her father, Richard Collier, said they had heard Randall Swartz “threaten physical violence” against Thea Swartz in the past.
There is no court record of abuse, but, Shove said, “there is concern,” and suggested if Swartz were released on bail that conditions include he not contact family members.
Bail was denied by Superior Court Judge Robert Bent, who said “the way it’s alleged, something was really quite amiss. The court is far from certain that everybody would be safe,” if Swartz were released. Swartz is being held in Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport.
Swartz, a 19 year employee of the Cabot Creamery Cooperative, also has been under investigation by federal authorities for fraud and embezzlement in connection to a scheme to use Cabot funds to purchase parts for reverse-osmosis systems, to sell on the side. Swartz was fired by Cabot in 2017; the FBI conducted a search of the Swartz home later in the year, but no federal charges have been filed.
