Sleep In Heavenly Peace (Pinnacle True Crime) by M. William Phelps Page A

Kauneonga Lake was simply a new place to live. Getting out of the city and moving to the country, as they settled into the ebb and flow of what was a somewhat normal way of life, seemed to fit them well. The dead baby in the blue suitcase was a memory now. With the pace of life slower up north, it seemed easier for Dianne to forget about what had happened in her life and move on.
    According to Dianne, she started dating when she hit her late teens, early twenties. As a woman, she felt she had a lot to offer. She said she still saw herself as a virgin, even though she had bedded down with more men than she could count and had given birth to her father’s child. The sexual acts she had been forced into weren’t about love, commitment, or sex; they were about power and money.
    At twenty, Dianne wasn’t looking for a man, she insisted, but wasn’t about to shy away from love if it happened. Life had become a routine of work and home as the years progressed after the baby she called Matthew had died. Soon she found a job as a clerk in Monticello, a nearby town, at a retail-clothing outlet. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, she said, but it passed the time, kept her away from her mom, and, simultaneously, earned her a little cash.
    Jonathan Schwartz , a broad-shouldered man with a square jawline and Cary Grant–type allure, had caught Dianne’s eye from the moment she saw him at work. Jonathan spent his days in the warehouse. He and Dianne would run into each other every so often. Throughout 1973 and partly into 1974, they developed a close friendship that grew, she said, into love.
    The relationship, however, was flawed from the get-go. Jonathan grew up in a Jewish family and had never dated a Gentile. Dianne was Latino and white. She looked more white than Latino, and race or religion meant little to her. She liked Jonathan and they got along well. He treated her with respect and turned out to be the first male figure in her life to show her any type of admiration and respect, which she believed she deserved.
    “I really, really did love him,” Dianne recalled.
    On January 8, 1974, Dianne and Jonathan, in what was a small ceremony, got married. After a brief honeymoon, they moved into an apartment near the lake, just below where Dianne had been living with Mabel for the past few years. Inside the first year of their marriage, though, things didn’t go as Dianne or Jonathan might have planned. In great physical shape most of his life, Jonathan developed severe health problems not long after he and Dianne married.
    “He got very, very sick and ended up having complete renal shutdown,” Dianne said, “and had to go on dialysis.”
    What made it hard for Dianne to care for Jonathan, she said, was Mabel, who was stuck on the notion of Dianne marrying into wealth and insisted she do whatever Jonathan wanted. Despite Mabel’s hatred for Jews, she would tell Dianne, “You take care of him, Dianne, and do what he says.” Mabel believed Jonathan had money, and if Dianne catered to his every need, some of it would trickle down into Mabel’s hands.
    Jonathan was soon placed on a list. As soon as a replacement kidney was available, he would get it. Until then, Dianne believed it was her job as his wife to care for him.
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    Thomas and Weddle had always viewed the babies in boxes as a homicide case. Homicide and murder cases are entirely different from both a legal and investigative perspective. By definition, murder is not an act of contrition; it is an act of “willful killing.” One person sets out to kill another and completes the act, generally, in a violent manner. Most of the time, there is premeditation involved and the person committing the crime is considered to be of sane mind. Homicide, on the other hand, is the killing of one person by another in “which intention is not considered.” A drunk driver doesn’t necessarily set out to kill another human being when he gets into a vehicle drunk and begins driving