![]() "Steve was your classic gentle giant … a guy who had the heart of a bear," Dr. "Patients, colleagues - a great career," Van Sant noted.ĭoctor Schwartz had a thriving practice as a kidney specialist in Tampa, Florida. "I would say that's a very accurate statement," Carter replied. "He was beloved in many ways, was he not?" Van Sant asked. "Everyone seems to universally hold such a high respect for him," said Carter. "Dad was always a role model to me … and what I've always told everyone, 'If I could be half the physician he was, that would be a successful life," Carter Schwartz told "48 Hours" correspondent Peter Van Sant.Ĭarter went to medical school, following in his father's footsteps. To say Steven Schwartz's life was extraordinary, as his son, Carter, does, is an understatement. Schwartz did have a long and fruitful second act, until the final strange curtain came down.Produced by Alec Sirken, Ryan Smith and Michelle Feuer He will be long remembered for his good deeds, not the bad one. There is no excusing the crime Schwartz committed as a young man, and perhaps no one alive can explain the desperation in his own mind that drove a young man from a good family to do it, but there is also no question that Steven Schwartz redeemed his past the rest of his life. His son Carter, now in medical school following in his father's footsteps, says today, "I just hope that I can carry on my father's legacy and that I can do some good for the world just like he did." He was just a wonderful guy who would do anything for anyone," says his longtime medical colleague Dr. "He was dedicated to medicine like no physician I've ever known. By the account of his patients and colleagues, he was a highly skilled, admirable physician, who lived the 50 years after his terrible crime to serve others. ![]() After his prison term, Schwartz went onto college and then medical school in Torino, Italy, before returning to the U.S. He was married twice, the second time, to a woman he describes as "my beautiful wife Kathy who has taught me to be a much better man,"and he has two daughters, two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.īoth Dyer and Schwartz eventually received pardons from the governor of New Mexico. He went on to college, getting a bachelor's degree in sociology at Texas Tech University, and later a Master's degree in criminology from Youngstown State. "And I constantly felt like I had to make up for the wrong that I had done because I know that it hurt a great many people,"Dyer says today. That time in prison gave him time to think and assess his young life. Schwartz spent nine years in prison for his crime, and Dyer was charged as an accessory and did one year's time. Dyer says he was somewhat aimless at the time, and Schwartz was clearly in a bad place in his life. In the long run, what happened that terrible day in 1961 may have set both men on a path to a more righteous life. "That changed my whole life, right there in that point in time," he says.īut it was not necessarily a change for the worse. And what he described to me- he said, 'I shot the man between the eyes.'"ĭyer knew things had gotten out of control by that point. And I look at him, and his eyes are just bloodshot. "So I run and get in the car," Dyer says, "and when I look inside- get a look at his face. "I didn't think he was really going to go through with it," he says. In fact, Dyer's close friend had a car, and Schwartz talked him into borrowing it, though Dyer says he was reluctant. What Schwartz needed to commit the robbery was transportation to and from Dr. In the small town of Hobbs, a lot of people knew his habit, including Steven Schwartz. And he'd go to the bank at the end of the week." ![]() Cook would take the money and put it in his pocket. "In those days you just paid the dentist in cash," said his former patient James Cecil, still a thriving auctioneer in Hobbs. Victor Cook, who was known to carry large sums of cash on him. The solution was to commit a robbery of a local dentist, Dr. The dark side became very evident when Schwartz told Dyer that he had hit on a solution to his money problems-to get money that would allow him to pay off the gambling debts and to move from New Mexico. He just had this kind of dark side to him that- that was there at that moment."
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