Man guilty of killing wife who vanished

EVERETT — Thirteen years after his wife disappeared without a trace, David Schubert was found guilty yesterday of second-degree murder, ending one of Snohomish County's most perplexing criminal cases.

The verdict came after seven emotional days of deliberations in which jurors grappled with whether Juliana Schubert, whose body has never been found, could possibly be alive. But they ultimately decided the doting mother would not have left her two children behind on June 30, 1989, the last day she was seen.

Schubert, 62, bowed his head after the verdict was pronounced, his mouth agape as his two lawyers rubbed his back and consoled him.

At least one juror wept. So did Juliana Schubert's mother, Karil Nelson, who trembled in the front row of the courtroom behind the prosecutors' table, where she had sat with friends throughout the weeklong trial. She also sat through Schubert's first murder trial last year, which ended with a hung jury.

"I'm crying tears for my daughter," Nelson said after the verdict was read. "It's hard to believe this has happened (but) ... I had faith in my God that miracles of miracles can happen."

The jury's decision makes Schubert one of only a few defendants in Washington history to be convicted of murder when a body has not been found.

His attorneys asked yesterday that he be allowed to remain out of custody until his Oct. 18 sentencing, pointing out that he hasn't missed a court appearance in 13 years. Schubert faces a standard sentencing range of about 10 years to almost 14 years.

Superior Court Judge Ronald Castleberry acknowledged this but ordered that Schubert be taken to jail, saying it would be the "prudent and quite frankly the safest" action considering the "very stressful situation and circumstances."

Nelson watched, still crying, as the former Arlington reserve police officer and insurance broker was handcuffed and led away. Several jurors embraced her as they filed out of the courtroom.

"It was hard on all of us," said one, a 34-year-old Snohomish plumber named Mike, who did not give his last name. "There was high tension in the jury room."

Schubert was charged with first-degree murder, which would require prosecutors to prove premeditation. Jurors said they were evenly split on this count.

At first, they said they were split 9-3 in favor of convicting him of second-degree murder, and for several days grappled with the question of whether Juliana might be alive somewhere.

Schubert had said his wife called him days after her disappearance to say she was in Colorado and needed to think things over. He said they had argued about divorce plans just before she vanished.

His lawyers, Rick Leo and Caroline Mann, argued that prosecutors hadn't proven that she was dead, let alone that Schubert killed her. They said detectives conducted their searches following her disappearance as if Juliana were dead — neglecting to call Colorado motels or check to see if she took a train or cab somewhere.

Jurors wondered why such steps weren't taken, according to juror Ernie Schurig, a 55-year-old Everett engineer. And they weren't "100 percent sure that she's dead," but were "99 or 95 percent," he said.

Ultimately, jurors said, they were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Juliana — by all accounts a devoted mother — wouldn't have simply walked away from her two sons, who were 6 and 8 when she vanished.

And Schurig said testimony from three different witnesses about Schubert's statements and actions before her disappearance — including one who testified that Schubert said he would kill Juliana if that's what it took to get "peace" in his life — convinced jurors that Schubert had killed her.

Schurig said the conflicting statements Schubert had made about her whereabouts after her disappearance were also compelling evidence.

"He bungled up the cover-up so much ... like a 5-year-old making up lies because he stole the cookies and can't remember what stories he told," Schurig said. "The only thing he didn't bungle was getting rid of the body."

But jurors still had to reckon with the question of whether Schubert meant to kill his wife. If they weren't convinced of intent, they couldn't convict him of second-degree murder. Manslaughter was not an option; the statute of limitations for that offense expired after three years.

On Monday — five days into their deliberations — jurors sent Castleberry a note with two questions concerning whether a murder conviction was possible if the act was not deliberate. The judge indicated that the jury must find that Schubert intended to cause the death of Juliana Schubert to find him guilty.

A little later, they sent another note indicating they could not reach a unanimous decision and asking the judge what they should do. Castleberry instructed jurors to discuss whether they were likely to reach a verdict within a "reasonable period of time." They reconvened to the jury room for about 20 minutes, and told the judge they thought they could.

At that point, jurors said, they were split 10-2 in favor of a second-degree murder conviction. By Tuesday, it was 11-1, jurors said. The jury announced early yesterday afternoon they had a "response" — making it unclear to the attorneys whether they indeed had reached a verdict.

Schurig said the last two holdouts, like the rest of the jury, were finally convinced that even if Schubert didn't set out to kill Juliana, he formed intent sometime during the act.

Mann said the defense was "disappointed" by the jury's decision and intended to appeal. Leo said the verdict showed "the system is broken."

"I think that every citizen in the state should be very worried that someone could be convicted of a crime on the evidence that was presented," he said.

In Schubert's first criminal trial last year, jurors were convinced Juliana was dead, but weren't unanimous about what had happened to her, splitting 9-3 against convicting Schubert of first-degree murder and 9-3 in favor of a second-degree murder conviction.

After that mistrial, prosecutors quickly decided to try Schubert a second time.

Schubert came under suspicion shortly after his wife disappeared from the couple's 17-acre rural Arlington estate in 1989, but it wasn't until 1994 that he was charged with second-degree murder. Prosecutors later requested the case be dismissed without prejudice after the lead detective became too ill to testify. Snohomish County sheriff's Detective Rick Blake died of leukemia a year later.

Blake's former partner, Detective Gregg Rinta, pursued the case for years, and Deputy Prosecutors Ed Stemler and Paul Stern credited the work of both men in keeping the case alive.

They also praised Nelson for her perseverance on behalf of her daughter. Five years ago, she successfully pursued a wrongful-death suit against Schubert on behalf of the couple's two sons. A civil jury ruled Schubert killed his wife and should pay his sons $1.7 million because of it, though the boys insisted he was innocent and testified on his behalf.

The burden of proof in civil trials is less than the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard in criminal cases, and the juries in his two murder trials weren't allowed to hear the verdict in the civil case.

But they were allowed to hear evidence from the trial, including Schubert's testimony about his argument with Juliana before her disappearance, and prosecutors said such evidence bolstered their case. They depicted Schubert as a cunning, greedy control-freak, who killed his wife because he didn't want to lose money in a divorce, as he had after a previous marriage.

Jurors said prosecutors did a good job tying the various pieces of evidence into a compelling whole.

The jury in the first trial also had extensive deliberations, lasting longer than trial testimony.

In the midst of their deliberations, Schubert's youngest son, 18-year-old Nick, was found dead in his California dorm room. There was no suicide note and no signs of foul play, and authorities could not determine how he died.

Janet Burkitt: 206-515-5689 or jburkitt@seattletimes.com.