CHAPTER 1
DISCOVERY
Hell is empty. And all the devils are here.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
For Patrolman Donald Schwerdt, September 19, 1972, should have been a normal Tuesday. It was his second day back to work after a relaxing vacation, and he was easily beginning to settle back into his routine. Sitting in his modest, two-story home on Brook Street, Schwerdt ate his breakfast and drank his coffee. He then put on his freshly ironed uniform and walked out the door. He was immediately greeted by the smell of honeysuckle and the rumble of approaching school buses. On many days like this one, Schwerdt could be seen making the three-minute walk to work, his seven adoring children following behind like ducks in a row. The five Schwerdt daughters and two Schwerdt sons would almost always meet their father halfway home at the end of his shift, asking how his day went. The forty-four-year-old patrol officer was a late addition to the police department, having spent most of his adult life in the United States Navy and, later, working for the U.S. Postal Service. Despite being one of the oldest officers of his rank, Donald Schwerdt loved being a cop. The pride that he took in his job could be seen in the certain swagger in his walk, his head always held high and his eight-point hat cocked slightly to the side.
Entering the three-story, brick-and-mortar municipal building, Donald Schwerdt made his way into police headquarters, which was housed in the center of the first floor. After reviewing a list of the community's stolen vehicles, Schwerdt was assigned to patrol the north side of the township. Firing up his patrol car, a late-model Plymouth Fury recently purchased from Morris Avenue Motors, Schwerdt prepared for what he thought would be just another day spent patrolling the streets of the sleepy mountain community of suburban Springfield, New Jersey. It would have never crossed his mind that events were about to unfold that would cast doubt on the police force, divide whole families and terrify the entire tri-state area.
As Schwerdt's patrol car cruised up and down the pristine streets of Springfield, a dog was weaving its way through the labyrinth of trees bordering the nearby Houdaille Quarry. In its mouth, the dog held a decaying human arm.
The canine made its way out of the woods, crossed Mountview and Shunpike Roads and came to rest on the lawn of the brand-new Baltusrol Gardens apartment complex on Wilson Road. The dog loosened its bite, and the arm fell to the ground in front of a row of bushes just outside the rear entrance to the two-story, red brick–clad complex. The glass-paneled front door opened. The dog's owner, a tenant of the building, motioned for her pet to come back inside, completely oblivious to the gruesome souvenir lying only feet away. That discovery would be left for the building's elderly superintendent. Only moments after the dog's return, the superintendent stepped outside and made her way down six concrete steps to the lawn. Her attention was immediately drawn to something strange resting at her feet.
A scream pierced the mountain air.
"The call came in around eleven o'clock," Schwerdt recalls. "Dispatch radioed me that this woman had found an arm on the lawn of the apartment complex where she lived." Schwerdt's first impression was that the woman was simply the unwitting victim of a practical joke.
"I honestly thought it was a prank," Schwerdt says. "I figured it was going to be a mannequin's arm because this lady was always being harassed by a few of the kids that lived in the apartment complex. They would do things like throw her trash all over the lawn. They were just awful to her. So when I got the call, I figured it was those kids again, and maybe they poured some ketchup on a mannequin arm or something."
There was a slight squeal of the tires and then the throaty moan of the Plymouth Fury's four-barrel carburetor as Schwerdt turned around and headed for Wilson Road. Passing the abandoned Springfield Swim Club, he made his way up the mountain on Shunpike Road. As Schwerdt approached the block of apartments, the tree line quickly began to envelope him, blocking out much of the sunlight. Had he been a superstitious man, Schwerdt might have taken this as an omen. He parked his patrol car in the small lot on Wilson Road and made his way toward the rear of the unfinished apartment complex, his polished shoes glistening in the early afternoon sun as they clicked against the asphalt. As he got closer to the gruesome item in question, Schwerdt quickly discovered that his original assumption was far from true. "When I got there, the arm was lying in the grass," he recalls. "I looked at it, and I said to myself, 'This is human.' I could see the fingernails and the color of the skin." Schwerdt immediately grabbed his camera and took several photographs of the forearm. "I could tell that the arm had been out in the elements for a while. The flesh was real leathery, and it was a sort of maroonish red in color."
Once Schwerdt finished taking photographs, he returned to his patrol car. Clutching his radio's handheld microphone, Schwerdt called out to dispatch. "You better send the detectives up," he said. "We got an arm here, and it's no joke."
Patrolmen Edward Kisch and Dominick Olivo heard this call over their radios and immediately raced to the apartments to provide backup. Fellow officers described Kisch as having good intentions and being very serious about his work. Today, fellow retirees remember the then-thirty-year-old officer for being able to mind his own business and do his job well. The same retirees remember Olivo affectionately as "Dom." In his later years, the robust patrolman reminded some of his colleagues of actor Erik Estrada's portrayal of Officer Frank "Ponch" Poncherello on the hit NBC television drama CHiPS.
Once Kisch and Olivo arrived at the apartments, Schwerdt returned to the elderly superintendent and asked how the arm had ended up on the lawn. The superintendent told the officer that her dog had most likely brought it home. Schwerdt asked if he could have a look at her dog, and the superintendent nodded, asking him to follow her to her apartment. There, Schwerdt made a surprising discovery. "The lady brought me over to a puppy — and I mean a tiny puppy. That really threw me off. There was no way that this little thing could have brought that arm home." He then proceeded to knock on each door of the apartment complex, asking the tenants if they had any pets. Eventually, Schwerdt found one resident who owned a large Dalmatian. "The tenant told me that she had let her dog out to run earlier that morning, and we determined that this Dalmatian had most likely brought the arm home from wherever it had been roaming."
Standing next to Kisch, Olivo stared at the rotting forearm lying on the ground. After pausing...
