Posted on 11/17/2004 10:35:44 AM PST by Tamar1973
To Sonoma County residents, Joshua Schwartz is the frightening assailant accused of trying to abduct a 9-year-old girl from her Roseland home and stabbing her mother with a pair of scissors when she tried to intervene.
But those who know Schwartz describe a talented artist whose genius disintegrated in the face of mental illness.
"It's a funny thing with creativity," said Bob Burden, a well-known Hollywood cartoonist who admired Schwartz's work so much that he considered collaborating with him. "There are a lot of people who are unbalanced who have it all. It's sad when that interferes with other people's lives."
Burden, whose Mystery Men comic strip was made into a movie featuring actor Ben Stiller, said he was amazed when he first saw Schwartz's work.
"He had a natural sense for design and the abstract - a kind of gift," Burden said.
Ultimately, Schwartz's illness came between him and the art world. Burden couldn't work with him, he said.
Family members tell similar stories about Schwartz, who was arrested on Nov. 8 after neighbors tackled him and rescued the little girl, who lived across the street from the group home where he was staying.
Schwartz, 26, declined an interview request Tuesday at the Sonoma County Jail.
Carol Schwartz of Rio Nido said her son suffered a mental breakdown while attending the prestigious California Institute of the Arts in Valencia and spent the past seven years in and out of institutions.
During a stay at a Malibu drug rehabilitation center, Schwartz befriended actor Robert Downey Jr. and sold him a small watercolor painting for $1,700, said Schwartz's father, Leonard Buschel of Los Angeles.
Records released by Le Elen Manor, the Santa Rosa group home where Schwartz last stayed, say he suffers from schizoaffective disorder dating from teenage experiments with psychedelic drugs.
A judge last week ordered Schwartz to undergo a mental evaluation to see if he is competent to stand trial. A finding is expected by Dec. 1.
Although his family conceded they could have done more to prevent Schwartz's fall, they insisted the state's mental health system was largely to blame for allowing a bright young man to self-destruct.
"This is a tragedy," Carol Schwartz said. "We have been trying to get him help for all these years."
"Josh is like a genius," said his father, who is a drug-rehabilitation specialist. "But he's also incredibly disturbed."
In his second year of college, Schwartz suffered a breakdown over a girlfriend and punched a hole through a campus wall, said a cousin, Bob Goldstein. Schwartz was expelled for the incident, Goldstein said.
Schwartz's parents, who are divorced, tried caring for him and eventually sought professional help, Carol Schwartz said.
Schwartz started collecting disability checks and bounced from group homes to residential treatment centers to hospitals. In seven years, he had been admitted to 42 different institutions, mostly in Los Angeles, his father said.
For a time, Schwartz lived with Goldstein, a New York entertainment industry worker.
Goldstein introduced him to Burden, who reviewed his drawings. That was in about 2000, when Schwartz was beginning to spiral down. He wound up in rehab for drug addiction, his cousin said.
There he met Downey, who became "a huge fan," Goldstein said.
Schwartz sold him a painting that was "very modern, very hip," Buschel said.
"His medium was large, oil collages," he said. "Some of his art is violent."
Downey's publicist, Alan Nierob, didn't return calls seeking comment.
Schwartz drifted for a while before moving to Sonoma County earlier this year to live with his 62-year-old mother. One day he got angry and threw her TV across a room, she said.
He was arrested and taken to a hospital for tests. He was then released to a group home, his mother said.
In mid-October, Schwartz became deeply depressed and checked himself into Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, saying he was thinking of suicide.
He was referred by Sonoma County mental health officials to Le Elen Manor, a converted apartment building at the end of a residential street.
Five days later, he tried to abduct the girl, police said. He faces charges of kidnapping with the intent to commit rape, burglary, assault with a deadly weapon and child endangerment.
If Schwartz is convicted of the kidnapping charge, he could be sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, Chief Deputy District Attorney Larry Scoufos said.
The other charges could add nearly 20 years, Scoufos said.
If he is found to be insane, he could be committed to a state hospital, Scoufos said.
Carol Schwartz said either outcome would be the result of a failure of the mental health system.
"They just kicked him around like dirt," she said.
Public health officials defended their handling of patients like Schwartz, especially with the statewide economic crunch.
Mark Kostielney, director of Sonoma County's Department of Health Services, said programs to treat mental illness have suffered budget cuts, but still provide a safety net for people in need.
And he said group homes have done well all across California.
"By and large, throughout the state, group homes do an excellent job of providing for people with mental illness," Kostielney said. "I think that's true in Sonoma County."
But Nora Ernst, forensic outreach coordinator for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Santa Rosa, said program cuts have included services that keep patients off the streets and out of jail.
"There simply is not intensive oversight of the caseload," Ernst said. "The situation is very serious."
Yes, we noticed that during the election.
He sounds more like an drug-addicted asshole than someone who is actually schizophrenic.
...I used to be a genius too...though not exactly sure why mine disintegrated...
I guess it could be the face of mental illness...
Yes, of course, it's society's fault! It seems he did more than experiment with drugs, he used them enough to get sent to rehab, with Robert Downey, Jr.
Who puts dangerous, violent psychos in residential neighborhoods? And who moves in across the street from lunatics?
This girl is lucky she's alive.
Everybody else involved with this story should be horsewhipped.
There is a very fine line between genius and insanity.
This guy is nuts.
Thank goodness for the erstwhile taxpayer, who foots the bill.
If he's convicted of what they accuse him of, it will cost a heck of a lot more than those disability checks.
I think it's probably more likely that the group-home moved in across the street from the girl's family, not vice versa.
"Yes, at first, Josh made representational art that its viewers could understand and appreciate. As he sank deeper and deeper into drug abuse and mental illness, his work became more and more abstract. Finally, he lost it totally and began doing bizarre things, like putting a crucifix in a jar of urine. We are hopeful that, with the whole kidnapping/stabbing conceptual art happening, he has a pretty good chance of getting an NEA grant."
What or where is SR?
Oh, come on. I'm a product of divorce and so are my three sisters. None of us are drug addicts and we're all normal, functioning adults.
Two of my brothers-in-law are addicts. One is a drug addict and the other is an alcoholic. My husband's parents were married for 40 years.
"Carol Schwartz said either outcome would be the result of a failure of the mental health system. "
How about the result of your failure as a parent to teach him to stay off of drugs? Or of the liberal culture that exhorts the use of chemicals and sexual experimentation to seek elightenment and expanded consiousness.
F**ksakes! This kind of thing really gets my goat, ya know?
Haha! Wow, this story really pissed me off. I am somewhat bemused at the effect this had on me. Must be the fact that the man is a violent sexual predator and they don't want to look that in the face and admit it.
"And who moves in across the street from lunatics?"
In all fairness, it's likely that the family lived in the neighorhood before the group home came to be there. Group homes by definition are in residential neighborhoods.
SR stands for Santa Rosa. It's in Sonoma County, California, grow the best wine and export the nuttiest liberals to Washington DC. (I just wish we could export more of them to New Zealand, Canada, Belarus, etc. Ivory Coast maybe?)
If they are unbalanced, they don't have it all. In particular, they don't have balance.
It is common for young adults beginning the slide into schizophrenia to "self-medicate" through drug abuse in an attempt to smooth the feelings of unease and disjointedness.
Problem is, when you have a brain chemical disorder, using brain altering drugs is bad juju.
It's a chicken/egg question. Was the schizophrenic break caused by drug abuse or did the schizophrenic start to abuse drugs.
Regardless, he's dangerous, trank him and lock him up.
I think that we have a future Democrat nominee for President here. Or at least a Senator.
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