By Scott North
Herald Writer
Snohomish County prosecutors will try again to convict an Arlington man of killing his wife, 12 years after she disappeared from their home without a trace.
David C. Schubert, 62, on Tuesday was told he’ll face a Feb. 4 trial for the presumed killing of his wife, Juliana, 30, who dropped from sight in June 1989.
The trial will mark the third time suspicions about Schubert’s role in his wife’s disappearance have gone before a jury, the second in a criminal court.
On Dec. 5, after two weeks of trial and nearly five days of deliberations, a Superior Court jury split 9-3 in favor of convicting Schubert of second-degree murder. At the same time, the jury also divided 3-9 in favor of acquittal on the more serious charge of first-degree murder, which was the crime prosecutors had been attempting to prove.
There are solid reasons to retry Schubert, deputy prosecutor Paul Stern said.
All of the jurors and jury alternates in the criminal trial told prosecutors they believed Schubert had killed his wife, even if they felt there was insufficient evidence to prove the murder charges, Stern said.
Add to that the verdict in a 1998 civil wrongful death trial, in which 12 jurors unanimously found Schubert was his wife’s "slayer," a legal term meaning he was found liable for her death.
"Twenty-six jurors have listened to the evidence in this case. Twenty-six jurors have told us David Schubert killed his wife," Stern said. "We will continue to do whatever we can to have him held accountable for what he did."
Schubert’s attorney, public defender Richard Tassano, said he’s ready to try the case again, but not looking forward to the prospect, particularly given the lingering nature of the allegations.
"It’s like being on a bad merry-go-round," he said.
Schubert, a former Arlington police officer and insurance broker, has long insisted his wife simply walked away from him and their two sons, then ages 6 and 8. Schubert was in court Tuesday, but he also is in mourning following the Dec. 2 death of his youngest son, Nickolas, 18. The teen was found dead in his college dorm room in California. No cause has been determined.
The missing woman’s mother, Karil Nelson, said she is pleased prosecutors continue to press the case against Schubert, the man she is convinced killed her daughter and hid her body.
With no direct evidence of a killing, prosecutors have built their case on circumstantial evidence, including witnesses who said David Schubert allegedly had talked about killing his wife to get some "peace." Juliana Schubert also reported being threatened with a handgun. In the weeks before her disappearance, she’d gotten a job outside the home and begun taking steps to divorce her husband and gain custody of their children. Then she disappeared.
The defense so far has focused on arguing that prosecutors simply didn’t have enough hard evidence to show Juliana Schubert is dead, let alone that she was killed by her husband.
But missing-body murder cases have led to convictions because jurors are instructed evidence can be direct or circumstantial, and one is not necessarily better than the other. There is no legal requirement to produce the victim’s body.
Judge Ronald Castleberry said news coverage of the case likely will require jurors to be drawn from a much larger pool than is typical in a criminal case.
The county faced the same situation in May, when a second trial was convened for Victor David, a Marysville man who was ultimately convicted of assaulting his wife for years on a filthy sailboat. David’s first trial in October 2000 lasted 24 days and ended in a mistrial. Jurors in David’s first trial split 7-5, with the majority favoring his acquittal. Jurors unanimously agreed on his guilt after hearing evidence in the second trial, and David is now serving a 10-year sentence at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla, where he is pursuing appeals.
The evidence against David also was entirely circumstantial. Nobody ever witnessed him assault his wife. He maintained the scars and broken bones were all the results of repeated accidental falls. Prosecutors credited their eventual victory in David’s case to the lessons they learned in his first trial.
You can call Herald Writer Scott North at 425-339-3431 or send e-mail to
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