Bizarre Wills Of Murdered Couple Taunt Family Members With Insults
Thursday August 28, 2008
You've probably heard that old joke about the lazy ne'er-do-well who was worried he wouldn't be remembered in his rich uncle's will. Of course, the story ends as the document is being read with the punch line: To my lazy nephew Rick, who worried he wouldn't get mentioned in my will, I say "Hi Rick!"
It was a stupid old canard and an apocryphal story - until now. According to the New York Post, a couple who were murdered in their home last month in the Big Apple left behind one of the most vindictive legal documents some lawyers have ever seen.
The Brooklyn couple minced few words about the relatives and people they hated in their final document and made sure they knew about it after they died.
When relatives gathered to find out what they inherited from Mark Schwartz and his wife Christina-Maria Petrowski-Schwartz, they were stunned by the contents.
Schwartz's brother got nothing at all except this line that sounds very much like that bad joke. "To my brother who I know hopes to be in my will, well, here you are," the newspaper quotes the draft as saying.
Petrowski-Schwartz remembered her ex-husband by leaving him $10,000 - but only if it's donated to a battered woman's shelter.
She also cuts all but her brother out of her estate with these equally deflating words, reported in the Post. "With regard to my estranged family who were never there for myself or my children, but always there for their distorted version of Catholicism, I give and bequeath the sum of $1 each to my" mother, father, two brothers and sister "and request that they donate same to their precious church to whom they had a greater allegiance, than to their first child and sister."
And the bizarre couple's final words to the world don't end there. In one draft, Schwartz asks his friends (yes, he did have some) to put him in scuba gear and throw his body into the ocean, despite knowing it's illegal.
Another version suggests they hold a beach party with strippers.
His pals also got $25,000 from him - but only on the condition that their wives never be told "so they may not get their hands on same," the newspaper adds.
It's not clear if the couple actually expected this to be their final statement to their less-than-loved ones. Schwartz was only 50, his wife just 48, when they were found dead in their Brooklyn home in mid-July.
Despite the vitriol in their wills, cops don't think family members had anything to do with it.
