Friday's Internet Edition, September 10, 2010.
|
| The case charging John Swart of Copperas Cove with murder will go to trial in August. |
News editor - The man charged with killing his wife almost 15 years ago will go on trial Aug. 18.
John Swart, 51, recently waived arraignment in the case and visiting Senior Judge Don Leonard set the date for the start of the trial. Leonard was assigned to the case after Judge Phillip Zeigler of the 52nd Judicial District voluntarily recused himself from the case.
Zeigler decided to recuse himself from the case since he was the district attorney when the case was initially investigated in 1988.
Around 2 a.m. on Aug. 26, 1988, a traveler en route to Gatesville saw a burning 1982 Plymouth Sapporo in a ditch along the road and called the sheriff’s department, according to an Aug. 28, 1988, issue of The Leader-Press.
Investigators from the sheriff’s department and the Department of Public Safety found an unidentified body burned beyond recognition in the car. Justice of the Peace Norman Storm pronounced the person dead at the scene, noting, “We couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.”
Storm ordered an autopsy and the body was sent to the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office for positive identification. Two months later, following an Oct. 26 inquest, Storm ruled Neva Swart’s death a homicide.
The case had been unsolved until Coryell County Sheriff Roger Faught reopened the case when he took office in 2001.
With help from the Texas Department of Public Safety Unsolved Crimes Unit, new evidence was found and the body was exhumed for DNA analysis.
Swart was arrested April 1 at the Coryell County Appraisal District office in Cove, where he works as appraiser. He was later released on $100,000 bond set by Justice of the Peace Jimmy Wood and has since returned to work.
Leonard set June 20 as the deadline for both sides to submit pre-trial motions. A hearing is scheduled for July 1 to hear those motions.