Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 11, 1992 TAG: 9202110270
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Long
LOVING FATHER - AND COLD KILLER
A BEDFORD COUNTY jury today will listen to attorneys debate whether Kenneth Stewart should spend the rest of his life in prison or be put to death for murdering his wife and infant son.One evening last fall, Kenneth Stewart approached a Bedford County jailer and asked for a word in private.
The inmate was desperate to help authorities find the gun he had tossed into an overgrown field along a road near Smith Mountain Lake.
He said he didn't want someone, a child perhaps, to discover the weapon by chance and get hurt by it.
An odd concern, it seems, coming from a guy who had just a few months earlier fired four bullets from that same .25-caliber pistol into the heads of his wife and his own 5-month-old child.
But Stewart - convicted last week of capital murder for killing his family last Mother's Day - is a man of contradiction.
Friends and relatives describe him as a gentle, doting father whose troubled life came together when he married and started a family. Even police officers say he's a polite, cooperative man who stays up late reading the Bible.
The prosecutor describes a different Kenneth Stewart: a cold killer who hung around smoking Marlboros after the murders and even concocted a gory scene with the victims' bodies.
Today, jurors will try to sort out the contradictions as they decide whether Stewart should be sentenced to life in prison or death in the electric chair.
Seeking the death penalty, prosecutor James Updike will attempt to show that Stewart's crime was outrageously vile and that Stewart will be a threat to society in the future.
Trying to save Stewart's life, defense attorneys Webster Hogeland and Steve Grant will raise mitigating factors about Stewart's emotional state and his difficult past.
Stewart was born in Winston-Salem, N.C., 37 years ago into what Grant describes as a "really bad family life."
It wasn't the kind of life "like we know," Grant said last week.
The second of four children, Stewart was hit in the eye by a rock at age 2.
Two years later, he lost vision in that eye and it was later removed. He now has an artificial eye behind his thick, shaded glasses.
During Stewart's childhood, his family moved around the country as his father, a mechanic, searched for better jobs.
By the time Stewart was 15, he had lived in Sanford, N.C., Jacksonville, Fla., Taylorsville, N.C. and Cleveland.
After the eighth grade, Stewart quit school and essentially became a "street kid," Grant said. It was then that Stewart got into drugs and alcohol.
Drinking would be an ongoing problem for Stewart. "He had a terrible bout with chronic alcoholism," Grant said.
Stewart has been convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol more than once.
Things began to look up
In 1986, it was through Alcoholics Anonymous in Williamsport, Pa., that Stewart quit drinking. That was also where he met Cindy Schultz, whom he would marry a year later.
"Finally, his life was coming together," Grant said.
A couple of years later, the Stewarts moved to Virginia at the suggestion of Cindy's parents, Ed and Ruth Schultz.
The Schultzes, who owned a Huddleston farmhouse and a second Smith Mountain Lake home, offered to rent the farmhouse to the Stewarts. Both Cindy and Kenneth loved animals and agreed to move.
Here, Cindy worked as a secretary for a local Realtor and Kenneth repaired plumbing and heating and air conditioning equipment.
On Dec. 10, 1990, Cindy gave birth to their son, Jonathan Edward Stewart. Kenneth Stewart was with her during labor.
"It was the most important thing he could possibly have had," Grant said. "For him, [family] was something terrific. It was something he had never had."
And Stewart's friends insist that he was a perfect dad.
"He knew how to take care of the child," said Paul Brooks, a buddy of Stewart's. "He knew how to change it, how to feed it; he knew how to do the whole schmear."
"He took care of that baby just like any mother would," friend Carolyn Brown agreed.
Within months of the baby's birth, though, the marriage fell apart. In April, Kenneth Stewart Stewart moved in with Brooks in Moneta, leaving Cindy and the baby in Huddleston.
The couple's problems centered around money, according to prosecutor Updike.
Cindy thought more money should go toward buying items for the baby, Updike said. Kenneth, who had been laid off from his job as a plumber, did not agree.
But friends said Kenneth didn't know why the marriage fell apart.
"He felt confused," Brooks said. "He told me several times that he still loved her."
Stewart was angry about the break-up, resentful of his in-laws and angry that he could only see his son on Sundays in Cindy's house, Brooks said.
"Kenny was hurt very badly by it," Grant said. "It was a hurt that hurt him to the bone."
He read a self-help book and got a prescription for medication to help him sleep, according to his defense attorneys.
They say he also contemplated killing himself.
Updike says he decided to kill his family. A jury agreed.
Stewart's mother, Jelene Rauch, will never believe that her son could have planned the murders of the wife and son he loved.
Rauch said Monday that a medical condition - diabetes, high cholesterol and stress - has prevented her from traveling from her home in Winston-Salem, N.C., to see her son's trial in Bedford County.
In fact, none of his family attended the trial - and Rauch does not know if she'll come to his sentencing today.
"He don't want any of us up there," Rauch said in a phone interview.
If Stewart did what he was convicted of, he must have lost his mind, Rauch said. After shooting 5-month-old Jonathan in his playpen, Stewart carried the boy's body upstairs and placed it in the arms of Cindy Stewart, who had already been killed.
"Kenny's not a mean monster," Rauch said. "Somebody that was never mean, that loved children and animals all his life - how in the hell could he do something like that?" Rauch said, angrily. "He must have been crazy."
Both the prosecution and defense are likely to present testimony about Stewart's psychological state during his sentencing hearing.
It's unclear exactly what the defense psychiatrist will say, but he will not claim Stewart is insane.
The prosecution expert will say his tests show Stewart's I.Q. to be in the low or average range, according to court papers already filed by psychologist Arthur Centor.
In addition, Stewart revealed no signs of brain damage or deep depression, Centor will say.
"There were no signs or symptoms of mental illness, affective [mood] disorder or mental defect," according to his report.
No emotion displayed
During his four-day trial last week, Stewart, a gaunt man with sunken eyes, showed no emotion during testimony about the killings.
He did not testify and, during other people's testimony, alternated between drinking water from a dixie cup and refilling the cup.
Stewart's blank expression did not change even when the jury returned with a guilty verdict after only 35 minutes of deliberation - an unusually brief period in a capital-murder trial.
Stewart could testify on his own behalf at the hearing today.
If he doesn't, jurors will have yet another contradiction to sort out on their own.
Stewart last week pleaded "not guilty" to his crimes, yet he has told authorities over and over that he wants to die in the electric chair for what he did.
Asked whether Stewart currently wants to live or to die, defense attorney Hogeland said his client "goes back and forth on that."
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