Crime & Safety

Man Kept Dead Girlfriend in His Bed for Two Weeks Because He Loved Her, Says Defense

The fact that Heather Stearns was found dead in the bed didn't mean John Clauer killed her, attorney Zach Schwarzbach told the jury in his closing argument

John Clauer, 66, loved the 30-year-old woman he kept dead in his bed for two and a half weeks because he couldn't face the fact that she was dead, defense attorney Zach Schwarzbach told a Santa Cruz jury in his closing statement Friday.

Schwarzbach read a letter Clauer wrote Stearns, his companion of several years, telling her he loved her and wanted her to come home and stay sober.

"How does any of us respond to the death of a loved one?" Schwarzbach asked the eight-woman, four-man jury. "There's no script. There may have been better choices, but it's hard to say what's right and what's wrong in dealing with a loss."

Schwarzbach pointed to other cases in the news in which people kept corpses in their homes, including a woman in Denmark who kept her husband's body for a year before reporting it.

In his rebuttal, prosecutor Jeff Rosell scoffed at the notion that Clauer kept the body because he was a "super-sensitive guy" who loved Stearns. Clauer, he said, had a history of violence against women and had beaten Stearns in 2007, landing her in the hospital.

"He took a hammer to her and told her to shut the fuck up," said Rosell, in a case that has produced some of the most bizarre and tragic testimony in county history and has received nationwide attention.

John Clauer is charged with first-degree murder, for which he can receive life in prison. He is accused of beating his alcoholic girlfriend to death in his East Cliff Drive apartment and then leaving her in his bed for two weeks, until neighbors complained about the stench.

Clauer told the neighbors it was his trash that smelled. But when two of them got the key to his apartment, they saw Stearns's decomposed body in his bed. Jurors saw horrific pictures of the body during the prosecutor's case.

During the trial, the veteran who served in Vietnam and received an honorable discharge in 1970, sat stoically. In earlier hearings he shouted out and had to be quieted by Judge John Salazar.

Schwarzbach told the jury that Clauer didn't report her death to police because he was afraid of the government, after serving in Vietnam and because he was on parole. His record includes the 2007 battery, the burglary of a lighting store and possession of narcotics.

Some of the defense case hung on a fingernail. Schwarzbach presented evidence that there was DNA under one of Stearns's nails that belonged to someone other than Clauer. He suggested that someone else killed her and left her in Clauer's bed, either because they planned to rob him or because he was an easy target, being a parolee.

Schwarzbach also argued that if Clauer had killed her, he would have fled to Mexico. Instead he stayed around and paid his rent and storage fees for his RV. And, he said, Clauer kept her in the apartment but probably didn't sleep there because he didn't smell badly. No one reported the horrible smell of death wafting from him. 

Rosell said the evidence of violence and abuse outweighed such speculations. And he argued that despite the defense finding a few cases in which people kept dead bodies in their homes, this was a rarity.

"It is unusual," he said, adding the defense had to scan the world to find other cases. "It doesn't happen. It happens very rarely."









Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com.