By Olivia Lloyd

A wealthy kidney doctor accused his wife of stealing from him and threatened to divorce her, then he wound up shot and stabbed to death at his Florida home, according to a lawsuit filed by his kids. A Pinellas County civil jury has now found that the wife “unlawfully and intentionally killed, or participated in procuring the death of Steven Schwartz (in 2014),” and she owes his three adult children nearly $200 million, court documents show.

The woman is not being identified because she is not facing criminal charges. The couple’s handyman, Albanian citizen Anton Stragaj, was charged with murder but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of accessory after the fact in 2021 and went to prison, Pinellas County records show.

‘Temporary situation’

Dr. Steven Schwartz married his second wife in 2011 when he was 71 and she was 50, according to the wrongful death lawsuit filed in 2016 by Schwartz’s children.

But years before they got married, the woman became a Schwartz, the family’s attorney said. She changed her last name to Schwartz and was “claiming she was married to him so she could fraudulently cash checks in his name,” according to the lawsuit.

The wife, who was the business manager of her husband’s medical practice, was accused of embezzling money from the practice, and she hid it from Schwartz by deleting emails and threatening staff members who found out, according to the lawsuit.

The wife was accused of telling staff “I could just shoot him” when she got upset he donated money to patients, and called her marriage a “temporary situation,” the lawsuit says.

The attorney for Schwartz’s kids said she coerced him into changing his “estate plan to particularly benefit her rather than his natural children” and threatened to expose personal information of his if he didn’t.

When Schwartz found out about his wife’s financial behavior, he threatened to divorce her, but again she blackmailed him, the lawsuit says.

According to testimony, the wife would buy fixer-upper homes that her husband didn’t know about, and Anton Stragaj would do the renovations. She also bought her own children homes without her husband knowing, her daughter-in-law testified during a deposition.

The wife had previously been convicted of embezzling from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, according to the lawsuit.

One former staffer testified that the wife asked him multiple times to go on Schwartz’s computer to see if Schwartz had read a particular email or looked something up online, and they would post a lookout staffer to make sure Schwartz wasn’t coming.

The staffer said he had the impression the wife knew Schwartz was looking into some of her finances and purchases, and she was concerned about what he might do.

The killing

Steven Schwartz was found dead four days after his three-year wedding anniversary on the evening of May 28, 2014, according to court records.

The wife told investigators she last saw her husband when she left home that morning, officers with the Tarpon Springs Police Department wrote in an affidavit. Later that day, the wife went out to dinner for Anton Stragaj’s birthday with a group of people, including her son and daughter-in-law, the latter testified.

When she got home at around 9 p.m., she called 911 to say someone had broken in, according to police.

When officers arrived, they said they found Schwartz dead from two gunshot wounds to the head and stab wounds to his neck and scalp, as well as a spinal fracture. It appeared the perpetrator had strangled him with his tie and killed him while he was on his way to work that morning, according to police and the autopsy.

For a year, police worked the case, until they hosted a press conference in April 2015 to announce that DNA evidence on Schwartz’s clothes could be connected to Stragaj, and he was charged with murder.

But the former staff member at the office who was close with the wife said during a deposition that everyone in the office suspected the wife had orchestrated her husband’s killing. They just didn’t know who she had carry it out.

He testified the wife kept close tabs on her husband and “always knew where he was.”

“A couple of things really stood out, one being that supposedly nobody knowing where Dr. Schwartz was throughout the day. Because again, being murdered on the 28th or whatever, and not knowing until the nighttime, that’s not possible in (her) world.”

Inheritance conflict

The wife inherited much of her dead husband’s fortune and proceeded to “cut off all support to Steven P. Schwartz’s natural children, while lavishing monies on her own natural children,” the lawsuit says. The Schwartz family attorney also said the wife bought a plane for her and her new boyfriend, bought his parents a Mercedes and paid for them all to go on an Alaskan cruise.

The woman’s daughter-in-law testified during a deposition that she suspected her husband’s mom had in fact killed Schwartz because of how quickly she had moved on from their life together.

She said the woman “started a new life and only seemed bothered by anything with it when it pertains to her and how it makes her look and what she might lose.”

She remarried and subsequently got divorced again after Schwartz died, records show.

The daughter-in-law also testified that her mother-in-law bought multiple homes and a brewery for her kids after Schwartz died while having Schwartz’s son “removed” from a condo his father owned “immediately” after his father died.

Now, his kids are expected to recoup at least some of the funds the former wife inherited after the jury rendered the verdict March 4.

State Attorney Bruce Bartlett said the case will “remain open until such time as we gather sufficient evidence to make an arrest.”