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Tonight on Dateline. Ashley was just a really special mom. Nothing came between her and her kids.
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She was a sister, an aunt, a friend. He said she had been in a car accident, and I just remember screaming.
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He was a fire captain. His wife died in a fiery car crash. The single dad now raising two children.
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This was a man truly grieving. The fire itself was strange. It wasn't a crash that somebody should have died in.
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Was it something else? Was it murder? None of us would have thought this was going to happen to her.
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A secret comes out. Yes. There had been an affair. This takes the case in a new direction.
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Other possible suspects. Right. We have a video that shows a person running from the crash.
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We call him Running Man. Find this running man. Find your killer? A picture-perfect couple.
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A mystery killer. What clues lie buried in the snowy blue mountains? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
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Andrea Canning returns to her hometown for Running Man. In the silence of this once happy home,
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photos reveal a life frozen in time. Christmas lights on the banister, a stuffed animal with the tag still on.
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It all looked very normal. What they don't show is the beautiful family that lived here,
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James and Ashley Schwamm and their two young children. Every day was like a dance party.
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There was love. Laughter. Very well-adjusted family. But everything was not as it seemed.
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There were secrets behind those walls. There were, yeah. Absolutely. That's like a whole new level of evil.
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It's horrible. Our story begins in the town of the Blue Mountains, a picturesque ski destination two hours northwest of Toronto.
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It's where I grew up and where I got my start as a reporter. Doing this series, I've learned a lot about education over the last few weeks.
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Police are aggressively investigating the fatal collision, looking for any clues.
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I never expected to cover a dateline here. It was January 26th, 2023, just a few miles from my childhood home, on a frigid, stormy morning.
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Just before dawn, volunteer firefighter Jordan Hagerman was driving to his job as a groomer on the ski slopes.
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There was not a single car on the road that morning. So as soon as I turned onto Arrowhead Road here, I noticed a glow.
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What did you think? I had a feeling that it was a fire right away. And you had just joined the volunteer fire department here?
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Yes. So as soon as I approached the bottom of the hill here, I could see the flames coming over the embankment.
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So as I drove up to the top of the hill, I could see down that it was a car. That's when I made my name engulf.
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Fire department, what was your emergency? Hi, there's a fire on top of Arrowhead Road around the bend.
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It looks like a car went off the road and it seems fully engulfed. I'm not sure if there's passengers inside.
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And you don't know if there's anybody around? I have no idea. Okay. No footprints?
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It's too dark to tell. Where I was standing and the car was about 75 feet down off the road, I could feel that intense heat.
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Oh, wow. These flames were high? Yeah. About 30 feet high. He knew from his training that was unusual for a car fire.
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Did you fear that someone could be in there? I did, for sure. That's scary. Yeah.
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Tim Newton, a captain with the town of the Blue Mountains Fire Department, was jolted out of sleep.
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The tones go off on my radio around 6 a.m. that morning. So you arrive here. What's the first thing you see?
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So as we arrive on scene, I can see over to my left-hand side coming up the hill.
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It was a fully involved car. It was fully engulfed in flames. Tim and his fellow firefighters raced to put out the flames.
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We didn't have good visibility. I knew as soon as I could, I wanted to try to get a member of the crew to open at least the driver's side door and do a sweep of the seat.
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We conducted that and didn't find anything. No driver inside the charred Mitsubishi SUV.
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It appeared they'd escaped the flames. But when the firefighters checked the passenger side, a different story.
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And that's when we found the body. Could you not even tell if it was a man or a woman?
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You could not tell. It was that bad. Yeah. How did it appear to you that this car had ended up down there?
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Based on the condition of the guardrail not being damaged on first inspection, the only explanation was that it had made its way through this very narrow section into the gully below.
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You thought it just slid off the road in these conditions. That it was coming down the road, lost control and...
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Went through this opening. Yeah. And kept going. Firefighters were perplexed. Where was the driver?
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Police officers now on scene were asking the same question. They notified Detective Sergeant Jason Lloyd and Detective Constable Jeremy Shiffman with the Ontario Provincial Police, also known as the OPP.
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I was advised from the sergeant on the scene that they had a dead body inside the vehicle.
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And I just asked them to send me some digital photographs to my desk so that I could have a better idea of what it is that they were addressing at the scene What your first reaction when you see these photos That there one person in the car and the body was in the footwell area on that passenger side
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They thought there might be an explanation for how the body got there. We looked at the angle, gravity, and the fact that the fire department
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was putting the fire out and that those hoses would be pushing in that general direction.
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So the force of the water from the fire hose could have pushed the body into the passenger seat.
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Yeah, along with gravity. Whose car is it? How quickly do you figure that out? So because of it becoming a fatal collision, the OPP's traffic reconstruction team came out.
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They found the license plate in the snow had been clipped off the vehicle when it went down into the ditch.
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So we checked the license plate and it came back to James Schwamm. Motor vehicle records showed James Schwamm lived 10 miles west of the Blue Mountains in the town of Collingwood.
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detective shiffman along with two uniformed officers headed straight to his house and rang
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the doorbell but no one was home so i went back to my car and i did what a lot of us do and i pulled
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up my phone and i started my own quick search on facebook and i found james schwamm's facebook
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profile his profile picture there has him on the front of a fire truck with his family james was a
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firefighter. Based on the photo, it looked like he worked at a station just outside of Toronto.
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The detective had a friend who also worked there. So I called her, Brittany Holmberg. I'm like,
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do you know James? And she said, yes, I know James. The Mitsubishi car is his car.
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Take us to that moment where your phone rings and it's your friend, you know, from the OPP.
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Yeah. He was asking me immediately about James Schwamm. You work with James Schwamm, yes. You're
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friends with James Schwamm, yes. Would there be any reason that he'd be up near the ski hill?
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And I was like, yeah, there's some fresh snow to be had and he's probably out skiing or probably
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trying to get out there really early. Then the detective told her about the accident.
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I'm sorry to tell you this, but we have reason to believe that James Schwamm has passed. I remember
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hanging up and just having a panic attack, like had a full-blown panic attack. She tried calling
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James, but he didn't answer. So I left this voicemail and it was like the saddest thing ever.
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What did you say? I don't remember. I was like sobbing at this point. And I just said,
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if you're there, pick up. Like people think you're dead and I hope you're not dead.
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Oh my God. That is a horrible call to make and voicemail to leave because you're so in the dark.
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Time to track down James's wife, Ashley. What they would find would lead to more questions
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about how that SUV plummeted off the side of the road and who was inside. In one of the videos, it's crystal clear
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that it's a person running and they've got a backpack on. And in the background, you can actually see the fire from the car.
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Something was revealed right here on this beach. Happened just down there a couple of hundred yards.
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He said, I just want you to know that you will spend the rest of your life paying for this.
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Far more diabolical than you ever imagined. What we uncovered afterwards made it sick.
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Police believed 38-year-old James Schwamm had died in a fiery crash. They needed to talk to James' wife.
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So you're going to go find Ashley? Correct. We wanted to let her know that there's been a crash.
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Detective Schiffman learned from James' co-worker, Brittany, that Ashley worked for a high-end homebuilder.
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So they headed to Ashley's office. But when we get there, we don't find Ashley. She hadn't shown up for work that day.
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And very out of character, she missed a 9 o'clock meeting. Is your mindset now shifting?
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Very much so. So James wasn't at home. Ashley didn't show up for work. A few minutes later, Brittany calls me back and says,
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Jer, I found him. She found James. She found James. I called him and he answered.
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At this point, I felt like you're just talking to a ghost, but I was just so happy that he was still alive.
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But they still hadn't found Ashley. Brittany told Detective Schiffman that James was at his part-time job at Walkers,
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a small engine repair business. And then we went to Walkers. He's there? He's there.
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And we asked to speak to him in private in the back and leave the floor area to a smaller room.
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The officers broke the news that his car had been in an accident, and they believed his wife was inside.
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James became emotional, and he was crying. His face was running, his eyes were running, his nose was running.
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I mean, you've just told him his wife is very likely dead. That's right. There was no doubt, in my mind or his mind at that time, that that was Ashley in that car.
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When do you first hear that there has been a car crash? 2.15 in the afternoon, the phone rings and, hi, how are you? He's in tears.
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James's first call was to Ashley's father at his home in the Bahamas. Ian Milnes is a retired bond trader. His nickname for his daughter was AJ.
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Then he says that AJ was in a car crash. I sit up and scream through the phone, what are you talking about? And I said, I'm on my way home.
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Oh, my God. And then is when I jump into action. I phoned around here to get a jet, and I'm gone.
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While heading to Canada, Ian started making calls to his family. Ashley was one of four children.
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She had two older sisters and a younger brother. He reached all of them except one.
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After the screaming and crying, I said, get over to Lindsay house and tell her Lindsay Milnes is Ashley sister I was in my bedroom and I looked out the window and I saw my brother car pull up
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And then my dad was FaceTiming me. And, um, so I answered I knew something was wrong when I saw my older sister get out of the car.
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You just knew? I didn't know it was her. I knew something was wrong. And he said, we lost someone today.
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and I just remember screaming. And I asked him what happened, and he had said she had been in a car accident.
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It was terrible. That was one of the most painful experiences I've ever had. They all headed over to Ashley and James' house.
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I walked in the door, and Jamie was standing there, and I gave him a big hug. It was a long evening.
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They'd known James, or Jamie, for years. He and Ashley had met in their early 20s at Craigleith, a private ski club in the Blue
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Mountains. Both of their families were members. My brother was friends with Jamie, so I think it was just they all ran around in the same
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circle of friends. Both families were prominent. James' mother had been an executive with Warner Brothers.
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Ashley's dad made his fortune in finance. James and Ashley shared a passion for hiking and exercise.
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They were a great match. The love of this area. Mm-hmm. Our families knew each other, so yeah, it made sense.
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After a few years of dating, in 2012, they married in a fairytale wedding at Craigleaf.
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James was 28. Ashley was 30. Did you walk her down the aisle? I walked you down the aisle.
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Like the great dad? Yeah, and you know, it was fun. It was nice. It was everything she wanted and more.
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I mean, she came in on a horse and carriage. She was the picture-perfect bride. Glowing.
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It was a good day. They'd been living in Toronto, but shortly before their wedding,
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they decided to leave the big city to be near the Blue Mountains, nestled against Georgian Bay, part of the Great Lakes.
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It's a place I know very well. My grandfather founded this ski area in 1941, and I grew up right here on the mountain.
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Generations have come here to make memories, weekends filled with sledding and hot cocoa.
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James and Ashley, they moved here looking for a simpler life, a close-knit community.
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It wasn't long before they had children, first a boy, then a girl. In 2018, the family moved into this Tudor in an upscale neighborhood in Collingwood.
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Look down. They juggled parenthood with their thriving careers. James was promoted to captain at the fire department.
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Ashley oversaw the building of luxury homes with an eye for interior design. She just had this talent of seeing what something could be and really making things come to life.
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Carrie Dyson was one of Ashley's best friends. They too met at Craigleith Ski Club.
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We both liked to ski, loved to hike, play golf. And they had children around the same age.
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Ashley was just a really, really special mom. She was so dedicated and so loving.
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Nothing came between her and her kids. She would do anything for them. And if they needed something, the rest of the world stopped and she would be there for them.
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Carrie will never forget the moment she heard about the crash. A friend of mine called me the evening that it happened to tell me that she had passed away in a car accident.
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Devastating. It was terrible. You can't brace yourself for hearing something like that.
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Just to have it so sudden. While reality set in for Ashley's friends and family, investigators were just getting started.
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We had a reconstructionist team up there. They're still in the midst of doing their investigation.
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We have, you know, the body in the vehicle being transported up to the Center of Forensic Science at this moment.
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To Detective Schiffman, something felt off. He wondered why Ashley was out on the road so early on a snowy, icy morning.
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And why did the car burst into flames? We had no evidence of anything afoul happening, but it felt weird.
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There was no braking. There was no steering. There was no skid marks in the snow.
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and it really looked like it was pointed right there, intentionally driven off. The day after 40-year-old Ashley Schwamm was found dead in her charred SUV,
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her father Ian Milnes took charge. We're into protection mode. He made sure his son-in-law James and their two small children were surrounded by family.
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Ian gathered everyone together in his chalet at the mountain. He was especially worried about James, thrust overnight into the role of grieving single dad.
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He went right in my arms crying, saying I'm so sorry. And I just, I mean, I don't know, you know, I said, Jamie, whatever we can do, we're here.
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He's a fish out of water. Dad with two kids, and now he's got to deal with that, and we've got to help him and all this stuff.
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Detectives were now piecing together the hours leading up to the crash. When they talked to James at the shop, he told them it was just a normal morning.
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The children, who were nine and six, were asleep. He'd left the house at 5.14 a.m. to walk the dog.
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He didn have his phone with him So when he got back about an hour and 15 minutes later he had a text from Ashley saying hey I went for a hike The kids seem fine I basically see you later A hike he thought Ashley had planned the night before
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She wanted to go out to the ski hills. Near their ski club, about a 10-mile drive, James pulled out his phone and showed them home security video from that morning.
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One was him going for a walk with the dog, walk out the driveway and turning down the road.
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and then a few minutes later there was a video of the Mitsubishi pulling out of the garage.
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He went one way and she went the other. James also showed detectives other texts.
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He said Ashley sent that morning. One read, Ew, I left the gas cans in my car and it smells.
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I have to drive with the windows open and it's so cold out. I had a text that talked about gas.
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It links to a big fire and maybe that's a reasonable explanation. That's a piece of the puzzle right there.
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It was a piece of the puzzle and Ashley told me this. Another text suggested why Ashley might have lost control of her car.
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She had vertigo. She wasn't able to hike and she was just going to come home and work out in the basement.
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Did Ashley suffer from some type of vertigo? Yes. Yes, she did. I mean, she would call and complain and talk about it.
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She had a vertigo attack in the grocery store and my brother had to go get her. To the family, everything pointed to a tragic accident.
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Accidents, unfortunately, they happen everywhere, but we know that they can happen here with these roads.
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Yeah, and there was a snowstorm the night before. This is just really bad luck. That's what we thought.
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I know firsthand just how treacherous these roads can get in the winter. My own grandfather died in an icy crash not too far from here.
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But for investigators, something wasn't sitting right about the scene. Clues that were telling them Ashley's death may not have been an accident.
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There was no braking. There was no steering. There was no skid marks in the snow leading to it.
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It was, they could tell that the tires were rolling as it went off the road down the embankment.
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And it really looked like it was pointed right there, intentionally driven off. You describe it as threading a needle almost.
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Threading a needle. Because that's such a narrow opening. There was not a lot of space between the guardrail and where these rocks are, like this rock face.
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The team also told them it was a survivable crash. And there was more. Another thing that came to light was that one of the witnesses initially came by the scene.
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They thought that there could be track marks in the snow in the area of the road that curve there.
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You mean like footprints? Well, and that's just it. We weren't sure. There was a footmark of some sort of thing in the snow.
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We didn't have like what we would be looking at, an actual footprint with tread markings.
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It just seemed as though there could have been tracks in the snow. Could someone have run away from the crash and left Ashley inside the car?
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Investigators' suspicions were growing, and they weren't the only ones. A few days after the crash, Ashley's big sister had a feeling she couldn't shake.
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I knew something, like, really wasn't right. And I didn't, I mean, I thought I literally was going crazy.
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She said it was like Ashley was in her gut, screaming for her to do something. On an impulse, Lindsay drove over to the police station and spoke to a detective.
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I said, I just need you to find her phone. I said if you find her phone Then You'll find things on it
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You need to see like more like phone records I just the first thing I think I had said
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If you can show me One text or tell me That you've spoken to one person That she was supposed to meet
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Going hiking Then that will be It's enough for me Because then I know she was actually going
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I said but if you can't I said it doesn't make sense why AJ would be hiking at that hour in the dark by herself because she was scared of her own shadow.
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Detectives never found the phone, but they were able to access Ashley's hiking history.
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She used a fitness tracking app called Strava. And so we were able to look through her Strava accounts to find out when she would do her hikes.
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One of the interesting things that did come out of her history was that she was never up at Craigleith Ski Club
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at 5.50 in the morning to go hiking at any time. They could see that her hikes were always close to home
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and started after 7 a.m. So it's not a smoking gun, but it sure does look suspicious.
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It certainly does. They needed to talk to James again. Was this argument more than what we're talking about here?
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No, it's just a digger. Ashley Schwamm's neighbors were devastated at the news of her death.
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Anne Lockhart, a friend of mine from high school, lived next door. Tragic. And the whole neighborhood was reeling in it.
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And the disbelief and, you know, the heartbreak for these kids and for this husband.
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She saw James the morning of the crash before anyone knew what had happened. I vividly remember looking out the front window and I saw James walking the children to school.
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Now their lives were upside down. She wanted to give them space. She couldn't understand why police weren't doing the same.
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I was walking my dog at night. It was around 9 o'clock. And there was a police car sitting at the end of our street.
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It just was an eerie feeling. And I couldn't understand what's going on. It was just a car accident.
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Are you all starting to talk? Like, hey, is there something more here that we're just unaware of?
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Yes. The neighbors didn't know that police were taking a closer look at the accident
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and had called in a veteran detective. This is a small area, you know, and you've been doing this a long time.
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There's a higher level of experience there. I get assigned to obvious homicides and also suspicious deaths.
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And this would have been a suspicious death. Detective Inspector Sean Glassford directed the team to get on-the-record statements from Q&A,
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people like James. So you asked James to come in for an interview? He had spoken to us at the
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at Walker Small Motors, but it wasn't a formal statement. And now we needed that formal statement
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from him. Two days after his wife's death, James was sitting across from Detective Schiffman,
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who immediately let him know they had suspicions about the crash. The worst thing that any person could have done in this situation is to have killed her.
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I have a lot of questions, and that's why you're here. I need you to sort of just take yourself back to Thursday morning.
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Okay. My alarm went off. I'm in the bedroom upstairs with Ash. He recounted a conversation he and Ashley had about leaving their kids alone while he walked the dog, and she went out on a hike.
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Well, that morning, Shosh was upset that I was going further. We were trying to get better at using our calendars to plan stuff.
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And I guess nobody talked about how important it's really just. I don't time, so it was a little arcing into the bedroom to all be going for the walk.
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Argument? The detective wanted to hear more. Was this argument more than what we're talking about here?
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No. There's just a scheduling thing. Me, me taking her for a walk and her wanting to go somewhere in the morning or wanting to do her hike before work.
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I just talked about there's nothing. It was just a nothing fight. So do you know there was nothing?
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This was just this was OK. This wasn't a big deal. Yeah, it wasn't. It's just a big.
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The detective moved on and asked James about the route he took walking the dog. We've come out.
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We're now Krista. I gave him a pen and said, here, trace your. your route for me and he did i took the trail um through here over to the crosswalk he accounted
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for about an hour and 15 minutes and this is in town there's there's cameras i'm like all right
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this is great james we'll find you here and then really we can rule you out as being somebody who
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had anything to do with that crash at that time do you know if she was supposed to meet anybody
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that morning. I'm sorry, I don't. He pivoted, asking James if he knew of anyone who might have had a grudge against Ashley.
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She had a contractor into the family chalet to do some repairs and they had an argument,
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a disagreement about how much that was going to cost. The detective planned to track that man down.
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As he wrapped up the interview, he asked James if they could take a look at some things.
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In this course of the investigation, there's going to be things that we want to look at.
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The cars want to love them. Your phone might be another. Of course, yeah. And to provide us his blink camera system so we could download those images as well.
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And he agreed. This is like a doorbell camera. Yeah, a doorbell blink camera. The other thing that the team would like to do is to just go into your home.
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Yeah, of course, absolutely. He gave us his phone. He gave us his blink. He's invited us into his home to take a look around.
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Which is what you would expect. Like from someone who has nothing to hide. Take whatever you want.
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That's right. He's an emotional wreck. get myself composed and then someone comes to the door and this would be a well coaster in the
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motions yeah it is done when the interview was over shiffman and his team drove to james's place to begin their search
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and we do the walkthrough through his house and his house looks normal clean it all looked
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very normal. As he left, the detective wondered if he'd gone down a rabbit hole.
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Maybe Ashley's death was just a terrible accident. I'm heading back to the office,
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and Sean calls me. He says, where are you? I'm like, we've just left. I'm coming back. He's like,
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get back here now. He was sure the boss was about to shut down the investigation.
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Like everything checks out. That's not why he wanted him to come back. The pathologist had the results of Ashley's autopsy.
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Did your jaw just drop in that moment? It did, and she added to the fact that she would have been dead before the fire was even lit in the car.
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James Schwamm's friends were worried about him in the days after Ashley's death.
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I was like, let's be supportive. Jordan Paris and others reached out to him to offer condolences.
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This is just me saying that I'm thinking of you, praying for your comfort, praying for your...
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I am here, and if you need me, I'm here. But please, no stress. But James rarely responded.
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I'd reached out, like, many times, just checking in constantly and trying to, like, go over there and help him out and reconnect.
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They assumed he was deep into his grief. Can I get you anything else? I want to take a break.
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But unlike James's friends, Detective Schiffman was not convinced Ashley had died in an accident.
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As he interviewed James about the crash, Detective Lloyd was two hours away in Toronto waiting for the results of Ashley's autopsy.
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The body was very badly burned. It was badly burned. The autopsy lasted all day. When it was over, the pathologist pulled the detective into an office.
00:29:32
And she posed the question, like, are you guys homicide detectives? And I'm like, yeah, we are.
00:29:36
and she said, well that's good because I really believe you have a homicide. And I was actually, I was, I was taken back by it.
00:29:43
It's chilling. She said Ashley did not die in the car fire. There is no soot in the airways and there was no carbon monoxide in her blood.
00:29:53
And she explained to me that she died from neck compression She had a broken neck And it wasn broken during the crash The doctor was sure of it So what was it
00:30:05
It was caused by either legature strangulation or manual strangulation. So whether it was done with a strap or a belt.
00:30:12
Did your jaw just drop in that moment? It did. And she added to the fact that she would have been dead before the fire was even lit in the car.
00:30:21
In the span of two days, Ashley's death had gone from tragic accident to clear-cut murder.
00:30:27
We know the vehicle's gone to the ditch. We know that there's a fire. We know that there's a dead body.
00:30:33
Who was driving that car? We know it wasn't Ashley. We're confident it's not Ashley.
00:30:37
Of course, the police wondered if it could be her husband. But James had already shown them doorbell footage from his house that morning.
00:30:43
He left to walk the dog. Ashley's car pulled out shortly after. On top of that, he'd given them everything they asked for.
00:30:51
His grief seemed genuine. In fact, one of the officers said if he's faking, he deserves an Oscar.
00:30:57
You had no idea the road you were about to go down with this case. No, no, not at all.
00:31:02
Their first hurdle was keeping a lid on what they were finding. They didn't want word getting out that this was now a murder investigation.
00:31:10
But Ashley's dad wanted an update. They kept things vague and didn't reveal the results of her autopsy.
00:31:16
They came over, I think there's three of them, so we're all sitting in our little living room area.
00:31:21
And they said, I don't want to get you riled, but we see some inconsistencies. It's the Saturday, two days after.
00:31:28
Inconsistencies? Well, like things just don't add up. I immediately jump into, what are you talking about?
00:31:34
What are you thinking? So the police are... So they're protecting everyone. They're just saying, everyone cool it.
00:31:39
Let us work and let's figure out exactly what happened. By then, police were already knocking on doors in the Schwams neighborhood and beyond.
00:31:48
A girlfriend said to me, did you get the police ring your doorbell last night? A lot of the neighbors had the police come to their house asking if they have surveillance video.
00:31:56
We live in a video world, cameras everywhere, doorbell cameras, security cameras.
00:32:01
Is that one of the first things you do is say, let's find out if we can see cars coming and going around the time of the accident?
00:32:09
Because you have a really good timeline of when this happened. Absolutely. In particular, officers looked for cameras along the 10-mile route from Ashley's house to the crash site, searching for her car.
00:32:21
They quickly hit pay dirt at a ski club in town, not far from that ditch. You find video here at the Alpine Ski Club that seems to be connecting to your investigation.
00:32:31
That's right. We found a video of showing a car parked in the lot minutes before the crash, sitting here by itself.
00:32:38
We can see what we believe to be somebody walking around, walking around the car.
00:32:42
Can you make out a face? Is it a man or a woman? Quite a distance. The camera's way back on the building, so it just shows the parking lot.
00:32:50
The police were pretty certain the car was Ashley's Mitsubishi. It had pulled into that lot at 5.42 a.m. and pulled out three minutes later at 5.45.
00:33:01
At 5.54 a.m., the volunteer firefighter who first spotted the crash called 911. Three minutes after that, at 5.57, this camera picked up a figure running away from the scene as the car was in flames.
00:33:15
It's crystal clear that it's a person running and they've got a backpack on. And in the background, you can actually see the fire from the car.
00:33:25
So this video doesn't show a face either? No. Another camera farther from the crash caught what appeared to be the same person still running.
00:33:36
Moments later, this camera caught the figure yet again. Neither offered a clear view of the runner's face.
00:33:42
That's part of the things when you're doing your canvas, you don't always get what you're looking for as far as really good finite resolution.
00:33:50
So you work with what you have. So they had a faceless figure running from the crash site.
00:33:56
Find this running man, find your killer? Perhaps. Is it a guy out for a jog? At the same time, we don't know.
00:34:03
All the set of facts come into play. to build the picture as to what happened. As to how Ashley's body came to rest in that ditch,
00:34:12
perhaps detectives needed to look closely at Ashley herself. When they did, their investigation got a lot more complicated.
00:34:20
I had heard it from local friends very early on. The affair? Yeah. So the rumors were starting to swirl.
00:34:27
Yeah, yeah. While detectives were investigating Ashley Schwamm's death, they heard something that pricked up their ears.
00:34:47
Rumors around town about trouble in her marriage. We had information that there had been an affair months earlier.
00:34:53
They learned Ashley had gotten involved with her boss, Steve McDonald, at the home building company.
00:34:59
A short-lived romance that ended when his wife, Alexandra, discovered the affair.
00:35:03
When it was discovered in April of 2022, Ashley was actually visiting her father in the Bahamas.
00:35:10
She'd been here for a week with her girlfriends celebrating her 40th. She got a call that morning by this guy's wife and said,
00:35:22
you were with my husband, the cheating bastard. If you do not tell your husband when he flies down today, I will.
00:35:31
Oh. James and the kids arrived in the Bahamas just as Ashley's friends were leaving to go home.
00:35:38
Jamie comes with the kids and everything's bubbling and lovely and she says, let's take a walk on the beach.
00:35:43
This is hard to imagine. It's frightening. Ian stayed back with the kids. Ashley and James went outside to talk in private.
00:35:52
Something was revealed right here on this beach It happened just down there a couple of hundred yards That when AJ told Jamie that she had had a one affair with his guy and that was
00:36:07
the problem. Ian didn't think his son-in-law would be able to get past it. Jamie's the kind of guy I could never forget.
00:36:15
And I knew that the second he was sitting here talking to me about it. What did he say to you about it?
00:36:21
He wanted to know, did you know? Did you know? At this time, we didn't have any idea.
00:36:29
None. Zero. Zip. He understood James' shock. With me, I couldn't repair it. If it happened to me, telling it truthfully, I'm gone.
00:36:40
Ashley waited a bit before telling her sister, Lindsay. How do you find out about this, that this has happened?
00:36:46
I think it was three, four days after. and she was crying. I remember her telling me and my reaction was, so, I mean, you screwed up. Yeah.
00:36:59
I mean, I'm your sister. I love you. This isn't going to make me hate you. Affairs happen because something is usually not great.
00:37:06
I think maybe she was lonely, but I wasn't up here. So I don't know. It's one of those things
00:37:12
that I kind of wish I had asked her. But I remember I did say to her at the end of our
00:37:17
conversation. I said, I just want you to know that you will spend the rest of your life paying for
00:37:23
this. The weeks that followed were agony for the couple, privately and publicly, especially for
00:37:30
James, a proud firefighter and leader. I had heard it from local friends very early on. The affair?
00:37:36
Yeah. The rumors were starting to swirl. Yeah. Yeah. Just in the town and I felt like horrible
00:37:43
for him. I even noticed a disconnect with him as a friend, and it was just, I think,
00:37:51
because I knew what was going on in his personal life, and he didn't want to bring it up.
00:37:58
Firefighter Jordan Paris remembers one day on the job when James was struggling.
00:38:02
He had a moment in the live fire tower where he came to me, and he was like, straight up, you could tell his day was over. And I thought it was maybe he was injured,
00:38:11
But he was like, no, I'm not injured. He sat in the stairs and his eyes welt up and he says, I'm having a rough time here.
00:38:17
So I said, OK, what's happening? He says, there's a lot going on at home. I don't know.
00:38:22
There's just things breaking down and I got to get some kind of help or something.
00:38:26
At home, like with Ashley? That's all he said. Lindsay says the couple did seek help.
00:38:31
I think the first few months were hard for both of them. But I mean, they were both hell bent on it working and they wanted to.
00:38:39
And so, you know, I think they did counseling separately. They did it together. Ashley wanted to save her marriage.
00:38:45
Absolutely. Absolutely. She loved those two kids. I mean, that was what she wanted her family back.
00:38:51
She didn't want that to ruin it. In fact, they were still in counseling when Ashley died.
00:38:58
Dad, we're trying to fix it. I said, if you can't fix it, you move out with the kids, you go to the chalet, leave him the house.
00:39:06
Just do it. You're there to support her. 100%. She's my AJ. And I'm supporting both.
00:39:13
James had been open about the affair with detectives. He said the counseling was going well.
00:39:18
This was working for you guys. Yeah, it was really working for us. I wish we did it before, but it was good.
00:39:25
Yeah. He also told police that Ashley agreed to find a new job. Part of the deal was that she would stop her.
00:39:32
Ashley wanted things to work so much that she quit her job. I remember when she told me and I thought, great, I mean, you're doing everything to make things right.
00:39:44
But now she was dead and detectives needed to know more about that affair. When you hear a detail like that, how does that now factor into your view on this case?
00:39:55
It's another piece of the puzzle. It's just another part of the story. Obviously, we want to talk to the person that she had the affair with.
00:40:01
We want her to know where he was at the time of the crash. With the murder investigation into Ashley Schwamm accelerating,
00:40:22
Detective Glassford and his team created a war room, a whiteboard at the center.
00:40:26
We jot things down just to keep track of things. As we talk, we come up with things we'll need to do.
00:40:33
There was a picture of Ashley beside the board. and we never lose focus that that's who we're working for.
00:40:39
Also for her children and her family. One thing on their to-do list was speak to Ashley's former boss, Steve McDonald,
00:40:46
the man she'd had the affair with. They learned he'd since gotten divorced. We need to determine if he had anything to do with her death or if he's innocent.
00:40:55
Yeah, I mean, he could be very angry with her. She broke off the relationship to try to make things work with James.
00:41:03
Sure. Maybe there's something going on we don't even know about. Do you bring him in?
00:41:07
Is that the next step? Do you bring in the... Yeah, we got a hold of him. He came in right away.
00:41:11
What was his story? He was with a new girlfriend. He said he was with her at her place in Toronto.
00:41:16
Then we went and got the videotape of the parking garage at her condo. And sure enough, his car's there.
00:41:23
I think he had to pass in and out. And so we were able to prove that too. We were very satisfied that he was somewhere else at the time of this death.
00:41:31
They also questioned McDonald's now ex-wife, Alexandra. She was angry with Ashley.
00:41:38
She called her out on this Bahamas trip, told her to tell her husband or else she would.
00:41:45
Absolutely. We checked into her as well. We found out she was on an airplane coming from a ski trip in Austria at the rate at the time.
00:41:52
Literally when this happened. She had an alibi. She was in an airplane Detectives were being careful not to have tunnel vision looking into every possible suspect they even checked out the contractor james said ashley had a dispute with there some
00:42:07
nasty emails back and forth we interviewed that person as well and were quite satisfied they had
00:42:12
nothing to do with ashley's death so detectives decided to take another look at james his story
00:42:18
about where he was at the time ashley's suv went off the road and burst into flames never changed
00:42:24
And he accounted for every moment he was out that morning. So just walk me through the route and sort of just trace it, okay, if you can.
00:42:31
Sure. Remember, James had drawn the route of where he said he walked the dog. I gave him a pen and said, here, trace your route for me.
00:42:40
If he was being truthful, surely neighborhood security video would confirm his story.
00:42:45
Would you say this investigation at this point is as much to rule him in as it is to rule him out?
00:42:50
Yeah, if we found him locking the dog, then he didn't have anything to do with her death.
00:42:55
Officers scoured through hours of footage and noticed something was missing, or someone.
00:43:02
That canvas team that was now looking for his route, they don't find him. They didn't spot James anywhere.
00:43:11
They wondered if perhaps the cameras simply weren't pointed in the right direction.
00:43:14
To test it out, Detectives Lloyd and Schiffman headed to the Schwams neighborhood.
00:43:19
The two of us actually walked his route. We set off at 5 o'clock. 5.14. 5.14. And we started at his house and it was snowy just the same.
00:43:31
And we walked the track that he said that he walked, the two of us. This time, when they looked at the videos, they did see something themselves.
00:43:41
There they are walking the route James said he took. We're there. But when we compared to the day that he walked it, he was not.
00:43:48
So the absence of video, the absence of evidence is not looking good for James Schwamm.
00:43:57
They thought back to a moment in his interview that now seemed telling. I'd love to find someone who saw you there that morning.
00:44:05
And then all those other questions, which almost don't matter, don't matter at all.
00:44:10
Do you know what I mean? Yeah, sorry, I didn't put it together. Yeah. This was a moment during the interview where he had a real visceral reaction. He had a tick with his lip and it twitched and it twitched. It became very evident that there was some kind of stressor going on. And he said at one point he didn't realize what we were going to do.
00:44:34
What does that mean? I don't think he thought we'd be checking his story. I think he thought he'd tell us what happened and we'd just believe him.
00:44:43
He was a fire captain. He was a fellow emergency responder. And we would just accept that as the truth.
00:44:51
Later, Detective Lloyd put something else together that was telling. It was when police first went to James' house.
00:44:57
I knew that Jeremy and the other officers had gone to his house initially to do the death notification.
00:45:04
The detective looked at the video from James' work at that very moment. And I can see him reach into his pocket, and I can see he's studying this phone.
00:45:14
So James is seeing you at his door. He's seeing them at the door. He could have asked them, like, hey, officers, what are you doing at my door?
00:45:22
Instead, he ignored them. And he puts the phone back into his pocket. They also discovered this from Walkers.
00:45:29
James with what looked like a laptop. Like an iMac type thing. He grabs onto this computer, I believe to be a computer, and he throws it into a trash can.
00:45:39
And then he walks out to the dumpster out back and he comes in with an empty trash can.
00:45:44
And then when we went down to try to recover the laptop from the dumpster, it was gone.
00:45:52
Detectives now suspected James had killed Ashley and staged the crash. One problem, the timing of it all was baffling.
00:45:59
How did he pull it off? How does he get home and get the kids to school on time?
00:46:05
That was a question we had to go answer. We've got this very small window. Very small.
00:46:11
We picked one of the fittest individuals we know in the office. So this is a little experiment here.
00:46:16
Can he do it? Ashley's family was hunkered down at her father's chalet. Lindsay had a growing unease about James.
00:46:36
It was almost like he wanted to just put it behind him, that it was done, that it happened, and we just, we need to move on with things now.
00:46:44
Did you think, well, maybe this is his way of handling this? That's what I thought. Everyone grieves differently.
00:46:48
And there were two kids involved, right? Like, he cannot fall apart. It didn't feel right, but at the same time, I didn't, I mean, no one's gone through something like this.
00:46:58
Lindsay didn't know it yet, but James Schwamm had become suspect number one in the murder of his wife, Ashley.
00:47:04
But detectives were scratching their heads wondering how he could have pulled it off.
00:47:09
If he drove Ashley's SUV to the mountain and crashed it, how did he get back to his house without a car?
00:47:15
It's 10 miles away. You know, there's one vehicle involved in this potential crime here.
00:47:22
How does he get home and get the kids to school on time? That was a question we had to go answer.
00:47:30
We had a hard time with this one. Detectives took another look at the timeline. We have the 911 call at 5.54.
00:47:39
Then at 5.57 a.m., they have that footage of a man running from the crash site. And they'd since discovered another video, something damning.
00:47:49
This one more than an hour later, miles away in Collingwood. At 7.07 a.m., a home security camera captured someone running toward James's house.
00:47:59
It's the same person. that ran from the scene. He had the same backpack on, and it actually looks like he's carrying some boots in one hand.
00:48:07
And he turned onto Chris the Court, James' street. If the running man was James,
00:48:15
police figured he had about an hour and 15 minutes to make the 10-mile trip home.
00:48:20
James was in great shape. True. So we decided we were going to have one of our members do the run.
00:48:28
so we picked the one of your colleagues correct we we picked one of the fittest oh individuals we
00:48:36
know in the office so this is a little experiment here how long can he can he do it it's a long run
00:48:42
it's a long run he set his watch and he picked a route to go back and it took him an hour and 25
00:48:50
minutes that's long time long time so that that wouldn't be feasible then that's doesn't seem like
00:48:57
that would be how he got if he did this how he got back to so he's off by about 10 to 15 minutes
00:49:03
they wondered if maybe james had ridden a bike they knew ashley's dad's chalet was not too far
00:49:09
from the crash site maybe he just left a bicycle there and maybe he rode back so we had someone
00:49:15
else get on a bike and do the same thing that would shave a lot of time off it did a lot so
00:49:20
What was that one? 45 minutes. But they didn't find any video of a guy on a bike.
00:49:27
They set that puzzle piece aside and turned their attention to another lead. They'd been notified about a call
00:49:33
that came into the police department hours after the murder. Ontario Provincial Police.
00:49:38
Hi, I was just wanting to share some information that a student gave me. The caller was a first grade teacher
00:49:46
worried about a student. Okay, and what did she tell you? Well, she said that She didn't have a very good night last night.
00:49:53
She had woken up to her parents fighting. And then she proceeded to tell me that her mom had fallen down the stairs.
00:50:02
And so I asked her if she had, you know, seen her mom. And she said no. But my dad yelled off and said she was okay.
00:50:09
She said she couldn't sleep. So she made a necklace, like an elastic band necklace.
00:50:15
And then I said, well, did you see your mom in the morning? She said no, that her mom had gone for a long hike.
00:50:22
And what's the mom's name? Do we know? Her name is Ashley. It was Ashley's six-year-old daughter's teacher.
00:50:29
It's what changed the perspective. James had mentioned an argument to the detectives, but he downplayed it.
00:50:36
Now his daughter's story was making it seem much bigger. A few days after that call, they asked James to bring his children in for an interview.
00:50:44
That's so delicate. Very delicate. So young. They told James it was just routine. Is he in the room then? He allows the children to do
00:50:54
interviews alone. Yes. What do you learn from the kids? There's a girl and a boy.
00:50:59
They're how old at this time? Six and nine. Okay. So what are they telling you about that night,
00:51:04
the night before their mom's death? They really didn't give us anything of any value.
00:51:12
We never heard about a fight. We didn't hear about a fall down the stairs. Kids were nervous.
00:51:17
Kids were uncomfortable. Kids were grieving. And the daughter just didn't repeat what was potentially, I guess, a bad memory of mom after just losing mom.
00:51:28
But detectives couldn't dismiss that call from the teacher. To them, a clearer picture of Ashley's final moments was emerging with James squarely in the frame.
00:51:38
On your whiteboard, you had one side of why he might have done this and another side of why he might not have done this.
00:51:45
That's right. And as we go about our investigation, the things on the side that he didn't do it start to disappear.
00:51:52
And the things on the side that he did it starts to get longer. You recover something that is like right out of a Hollywood script.
00:52:02
It really was remarkable. And James was in for a big surprise. What's his reaction?
00:52:09
What's going on? I don't understand. even though detectives had gathered a long list of evidence pointing to james schwamm
00:52:26
murdering his wife it was still hard for them to wrap their heads around look down
00:52:31
he was a well-respected fire captain don't be too bouncy i'm trying not to be bouncy
00:52:36
a man whose job was saving people where'd he go he does have instant credibility being a fire
00:52:44
captain we're gonna find out how much a firefighter weighs with all of their gear on
00:52:48
he's devoted his life to service and he works with police and you know he's in a very distinguished
00:52:56
position correct and we run these people through our systems there was no history with either james
00:53:02
or ashley no no 911 calls to the house or or not claims of domestic violence anything like that
00:53:10
Nothing. Detectives even discovered a post James had shared supporting domestic violence awareness.
00:53:17
Still, they scheduled a meeting with the prosecutor to go over the evidence. This is a very circumstantial case at this point.
00:53:26
Yes. Were you concerned? No. If you had enough? No. I was quite comfortable with the fact that we had enough evidence to not only arrest, but to prosecute for second-degree murder.
00:53:39
Detectives had developed a theory of what happened between James and Ashley during that January snowstorm.
00:53:45
We believe that this was a fight that went bad. His daughter heard an argument that night.
00:53:51
Then mom fell down the stairs. Something happened in that house and it just ended in a tragedy And then this is more of a cover He kills her He panicked What do I do Then he comes up with this story The story of Ashley going on
00:54:08
that early morning hike and the cover-up, they say, was elaborate. During the autopsy,
00:54:13
the pathologist noticed something that hadn't burned in the car fire. The shoe was actually a
00:54:19
specific snow hiking shoe with metal studs in the bottom. So he redressed her to get her set up so
00:54:28
everything looked the part. So you think after he killed her, he dressed her to look like she was
00:54:34
going for a hike? He did. After he dressed her, detectives believe James put Ashley's body in her
00:54:40
SUV. But how did he make it look like she left the house alive? Remember that video of James
00:54:46
leaving to walk the dog and Ashley's SUV leaving just minutes later? He went one way and she went
00:54:53
the other. Their theory was that James used his phone to remotely turn the camera off,
00:54:58
long enough to circle back, drop off the dog, get into her SUV and drive it away himself.
00:55:04
They also think he sent those texts from Ashley's phone about the gas cans and vertigo.
00:55:10
Right there, it's the explanation for the crash. The cover-up continued when he arrived at
00:55:16
Alpine Ski Club parking lot. We think this is James getting the vehicle and Ashley ready
00:55:24
for that crash. He doused her in gasoline. He doused the car in gasoline and drove it into the ditch
00:55:31
and then set it on fire. You recover something that is like right out of a Hollywood script,
00:55:39
a piece of evidence. Correct. So the vehicle was removed from the scene and then it was taken back
00:55:45
for a forensic examination. And when they're sifting through the passenger compartment of the vehicle,
00:55:52
they found a Zippo lighter with the initials JWS, James William Schwamm. He's thinking this fire is going to consume everything
00:56:02
that's there. She's going to be consumed. That lighter is going to be consumed. There's going to be nothing left.
00:56:08
Do you feel now with this lighter, with all the things you've learned, that there is enough to make an arrest of James Schwamm?
00:56:15
Yes. Where does this happen? So we had surveillance on him, and they had him coming back towards his house.
00:56:22
And we arrested him basically on his right outside of his driveway. It was one week after the murder of his wife, February 2nd, 2023.
00:56:31
We took him out of the vehicle and told him that he was under arrest for murder.
00:56:36
Second degree murder and indignity to a body. What's his reaction? Jeremy, what's going on? I don't understand. What can I do to help?
00:56:45
That's a first. It was a very odd reaction. I've never heard a response like that after or during an arrest.
00:56:54
Me neither. And what do you say? I think it's him implying that we got it wrong.
00:56:59
As James was led away, they could see his children in the car. And the children are watching this arrest?
00:57:05
Yeah, the kids are in the backseat. That's really heartbreaking that they had to see that.
00:57:12
Yeah, it is. and it's unfortunate it happened that way. I still think about the boy, the little boy.
00:57:19
I went up to the car and the little boy asked me if he'd ever see his dad again.
00:57:25
That kind of drives it home. That there are other victims here. Detectives called Ashley's dad, Ian.
00:57:34
They say we want to talk to you. Us, you know, Jamie, just our family. Is this at the chalet?
00:57:40
They come to us and they say we just want to let you know we've just arrested Jamie for the murder of Ashley.
00:57:47
What is the expression on everyone's faces? Lindsay bursts into tears. Oh, Jesus.
00:57:54
If the police are right and Jamie did this, this is the ultimate betrayal. Yeah, he does betrayal.
00:58:02
He does it well. I mean, the lying, the tears, the work that went into this. And then you realize he hasn't watched enough of Dateline because he screwed up in so many ways.
00:58:20
There was a lot of crying, a lot of shock. It was really hard. And for like a moment, I remember I felt bad for him.
00:58:30
And I think that's one of the most screwed up things for me. Because I had just heard he had killed my sister.
00:58:38
but he was family right firefighter jordan paris saw an announcement pop up on his phone
00:58:45
social media posts went out and said former fire captain james schwamm no longer works for i was
00:58:53
like they said the word former so i took offense how dare they put the word former meaning he's
00:59:00
basically guilty and i was like no that's not how it works that didn't sit right with you like hey
00:59:04
give him a chance to explain. Both he and Brittany held out hope that maybe James was innocent.
00:59:11
It's just so, like, surreal. Yeah, I didn't see it coming. No history, no, you know, no...
00:59:18
It didn't make sense to you. No, it did not make sense at all. And I'm like, why aren't there more people, like,
00:59:22
defending him? Detectives weren't sharing any information about the murder. They continued to gather evidence
00:59:28
and were about to learn. The plot was more diabolical than they imagined. And that's like a whole new level of evil.
00:59:35
It's horrible. News spread quickly about James Schwamm's arrest. Schwamm arrest came a week after Milne body was discovered in the early morning hours of January 26th This was the number one story in Canada Mike Arcelides is a reporter for CTV He covers the Collingwood area
01:00:06
This didn't just make news in Canada. This made news around the world. This isn't a guy you would think would turn to murder.
01:00:14
You hear about a car crash, you hear about a fire, and then the man accused of murder is a firefighter.
01:00:21
It's the same community I once covered as a young reporter. And to protect your valuables in general, you may want to have an alarm system installed.
01:00:29
I covered fires and accidents and everything in between, but never a story like this one.
01:00:35
Ashley's murder shook the community to its core. There was one night our kitchen was lit up with flashlights in their backyard.
01:00:43
And it just was like, how is this my house? It feels like it's out of a movie. A crime scene.
01:00:47
A crime scene. Literally a crime scene. And it was just an eerie, awful feeling.
01:00:52
Police believe the couple had a fight and James just snapped. Until a man walked into the police station.
01:01:00
I'll never forget that day. I was sitting in my office and one of our staff members comes to say to me that there's a doctor in the front office that wants to talk to you about the homicide that you're working on.
01:01:13
He speaks about being at a party with James present. James had asked him about breaking necks like they do in the Steven Seagal movies.
01:01:23
You know, the big twist and all that stuff. And the doctor was like, well, I don't know.
01:01:26
Maybe something you don't think too much of, right? Because... Maybe not at the time.
01:01:31
But now it was raising the detective's eyebrows. He knew Ashley's neck had been broken.
01:01:37
But this is something that no one else knew, right? You had not released this detail.
01:01:42
No, we consider that hold back evidence. We keep it close to us. Because really only the killer knows.
01:01:48
It turned out James had been asking a lot of questions in the weeks leading up to Ashley's murder.
01:01:53
There were searches about alimony and that kind of thing, right? Like, how much is it going to cost?
01:01:59
He was talking to some colleagues that had been through a divorce. Like, how much did this cost you?
01:02:05
Yeah. And then there was a transition into, you know, doing Google searches on, can the police see what I'm looking at?
01:02:12
Can the police find deleted information? This story is about to take a major turn.
01:02:17
what we uncovered afterwards made it sick. The evidence now suggested to detectives that James planned Ashley's murder.
01:02:26
Take those gas cans that caused the SUV to erupt in flames. The day before the crash, James texted this to Ashley.
01:02:34
There are two gas cans in garage and workbench. Please, please can you fill them up?
01:02:39
I forgot to bring down here. In his police interview, he implied that Ashley did just that
01:02:45
and had forgotten to take the cans out of her car. So when she leaves that morning,
01:02:51
she leaves with the cans still in the car is what I'm getting at. Yeah. Why would she do that?
01:03:00
I almost don't know. They were certain he was lying. They knew Ashley never filled those gas cans.
01:03:06
We looked at all the gas stations in Collingwood, and it's another thing of what wasn't there,
01:03:11
and she was never there getting gas. Detectives believed that gas can text was just a ruse
01:03:17
to fool police into thinking Ashley put them in her SUV. In truth, they said, James got the gas two days before the murder.
01:03:26
When he was on his way to the fire hall to start his shift, he actually puts a gas can, a Red Jerry gas can in his car.
01:03:36
And off he goes. They thought he filled both those cans and later planted them in the back of Ashley's SUV.
01:03:44
This is looking like premeditation now to you. This was the first bit of planned and deliberate.
01:03:53
The more they looked, the worse it seemed for James. Days before the murder, cameras captured him adjusting the home's security system.
01:04:01
And he moves the camera system from inside the garage to the back of his house. It's full of snow.
01:04:08
The detectives could think of only one reason why he'd want that camera out of the garage.
01:04:13
So that he can load his wife's body into the vehicle inside the garage, concealed from everybody so nobody can see him, drive her up to the mountain.
01:04:24
He had a plan. That he appeared to fine-tune in the run-up to his wife's murder.
01:04:29
While examining James' vehicle, we found a dash cam that he had set up in that car.
01:04:35
Because it's outlier. We have video of him the day before her death driving into this parking lot with his young son.
01:04:46
To detectives, it looked like James was scoping out the lot near the crash site.
01:04:50
Like he's planning on where to park and where to get ready to do what he's going to do the next day.
01:04:59
We never see his face in any of these videos. But you could clearly hear him talking.
01:05:06
with his son in that video. And at one point, you could see the profile as his son walked by in front of the car.
01:05:15
That's like a whole new level of evil if you're bringing your son along for the pre-planning of his mom's murder.
01:05:24
It's horrible. Then, they say, James roped in his unwitting parents. We found evidence of a phone call
01:05:32
that James made to his mom. And she told him that her car was now available for him to use the day before the crash.
01:05:41
A new car entering the picture. A car that's never been part of our investigation.
01:05:45
But it was now a pivotal discovery. After talking to his parents, detectives learned that the night before the murder,
01:05:52
James parked his mom car near that ditch The next day immediately after setting fire to Ashley SUV he ran to the awaiting car We found it all We found the car leaving his parents house
01:06:06
They found the car coming to the parking lot. We found the car heading back to Collingwood after the murder.
01:06:13
Police figured out where he dropped the car off. They found a text his mother sent him.
01:06:17
She said, James, just so I'm clear, my car is at the kids' school. And he texts back, yes.
01:06:26
From there, police said cameras picked up James again, running from the school back home.
01:06:31
Finally, they had an answer to a question that had nagged them from the start. How James got back to Collingwood so quickly from the scene.
01:06:39
He had a getaway car. But why? Why would he do this? That potentially the next Mrs. Schwarm was getting lined up.
01:06:50
And you won't believe who it was. Detectives were convinced James Schwamm had planned his wife's murder,
01:07:10
but they wanted to know why. Her father Ian believed the affair was the catalyst.
01:07:15
He was never, ever going to forgive AJ for doing what she did, embarrassing him.
01:07:25
That kind of, that's his mantra. He's very huge and really big in other people's perception of him.
01:07:35
I really believe that it was a huge blow to his ego. After speaking to his firefighter friends,
01:07:40
he was going through a lot of emotional withdrawal. They also learned he'd been asking his fellow firefighters for advice on divorce.
01:07:48
I think he was worried, ultimately, that if he and Ashley divorced, that he would be losing some of those finer things.
01:07:59
The house, child support, alimony, and all of his stature. And we know he spoke to, we're colleagues, about that very thing.
01:08:10
Yeah, so if Ashley's gone, he gets the children, gets to keep the house. Is there life insurance involved?
01:08:16
There's life insurance. There's two policies. How much? One was for a million dollars, payable to him.
01:08:22
And the other one was for $250,000 for the children with him as the executor. In the event of Ashley's accidental death.
01:08:33
Wow. That's... It's interesting. Yeah. It certainly pops out off the page when you look at stuff like that.
01:08:42
It certainly suggested money was a motive for the killing. Then, police discovered another one.
01:08:47
He developed a friendship with Alex MacDonald. Alexandra, the woman whose husband had that affair with Ashley.
01:08:54
James had her name listed under an alias in his phone. Detectives could see that shortly after the affair was discovered,
01:09:01
James and Alexandra began texting each other. It was very, they were flirtatious, but not overt.
01:09:08
And maybe that's not even the right word. They were just connected. They were two people who had both, I think, had their serious problems with that affair,
01:09:18
who were now together sharing things. They asked her if there was more to the relationship.
01:09:24
She acknowledged that they had developed a friendship, a relationship, and that they had mutual feelings for each other.
01:09:31
But they could tell James wanted more. When we looked at his phone, he had over a thousand messages with her in the month of January.
01:09:40
The month Ashley died, five days before the murder, he texted this. I wish you were here, but you're with the wife.
01:09:48
Not really. She's here, but we're not. I'm happy with my decision, but no one else knows it's what I want.
01:09:54
Please don't tell anyone. He said, I'm going to do what's going to make me happy without any details.
01:10:02
Leaving detectives to read between the lines that James wanted Ashley gone so he could start a new life.
01:10:08
and that potentially the next Mrs. Schwamm was getting lined up. It was clear from the text that Alexandra didn't know what decision James was talking about.
01:10:21
There was no indication from his phone or anything that they had been, you know, even if it was cryptic, that there was something going on with the planning.
01:10:29
Not at all. They ruled out the possibility that she was part of the plan. Two weeks after James' arrest,
01:10:36
the prosecutor upgraded the charge against him to first-degree murder. For friends like Anne Lockhart, certain moments took on a new, darker meaning.
01:10:46
I have two little chairs and a table in our front patio. I said to Ashley, do you want to sit and have a glass of wine?
01:10:51
We hardly sat down, and James came out and said, Ashley, let's go. And she said, I'm just going to finish this wine, and we'll be along.
01:10:57
And not a few moments later, James came out, and he seemed angry. and he was, Ash, time to go.
01:11:04
Right now, let's go. It was that one moment of control that I saw. I felt like sick.
01:11:11
You're like, wow, like I was hugging and holding this person like hours after he like killed his wife.
01:11:20
I went quick to anger. You took away a mother from their children. You took away the love of your life,
01:11:24
a beautiful marriage they had. You jeopardize, you selfish. lindsey couldn't believe her family once loved and trusted this man to know that he planned this
01:11:35
this wasn't like he woke up and then just killed her he planned this i think that is one of the
01:11:42
hardest pills to swallow you all are bracing for a trial absolutely and it could be a big one
01:11:50
with all the evidence and i mean yes the trial we knew wouldn't be for i think they had said
01:11:57
two years? Oh, a released few details about how James killed Ashley. You're hearing so many rumors about what happened, like ridiculous stuff.
01:12:08
I couldn't wait for the trial because I just wanted all the evidence and the facts like in front of me.
01:12:13
And then I could finally eliminate the idea that he had some good in him somewhere.
01:12:19
There is a lot of work to be done. Absolutely. They say most of the work starts when you make an arrest and you're getting ready for the trial.
01:12:27
Then his phone rang. So you get some news out of the blue that James Schwamm wants to talk.
01:12:48
More than a year had passed since the death of Ashley Schwamm. Prosecutors were building a case against her husband James,
01:12:55
hoping to convince a jury that he'd carefully planned and carried out her murder.
01:13:00
Ashley's children had begun opening up about that night, about their mother's final moments.
01:13:06
They went to counseling. They started to speak more about what they experienced that night.
01:13:13
Her son remembered being awakened by his parents arguing and stepping out of his room.
01:13:18
The son was able to say that Ashley had asked him to bring her a phone. Her son said she was going to call the police.
01:13:26
The last thing she said to her son was, get my phone. Ashley never made that call.
01:13:34
The son said his dad told him to go back to bed. I mean, that just honestly gives me chills hearing that.
01:13:41
It's really hard to hear that. That's really awful. Later, he heard his father crying and talking to Alexa, the virtual assistant.
01:13:51
What time is it? And he heard three o'clock. When he woke up a few hours later, his mother was gone.
01:13:58
The family feared Ashley's son would have to tell that story on the stand. Then things took a dramatic turn.
01:14:04
You get some news out of the blue that James Schwamm wants to talk. It started with him waiving his preliminary hearing.
01:14:14
And then shortly after that, he made it known through his counsel that he wanted to talk.
01:14:19
James had been sitting in jail for more than a year. Now he was asking for a deal.
01:14:25
The prosecutor reaches out to you with some big news. Yes the whole investigative team and my whole family that Jamie would plead second degree They said he going to plead and this is the deal he wants
01:14:42
But you guys decide. So they took it to you. Oh, 100%. They said, guys, you decide.
01:14:49
The family was willing to consider it to spare the children. James had been charged with first-degree murder.
01:14:55
In Canada, that means he was facing life in prison with the possibility of parole in 25 years.
01:15:01
Now he was hoping for a lighter sentence. One of the big concerns with second degree is, you know, he could be eligible for parole as early as 10 years.
01:15:12
It's crazy. Potentially. You're at the mercy of the judge. But Ashley's family felt confident because of the callousness and planning that went into this murder.
01:15:22
The prosecution could convince a judge James deserved the harshest sentence possible.
01:15:28
So the family agreed to the deal. In June 2024, a year and a half after James murdered his wife Ashley,
01:15:36
he was led into a courtroom ready to admit what he had done. He introduced himself. I'm James Schwamm.
01:15:43
And he gave his date of birth. He was respectful. Mike Arcelides covered the hearing.
01:15:49
He noticed the courtroom was divided down the middle with Ashley's family and friends on the left side
01:15:54
and just a small showing for James on the right. It was two or three people on one side of the courtroom.
01:16:01
and about 50-60 on the other. And it felt like a funeral in there. The Schwamm family's good name has now come down to this.
01:16:09
Yeah. As part of the deal, James had signed an agreed statement of fact confirming all the evidence uncovered in the investigation.
01:16:17
All the disturbing details were true. So this is essentially showing, even though this is second degree,
01:16:24
this is telling you how diabolical it was. And I think it also shows that, yeah, okay, so he's pleading, but we gotcha.
01:16:31
We got you. The courtroom fell silent as the prosecutor read aloud, step by step, how James murdered his wife.
01:16:39
Brittany couldn't believe she'd ever defended him. I feel so guilty for it now. I just wish I had the opportunity to apologize for it.
01:16:49
Oh. The judge invited Ashley's friends and family to speak. You gave a very powerful victim impact statement.
01:16:57
What was your core thought that you wanted to get across? She didn't have to go.
01:17:05
And it wasn't right. I just want him to pay for what he did She just wasn some victim She was a sister an aunt a friend a mom
01:17:21
She was amazing. He took her from you. Yeah. He shattered your family. He did. He did.
01:17:30
Everyone was crying. Aunts and uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters, trying to make sense in their heads of what exactly happened here.
01:17:39
Does it look like Jamie Schwamm is absorbing any of this? None. None whatsoever. He showed no emotion.
01:17:45
He didn't cry. He looked very stoic. Ashley's father, Ian, gave the final impact statement.
01:17:52
He looked at me and I looked at him as I talked. What did you want him to know in that courtroom?
01:17:58
Well, how cowardice the move was. It was just so cowardly done. Ian had always thought James cared more about his reputation and his image than anything else.
01:18:11
I wanted to cut that. And the way you cut that is to say you were hired to be a protector, a fireman.
01:18:21
So you always want praise and medals and things. Just think what you're getting now.
01:18:27
This is the worst of all things happening to you because the world knows you'll never escape.
01:18:34
Yeah. Is this the ultimate embarrassment for him? Oh, God, if there's anything worse, you let me know.
01:18:41
James Schwamm was the last person to speak. He told the judge that he is exactly where he needs to be because of his terrible, awful actions.
01:18:50
He said he is haunted by what he's done and how it continues to hurt the people he loves the most.
01:18:56
His attorney tried to plea for leniency, saying that he was taking responsibility.
01:19:02
He pled guilty. Yeah. Who gives a crap? He did it for no other reason than to serve himself.
01:19:11
What did you hear in that courtroom? What I didn't hear was an apology. I didn't hear him say he was sorry.
01:19:19
The judge gave James Schwamm life in prison with a chance of parole in 20 years.
01:19:24
He will be 58. It's the longest sentence in Canadian history for a person with no prior record.
01:19:30
The judge also prohibited him from having contact with his children until they turn 18.
01:19:36
The judge gave this unprecedented sentence. Did that bring you some peace knowing that the judge really listened?
01:19:43
Yes it did Nothing brings her back But I felt like the judge heard us This past September Ashley family had a memorial in her honor
01:19:57
You held an event, a very special event for Ashley in conjunction with my friend's house,
01:20:02
which is a domestic violence shelter here in the area. It was amazing. We could finally celebrate her after two years.
01:20:11
As one of her favorite pastimes was hiking, we did a memorial hike for her. And sunflowers.
01:20:20
And she loved sunflowers. And there was a local man who donated all the sunflowers.
01:20:27
And it was absolutely beautiful. And she would have loved it. They expected 100 to 125, and they got 175.
01:20:37
And people stayed right to the end. And I think they got a whole bunch of dough, I hope.
01:20:45
In addition to celebrating Ashley, the event raised money for a fund created in her memory.
01:20:51
The Sunflower Fund is for children of victims of domestic violence and abuse. And it's to help them with their camps and their therapy and all of that.
01:21:06
Something that Ashley would want to focus on. Absolutely. She would have loved it.
01:21:11
Yeah. The best part for us was seeing the kids again, to see how happy the kids seem.
01:21:17
I could see the love that is surrounding them. And it's very obvious they're in good hands and thriving.
01:21:25
Ashley's children, now 11 and 8, are being raised by her brother and sister-in-law.
01:21:31
What is the future for all of you? I mean, we have to move on, right? and she would not want us sitting here being upset and doing this, you know?
01:21:39
Ashley lives on through her children. Oh, my God, yeah. They are in amazing hands.
01:21:45
She would be so proud of those kids. She would be very proud. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
01:21:59
And don't forget to check out our Talking Dateline podcast, which will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode,
01:22:06
available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central.
01:22:14
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.