However, Schwinaman - who has yet to comment on Globe's allegations - can never be prosecuted for the child’s December 25, 1996 murder because he cut a plea deal with prosecutors who agreed he wouldn’t have to submit his DNA that might prove he committed other offences.
“He agreed to plead guilty to a lesser crime in return for a deal that took his DNA off the table for any other case – including JonBenet,” a source tells Globe.
JonBenet had been found in the basement of her family’s Boulder, Colorado home, bound and strangled with a garrote, and sexually molested, her skull bashed in.
Schwinaman’s ex-wife Heather Kubes can’t provide him with “a 100 percent alibi” during the murder time frame.
“It wasn’t unusual for him to disappear for a few hours and have no explanation for it,” Kubes says. “I have no idea what he was capable of. I think anything is possible.
In 1995, Schwinaman pled guilty to sexual assault on a child, and a four-year sentence was postponed.
In 2003, he made a plea deal on the three sex attacks on girls between 1993 and 1996. Two victims had been bound with rope and the other girl’s hands had been secured behind her back with duct tape.
This article first published on New Idea.
