What Led Two Lawyers To Take Hostage And Torture A Managing Partner And His Wife?
This case is very sad and deeply disturbing, on many levels.
Alecia and Andrew Schmuhl
It seems that 2014 was a year of terrible crimes against lawyers — crimes that are only now making their way through the justice system, two years later. We have extensively covered, and continue to cover, the latest developments in the Dan Markel murder case. And now we offer you a closer look into the horrific home invasion and torture inflicted upon Virginia lawyer Leo Fisher and his wife by two other lawyers, Andrew and Alecia Schmuhl.
We have written about the Schmuhls at length in these pages. Today we draw your attention to a comprehensive examination of their case, in the form of an impressively detailed, deeply disturbing piece by Jason Fagone for Washingtonian magazine.
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Fagone’s article opens with a chilling account of what happened at Leo Fisher and Sue Duncan’s home in McLean, Virginia, on November 9, 2014. It captures the horrific details of the home invasion and torture carried out by Andrew Schmuhl, including how he sliced Fisher’s throat, repeatedly stabbed both Fisher and Duncan, kicked Fisher in the head, and shot Duncan.
But Fagone also takes a closer look at the Schmuhls, depicting them as human beings and not just villains. Their life together started normally enough: they met at Valparaiso Law School in Indiana, married, and moved to Washington, D.C., where Andrew served in the Army JAG Corps and Alecia worked at small law firms, including Bean, Kinney & Korman, where she worked with Leo Fisher. As readers who have followed the case might recall, the firm’s decision to let Alecia go may have triggered the Schmuhls’ crimes against Fisher and Duncan.
Another contributing factor: the many prescription drugs that Andrew was on, including Fentanyl, a powerful painkiller that Andrew started taking after he sustained a spinal injury during Army training. Fagone’s article raises some questions about Andrew Schmuhl: “Was he in his right mind during the attack? Was the ‘interrogation’ and torture of Leo Fisher and Sue Duncan the cold-blooded act of a monster, or was he a basically decent person turned into a zombie by prescription medications and their toxic interactions?”
Regardless of your view on those issues, there’s no disputing that this is a very sad story. Andrew Schmuhl will probably spend the rest of his life in prison, and Alecia Schmuhl faces between 10 and 45 years in prison when she’s sentenced in January. As for Leo Fisher and Sue Duncan, they continue to suffer, two years later. From Washingtonian:
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The attack left them with lasting injuries, some permanent. Sue experienced concussion-like symptoms in the aftermath and still has ringing in her ears. Her back aches all the time from the scars of the stab wounds, which formed keloids, “like this raised, hard red ridge,” she says. Leo has trouble chewing and swallowing food: When Andrew cut his throat, it severed the nerves on one side of his face, making it difficult to control his tongue. When he gets tired, he slurs his words. It’s a permanent injury that has affected his livelihood, his ability as a lawyer to speak clearly.
The attack also changed Leo in less tangible ways. He always considered himself a calm and open-hearted person, but now he feels rage, and it’s hard to press it down. It’s hard to watch his wife suffer, too—Sue, the one who saved them both. They would have died if she hadn’t triggered the security alarm and dragged her bleeding body to the phone. She isn’t interested in socializing anymore. She has nightmares. She wakes up thinking people are coming in the night to kill her. There are moments when he can hardly bear it. At trial, on the stand, Leo Fisher, a quiet man, tried to describe the feeling. “I just want to eject myself from where I am and scream at the top of my voice,” he said. “I’ve never been a person who hated before, and I hate now.”
Check out the full article via the link below.
A Home Invasion, A Torture Session, One Lawyer Nearly Killing Another—The Gruesome November Night in One of Washington’s Wealthiest Suburbs
[Washingtonian]
David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at [email protected].
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