THREE RIVERS, Mich. (WOOD) — On a table in the South Carolina jail cell where cold case murder suspect Robert Waters died by suicide, guards found Bible-based pamphlets about creation and forgiveness:
"From Bitterness to Forgiveness," "The Power of Forgiveness" and "Discovering Creation."
Waters, 53, of Beaufort, South Carolina, arrested just days earlier in the December 1988 murder of 19-year-old Cathy Swartz in Three Rivers, had hanged himself in his cell with a sheet, according to documents obtained by Target 8.
Swartz's daughter, Courteney Swartz, who was 9 months old and in the other room when her mom was killed, said she may have been able to forgive him had he returned to Michigan to face the charge.
"He's a coward," Swartz, now 35, said. "I feel there might be more to this story and him just taking his own life was just the easiest way for him to not have to deal with anything."
She doesn't understand why he wasn't on suicide watch.
Waters, a married father of two, was living a comfortable life in Beaufort, South Carolina, before his arrest on April 30. He owned a plumbing company. The man who had lived near Three Rivers as a teenager had no criminal record.
St. Joseph County sheriff's deputies were preparing to return him to Michigan to face a murder charge when he died by suicide on May 6 in the Beaufort County Detention Center — five days and eight hours after his arrest.
Jail officials have refused to discuss the death.
But documents obtained by Target 8 through the Freedom of Information Act show he was in a general population cell, not on suicide watch.
Records show he used a sheet to hang himself from the top bunk of a bed in his cell. Guards said he was alone.
He was dead by the time jail guards found him.
Guards told investigators they last checked on him a half-hour earlier and that he didn't appear suicidal.
A guard told investigators Waters "did not appear to want to hurt himself and seemed normal," in the days before his death.
Another described him as "a nice person."
There were no reports of mental health issues; the only medication he was taking was Tylenol for back pain.
Water was not investigated initially in the murder of Swartz, who was beaten and strangled in her apartment before her throat was cut.
Police believe Waters, a former classmate and friend of the victim's fiance, had tried to sexually assault her.
Waters, then 18, left behind a bloody fingerprint and his footprint in blood.
But it was his DNA in that fingerprint that finally led police to him. The prints also matched.
St. Joseph County District Judge Jeffrey Middleton, who worked on the case for years as a prosecutor, thought it would never be solved or that the killer had died without justice.
Then, he learned of Waters' arrest, and then his death.
"I felt like somebody let all the air out of me," he said.
He figures the death was an admission of guilt.
"He knew it was coming, and so for his wife and family, your provider, your dad, your husband you've known all your life, all of a sudden it is gone," Middleton said. "As a murderer, that's an awful lot of weight to bear, and to save everybody the shame and humiliation, you take the easy way out."