Woman Fearfully Confronts Attacker Who Stalked Her

SANTA ANA —  This was the moment Catherine Cline had been both dreading and awaiting since last summer.

It was the chance to confront her former classmate at an Irvine high school who had admitted stalking her for seven years, keeping detailed notes on her life and finally attacking her with a baseball bat one grisly night in June, 1989.

But she was not ready for the meeting. As the acknowledged attacker, Steven Schumacher, was led into a Santa Ana courtroom Friday, Cline, 22, began trembling in her seat.

“When I saw him, I just wanted to get up and leave, I was so scared. I knew it was stupid--he was in chains and he couldn’t break them, but maybe. . . ,” Cline recalled later, her voice trailing off. “I just wanted to get out of there.”

But Cline stayed in the courtroom. And to her relief, so did Schumacher.

An Orange County Superior Court judge found that the 21-year-old defendant from Irvine, confined to Patton State Hospital for psychological treatment since October, is now well enough to stand trial for the assault and scheduled his arraignment for later this month in Municipal Court in Fullerton.

If convicted on assault charges, he faces up to six years in prison. His lawyer may seek an insanity plea in his defense.

Judge David O. Carter also kept the defendant’s bail at $150,000, ensuring that he will remain behind bars, at least for now, to face allegations that he developed a violent obsession with his Woodbridge High School classmate, whom he had never even met.

Standard bail in assault cases is $10,000. Prosecutors sought the higher level for Schumacher because of what they described as the brutal and persistent nature of his actions. Defense attorney Frank O’Rourke did not oppose the higher bail, saying he will probably seek to lower it later.

“His offense was the product of a psychotic obsession,” O’Rourke said, previewing the defense. “But two psychologists have now said that he has regained his mental stability. And what he needs now is to be restored to the community.”

Cline, the defense attorney acknowledged, “may be afraid for the rest of her life--we can’t stop that. But in a free society, a person who’s competent and well and has served his time has a right to be free.”

The victim said O’Rourke is right about just one thing: She will be scared the rest of her life.

Cline, who manages her father’s insurance office and models occasionally, said that since the attack, “I don’t trust anybody any more. People that I meet, they have to prove themselves to me now.”

She said she can’t imagine living alone. And she is thinking of changing her name for fear of what might happen when Schumacher is free.

Once Schumacher is released, Cline is convinced, “he’d try to find me again. . . . He’s sick. I just don’t believe he could have gotten better this quickly.”

Indeed, her mother, Carolyne Cline, said she began this spring to receive repeated silent phone calls that she suspects were placed by Schumacher. She has reported her suspicions to the police, saying the calls are reminiscent of a string of calls--as many as three or four a day--that she got from Schumacher before the assault.

Those earlier calls, also reported to police, culminated in this dire warning from Schumacher, according to police and the mother: “You can tell your daughter I’m going to break her neck for the last six years of my life.”

Atop the emotional and physical scars of the attack--she suffers some hearing loss--is the frustration of not knowing exactly what caused it, Cline says.

She said she thinks Schumacher was in a science class with her during their senior year at Woodbridge. She also thinks that he was the unknown person who sent her white roses once, but she does not remember ever having talked to him.

But Schumacher knew her. Asked by Placentia detectives after his arrest last year how long he had had a “fixation” with Cline, he responded: “Seven years.”

He had followed her and kept minute logs of her actions for eight months when she lived in Irvine. Then, after Cline moved into a gated complex in Placentia--in part to escape the threatening phone calls--he was somehow able to track down her address through the post office, he said.

Finally, Schumacher said, he waited with a baseball bat in Cline’s parking lot the night of June 19, 1989. He knew the lot because he had mapped it out and was able to get inside by following another car. Once Cline arrived, police said, Schumacher emerged from the darkness and cracked her over the head with the bat.

Bloodied, she managed to escape to her home and was rushed into intensive care with a concussion.

Schumacher told police he had not meant to hit her so hard. Asked by police after his arrest whether he still wants to hurt Cline, he said, “I don’t think it’s worth it, no.”

But police are skeptical.

In a letter sent just last month to authorities at Patton mental hospital, Irvine Police Detective Peter K. Linton put it bluntly:

“Steven Schumacher’s past speaks for itself with respect to his relentless pursuit of Cline. I don’t wish to see Cathy Cline murdered by this person in the event he escapes or is released.”