A few days before his ex-wife was killed, Richard Paul Stewart wrote a two-page letter to his sisters, police say. In it, Stewart wrote that from the day he was arrested for domestic violence more than two years earlier, he knew he would kill Norma Stewart.
“My waiting is over,” Richard Stewart wrote. “It is time to make her go away for good.”
Prosecutors say Stewart made good on his pledge early in the morning of April 4, when he went to the Westminster investment firm where his former wife worked and shot her once in the head.
At a preliminary hearing Friday in Adams County, Judge John E. Popovich ruled there was enough evidence against Stewart to proceed on a charge of first-degree murder after deliberation. Popovich also ruled that the 71-year-old should continue to be held without bail.
A dozen of Norma Stewart’s relatives, seated in the courtroom, let out hushed cheers and sighs of relief at the decision.
Richard Stewart sat at the defense table in a yellow-and-white-striped jail jumpsuit, expressionless, throughout the proceeding.
Norma and Richard Stewart were married for more than 40 years before Norma Stewart filed for divorce in 2008, a short time after Rich ard Stewart was arrested for allegedly destroying his wife’s clothing and several pictures of her and her family.
Friends and family told police that Richard Stewart was angry at his ex-wife over financial issues and that he made numerous threats against her and others, Westminster Detective Dean Passarelli said.
Under questioning by defense attorney Todd Nelson, Passarelli also said Stewart’s daughter told him her father “was miserable” and that he drank alcohol and took pain medication because of difficulty with pain following a surgery.
Westminster Detective Steve Roll testified that police tracked Stewart to Lubbock, Texas, following the shooting. At the time of his arrest there, Stewart had taken so many painkillers that he had to be admitted to the hospital, Roll said.
Roll also testified that during a more than two-hour interview, Stewart admitted to driving to Colorado on April 3 from his home 10 hours away in Missouri, checking into a motel, then driving to Norma Stewart’s office the next morning and shooting her.
Texas police found the two-page letter Richard Stewart had written inside a Lubbock hotel room where he stayed the night of the shooting, Roll said.
He also testified that at the end of their interview, Stewart said to him, “I (messed) up royally.”
Stewart is scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 6.
Sara Burnett: 303-954-1661 or sburnett@denverpost.com
