The Strange End of the Swan Doctor

Unsolved Mystery: You Be the Judge

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It was a rainy Saturday night on January 16, 2010. 

By all accounts, Dr. Stonebreaker was a good guy with a gentle sense of humor. He ran a veterinary clinic focused on exotic birds in North San Diego. He even added a small enclosed garden to the vet clinic for homeless exotic birds. The garden was called “Free Fight.” We used to drive past his vet clinic on the weekends and thought about going into Free Flight to visit the exotic birds, but somehow we never found the time. We were always headed somewhere else, which is the way things are on weekends in San Diego.

I knew about Dr. Stonebreaker because he was the vet for the swans that live at the local lake. And who can forget that name once you heard it?

According to interviews with his older brother, Dr. Stonebreaker wanted to be a vet as far back as anyone could remember. So he lived his dream by building a bird clinic with a sanctuary for homeless birds and a view of the Pacific Ocean.

I would have guessed there isn’t serious money to be made in tending to the health of exotic pet birds, but what do I know? Dr. Stonebreaker drove a silver 2008 Porsche Carrera. A new Porsche Carrera costs about $155,000 these days according to my online research.

But somehow, not all was well in the world of Dr. Stonebreaker because he ended up murdered on a rural road about 20 minutes from the bird clinic on a cold rainy Saturday night.

I’ll relay the facts I’ve been able to find and you draw your own conclusions.

According to reports at the time, on Saturday afternoon, the Stonebreaker family was at home together.  According to an affidavit filed after the murder by Mrs. Stonebreaker, late that Saturday afternoon she left the home to pick up one of the kids at a friend’s house. When she returned home, Dr. Stonebreaker was gone. When he didn’t return home for dinner, she tried calling his cell phone without success. She also drove by a local sports bar her husband frequented and then drove to the clinic to check on a patient. According to reports, Mrs. Stonebreaker was at the clinic at the time Dr. Stonebreaker was murdered.

The next morning, that would have been Sunday, Mrs. Stonebreaker left home at 5:00 AM for an all-day volleyball tournament with one of her daughters and her son. During the afternoon, she tried phoning her husband again, as well as two local hospitals and a family friend, seeking his whereabouts. She didn’t learn Dr. Stonebreaker was dead until the ME’s office called her at the volleyball event.

At 9:30 or so on Saturday night, California Highway Patrol found Dr. Stonebreaker’s car in a ditch on a rural road called “Del Dios Road.” That road has quite a few horse farms. The houses are big, all set far back from the road. The lots are at least 1-acre and some are vastly larger.

I was quite aware of the area because at one point we’d even thought about buying one of the houses on that stretch of road. The house was more than we could afford, but we’d gone back a few times to inspect the house so it would be fair to say we actually thought about living there.

When the California Highway Patrol arrived that Saturday night, there was no one in or near the car. Reportedly, the officers looked inside the car and there was no blood or signs of passenger injury. I don’t know what they were thinking, but somehow, they concluded the occupants had walked off and simply abandoned the expensive car in a ditch on a rural road on a dark rainy night. The car was towed away that night.

The next morning, about 2,000 feet from the ditched car, a homeowner on Del Dios Road let his dogs out for their morning run at 7:50 AM. The dogs started barking and making a fuss. The homeowner came out to find Dr. Stonebreaker dead in his driveway.

I’ll avoid the grizzly descriptions, but apparently the Doctor had been beaten to death on the driveway. Reportedly, the only blood was in the driveway and there was no blood on the path Stonebreaker would have used to ascend the driveway.

When the body was taken away, police were still going on the theory that Stonebreaker died as a result of the car accident or because he fell and hit his head on the driveway while looking for help.

However, when the body was later examined by the medical examiner, it was clear this wasn’t the result of driving into a ditch or a hard fall. The injuries were all at the back of the head rather than to the face. The death was ruled suspicious.

Did the police fail to collect valuable DNA evidence at what turned out to be the murder scene because they assumed the death was accidental?

Let me be very clear that the wife denies any involvement with her husband’s death. Although the local police initially called the wife a person of interest, Sgt. Scott Enyeart, the lead homicide detective, issued this statement to the press in October 2011: “To the extent that any of my prior emails or other communications stated that Pam was “the number one suspect,” “the only suspect” or words to that effect, that was not correct. Mrs. Stonebreaker has been and is only one among many persons of interest who has not been ruled out as a potential suspect in the death of Dr. Stonebreaker.”

There are several strange aspects to this story.

On the initial traffic reports, the police reported the road was winding and maybe Dr. Stonebreaker missed the curve and then over-corrected. I revisited that road this week and in that particular stretch of road, it really isn’t what I would term winding. 

Some have theorized there was a road rage incident and that a lunatic got out of another car and chased Dr. Stonebreaker to his death. But I can tell you at night these are lonely two-lane back roads. On a rainy winter night, you may not even see another car for a good stretch.

There is another theory that the homeowner who found the body may have killed Dr. Stonebreaker and that the next morning he pretended to know nothing about the murder. But the homeowner had actually used Dr. Stonebreaker for vet services and, as far as we know, had no reason to murder his pet’s veterinarian.

It seems to me – and I’m surmising here – that someone was in the car with Dr. Stonebreaker when it became clear to him they intended to harm him. He ditched the car and attempted to run from his attacker.

The Porsche Carrera has a very small back seat. Unless the attacker riding in the Doctor’s car was very small in stature, any passenger would most likely have been seated beside the driver.

Could Dr. Stonebreaker have gone to his local sports bar, offered someone a ride and only then realized he was in danger?

The house toward which Stonebreaker ran was up a hill and evidently Stonebreaker wasn’t able to escape his attacker.

I was quite aware of that hill because it was the house next door to the one we considered buying.

However, if Dr. Stonebreaker was murdered by a passenger in his own car, how did the passenger get away on that lonely road after the murder?

It’s been 14 years since Dr. Stonebreaker was murdered and the case is unresolved.

The insurance companies who were supposed to pay Mrs. Stonebreaker $2.7 Million in life insurance policies initially refused to pay. California has a law known as the slayer statute (California Probate Code 252) to make sure murderers don’t receive life insurance payments from killing their victims. That law helps keep state murder rates down.

On the basis of the slayer statute, the insurance companies initially withheld payments.

Mrs. Stonebreaker took the companies to court. Reportedly, the insurance companies paid the widow $400,000. We don’t know whether additional payments are to come if the murderer (meaning someone other than Mrs. Stonebreaker) is caught and convicted. But based on these numbers, the widow settled for less than 20% of the face value of the policies. It’s possible the widow received further insurance payments not announced to the press.

The vet business was sold to new owners four years after Dr. Stonebreaker was murdered. The Free Flight bird sanctuary is still there and that likely would have made Dr. Stonebreaker happy to know.

An unsolved murder in a small town, on roads you know, has a way of sticking in your mind. It seems almost as if you thought about it enough, you could work out the answer. It’s 14 years and I’m still puzzling this one.

What do you think?

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Sources: CBS8.com, The Coast News Group, nbcsandiego.com, Rancho Santa Fe Review, sandiegouniontribune.com

Copyright © 2024 L.E. Langner. All rights reserved. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.