Lori Schultz interview

Tuesday, June 18, 2024 – 9:00 a.m.

Washington resident Lori Schultz was a lifelong friend of Monica Drum and is the executor of Ms. Drum's will.

Detectives Murphy and Parker interviewed her at the Yoknapatawpha County Sheriff's Department the morning after Mrs. Schultz reported finding what appeared to be a safe deposit box key hidden at Ms. Drum's residence.

Participants:

• Detective S. Murphy
• Detective E. Parker
• Lori Schultz

Detective Murphy: Thank you for coming, Ms. Schultz. For the record, please state your name and address.

Lori Schultz: Certainly. I'm Lori Schultz, and I live almost at the end of County Road 117, just north of Soap Lake, Washington.

Detective Murphy: I thought you lived in Ohio.

Lori Schultz: I still use my parents' address for a lot of things. I came to Oxford from Ohio.

Detective Murphy: Where do you spend most of your time?

Lori Schultz: At work in Soap Lake.

Detective Murphy: Okay. What were you doing in Ohio before coming to Oxford?

Lori Schultz: I wanted to tell my parents about Monica and help her parents with the funeral plans there.

Detective Parker: Did your parents know Monica well?

Lori Schultz: Since the day we were born.

Detective Parker: You two shared a birthday?

Lori Schultz: Yes, January 1st! I would have been the first baby born—not just in Kent but all of Ohio.

Detective Murphy: Would have been?

Lori Schultz: Yeah. Monica beat me by five minutes. Five minutes! I think it affected her.

Detective Murphy: How so?

Lori Schultz: You sound like my waiter at the Chinese restaurant last night. Monica always, our entire lives, kind of treated me like a little sister. We wouldn't have even known each other had we not been born so close together on New Year's Day. The newspaper photographer took both our pictures. Well, he took one photograph, but it had the title: "Number one and number two." I think Monica always just took it upon herself to look out for me because we were born on the same day.

Detective Parker: This was in 1984?

Lori Schultz: Yes.

Detective Parker: So you and Ms. Drum grew up together.

Lori Schultz: From day one on. If we talk about her too much, I might get emotional. I'd rather not talk about her too much.

Detective Murphy: I understand, but your friend was killed, and we have to talk to those close to her. So, Ms. Drum looked out for you as you grew up?

Lori Schultz: Yes, Monica looked out for me, and I probably encouraged it. Whenever I was having a problem, Monica knew just what to say, especially about guys. It's just like she knew just what was going on in their heads. More than they did! If it weren't for Monica, I'd probably be married ten times over by now.

Detective Parker: Who did Ms. Drum go to with boy problems? You?

Lori Schultz: No ... I don't think she ever had any boy problems, to be honest with you. Well, Bobby was a problem, I think, but nobody knows where he is, anyway. I was going to let him know about Monica's ... passing, but I don't know how to find him.

Detective Parker: Who is Bobby?

Lori Schultz: This guy she met when we lived in California.

Detective Murphy: You lived with Ms. Drum in California?

Lori Schultz: Yeah, I followed her out there, really. She had just talked me into breaking up with my boyfriend, and I didn't feel like being in Ohio when she was going to California. Monica went to an excellent school out there.

Detective Murphy: Yes, Berkeley is a good school. I haven't heard anyone else speak of Bobby. How long did he and Ms. Drum know each other?

Lori Schultz: I guess it depends on how you look at it. They weren't really together in Cincinnati. At least, she never mentioned his name when we talked on the phone.

Detective Parker: Wait, Ms. Drum and Bobby knew each other in Berkeley and Cincinnati? What's his last name?

Lori Schultz: Upshaw. Yeah, they knew each other in both places. Well, I never heard of Bobby going over to Berkeley, but she met him in San Francisco.

Detective Parker: Tell us about their relationship, their history.

Lori Schultz: Well, I was working—bartending—at the San Francisco Brewing Company. Monica came over from Berkeley to sit at my bar and have a few drinks. I actually met Bobby first. He was wearing an Ohio State letterman's jacket, so I asked him if he played for the Buckeyes. He said he didn't, that he had gotten the jacket from a player that owed him a lot of money.

Detective Murphy: Did he say why the player owed him money?

Lori Schultz: No. I figured he just loaned the guy money, and he couldn't pay him back. I could see he was a big sports fan.

Detective Murphy: Why?

Lori Schultz: Because he was watching the TV and writing down all the scores. He told me Frank Gore was going to meet him there, but I never saw him.

Detective Murphy: And Monica met Bobby that night?

Lori Schultz: Yes, and I could see right away that she thought a lot of him.

Detective Parker: How could you tell?

Lori Schultz: Women just can. You know. I introduced them, and they really hit it off, although he sure wasn't the kind of guy you would think Monica would be attracted to.

Detective Murphy: How so?

Lori Schultz: There you go again. Well, Bobby was focused on drinking and sports. Monica focused on people, conversation, stuff like that. She didn't really like the Brewing Company, said it was too yuppified. It had an old piss trough in the floor right in front of the bar from back in the 1850s when it was a sailor's bar. Bobby pointed it out to her, and she thought it was interesting.

Detective Murphy: So, they hit it off?

Lori Schultz: Well, they ended up leaving and going up the street to Vesuvio, next to that bookstore. Later, she told me he didn't like that place, and he liked the next place even less.

Detective Parker: What was that place?

Lori Schultz: A coffee shop! She took him to a coffee shop! Here, this guy was drinking and watching sports, and she took him to Caffé Trieste, which was one of her favorite places, but he hated it, she told me. They ended up compromising and going to the Saloon. They came back to the Brewing Company at closing.

Detective Murphy: That gave you a chance to see their early attraction developing?

Lori Schultz: Actually, no. Bobby and some guy went into the manager's office for a while. The whole time they were in there, Monica just went on and on about how "real" Bobby was.

Detective Parker: Is that what you thought?

Lori Schultz: He seemed like just another guy to me, but I wasn't going to say anything. Monica usually just criticized men.

Detective Parker: What was their relationship like?

Lori Schultz: Well, Monica was flat-out in love. Bobby, he was consumed with whether the 49ers won and by how much. He kept telling Monica, "As soon as football is over, we'll go away on a trip."

Detective Parker: Did they?

Lori Schultz: No. When the season was over, he just went back to Cincinnati. He'd been flying into town every weekend there was a game, but when the season was over, he didn't show up in San Francisco anymore. It tore Monica up. I had never seen her like that, especially over a guy.

Detective Muphy: What did she do?

Lori Schultz: She started looking for a job in Cincinnati and found one pretty quick. She left grad school just like that. She went to work for a newspaper and went after Bobby. I don't think he would have too much to do with her, though. We talked on the phone about it a little, but she didn't seem to want to talk about it too much. By then, all she wanted to talk about was work.

Detective Murphy: But you stayed in California?

Lori Schultz: Yes, I met Scott, who is now my husband. I didn't change my name. Scott and I have an antique store in Soap Lake. Well, he already had it, and he was in San Francisco on a buying trip, and we met, and here we are. Or there we are.

Detective Parker: Don't you work for the tourism council?

Lori Schultz: Oh, yes. But that's not a full-time job. I do both tourism and the store. They're kind of connected if you think about it.

Detective Murphy: Did your husband know Ms. Drum?

Lori Schultz: They never met, and I'm sorry about that.

Detective Murphy: So Mr. Upshaw and Ms. Drum, they did or didn't have a relationship in Cincinnati?

Lori Schultz: No, I don't think so. I think all of a sudden, she pretty much lost interest, and she got engaged to this other guy who worked at that Cincinnati paper. He was older. She might have just done it to make Bobby jealous—she did that kind of thing—but I don't think so.

Detective Murphy: Why not?

Lori Schultz: Once she began working for the newspaper, that was her life. It was all she talked about, and I don't think she's dated anyone outside the business since then. Anyway, when she broke up with this guy she was engaged to, she quit that paper. Then, I don't know. She had a couple of other boyfriends in Cincinnati, a photographer, I think. Anyway, after she'd broken up with the last of them is when she got this job in Mississippi.

Detective Parker: What do you know about Rick Hughes?

Lori Schultz: I don't know him … or do I? That name is familiar.

Detective Parker: He's a reporter at The Oxford Eagle.

Lori Schultz: Oh, yes. That's the guy that shoved her.

Detective Parker: What do you know about that?

Lori Schultz: Just that it happened in front of a lot of people and that the guy is a jerk. But I guess that's a given since he was pushing her around, right?

Detective Murphy: She didn't tell you anything more than that about the incident?

Lori Schultz: No. I knew she was seeing him, only she called him Richie most of the time when we talked about him. It was her usual thing, up and down. I don't think she was ever really serious about anyone except in as much as they worked with her. You know? Just office romances.

Detective Parker: What about Shawn Sharp?

Lori Schultz: I don't know him.

Detective Parker: Ernie Parrish?

Lori Schultz: No, him either.

Detective Parker: Nicole Grayson?

Lori Schultz: No.

Detective Parker: Tommy Green?

Lori Schultz: That's the guy she was engaged to for a little while in Cincinnati.

Detective Parker: Did you ever meet him?

Lori Schultz: No. From what I heard, he was just a guy looking to get married without disrupting his job too much. You know, Monica and I both had Tommy Green's father as a teacher when we were at Kent State. English.

Detective Murphy: How long will you be in town?

Lori Schultz: I'm not sure. It depends on when we can have Monica's funeral back in Ohio. Do you know when that will be?

Detective Murphy: I don't, but the Coroner's Office can help you out with that. Will your husband be joining you here in town?

Lori Schultz: He's coming next week. We—I mean Scott and I—were already planning to spend a few days here with Mon before we went to Ohio later this month, kind of like a vacation visit. Now it's all changed. I just can't believe it. I really was looking forward to him meeting Monica. She and I had kind of gotten distant, and I wanted us to be close again. I worried about her.

Detective Parker: Why?

Lori Schultz: Monica never really had any friends besides me. Her parents are really old.

Detective Parker: Do you think Ms. Drum was lonely?

Lori Schultz: No. Well, maybe a little, but I don't think she realized it. I think she was just completely immersed in her work life, you know, and not seeing the toll it was taking on the rest of her. I don't know. She never managed that work-life balance everyone talks about. I was always wondering if she would ever stop.

Detective Murphy: What do you plan to do while you're in Oxford?

Lori Schultz: I've got to do something with all her stuff. And there's a lot of financial and legal stuff to do with her will and her estate and all that.

Detective Parker: If you run across anything else in her effects that strikes you as unusual, we need you to notify us.

Lori Schultz: I understand. I want to help in any way possible. So, did you find out anything about that key? If it really does go to a safe deposit box, I'll need to know for her estate.

Detective Murphy: We'll let you know once we have some solid information.

Lori Schultz: Thank you.

Detective Murphy: Thank you for coming in, Ms. Schultz. Once you know how long you'll be in town, please let us know.

Lori Schultz: I will. Bye.

Interview ended – 9:37 a.m.