JAILED SUSPECT IN SLAYING CASE HANGS HIMSELF.

Byline: Theresa Moreau Daily News Staff Writer

Even in death, Theodore Lewis declared his innocence in the slaying of Stephen Schwarzwald, police said.

``Not guilty,'' Lewis had etched into his stomach only moments before hanging himself in his Van Nuys jail cell early Tuesday, police said.

The 55-year-old Lewis had been in jail since his arrest Friday on suspicion of killing Schwarzwald two weeks ago. Police assert that Lewis killed Schwarzwald to take his job as caretaker for an elderly man, thus becoming his only heir.

The 41-year-old Schwarzwald was found shot to death, and stuffed into the trunk of his late '80s Lincoln Continental, parked behind the Sherman Oaks home he shared with a wheelchair-bound man, who is 83 years old.

That man, William Braem, said in an interview Tuesday that he knew Lewis since at least 1988. And on the day that police discovered the body of Schwarzwald, Braem called on Lewis to move in and take the dead man's place.

``Lewis was the new caretaker,'' said Detective Stephen Fisk, head of the Los Angeles Police Department's Van Nuys Division homicide unit. ``The old caretaker's murdered, and the same day the new caretaker moved in.''

Schwarzwald had worked for the past 20 years as a 24-hour caretaker for Braem, a double-amputee. The two men shared a multilevel home in the 4000 block of Cody Road, nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains.

In the weeks since the killing, detectives followed a trail that they say led them straight to Lewis.

Fisk said that he and his detectives gathered enough physical and circumstantial evidence that led them to believe that Lewis had a motive to kill Schwarzwald.

And the motive was money.

``He was in extreme debt, and he had no way out,'' Fisk said. ``The dead guy was the beneficiary on the will, and if Lewis became the caretaker, he was going to gain a lot when the old man died.''

It was no secret that Schwarzwald was in line to inherit Braem's money.

``Stephen had a big mouth. He was telling people he had a unique situation,'' saidJohn Bohannon, 57, of Northridge, who knew Schwarzwald for many years. ``A situation that since the man didn't have any heirs, he was going to inherit everything. And he told the wrong person.''

That person was Lewis.

Bohannon said he knew Lewis only superficially through Schwarzwald and recalls that he looked just like Santa Claus.

Jail personnel delivering breakfast discovered Lewis around 4:15 a.m. ``hanging by the neck from his jail cell bed,'' said Officer Eduardo Funes, a police spokesman. Lewis had ``used a mattress cover as a ligature.''

Lewis couldn't be revived and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Schwarzwald murder case is closed.