Insurance agent shot dead near his office in Newton

NEWTON -- A 39-year-old insurance agent was shot to death in his car in a Newton parking garage yesterday morning, the victim of someone Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley said could be called an ''assassin."

Edward Schiller, an employee of Aronson Insurance Agency Inc. who friends said grew up in Sudbury and lived in Framingham, was discovered at about 9:30 a.m. by a worker in his office building near the busy corner of Boylston Street and Langley Road, near the Mall at Chestnut Hill.

Coakley said Schiller was shot at least once in the head at close range in what she said could be labeled an execution. He was found slumped behind the wheel, and the driver's door was open. ''It certainly does not appear random," Coakley said during a press conference at the scene.

No arrests had been made by last night. Coakley said authorities believe that Schiller's killer may have followed him into the ground level of the two-story parking garage or laid in wait. She said she does not believe the privately owned garage has surveillance cameras.

Police believe that Schiller was shot between 7:30 and 7:40 a.m. His body was discovered nearly two hours later. Coakley said some people who were interviewed by police after the body was discovered reported hearing what might have been a gunshot in the minutes before 8 a.m. But none reported it at the time.

Newton residents reacted with shock to the news that a man had been slain in what was recently selected as America's safest city for the second year in a row by Morgan Quitno Press, a Kansas-based research company. Schiller is the fifth homicide victim in Newton in the past decade, authorities said.

''It goes to show you it can happen anywhere," said Bob Williams, 58, who lives across the street from the garage. ''This is scary. Nothing like this happens here."

Darryl Sanders, the 46-year-old manager of a mattress store next to Schiller's insurance office, agreed. ''It's kind of unnerving," Sanders said. ''It's something I never thought I'd see, especially so close."

Schiller's neighbors in Framingham also reacted with shock, describing him as an extrovert who went out of his way to befriend the children on his block.

Joanne Bolanes, Schiller's next-door neighbor for seven years, said he baby-sat her children and came over for dinner regularly.

''Eddie had a lot of friends," she said. ''He was always a handshake and a smile."

Bolanes said Schiller, an avid motorcyclist, took her 10-year-old son, Zachary, to motorcross events and taught him mechanics. ''He was like Uncle Eddie to him, showing him how to work on carburetors," she said. Bolanes said Schiller was at her home for dinner Wednesday and seemed to be his usual fun-loving self.

Bolanes said Schiller was particularly close to his family. He attended Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School and Arizona State University, she said.

Reached yesterday at her home in Arizona, Schiller's mother, Christine, said she is bewildered by her son's death. She said she can think of ''no reason, none at all," that anyone would target him.

''That's the puzzling part," she said. ''There's been nothing in his life that I would imagine would lead to this."

There were signs, however, that Schiller had experienced difficulties in the past.

In September 2004, court records show, Framingham police responded to his home on Hallett Road because he had fallen in his kitchen. He was discovered by friends, the records say, and police arrived and found him barely breathing, with a weak pulse.

The responding police officer searched Schiller's bedroom to determine whether he might be taking medication that would cause him to collapse, and discovered several hypodermic needles, 23 Ziploc bags filled with what police suspected was heroin, and drug paraphernalia, the court records say.

The records show that Schiller was charged with distribution and possession of heroin and that a judge dismissed the distribution charge. The judge ordered Schiller to be evaluated for drug abuse and to undergo random drug tests. If Schiller did not get in trouble again by August, the possession charge was also to be dismissed.

Friends declined to comment on Schiller's alleged drug use, instead remembering the warm, generous man they knew.

He loved his Yamaha motorcycle and rode it in a recent leukemia fund-raiser planned by a neighbor, friends said. He held popular Christmas bashes. And he played hide-and-seek and other games with the Bolanes children as if they were his own.

''Every Fourth of July he had a bag of firecrackers ready," Zachary Bolanes recalled. ''He taught me to light the wick and run away."

John Ellement, Ralph Ranalli, and Cristina Silva of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com.