1. Charles Schmid was born to a single mother, he was adopted by Charles and Katharine Schmid, owners and operators of Hillcrest Nursing Home in Tucson, Arizona.
29 Facts About Charles Schmid
1. 2.
Charles Schmid had a difficult relationship with his adoptive father, whom his adoptive mother later divorced.
3.
When Charles Schmid tried to meet his birth mother, she angrily told him never to come back.
4.
Charles Schmid did poorly in school, but was described as good-looking, intelligent and well-mannered.
5.
Just before graduating, Charles Schmid was suspended for stealing tools from the school's machine shop; he never returned to school.
6.
Charles Schmid began living in his own quarters on his parents' property and received an allowance of $300 a month.
7.
Charles Schmid's parents left him to run on his own with a new car and a motorcycle.
8.
Charles Schmid was called the "Pied Piper" because he was charismatic and had many friends in Tucson's teenaged community.
9.
Charles Schmid spent part of his time on Tucson's Speedway Boulevard, picking up girls and drinking with friends, although he tended to be a loner.
10.
Charles Schmid was a short man who wore cowboy boots stuffed with newspapers and flattened cans to make him appear taller; he explained to impressionable teenagers his resultant rolling gait was a result of a "crippling fight" with Mafia members.
11.
Charles Schmid used lip balm, pancake makeup and created an artificial mole on his cheek.
12.
Charles Schmid stretched his lower lip with a clothespin to make it resemble Elvis Presley's.
13.
Charles Schmid instructed his girlfriend, Mary French, to persuade Rowe to accompany her, Charles Schmid, and John Saunders to the desert.
14.
Charles Schmid then bludgeoned Rowe to death in the others' absence.
15.
Several months after the murder of Alleen Rowe, Charles Schmid encountered a 16-year-old local teen named Gretchen Fritz at a local swimming pool.
16.
Fritz was the daughter of a wealthy, prominent Tucson heart surgeon and community leader, and via local gossip, Charles Schmid had learned the girl had recently been expelled from her private school due to her involvement in an attempted armed robbery.
17.
That evening, Charles Schmid drove to Fritz's home, where he presented himself as a pots and pans salesman as a ruse to introduce himself to her.
18.
Charles Schmid strangled Gretchen and her 13-year-old sister Wendy on August 16,1965.
19.
Charles Schmid confided to his friend Richard Bruns that he murdered the sisters and showed him the bodies, buried haphazardly in the desert.
20.
Bruns became increasingly afraid that Charles Schmid was going to murder his girlfriend.
21.
In 1966, Charles Schmid was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death.
22.
Charles Schmid attempted to escape from prison multiple times, finally succeeding on November 11,1972, when he and triple murderer Raymond Hudgens escaped from Arizona State Prison.
23.
Charles Schmid sent his work from prison to Richard Shelton, a professor at the University of Arizona.
24.
On March 20,1975, Charles Schmid was stabbed 47 times by two fellow prisoners.
25.
Charles Schmid's body was stolen from the morgue but recovered by police.
26.
Charles Schmid's mother chose the prison cemetery for his burial, believing his tombstone would be defaced if he were buried in a public cemetery.
27.
Charles Schmid received a Catholic funeral at the prison, but his body was not in the casket during the service.
28.
John Gilmore was sent at first by Playboy magazine to do a story on the trial, but after an introduction to Schmid's wife, he managed to meet Charles Schmid and get the exclusive rights to a book.
29.
Charles Schmid was in close contact with him and his family during the trial.