CRIME HUNTER: Charlie Schmid Jr. was the Pied Piper who terrorized Tucson
· Toronto Sun
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By the late 1950s, singles and families alike were packing up and ditching cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Buffalo and New York.
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They were eyeing opportunities in the Sun Belt. Weather, opportunity and a fresh start were the convincers.
Tucson, Ariz., was transforming itself from a quiet desert town to a bustling city. Between 1950 and 1960, Tucson quadrupled in size, growing from about 55,000 residents in 1950 to more than 200,000 by the time the calendar hit 1960.
Charles Howard Schmid Jr., 23, was a native. He hung out at the drive-ins and juke joints that dotted the city’s East Speedway Boulevard. To the teens hanging out, Schmid was something of a Libertine.
Muscular and a one-time Arizona high-school gymnastics champ, Schmid always had wheels. There were also the girls. Lots of girls and Smitty had their phone numbers.
Self-conscious about stature
Schmid stood just 5-foot-3 and it ate his guts out. So Smitty added three inches by using some of the same schemes as height-challenged thrill killer Charles Starkweather. He stuffed rags and smashed tin cans into his boots.
He also began dying his hair jet black, piling on the pancake makeup and topping off the package with pale cream lipstick, a bogus mole on his face and mascara. He used a clothespin to stretch his lower lip to give himself an Elvis Presley pout.
Lying Charlie told his pals he got his cash by stealing cars and smuggling them into Mexico. Or did the cash originate with the gaggle of girls whom he had instructed on “100 ways to make love”? In truth, it was his mom.
On the night of May 31, 1964, Schmid was with his then-girlfriend Mary French and a pal. He mused aloud: “I want to kill a girl tonight!”
‘Kill a girl tonight!’
Alleen Rowe seemed like a good prospect for homicide. The 15-year-old high school student lived with her divorced mom, who worked nights. Rowe made herself a target because she put the kibosh on casual group sex with Schmid and some of his pals.
French lured Rowe to accompany the group to the desert. She agreed, but not long after arriving, Schmid held the now terrified girl’s arms behind her back before tying her up.
Rowe pleaded: “Why are you doing this to me?”
Schmid coldly replied: “It’s Mary French’s idea. She hates you.”
Rowe’s bathing suit was then ripped off and Schmid told the other man with them to get lost. When the man returned, Rowe was trying to get her clothes on after being raped by Schmid, who ordered the second man to rape Rowe as well. He could not sustain an erection.
‘Remember, I love you’
Schmid battered the girl to death with a rock. He returned to the car, he kissed French, and told her: “Remember, I love you.” The trio then buried Rowe.
Alleen’s mother, Norma, was worried sick and gave cops the names of Schmid, Saunders and French. They may have information, Norma told detectives and the trio were questioned but investigators believed Alleen was a runaway.
Charlie Schmid might have gotten away with his sinister crimes but he would not, and could not keep his mouth shut.
In June 1964, about a month after Alleen Rowe vanished, Schmid showed friend Richard Bruns, 19, where the girl had been buried in the desert. An agonizing secret to keep, but Schmid was like a mentally challenged peacock strutting his crimes around.
Classified as pathological liar
That August, Schmid met pretty blond 16-year-old Gretchen Fritz at a pool. Gretchen was a rich girl, the daughter of a prominent heart surgeon. But like Schmid, she was no stranger to trouble. In fact, she had been booted from her private school.
The reality was that she had been classified as a pathological liar in dire need of psychiatric therapy.
Still, Gretchen was stunning and the pair began dating. But she was not what Schmid had bargained for. She was posessive, blindingly jealous. Fritz would become hysterical if she saw Schmid with other girls. He would later say she was calling him “five or six times a day.”
This was all too much for the young killer. He wanted out. So he spilled the beans about murdering Alleen Rowe. Schmid took Fritz to the burial site to show the troubled blond “what kind of guy I am.”
Strangled girls to death
Fritz was already aware “what kind of guy” Schmid was. She had boosted his diary, which provided more details on the Rowe murder and an admission that her beau had shot and killed a 16-year-old boy.
Now, Fritz somehow had the idea she was holding the cards. She threatened to “ruin” him if HE tried to break up with her. Schmid called Fritz’s bluff on August 16, 1965 and strangled his 17-year-old girlfriend to death, along with her 13-year-old sister Wendy.
Cops suspected the sisters were runaways, gone to Mexico. Schmid confessed to pal Richard Bruns and showed him their bodies, buried in the sand. Terrified, Bruns became convinced that Schmid was going to murder him or his girlfriend. He fled to his grandparents home in Ohio and confessed to them.
He eventually spilled his guys to the cops, and Schmid and his cohorts were busted. At least 30 teens who were friends of Schmid, by now known as the Pied Piper of Tucson, kept it buttoned.
“A lot of people knew, but it was already too late. Telling would just have made it tough on everyone,” one teen told Time.
Stabbed 47 times
Charles Howard Schmid was convicted of murder in 1966 and pencilled in for a date with the gas chamber. His sentence was later commuted to 50 years in prison. He would not see the end of his sentence.
On March 20, 1975, Schmid was stabbed 47 times by two convicts. He died of his injuries 10 days later.
Schmid’s corpse was then stolen from the morgue.
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