Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - "The Pied Piper of Tucson” Charles Howard Schmid

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

With his caked-on makeup and pathological lies, Charles “Smitty” Schmid cut a distinctive figure among Tucson’s youth. The 22-year-old wanted to draw misfit teens to himself like moths to a flame, before holding a cultish sway over them. Schmid was a corrupting force. And by the summer of 1965, he had killed at least three young women, burying their bodies in the Arizona desert. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of sexual assault, violence, animal abuse, and murder. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. In August of 1965, Gretchen Fritz and her sister Wendtie were going to see the new Elvis film when they ran into Gretchen's boyfriend, Charles Schmidt. Smitty, everyone called him. It's hard to say what exactly was going through Gretchen's mind that night. she may have been happy to see her boyfriend, or perhaps she was annoyed with him, as she often was.

At some point, they went back to his house. Gretchen might have thought they were there to drink and unwind. Or she may have suspected that something was off. Whatever she was thinking, she clearly didn't expect what happened next. Details from that night will always elude the public, because only one person left the house alive. It wasn't Gretchen, and it wasn't her sister. It was Smitty, the smooth-talking Lofario known throughout town. Even before that night, Smitty had a reputation.

Some saw him as a rebel. Others just thought of him as a 23-year-old clown who wore too much makeup and hung out with teenagers. But despite all the gossip, some knew the truth, that beneath all that artifice was the heart of a cold-blooded killer. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson. This is Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers.

Today, we're taking a look at the wild story of Charles Howard Schmidt, the Pied Piper of Tucson. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. In today's episode, we'll cover Smitty's entire story. including the murders of three young women. He killed between 1964 and 1965.

Smitty's life seemed like a cauldron of various psychological disorders, which he often treated by surrounding himself with naive, local teenagers. It was a youth scene that ran on jealousy, pathological lying, and occasionally violence. Think Rebel Without a Cause, or The Wild One, but with a serial killer at the center. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

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Your next obsession, is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Today, Tucson, Arizona boasts a population of over half a million, making it the second largest city in the state. It has a thriving arts community fueled by the confluence of American, Native American, and Mexican-American cultures, as well as a world-renowned medical research center and hospital. But Tucson used to be a very different place. In the early 1960s, the city was organized around Speedway Boulevard, a throbbing thoroughfare of hamburger stands, rock and roll clubs, drive-ins, laundromats, and used car lots. It was choked with endless neon signs advertising all of the above, and more.

Teenagers haunted the boulevard from dusk till dawn, taking breaks only to sojourn out into the desert for alcohol-fueled parties. That might sound like a good time, but it quickly grew tiresome for the kids stuck in a city with a population of less than 300,000, so much so that many chose to skip to. town. Around this time, Tucson police were searching for as many as 100 runaways a month. Writing about the city for Life magazine, Don Moser asked, what do people do in Tucson? They do each other's laundry. It was against this backdrop that today's story begins, as Charles Howard Schmidt, known up and down the boulevard as Smitty, proved to be the perfect predator for Speedway's lost

team scene. To begin with, Smitty was a adopted almost immediately after he was born in 1942. According to his adopted mother, Catherine, he was born to an unwed mother staying at the nursing home run by her and her husband. His adoptive parents, Charles and Catherine Schmidt, were by all accounts very supportive, though he often fought with his father. Catherine said Schmiddy hated her then-husband, though she didn't elaborate. It's possible their love came too much in the form of material gifts, and not enough in the form of overt affection. That might be why he enjoyed the accolades he got in other parts of his life.

Smitty was a high school state gymnastics champion, well suited to it at five feet three inches. Despite his gymnastics success, Smitty quit the sport before graduating. He became bored with it and didn't care what others, like his parents or coaches, wanted for him. He was only interested in things that gave him a rush, and apparently gymnastics wasn't cutting it anymore. Instead, he started crafting wild stories for his classmates, claiming that as a child he had had leukemia and had to be put in a stretching machine, which he said was done because he had a stunted birth. There was no truth to any of it. Smitty was developing a pathological need to lie and expressed clear characteristics of this compulsive habit. His stories were complex and

detailed, he always cast himself as both the hero and victim. And he was seemingly unconcerned about being caught in a lie, or at being caught doing anything wrong for that matter. In fact, in 1960, during a senior year of high school, he was suspended for stealing welding tools from shop class. What he planned to do with them, we don't know, but he clearly wasn't headed for a bright and promising future. After graduation, he lived in a small house next door to his parents who paid him a $300 a month allowance for doing nothing. They also paid all of his bills. They were still showing their love with gifts rather than affection. Perhaps this is what drove Smitty to eventually seek out his birth mother. Smitty would later tell writer Richard Shelton

that when he finally met her at the age of 21, she threw him out. According to Smitty, she told him, I didn't want you when you were born or even before you were born, and I don't want you now. If Smitty didn't get along with his father, he may have wished his birth parents were someone else. Not too uncommon for any teenager, but the revelation that he was adopted and the eventual harsh rejection from his birth mother might have only furthered these feelings. He may have felt wholly abandoned by the multiple adults who were supposed to care for him. Vanessa is going to take over in the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or a psychiatrist.

but we have done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. Abandonment issues arise when a parent doesn't show their child enough affection and can manifest in the form of jealousy, lack of trust, a need to control, and an eagerness to please. As we'll see, Smitty embodied all of these attributes to a T, because, of course, he wasn't just shown a lack of affection. He was told that he wasn't wanted.

However, Smitty didn't sit in stasis. What came next was a very strange, very 60s transformation. Smitty had come to idolize Elvis. He even flirted with being a musician, fiddling around with a guitar in his abundant spare time. But it wasn't just talent that he wanted to embody. He started wearing extra large work boots, stuffing them with rags, cardboard, and smashed tin cans,

all in an effort to look taller. The wannabe heartthrob died his reddish-brown hair black, and reportedly did the same to the hair on his chest and arms. He pancaked his face in white makeup and lipstick. He also applied a pin-sized beauty mark to his cheek, which only got bigger as time passed. Strangest of all, he purposely kept his eyelids droopy and used a clothespin to pinch his lips to make them look more like Elvis's. That last bit sounds painful, and it also sounds a lot like body dysmorphia, a condition in which a person focuses intensely on their personal appearance,

to a degree that causes the mental and physical distress. Clearly, whatever his exact diagnosis, Smitty was struggling through a lot of personal anguish. It gets even stranger. Smitty was also known to carry around salt and pepper shakers in his pocket. Some sources say he used them to make his eyes water, so that he could convince girls he was just so moved to be in their presence. Others say he used the shakers in fights to blind his enemies. The thing with Smitty was, you never knew what was the truth.

What we do know is that most of the time he kept one close male friend and then simultaneously dated many women. He had a habit of befriending dropouts who were several years as junior and keeping them around as long as he could. With that in mind, let's shift perspective a bit to another young man with a troubled past. In 1964, 19-year-old John Saunders was lonely and listless, haunting Speedway Boulevard like so many teens.

He'd had a harder life than most. Born with severe allergies, he'd spent his infancy bound hand and foot to keep him from scratching at painful rashes. He became so accustomed to this that he couldn't sleep any other way, even when the condition cleared up. But he remained sickly through his teen years

and his peers bullied him frequently. Imagine then, being such an underdog and coming across a figure like someone, Smitty, a short man who looked like Elvis, who bragged about being a hell's angel and claimed he knew 100 ways to make love. There's that pathological lying again. Smitty even sounded cool. He'd say things to women like, I can manifest my neurotical emotions, emancipate an epicureal

instinct, and elaborate on my heterosexual tendencies. Of course, John was easily sucked into Smitty's orbit, regularly riding up and down speedway with him. Smitty was only cool to someone like John, and only someone like Smitty would seek the adoration of a downtrodden 19-year-old. Smitty himself was around 22 at this point, and he had a solid sidekick in John, someone who would never stop feeding his ego. But that wasn't enough. He wanted someone to feed his pocketbook, too. Around this time, he decided he needed to make a little more money. But rather than getting a job, he hatched a scheme to benefit from some money. someone else's paycheck. He bought cheap, fake diamond rings and proposed to two different girls, 17-year-old Mary French,

and 15-year-old Kathy Marath. Mary in particular was a bit impressionable. People described her as out of it and said she was somewhat frumpy. That might have made her more susceptible to Smitty's charms. For these teenage girls, Smitty's love came with just one condition. They had to open a joint bank account with him and share any earnings from their own. their jobs. Kathy smartly scoffed at the idea and turned him down. But Mary was infatuated with Smitty, so she accepted the ring and became his latest hangar on. But while Mary was falling in

love, John Saunders was learning that there was a dark side to his Speedway hero. As Smitty seduced more and more women, he became increasingly disillusioned with the world. He'd make strange comments saying that he thought everything was a joke and that God played with people like puppets. Or he'd mused that it would be great if a girl took her own life over him. He got this particular fantasy from Harry the Rat with Women, a 1963 novel with a lady killer protagonist. That wasn't all. According to one particularly disturbing account, Smitty invited a friend over to meet his pet cat. Only, rather than show the cat love, he picked it up, tied a rope around its tail, and then flung it around his head.

He finished by beating the animal against a wall until it was bloody. Then he turned to his horrified friend and asked, You feel compassion. Why? Animal abuse, something that can often correlate with future violent behavior. But of course, no one was thinking of that. There were multiple people in his life who ignored Smitty's dark side. His parents likely didn't pay attention to these warning signs, and continue to finance his gallivanting around town.

John Saunders noticed the signs, but he had every reason to ignore them. He continued his hero worship, hoping that proximity to Smitty would ingratiate him with the peers who had long despised him. And then, finally, poor Mary French, who was as love-struck as a teenage girl could be, she would do anything to be with Smitty, red flags or not. That love would soon be put to the test, As we said, there wasn't much for a restless teen to do in Tucson in 1964 once they had their fill of the speedway. They had to make their own fun, and Smitty's twisted idea of fun was about to get a whole lot darker. Coming up, Smitty takes his friends for a ride they'll never forget.

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The teens of Tucson were restless as ever, wishing they could be somewhere more exciting, maybe Los Angeles or New York. Not 22-year-old Charles Smitty Schmidt, though. He was also restless, but he was happy in Tucson. It provided him with a never-ending string of desperate and lonely teens to take advantage of. They filled the incessant need for attention.

he'd had since he was a child. He practically bathed in their misguided admiration for his fake Elvis looks and made up stories of illegal exploits. But he intended to make good on his lies. He'd had athletic success in high school. Then he had the attention of his peers. But now he needed greater and greater thrills to satisfy his cravings for more. In May of 1964, he told his obsessed groupie-slash-fiancee, Mary,

French, that he wanted to kill a girl just so he could know what it felt like. He set his sights on 15-year-old Aline Roe. Aline was blonde and blue-eyed, just his type. More importantly, she had once stood his friend John Saunders up for a date. Who did she think she was? Recent studies have shown that men who frequently see women naked are more likely to view them as capable of thought, but not feeling. It's not quite total objectification, more like a shift from viewing women as equals to seeing them as fickle others who lack the emotional complexity of men. Smitty, who took many women to bed, may have fallen into this trap. His bottomless ego made it so that he only ever considered his own feelings, not those of others.

He had no qualms with taking a life if it brought him pleasure. And if Mary had any objections to this new attitude, she didn't voice. them. Instead, she called Aline, who she knew from school, and pestered her to go on a double date with her, Smitty, and John Saunders. Aline wasn't convinced. She found both Smitty and John to be off-putting and strange. Plus, she had a test in the morning. That same night, Aline was home with her mother, Norma. They laughed together as the teen tried to teach her mother, La Frug. That was a popular dance craze in the 60s, involving lots of jerky, chicken-like movement. think Austin Powers dance numbers and you're pretty much there.

Norma worked as a night nurse and eventually had to go. So she said good night to her daughter and headed out. Aline was left alone and with no one around, she made a fateful decision. We don't know why Aline did what she did next. Maybe Mary's badgering had been enough to guilt her. Maybe there was some part of her that wanted to fit in with the more rebellious teens of Tucson. Or maybe she just thought she'd have fun with the terrible trio of Charles Schmidt, John Saunders, and Mary French.

Whatever her reasons, she got out of bed, maybe checked her reflection in the mirror. She was dressed in a one-piece bathing suit and a cover-up blouse with yellow flowers. She slid into orange flip-flops and stepped out into the night. A little later, Aline, Mary, John, and Smitty were in Smitty's car, cruising through the desert together. The desert around Tucson is a dangerous place. It's filled with thousands of freestanding Sawaro, ready to prick any careless nighttime intruders. The rocky ground hosts dozens of dangerous species who have learned how to survive in these harsh conditions, from rattlesnakes to scorpions, even the occasional jaguar.

In other words, it's not a suitable hangout spot for the unprepared. But Smitty and his friends weren't concerned with safety. Once they parked, the four made their way down to a wash, a sort of dry riverbed, and began to talk. Before long, Smitty asked Mary if she'd go back to the car with him. She agreed, maybe hoping things would continue to go this pleasantly, or perhaps grateful she wouldn't have to witness what she knew was coming. Once they were alone, John began to force himself on her. On their way to the car, Mary and Smitty could hear Aline,

screaming from behind them. Smitty gave a lame excuse, saying to Mary, she needs help, before running back down to the wash. Of course, it was all a perverse act. Mary already knew exactly what he planned to do. Once there, he did anything but help. According to one account, both Smitty and John forced themselves on a lean.

Then they made it put her bathing suit back on. After that, Smitty tried to strangle her, but she was still breathing, and so he found a sharp rock in the desert sand. He offered the rock to his friend, giving him the opportunity to deliver the killing blow. But John was as cowardly as they came. Whatever energy had prompted him to begin the assault had faded.

He was very much still that sick little boy in his crib. Smitty didn't ask twice. He turned back to Aline and struck her over the head with the rock. When Smitty got back to Mary, he was high on adrenaline, jumping into the car and kissing her. He must have smelled of desert, hair grease, makeup, and sweat. He smiled at her, breathless, saying, We killed her. I love you very much. The FBI notes that serial killers don't kill just for sexual release, as is often depicted in media.

They might commit their murders for the thrill, for money, for attention. It's easy to guess what might have motivated Charles Schmidt to kill Aline Roe. Like many teens in Tucson at the time, he was bored, and his rampant self-absorption meant that he was willing to do anything to entertain himself. Beyond that, Aline had rejected John before, and any rejection, any resistance, irritated Smitty to no end, even if it was his friend getting rejected. In the weeks that followed, Aline's mother, Norris. Norma lived through the trauma of her daughter being missing, even though most people believed that she had just run away. She wouldn't have been any different from the dozens of other teens who did so every month.

But Aline wasn't like those other teens. Norma was sure of it. However, she knew enough about Smitty and his friends to suspect they knew something. She eventually convinced the police to interrogate them. But Smitty had trained his followers well. He rehearsed a story with both Mary and John, making sure that all three were consistent in the narrative of what happened the night of Aline's murder. They told police that they'd gone to pick up Aline, but she wasn't home, so they just went on their way and never saw her. With no evidence to the contrary, investigators couldn't press this angle any further, and Aline's case went cold. The summer of 64 came and went. Time passed, and with it came some changes in Smitty's life. The reality of collecting teenagers

as friends, meant that Smitty had some turnover and his gang of misfits. Eventually, John Saunders joined the Navy and moved to Connecticut. Mary French left for Texas, though what prompted the move is unclear. This was likely difficult for her as she was thoroughly obsessed with Smitty. However, Smitty almost certainly couldn't care less. It didn't matter who the teens were, as long as he always had some to adore him. That's why he later earned the name the Pied Piper. Like the legendary figure,

he held an uncanny hold over the young people of his community. And soon, he had some new kids at his beck and call. First was Richie Bruns, a reform school dropout with a criminal record. He'd been either expelled or suspended from high school four times and had yet to make it past the 10th grade. Like John before him, he thought Smitty was the coolest and enjoyed the status that proximity to his new friend brought him. And then there was Gretchen Fritz.

If ever there was a queen befitting the Pied Piper, it was she. Gretchen was a pretty young blonde, whose father was a wealthy physician and a prominent member of the community. Smitty reportedly caught sight of the 16-year-old at a swimming pool in August 1964 and was immediately infatuated. He followed her home, Ever the Prince Charming, and rang her doorbell, saying that he thought he recognized her from somewhere. The ruse apparently worked as she invited. at him inside, beginning one of the most tumultuous romances Tucson would ever see. From the outside, it seemed like a perfect match. Gretchen's teachers said she was a pathological liar, so it seemed like they had that in common. But for a pair of young people with a history of lies,

they confided a lot in each other. Smitty told Gretchen about his childhood. He told her about a lean. He even told her a story of how another young man had killed his girlfriend in a car crash, and so he had cut the man's hands off and buried him in the desert. This was a story he repeated often, and whether it was true is impossible to know. For her part, Gretchen shared with him how she didn't think her family loved her. She herself had a criminal record. She'd taken part of the attempted robbery of a liquor store. Like I said, it seemed like a perfect match. However, with Smitty and Gretchen's great love came great jealousy, and they eventually began to suspect each other of cheating,

which, of course, Smitty likely was. He was usually seducing a number of teenage girls at any given time. They fought constantly. At one point, Smitty had Richard Brun send letters to Gretchen's parents, anonymously warning them of her supposed promiscuity. Smitty and Ritchie even wrote to the Tucson Health Department, claiming that Gretchen was passing STDs around town and needed to be stopped. Anything to keep her from having sex with anyone but Smitty.

But Gretchen had a certain amount of control over Smitty. She knew his secrets. And he worried that if he ever broke up with her, she'd tell the police everything she knew. They were deadlocked. Something had to give. In August of 1965, it did. That month, over a year,

Year after Aline's murder, Gretchen Fritz and her younger sister Wendy disappeared. At first, Smitty just told Richie that as far as he knew, Gretchen had run away to California. He told detectives the same thing. But after a while, the local mafia waded into the fray. Apparently, someone hired them to look into what happened to her. Even for someone as pathological as Smitty, the stress had to be getting to him. His lies were working. but how long could it last?

The pressure grew to the point where Smitty felt he had to tell someone the truth. And so one day, while sitting in his home with Richie, he told his friend, I've killed four times, not three. Now it's your turn to kill someone, Richie. He was apparently referring to Aline, the Fritz sisters, and the unknown boy he killed earlier. Richie didn't know whether to believe him. Smitty told a lot of stories after all. But then he took Richie out into the desert, and things became crystal clear.

There, just laying out in the dirt was Gretchen's body. Her legs were tied and her shirt was off. Wendy was a few feet away, buried in the dirt with just a foot sticking out. Smitty turned to Richie, handed him a shovel, and said, Now you're in this as deep as I am. Coming up, Smitty's machinations reached their breaking point. Every outfit starts with a choice. What am I wearing underneath?

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But Smitty was doing the opposite. The 23-year-old bragged to all his friends up and down Speedway Boulevard, telling them of his murderous exploits. He even offered to show them where he'd buried his victims. But the boasting stopped when members of the local mafia came around, asking more questions. asking more questions about what happened to Gretchen Fritz. Even then, Smitty stuck to the story that Gretchen and her sister ran away to California. According to Richie Bruns, the mob interrogated them both at one point,

and after Smitty told them the California lie, they called his bluff. They said they'd take him to the Golden State to look for her. Take me to California? Smitty asked. Yeah, don't you want to help find the girls, bring them home safe? They replied. And so, the mafia drove him to San Diego, where they showed Gretchen's picture to anyone who would listen. Apparently, Smitty couldn't even keep his mouth shut during this precarious beach vacation. For some reason, he pretended to be an FBI agent, going around San Diego,

claiming he was conducting an investigation into Gretchen's disappearance. This is a prime example of his pathological need to lie, even when in a dangerous situation, he couldn't help presenting himself as something more, more than what he was. Of course, the FBI doesn't appreciate it when random 20-somethings pretend to be agents. And so, Smitty was arrested and taken in for questioning. But as in Tucson, the FBI couldn't pin anything on him

and let him go. The constant evasion of the authorities was certainly going to Smitty's head, in more ways than one. The pressure he was under made him paranoid. Richie Bruns thought that his idol was losing his grip on reality, which, based on our research, had always been tenuous. Around this time, he was apparently running around his house, destroying things, and shouting, God's going to punish me.

And while the jury's out on God's involvement, it was Smitty's own acolyte, Richie, who was his undoing. If you remember, back in 1964, Smitty had proposed to not just marry French, but also Kathy Marath, the girl who was self-possessed enough to tell him to hit the road. The thing was, Richie Bruns had fallen in love with Kathy. She broke up with him, but he kept writing her love letters. Richie would toss and turn at night, dreaming that Smitty's wrath would somehow turn on Kathy. He'd killed Aline Roe just because she'd rejected his friend. Why not Kathy, who had rejected Smitty?

The anxious young man began patrolling Kathy's home, looking for any sign that Smitty was after her. Kathy's parents noticed this and were concerned he was stalking her. According to Richie himself, there was a three-and-a-half-month period in which he was always either with Smitty or watching Kathy. He even spent the night in the alley outside of her house. It got so bad that eventually Kathy's parents got the law involved. A judge ordered Richie to move to Ohio to live with his grandmother.

Meanwhile, Smitty was thinking that perhaps he could, turn his life around. He'd been through some tough times, sure, but that didn't mean he couldn't smooth things out. By October of 1965, Smitty was dating 15-year-old Diane Lynch. Supposedly, there was a mysterious old woman who saw them on a date together at a taco restaurant and warned them that their relationship would end badly. She said she could see their fortune. Smitty wasn't one for superstition, but you didn't have to be a psychic to guess that any relationship of his was would end badly. Nevertheless, Smitty and Diane got married on October 24th. It seemed like life was looking up for the Pied Piper, or so he thought. Richie Bronze was still in Ohio,

living out as court-ordered exile. But distance only made him worry more, as his nightmares that something would happen to Kathy continued. His guilt became so great that finally he decided to tell his grandmother everything he knew. grandmothers can bring that out in a person. He told her about how Smitty, John, and Mary had killed Aline, about how Smitty had killed the Fritz sisters and made him help bury the bodies. Once he told her about the murders, he phoned his father in Tucson, who in turn contacted the police.

By November, Richie was on a plane back to Arizona. Once back home, he showed the police exactly where Gretchen and Wendy Fritz were buried. On November 10th, the police showed up at Smitty's house with an arrest warrant, only they didn't have a warrant to search the house. Smitty's mother barred the doorway, refusing to grant them entry. And while it's hard to fault a mother for protecting her son and her own legal rights, this was indicative of a larger pattern within the family. It seems likely that Smitty's parents were enablers. Enabling occurs when a person, seeking to protect their loved one, continues to support them, even with, when they're engaging in harmful behaviors.

They fail to see that the best way to help in that situation is to continue to support them emotionally, but to stop supporting them financially. In the case of the Schmidz, his parents always provided Smitty with a home and an allowance, even though he did nothing to earn it. If they saw any signs of his violent behavior, which they almost certainly did,

they minimized or ignored it. Despite his mother's best efforts, Smitty was finally arrested and brought in for interrogated. His boots were removed and emptied of all the junk he had stuffed into them, much like the secrets that would soon shake loose. The police asked Richie if he would face Smitty to see if this might provoke a confession. After some initial hesitation, he agreed. They met in an interrogation room, and Richie would later note that Smitty looked worse than he'd ever seen him.

His face was caked with old layers of makeup, his beauty mark was a small. much, his shirt was sweaty and wrinkled. It seemed that despite his attempts at starting a new life, Smitty's past still haunted him. I know why you're doing this, Smitty told him. This was the beginning of his legal strategy, trying to make it seem like Richie had committed the murders and that he was now trying to frame Smitty. But the police next arrested John Saunders and Mary French, retrieving them from Connecticut and Texas. John confessed readily, making it deep. for a life sentence, but with the possibility of parole within seven years.

Mary was less tractable. Her still burning love for Smitty meant that she refused to rat on him. That is, until she found out he'd gotten married. Once that came out, Mary spilled everything. Mary offered to show the police where Aline's body was buried, but ultimately they couldn't find it, and with Smitty still refusing to confess, confess, the case against him for Aline's murder was weak.

So in February 1966, only the trial for the murder of the Fritz sisters moved forward. Smitty was nearly unrecognizable in court. His face was scrubbed of his usual ridiculous makeup. No more lipstick, no more beauty mark. And he wore black loafers instead of his boots. The trial was particularly eye-opening. Smitty's guilt and cruelty. had been established during John and Mary's confessions. But now, the Tucson community learned just how much its teens had been hiding. It's estimated that as many as 30 different kids were aware of Smitty's crimes. Multiple individuals testified to having heard or seen things that suggested Smitty was killing women.

Not everyone's silence had been born of fear. For as much as Smitty's followers respected him, there were just as many who saw him for the pathetic creature he was. was. No, it seems these teens were motivated more by a certain honor among thieves. They saw themselves as rebels, oppressed by their parents, forced to live in the gilded cage that was Tucson. All they had was each other. It was teenage angst, but with life or death stakes. Despite these closed ranks, now the secrets were out. There was no protecting Smitty anymore. Even his own father turned on him. Smitty's mother tried to claim he was with them on the night of the Fritz murders, but his father told the truth. They didn't see him that

night. At the end of the trial, Smitty was convicted of murdering Gretchen and Wendy Fritz. When she heard the verdict, his teenage wife Diane broke into tears, running forward and embracing him. However, their divorce was finalized later that summer, putting an end to their very brief marriage. The following May, the state finally moved forward with a trial for Aline's murder. In this case, Smitty ultimately confessed. Perhaps he was worn down by a year of friends and family turning on him. Smitty finally agreed to show the police where he buried Aline's body. Apparently, he'd moved the remains after burying her with John and Mary. Investigators unearthed her skeleton in June of 1967, over three years after she was murdered.

Her mother Norma finally had closure. She had never given up, always pursuing justice for her daughter. But of course, Smitty had to make even this moment about him. Word got out that a skeleton was being unearthed in the desert, leading to a crowd of onlookers at the crime scene. There were even some young kids. Smitty looked at the group and shook his head, saying, I think it's shameful that people bring kids to see a thing like this.

This sad attempt at moral superiority is fairly typical of Smitty's psychology. It's hard to say for sure what disorders he lived with. Whatever psych evals were done seemed to have been lost to time, but we can take a guess. Charles Schmidt had the traits of a pathological liar with abandonment issues, who needed attention from others to fill an emptiness inside. He fits most of the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. He increasingly saw women as obdemeanor. leading him to kill three.

As for as hapless accomplices, Mary French was released from prison in December, 1968, after serving three years. She planned on returning to live with her family in Texas. John Saunders is more of a mystery. Arizona Daily Star reporter Johanna Eubank found some evidence to suggest that he was released from prison in 1990. The records she found describe a man by that name who seems a good match to the one from story, but there's no way to know for sure. Richie Bruns avoided any prison time, but in the aftermath of the trials, some of the teens in town saw him as a rat, a squealer.

According to him, it was usually the more privileged teens who would deride him, whereas those with criminal records understood that there was a difference between, quote, squealing on somebody for stealing a candy bar and squealing on somebody who was out there killing girls. As for Smitty, the thrill of his crimes faded as he faced the realities of prison. This wasn't Speedway Boulevard, with its neon signs and fast cars and endless teenagers to adore him. By most accounts, he was unable to subsume his narcissistic persona when dealing with hardened criminals. He tried to escape multiple times and was successful on one occasion in November of 1972. However, he chose to wear.

a very odd yellow wig and caught the eye of a railroad worker who saw him fleeing through the desert. The worker also happened to be an old Speedway Boulevard acquaintance who recognized Smitty immediately. This time he had no problem ratting on the Pied Piper. Smitty was returned to prison, where in March 1975 he was stabbed at least 20 times by his fellow inmates. This was supposedly because he backed out of yet another escape attempt. It was a fitting end for a man who took the lives of three women and never showed any remorse. Perhaps the only sympathy there is to be had for Smitty is in how out of control he was. While he was very calculated in crafting his persona and deceiving the teens around him,

he was also totally unable to stop. Whatever ills plagued him, they left his mind totally unequipped to deal with reality. But this story is also about the failing of the larger community, one that raised a generation of teenagers who didn't value the lives of three of their peers. They placed more value on discretion and having a good time. If they saw themselves as rebels, it's hard to tell what this act of rebellion accomplished, for they hardly seemed any more enlightened than their supposedly oppressive parents. More likely this was a mask to hide what they really were.

Bored. And if nothing else, Smitty was entertaining. Many Tucson residents wrote into Life magazine, taking issue with the 1966 article that portrayed the town in a negative light. Some of the letters were from teens who claimed Tucson had good students and that there was nothing wrong with hamburger stands and drive-ins. But that defensiveness perhaps highlights the kind of attitude that gave rise to an environment where murder occurred and was covered up, as Richie Bruns later wrote. Only in this highly transient, unstable town, which offers its young people nothing, no jobs simply because there's no industry,

no place to go because there's no worthwhile teenage establishments around, and nothing to do whether than cruise in cars, park and make out, or get in trouble, could a smitty take hold of the reins of so many and guide them blindly down such a path of destruction? Charles Schmid gave the teens of Tucson something to do in a town where that was worth everything. But with that kind of appetite, you'd have to wonder if the teens of Tucson

would have been happy anywhere. As journalist Don Mozer put it in his 1966 article covering the case, for them there's nothing to do in any town. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back next week with a new episode. You can find all episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parkass for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time.

Stay safe out there. Serial Killers is a Spotify. original from Parcast. Executive produced by Max Cutler, our head of programming is Julian Boarro. Our supervising sound designer is Russell Nash, with Nick Johnson as our head of production, and Trent Williamson as our senior production specialist. Ben Bishop is our supervising editor, and Derek Jennings is our writing lead. This episode of serial killers was written by Greg Castro, edited by Kate Murdoch and Joel Callan, fact-checked by Catherine Barner, researched by Sapphire Williams and Chelsea Wood, produced by Bruce Kitovich and sound design by Michael Motion.

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