You’ve probably heard of the "Pied Piper of Tucson," but the real story of Charles Howard Schmid Jr. is way weirder than the nicknames suggest. It wasn't just about the murders. It was about a 23-year-old man who basically cosplayed as a teenage rebel, wore pancake makeup, and stuffed his boots with tin cans just to look taller while hanging out at burger joints on Speedway Boulevard.
Honestly, it’s one of those cases that makes you realize how easily a charismatic person can manipulate an entire community. Schmid didn't just kill people; he convinced his friends to watch, to help, and then to keep his secrets for months.
Who Was the Real Charles Howard Schmid Jr.?
Before he was a headline, he was just "Smitty." Born in 1942 and adopted by a couple who owned a nursing home, Schmid grew up with money but seemingly zero direction. He was a champion gymnast in high school—actually leading his team to a state title—but he dropped out before graduating.
He was short, only about 5'3". That bothered him. To fix it, he’d stuff rags and flattened cans into his boots to gain a few inches, which gave him this strange, swaying walk. He told everyone the limp was from a "mob fight." He dyed his hair raven black, used white lipstick to look pale, and even painted a fake mole on his cheek with axle grease.
It sounds ridiculous, right? But to the bored teenagers of Tucson in the early 60s, he was cool. He had a gold 1964 Falcon Sprint, plenty of cash, and he was older. He was the guy who knew where the parties were in the desert.
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The Murders That Shocked Arizona
The violence started in May 1964. Schmid told his friends, John Saunders and Mary French, that he wanted to kill a girl just to see if he could get away with it. He wasn't joking.
They picked up 15-year-old Alleen Rowe. They drove her out to the desert under the guise of a double date. There, Schmid and Saunders beat her to death with rocks. They buried her in a shallow grave and went back to their lives. For over a year, Alleen was just a missing person.
Then came August 1965. Schmid was dating a girl named Gretchen Fritz. Gretchen apparently knew about Alleen’s murder—Schmid had bragged to her about it. After a series of arguments where she allegedly threatened to turn him in, Schmid strangled Gretchen and her 13-year-old sister, Wendy Fritz.
Why Nobody Said Anything
This is the part that usually blows people's minds. Schmid didn't just hide the bodies; he showed them off. He took his friend Richard Bruns out to the desert to see the Fritz sisters' remains. Bruns didn't go to the cops for weeks. He was terrified. The "coterie" of teens around Schmid existed in this bubble of silence, where being a "snitch" was worse than knowing about a triple homicide.
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Eventually, the guilt or the fear got to Bruns. He fled to Ohio and told his parents, who contacted the Tucson police.
The Trial and the Life Magazine Circus
When the news broke, it didn't just stay local. Life magazine ran a massive 16-page spread in 1966 titled "The Pied Piper of Tucson." It painted a picture of a "lost generation" of kids in the desert, drifting through a culture of sex and violence.
Schmid was eventually convicted of the murders. He was originally sentenced to death, but that was commuted to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily struck down the death penalty in 1972.
While he was locked up at the Arizona State Prison in Florence, Schmid didn't exactly keep a low profile. He tried to escape multiple times. In 1972, he actually made it out for a few days, holding a family hostage before being caught. He also started writing poetry, some of which was actually published. He had this weirdly high IQ and a talent for words, which makes the brutality of his crimes even harder to wrap your head around.
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The Violent End of Smitty
In March 1975, the law of the "Big House" finally caught up with him. Two other inmates, Jimmy Ferra and Dennis Eversole, attacked Schmid. They stabbed him 47 times. He survived for ten days, losing an eye and a kidney, before he finally died at age 32.
His mother was so worried people would desecrate his grave that she had him buried in the prison cemetery under a plain marker. Even in death, his story stayed bizarre—at one point, his body was reportedly stolen from the morgue before being recovered.
What This Story Leaves Behind
The legacy of Charles Howard Schmid Jr. isn't just a true crime trivia fact. It actually changed how people looked at "youth culture" in America. It inspired Joyce Carol Oates to write her famous short story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Takeaways for True Crime Readers
If you're looking into this case, keep these nuances in mind:
- The "High IQ" Trap: Don't mistake Schmid's intelligence for stability. He was smart enough to lead a gymnastics team and write poetry, but he used those traits to mask a total lack of empathy.
- Groupthink is Dangerous: The Tucson murders happened because a group of kids felt more loyalty to a "cool" older guy than to the lives of their peers.
- The Media's Role: The "Pied Piper" moniker was a media creation. While it fits the narrative of leading children astray, the reality was much grittier and less "fairytale" than the papers made it out to look.
If you want to understand the geography of the crimes, you can still find maps of the old desert burial sites near Tucson, though most of that land is now developed. Most of the original documents from the trial are archived in the Arizona State Library for those who want to see the original testimony from the "coterie" members.
To get a real sense of the atmosphere back then, find a copy of the March 4, 1966, issue of Life. It’s probably the most accurate snapshot of the weird, sun-drenched horror that Schmid brought to the Arizona desert.