Obsession (53 page)

Gideon placed a collect call to his mother, Shirley, on Tuesday. She asked him point-blank, “Oh, Donny, what have you done? Did you kill this girl?”

“What girl?” he asked.

“The Stephanie Schmidt girl.”

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

Shirley said he sounded surprised when she told him the police were looking for him. She called the police, who were eventually able to trace the call to a Safeway store in Crescent City, California, near the Oregon border. His abandoned pickup truck was found in Coos Bay, Oregon, about a hundred miles to the north. It was later learned that Gideon headed for the Canadian border, but was turned back by customs authorities at the Coutts, Alberta, crossing because of a prior felony conviction in the United States.

Another development, both frightening and disturbing in its implications, surfaced while Stephanie and Don were missing. A Crawford County, Kansas, woman in her early fifties came forward and told authorities that she had been raped by Gideon in April. He had been driving her home after a date. She hadn’t
reported the incident because she’d been afraid, but felt she had to once he was linked to another possible crime. She expressed great remorse that her hesitancy in reporting it might have allowed Gideon to assault again.

Gene and Peggy prepared a “missing” poster for wide circulation. It featured pictures of both Stephanie and the five-feet-ten, 160-pound Gideon. He was not officially a suspect, merely wanted for parole violation and questioning in Stephanie’s disappearance. Stephanie’s three companions the night she disappeared told a newspaper reporter they couldn’t believe Don would be involved in her disappearance. They said he was like a big brother to them.

“He’s been at our house and everything,” said Sloane Kehl. “He never did anything. He never said anything that would lead us to believe he would be involved with something like this.”

Gene Schmidt told reporters that even if Gideon had abducted his daughter, he took heart from the fact that Don released the other woman alive after the attack.

Shannon Gideon, Don’s younger sister, told the Associated Press that even though there was some initial worry in the family that her brother was involved with Stephanie’s disappearance, logic told her that he wouldn’t be. “I admit, we wondered if something bad hadn’t happened. But he knows that getting out of prison was his second chance and that he’s lucky to get a second chance at all, so he can’t blow it. He’s working and being a good citizen.” When asked about denying killing Stephanie to their mother, Shannon said, “I know he’s got a past, but I believe him.”

A number of friends and associates worked to get Stephanie’s case featured on John Walsh’s national television program,
America’s Most Wanted,
most notably Larry Cukajti, a Sigma Chi friend of Gene’s and
an advertising account executive, who contacted the producer, Lance Heflin. The brief segment, including tape of Stephanie’s summer boating excursion with their friends, the Foxes, ran on Friday, July 16, along with an interview with Gene and Peggy saying they were confident their daughter was still alive.

The next day, Donald Ray Gideon called Volusia County, Florida, sheriff’s deputies from a hotel phone booth in Ormond Beach and turned himself in. Ironically, Jeni had been staying about five miles away. He didn’t admit anything, merely told them, “I’m the guy you’re looking for.” He had told his older sister by phone that he had left Pittsburg when he did because he “just wanted to get away for a while and take a little vacation.” Lead Pittsburg detective Ken Orender and Kansas Bureau of Investigation personnel drove to Florida. Gideon waived extradition and rode back with them to Kansas.

In Shawnee County Jail, he began to talk to detectives. State attorney general Bob Stephan was a friend of Gene’s from Sigma Chi circles in Topeka, where Gene had started an alumni group. He called personally and tearfully said, “The son of a bitch confessed and it’s not good. The police are on their way to talk to you now.”

Local police, FBI, and KBI all came to the house. Police Chief Steve Cox asked everyone else to leave the living room and wait in the basement, then sat down with Gene and Peggy and Jeni. Craig Hill watched the basement door to make sure they weren’t disturbed.

Chief Cox told them that Gideon had confessed to killing Stephanie, that he had drawn a map showing where he’d left the body, but that they couldn’t find it so they were flying him down to show them. They would need Stephanie’s dental records.

The confession was made to KBI agent Scott Teese
link and FBI agent Michael Napier. I know Mike Napier; he’s a super guy, now working back in Quantico. Gideon admitted to the agents that he had offered Stephanie a ride home and that she’d willingly gotten in his truck with him. When he drove past the road leading to her house, he grabbed her hand so she couldn’t jump out of the truck. He drove her to a field surrounded by woods, where he sexually assaulted her, then strangled her with his hands and tied her bra around her neck, all within an hour of leaving the bar. He said that he often went into rages, and according to Teeselink’s and Napier’s report, “When the rage hits, it is equivalent to and consists of ‘pure power,’ which he holds and exercises.”

He claimed that after the rape, he led Stephanie by the hand out of the truck, gave her a screwdriver, and told her to kill him with it. She couldn’t do it, he said, so he had to kill her. Let me say that this is not an uncommon type of embellishment to a predatory murder confession—an ex post facto attempt by the murderer to absolve himself of the blame—but it lacks all credence. Victimology in Stephanie Schmidt’s case tells us that presented with this opportunity, she wouldn’t have taken him up on his offer to kill him, but she would have run like hell.

In a telephone call from the jail, he also admitted the killing to his mother. He said he had killed Stephanie after assaulting her because he didn’t want to go back to prison. He also admitted the rape of the Crawford County woman in April.

In spite of their worst fears, the pronouncement seemed unreal to all three Schmidts. Craig came over to them and mentioned Parents of Murdered Children. It was the first time Gene and Peggy had heard of the organization. “You’ll get through this,” Craig said.

After the announcement, the house began filling up with people again. Lynn Allen, the Johnson County
victims’ rights coordinator, who worked with the district attorney’s office, came by to offer her help.

Stacey Payne could hardly believe the news. “I was sick. He had stayed the night in my dorm room not long before. Megan and I would be there; he’d sleep on our floor. I thought of him like a brother.”

And when she thought about the events of June 30, her memories were even more chilling. “When my friend and I went to take Don back to Bootleggers, he was so persistent. He was just like, ‘Take her home and let’s go back out.’ But she’d been upset about something, so I wouldn’t do it. But I just thought back, you know? If I had taken her home and then gone back out with him, would I have found myself in the same situation as Stephanie? My mom still cries thinking about it, how close it was.”

Eric Rittenhouse was devastated, not only by the confirmation of his friend’s death, but by what he could have done to prevent it if he’d had more information. He would have looked out for Stephanie more intently. “I’d have felt a lot more protective. I would have said to her, ‘Don’t do anything with him. And if you need a ride, or anything, call me—any time of day or night, call anyone in the fraternity. We’ll help you.’ I just wish I could have known.”

The media coverage ranged the entire spectrum of sensitivity. The Schmidts were infuriated by one story comparing their loss of a daughter with the Gideons’ loss of a son. On the other hand, one local television reporter who’d recently lost her father came by simply to express her condolences. She and Gene and Peggy sat together in Stephanie’s room and cried.

On July 27, acting on Gideon’s instructions from the night before, investigators went to a field surrounded by woods in Cherokee County near the town of Weir, about ten miles southwest of Pittsburg. Fifty officers combed the area, and at about 4
P.M
. they
found Stephanie’s body in a stand of tall weeds, de-composed from weeks of exposure to the elements. Within the hour, the Schmidts were told of the find. Because of the state of the body, Gene and Peggy and Jeni never had the opportunity to see Stephanie a final time after she died.

Donald Ray Gideon was charged with first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated criminal sodomy and was transferred from Shawnee to the Crawford County Jail near Pittsburg.

Initially, authorities told the Schmidts they couldn’t have Stephanie’s body for burial because it constituted material evidence. They finally relented when the forensic report was done.

Stephanie Rene Schmidt, three days short of her twentieth birthday when she died, was laid to rest in Resurrection Cemetery on August 2, 1993. Gene and Peggy chose it because a close college Sigma Chi friend of Stephanie’s who had committed suicide was buried there. His death was the first loss of a peer that group had experienced. Stephanie’s, all too soon afterward, was the second. The preceding funeral service, held at Atonement Lutheran Church in Overland Park, was attended by an overflow gathering of more than eight hundred. Paul Clark, a professional musician and one of Stephanie’s many, many friends, performed a song he had written for her entitled “Fallen Tree.” The procession to the cemetery stretched over a mile.

As much as Gene’s and Peggy’s lives had already changed in the horrible weeks since Stephanie’s disappearance, they were to change even more: agonizingly, magnificently, heroically. I suspect Gene and Peggy would just shrug and say they were doing what they knew had to be done, for Stephanie and others like her. But I defy anyone who has not been through this personally to minimize their mission or their accomplishment.
Those who have will know all too well what I’m talking about.

Gene says, “We went from almost a complacent, quiet lifestyle to a highly public, financially challenged lifestyle. But it’s not really for us. We’ve been guided a lot by Stephanie. Someone’s got to do it. Not enough people are speaking out.”

They went public the day after the funeral, going on radio to ask the critical question: Why was this violent man released from prison?

The fact of the matter was that Donald Gideon’s release after serving ten years of his twenty-year sentence was mandatory, and it had nothing to do with his likelihood of hurting anyone else once he got out. It had only to do with “good time” in prison. The Schmidts couldn’t understand how this could be allowed to happen. They approached the state Department of Corrections and were told they were not entitled to the information; in effect, if you want to know something, sue us.

“They were not at all sympathetic,” Peggy remembers.

So when their friend, real estate agent Jim Blaufuss, approached them and said a group of legislators, attorneys, and business leaders were forming a task force focusing on violent sexual offenders and asked if they wanted to participate, they responded simultaneously, “Absolutely!” It would be called the Stephanie Schmidt Task Force, and its initial charge would be to see if they could change some laws to lessen the chances of this kind of tragedy happening to someone else’s child. In addition to Blaufuss, the nucleus of the group included Johnson County district attorney Paul Morrison, state senator Bob Vancrum, and state representative Gary Haulmark.

But Gene and Peggy had already realized this new work they were doing would become a lifelong commitment,
and they wanted something more permanent. “One of the things that shocked me initially,” Gene explains, “was that since Stephanie was over eighteen, there was no organization like the Center for Missing and Exploited Children that would help her.” So they set up their own foundation and called it Speak Out for Stephanie—S.O.S. They would concentrate their efforts on college campuses, trying to create awareness of sexual predators and increase personal safety.

On October 6, 1993, appearing before Cherokee County District Court judge David F. Brewster and over his attorney’s formal objection, Don Gideon pled guilty to four felony counts. As he responded individually to the counts of premeditated first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping, rape, and aggravated criminal sodomy, he sat expressionless. Gene and Peggy and about sixty of Stephanie’s friends were also in the courtroom, most of them wearing Speak Out for Stephanie pins. They wept quietly as prosecutor John Bork recounted the events of June 30 and July 1. Bork said that the motive for the murder was to hide the rape. Judge Brewster then asked Gideon if he wanted to make any changes in the story. Gideon just shrugged and shook his head. Bork said he would ask for the maximum sentence to insure that the defendant never got out to prey on anyone else. He said that if Kansas had a death penalty, that was what he would have proposed.

As he left the courtroom, Gene told a reporter, “For the first time in my life, I felt I was in the presence of something evil. This guy has no remorse. He’s a slug. He leaves a trail of pain wherever he goes.”

The sentencing hearing was set for November 18. In spite of the guilty plea, Bork called witnesses and presented the graphic details of Stephanie’s rape and
murder in his effort to secure the longest prison term allowable.

Gene, Peggy, and Jeni all addressed Judge Brewster. Gene had wanted to play a poignant and moving video he had compiled of scenes from Stephanie’s life, to demonstrate graphically what they had lost. But he was told it could be considered prejudicial and could be grounds for an appeal.

Since before Stephanie’s death, Jeni had wanted to be a writer. It’s an ironic tragedy that the first occasion in which her deep sensitivity and eloquence could be shared with the public had to be this one. But her message was powerful, and throughout her time before the court, she bravely riveted her eyes on Gideon, not letting him escape her condemnation, demanding, as it were, that all violent predators be forced to face the responsibility for what they have done. It was not Jeni who looked away; it was Gideon. Once again he proved himself to be the coward, one who could not dominate this eighteen-year-old young woman in an even test of wills.