Charles Schmid

The young adult thriller Half in Love with Death (Merit Press 2015) by Emily Ross was inspired by the Schmid case.

Actress Rose McGowan's 2014 directorial debut, Dawn, was inspired by the events surrounding the murder of Alleen Rowe. It stars Tara Lynne Barr in the role of Dawn Rowe, Hannah Marks as Mary French and Reiley McClendon as Schmid.

A Crime to Remember portrayed the case in the 2014 episode "The Pied Piper".

On March 10, 1975, Schmid was stabbed 47 times by two fellow prisoners. After losing an eye and a kidney, he died from his injuries on March 30, 1975. His body was stolen from the morgue but recovered by police. Schmid's mother chose the prison cemetery for his burial, believing his tombstone would be defaced if he were buried in a public cemetery. He received a Catholic funeral at the prison, although he was not in the casket.

Schmid attempted to escape from prison multiple times, finally succeeding on November 11, 1972, when he and another triple murderer, Raymond Hudgens, escaped from Arizona State Prison. They held four hostages on a ranch near Tempe for a time, ate at a Sonic, then separated, and were finally recaptured and returned to prison.

The 1971 movie The Todd Killings is based on the Schmid case, as was the 1994 film Dead Beat and the 2005 film The Lost, adapted from a novel by Jack Ketchum.

In the early 1970s, Schmid became interested in poetry. He sent his work from prison to a professor at the University of Arizona, Richard Shelton. "For all the wrong reasons, I critiqued his work and discovered that he was quite talented," Shelton later said.

In 1970 John Gilmore published The Tucson Murders, through Dial Press, New York, a hardcover nonfiction true crime detailing the life and crimes of Charles Schmid, the "notorious pied piper of Tucson". 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. He was in close contact with him and his family during the whole trial.

In 1966, Schmid was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. When the state of Arizona temporarily abolished the death penalty in 1971, Schmid's sentence was commuted to fifty years in prison.

In 1966, Joyce Carol Oates published the short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", about a teenage girl being charmed and menaced by a predatory man; she was inspired in part by the Schmid case. The story is dedicated to Bob Dylan because Oates was also inspired by his song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." The story was adapted into a 1985 film Smooth Talk, in which Schmid's character, Arnold Friend, is played by Treat Williams.

One of Schmid's many girlfriends was Gretchen Fritz, daughter of a prominent Tucson heart surgeon and community leader. Schmid confided to Fritz that he had murdered Rowe. There were also rumors that Fritz knew of an earlier, unsubstantiated murder that Schmid supposedly committed. When he decided to break up with Fritz, she threatened to use the information against him. Schmid strangled Fritz and her sister Wendy on August 16, 1965.

On May 31, 1964, Schmid decided to murder Alleen Rowe, a high school student living with her divorced mother. His girlfriend, Mary French, had persuaded Rowe to go out with Saunders, but Schmid had intended all along to murder Rowe in order to know what it felt like to kill someone. Schmid and his friends took Rowe to the desert, where Schmid and Saunders killed her. Before murdering Rowe, Schmid instructed Saunders to rape her, but he couldn't do it. While the murder occurred, French was waiting in the car and listening to the radio. Afterwards the three buried her.

The mid-1960s, media focused their attention on the Schmid case and trial. Life and Playboy magazines sent reporters to cover the proceedings. Time did features on contemporary life in Tucson and the murders of the young women. F. Lee Bailey, a celebrity attorney who was involved with the Boston Strangler and Sam Sheppard cases of the 1950s and 1960s, was brought in for consultation.

Charles Howard Schmid, Jr. (July 8, 1942 – March 30, 1975), also known as the Pied Piper of Tucson, was an American serial killer whose crimes were detailed by journalist Don Moser in an article featured in the March 4, 1966, issue of Life magazine. Schmid's criminal career later formed the basis for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", a short story by Joyce Carol Oates. In 2008, The Library of America selected Moser's article for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American true crime literature.