Tales from the Morgue: The Pied Piper of Tucson, Part 2

In Police Statement

Bruns Identifies 'Murderers' Of Alleen Rowe

Three Took Girl To Remote Spot

By DAVE GREEN

Richard Bruns, 19, who told police where to find the skeletons of the Fritz sisters, also named two persons who he said killed Alleen Rowe, a pretty 15-year-old blonde missing since last year.

The Star learned yesterday that Bruns gave city police a statement in which he identified two men and a girl who he said took the Rowe girl to a desert area near Harrison and Golf Links Rd. where she was murdered.

He described the location of the grave as at the bottom of an embankment under a large tree near those roads.

As the Star went to press this morning there had been no systemic search conducted for the grave by either police agency.

In his statement to detectives Bruns said the three persons took the Palo Verde sophomore to the desert area and that the two men killed her by striking her on the head with rocks.

A person at the home of one of the boys mentioned by the informer said he is "out of town." The whereabouts of the girl said to have accompanied the two men on the night of the murder is not known at this time.

Alleen Rose, 15 at the time of her disappearance on May 31, 1964, was the first girl reported missing. It was more than a year later that Gretchen and Wendy Fritz were killed.

Detectives in San Diego, Calif. verified a report yesterday that Charles Schmid, 23, of E. Adams St., who has been charged with the murder of the Fritz girls, was arrested there first in 1962 and then on Aug. 28 of this year.

On the latter date he was held by police in that city for an hour and a half in connection with the disappearance of the Fritz girls but was not booked. He was released after San Diego police were informed that he was not a suspect in the Fritz case at that time.

Chief of Police, Bernard L. Garmire said yesterday that his department was not informed of Schmid's detainment in San Diego at that time. He said he learned of the incident later through another investigative agency.

Schmid was detained by San Diego police in 1962 also "but was not arrested," according to detectives there. They declined comment on why he was detained at that time.

San Diego authorities said Schmid was "escorted" to that city by two persons believed members of the underworld.

A reliable source said a member of a Tucson family interested in the Fritz girls disappearance contacted the underworld through a local businessman and on a Friday night Schmid received a telephone call from a man who said in effect that he should pack for a trip or expect trouble.

It is reported that Schmid promptly called the FBI who told him to make the trip. They said they could do nothing at that time since no crime had been committed, but according to the source, they hinted that they would take the necessary action.

In San Diego Schmid was arrested, while showing pictures of the Fritz girls and inquiring of persons if they had seen them. He was doing that at the insistence of his two escorts, the source related.

It would appear that Schmid was not being held as a suspect at that time in the Fritz case but that law enforcement agencies were cooperating to rescue him from the two underworld figures.

When he was released by the San Diego police, Schmid returned to a motel room where the two alleged hoodlums were supposed to be staying. On his return to the motel he was told by a man that the two men who accompanied him to San Diego had been taken away by some men — in handcuffs.

Although the source said that Tucson police were told the identities of the two travelers, Chief Garmire said he was not given their names.

Mrs. Norma Rowe, mother of the girl who was reported buried in the vicinity of Golf Links Rd. said she was informed yesterday by a person at the Sheriff's office that his deputies were planning a search of the area today.

Mrs. Rowe, who insisted from the day her daughter was first reported missing that the girl had been murdered, had also expressed belief that her daughter's death was connected with the death of the Fritz girls.

She had previously named as persons she suspected of killing her daughter, the men who were identified in Bruns statement as the killers.

While investigators now see a possible tie-up between the Rowe and Fritz cases, still other sources fear that Sandra Hughes, 14, who disappeared on Sept. 10, has also been slain.

There has been no hint of another arrest in the Fritz case on which police booked Schmid on suspicion of murder. But he has not given police a statement.

Schmid, who was recently married to a 15-year-old girl, Jane, led Tucson High school to the State Gymnastics Championship in 1960.

He won the flying rings and still rings events, came in second in the long horse and took a fifth place on the horizontal bars.