Obsession (51 page)

At this point in our research and knowledge, we really can’t say with any degree of authority why an Edward Gein, Theodore Bundy, or Gary Heidnik does what he does, why he finds such satisfaction in the act that it takes over and subverts everything else in his life. And I’m not certain we ever will.

The one thing I do know is that, at this point, we have nothing effective to offer to get them to stop or to supplant the particular obsession with something less harmful and more productive. But until we do, we need to keep studying them and looking for answers—not because we
hope
we can help them, but because we
know
we’ve got to be able to stop them quicker and more effectively.

I
f there really were such a thing, the Schmidts of Leawood, Kansas, could have been considered the “all-American family.” They certainly qualified for that designation until late in the afternoon of July 2, 1993, when their world turned upside down.

Gene Schmidt was from Hoisington, in the central part of the state, about ten miles north of where the Arkansas River takes its major turn at Great Bend—the center of the center of the country, the heart of the heart of America. Margaret Louise Dormois, universally known as Peggy, was from the southeastern Kansas city of Chanute, named for civil engineer and aviation pioneer Octave Chanute, who built the first bridge across the Missouri River at Kansas City and later influenced the Wright brothers in their understanding of flight. Gene and Peggy met in 1963 at Pittsburg State University, about an hour’s drive from Chanute and due south of Kansas City. When they married in 1966, Gene became a student teacher in Missouri, right out of college, taking time out for a stint in the National Guard before resuming his teaching career in journalism and English in Kansas. He left teaching to go to work in Topeka for Jostens, the
company noted for yearbooks and class rings, as a photographer and publishing consultant.

Their first child, whom they named Stephanie Rene, was born on the Fourth of July in 1973. “For the first three or four years of Stephanie’s life, I let her believe all the fireworks were for her,” Gene remembers. Their second daughter, Jennifer Anne, came along two years later, on October 9, 1975. Both girls were beautiful—angelic looking—Stephanie with thick, tight, blond curls and Jeni with straight, fine, blond hair. Stephanie had colic for three months and kept her parents up virtually continuously. That turned out to be the most trouble she gave them for an extended period during her entire growing-up years.

Anticipating the first birth, Gene firmly expected a boy, and Peggy was hoping for one for his sake. But when Stephanie came along, Gene admits, “She stole my heart right away, so that when Jennifer was coming along, we were hoping for another girl.”

As Peggy adds, “Boys are all right, but girls are very special.”

Practically from the moment of Jeni’s birth, she looked up to her big sister as her role model in life, and Stephanie tried her best to live up to the responsibility. As soon as they brought Jeni home from the hospital, Stephanie handed Peggy her diapers and said, “Give these to my little sister.”

Peggy recalls, “She was a big help. She’d feed Jennifer. She was very maternal.”

Jeni, for her part, didn’t eat baby food very long because she wanted to be like Stephanie. She drew the line, though, at one of Steph’s suggestions: “My mom would spray a big mountain of shaving cream on the kitchen table, and we’d play with it. And Stephanie would try and get me to eat it.”

Jeni followed Stephanie everywhere; the two girls were inseparable. Jeni recalled the day Steph went off
to kindergarten: “For three years I had her as my buddy all day long. And then one day this huge bus came to pick her up and take her away. I didn’t understand. Kindergarten was only half a day and my mom said she’d be back soon, but it was so lonely without her. I waited on the front porch until she came back.”

As they grew, Jeni both idolized and competed with her sister. She was often frustrated when she couldn’t do things as well as Steph because of her age—whether it was swimming, gymnastics, piano lessons, or learning to ride a bike.

Eventually, the differences started to show. They were still close and completely devoted to each other, but Stephanie developed as a more outgoing, group-oriented person. She was always trying to lead and organize, wherever she went and whatever she was doing. Jeni was more sensitive and introspective and enjoyed doing things alone: reading, writing, cooking. But if Stephanie tried something and she was good at it, whether it was intellectual or athletic—and Steph was both a prize student and a good athlete—Jeni had to try it, too. Stephanie was a first-class swimmer and Jeni was somewhat afraid of the water, but when Stephanie won a trophy, Jeni had to try for a trophy, too. It wasn’t resentment of her older sister’s prowess; it was just that she admired Stephanie so much, she had to do “Stephanie things,” too.

“Stephanie won the school spelling bee,” says Gene. “Then, thank God, Jeni won the math flash-card contest. Otherwise, we were going to have to buy her a trophy!”

Even though Jeni was the serious one, Stephanie could be introspective, too. From the time she was young, she kept a journal and wrote down her deeply held feelings and beliefs. An entry from when she was ten records, “My Three Wishes: 1. I wish I was skinnier.
2. I wish I had long hair. 3. I wish I knew Ricky Schroder personally.”

Though Stephanie ultimately turned into a thin and willowy beauty, wishes 2 and 3 went unfulfilled. Not only did teen heartthrob Schroder fail to come into her young life, her hair remained tight and curly. In fact, Janice Schuetz, her hairdresser in Topeka, remembered, “Stephanie was so cute, and she always wanted long hair. When she came to me for a haircut, she would climb up in the chair and say, in her dear little voice, ‘Cut it long.’”

As parents, Gene and Peggy were completely devoted to their daughters. Gene, an accomplished professional photographer, captured virtually every aspect of family life on film. This included frequent visits to grandparents, family, and friends and trips to Disney World three years in a row.

After Gene left Jostens, he worked in a variety of fields, all taking advantage of his outgoing, larger-than-life personality and his natural salesmanship. For a while he sold real estate in Topeka. When his company split in two, he went with the half that aligned with RE/MAX and moved to the Kansas City area, buying a house in the upscale suburb of Leawood. Stephanie was in the eighth grade and Jeni in the fifth. The girls found adjustment to the move difficult, both in making new friends at school and in that they had moved into a more affluent, materialistic environment that neither was prepared for. It was harder on Steph, who was more peer-oriented. Jeni, who felt more comfortable being by herself, had a slightly easier time. Despite the affluent surroundings, both girls had part-time jobs at the local HyVee grocery store. Steph graduated to working as a salesgirl at the Gap, which she enjoyed because she interacted with so many people. The clothing discounts were a large inducement, too.

Gene stayed with RE/MAX full-time for about three years, and all the while he and Peggy were designing promotional materials that he and other agents used in their selling. The demand for their services grew so great that Gene left real estate, and he and Peggy set up a thriving business as advertising and promotional consultants. Both beautiful blond girls served as occasional models for their parents’ retail and real estate photographic spreads. They called the company Dormois Productions, utilizing Peggy’s maiden name.

As the girls grew, the parents considered themselves neither strict nor lenient, and Jeni agrees. Their method of discipline had little to do with punishment or restriction. Instead, as Jeni recalls, her parents, and particularly her father, were continually challenging her and her sister’s belief systems, making them articulate why they did what they did and felt the way they felt. If they could justify their thinking or behavior—whatever it was—in a way that sounded logical and reasonable when stated out loud, then it was okay. If not, the girls generally changed on their own. Even when the parents needed to impose discipline, both girls acknowledged their parents were always willing to listen, and every decision remained open to a well-reasoned appeal.

One night when Stephanie was fifteen, Gene and Peggy returned home with some friends to find her walking out of the garage with her boyfriend. Gene blew up. The rule was, you’re not alone in the house with a boy when parents aren’t home. In retrospect, Gene thinks he was probably as concerned with the impression on their friends as anything. But after he was finished with his tirade, Stephanie countered that he and Mom stressed trust. Had she done anything to violate that trust? Well, no, Gene admitted. Then why wasn’t he trusting her now? Gene backed down.

Actually, the appeal that ended up working the best had nothing to do with discipline, but a lot to do with Gene’s perception of family order and tranquillity. It involved the girls’ quest for a dog. “I was not fond of dogs,” Gene explains, “particularly selling real estate. I saw what they did to the values of homes.”

“We always had an excuse,” Peggy adds. “We kept buying stuffed animals, but after a while that didn’t work anymore.”

After several false starts, they finally ended up with a little white female bichon frise, in time for Jeni’s seventh birthday. She was named Sandi and quickly became an integral member of the family.

Of the two girls, the more outgoing Stephanie was the prankster. Gene and Peggy used to play a game with the girls where they’d make one minor alteration to their clothing, such as putting a clothespin on the back of one of their coats, and see how long it took the girl to discover it. Then one day, Stephanie came home from school and said that Gene was supposed to call the principal. Gene asked what she had done.

“Well,” she explained, “we had a substitute teacher today and I put a clothespin on the back of her skirt because I thought it would be funny.”

“I called the principal and I was just irate that he was upset over something as stupid as a clothespin,” says Gene. “And then he informed me that attached to the clothespin was a sign that said, ‘I’m a dork.’ So I looked at Stephanie and said, ‘You left something out, didn’t you?’”

It was a key part of Stephanie’s personality that after she’d concocted a prank, she had to be there to laugh at it, meaning she was much more likely to get caught.

When Steph and Jeni got to the age where they were each attempting to monopolize, and therefore were fighting over, the phone, Gene and Peggy put in
a second line and told the girls it was theirs, and to work out their own schedule. Like most other issues in the Schmidt household, initial arguments and bickering gave way to reason.

Gene and Peggy’s basic philosophy with the kids was give-and-take, and that things would work out best if each party tried to understand and appreciate the position of the other. In music, for example, Gene was a traditional rock fan. Jeni was into the heavy-metal sound, and Steph liked softer, more romantic music and country western. Originally, there wasn’t much crossover among the three distinct tastes. So Gene made it a point whenever he had one of the girls in the car with him to listen to her choice, and discuss what she liked about it, then to listen to one of his favorites and do the same. Gradually, all three of them began to appreciate the others’ preferences.

All in all, Gene says, “Stephanie was a blast. She was just fun. I’ve never really seen that much unconditional love.” And the ultimate success of the Schmidts’ approach was reflected in another piece of Stephanie’s writing:

“I hope someday I can be like my parents. I am excited to get married and want to have two to four children before I am thirty, but I want a couple of years to spend with my husband without any children. I want my family to be close-knit, caring and loving. I think it will be similar to how my family is now.”

Jeni had always been more career-oriented, so Stephanie declared that she would have Jeni’s kids for her. Despite her less maternal instincts, Jeni articulates her parents’ influence just as directly: “Honesty and trust and a good sense of humor would probably be the three most important things my parents instilled in us. It just seemed very natural.”

As they got into junior high and high school, Steph’s and Jeni’s tastes in boys also reflected their diverging
personalities. “I liked boys with ponytails and who played guitars,” says Jeni. “She liked guys with crew cuts and who threw footballs. But she always got along with the guys I’d bring home, and I always got along with her boyfriends.”

Pretty much everything else, they shared. They borrowed each other’s clothes, though Jeni’s wardrobe was pretty pedestrian compared to the name labels Steph preferred, as Jeni saved her money while Stephanie quickly spent hers. Steph decided to teach Jeni “how to shop,” which gave her a ready companion for one of her favorite activities in life.

Jeni’s companionship was important to Stephanie. They shared friends, went swimming, saw movies, had lunch, and shopped. Recalls Jeni, “The day she graduated from high school, she took me out with her instead of just going out with her friends. That was pretty cool.”

It seemed as if everyone loved Stephanie Schmidt. Heather Haas, her friend at Blue Valley North High School, says, “She was pretty much the one who was the core of the group. She was the one who was really outgoing and really a people person.”

Stephanie didn’t push herself academically in high school. She enjoyed the social side and the organizing too much. She declared that she wanted to go to the University of Kansas in Lawrence—KU in local parlance—but Gene was concerned that it was too big for her and that she chose it because so many of her friends would be going there. He said he would support any decision she made, but asked that she consider one or two smaller schools. He judiciously avoided suggesting his own alma mater for all the obvious reasons.

But since it was an obvious possibility and relatively close—about two hours’ drive—Stephanie and her close friend Shannon Marsh decided to check out
Pittsburg State. Instantly, they both fell in love with the school and decided it was what they wanted.