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. 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. Schmid confided to Bruns that he murdered the sisters and showed him the bodies, buried haphazardly in the desert. Bruns became increasingly afraid that Schmid was going to murder his girlfriend. Ultimately, Bruns fled to Ohio because his girlfriend's parents were convinced that he was harassing her. Bruns stayed with his grandparents and told them everything he knew about the murders, and flew back to Tucson to help with the investigation. Trial 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. In 1966, Schmid was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. When the state of Arizona temporarily abolished capital punishment in 1971, Schmid's sentence was commuted to fifty years in prison. After Schmid's trial and conviction, his adoptive mother and her second husband had owed her son's legal team more money than they possessed. As a result, they ended up living in near poverty in Coolidge, Arizona. After incarceration 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. In the early 1970s, Schmid became interested in poetry.