Sex. Murder. Mystery(112)

Carla Larson had no idea what had been going on, though later she gathered from things her mother told her that she and John Schmitz had been “involved” for quite some time.

An early clue was the ringing of the telephone.

“Sometimes the phone would ring and it would only ring once and my mother would say, 'Don't answer it! Don't ever answer the phone unless it rings more than once or twice!' ” Carla Larson recalled many years later.

It was only after things were more out in the open between the politician and his “favorite campaign worker” that her mother told her what the single rings meant to her.

“It was his code to let her know that he was thinking of her, when he couldn't talk—like when he was at home. It worked. But I was really annoyed by it. She knew that it was him. He told her that when he couldn't talk he'd let her know,” she said.

Carla Larson told her mother that she objected because John had a family and a wife.

“My mother never cared if anyone was married or not. Not a big issue with her,” she said.

John Schmitz often visited Carla Stuckle's home on Drayton Way in Tustin. So often that Carla Larson's suspicions increased. He spent so much time with her mother, something had to be going on. The young woman noticed how they talked to each other in ways that seemed more intimate than a mere friendship. The suspicions were confirmed one afternoon when she arrived home and went inside her mother's bedroom to find her in bed with the state senator.

“My mother told me that they weren't having sex. They just liked to lie there naked together,” she remembered later.

Carla told her daughter how she had become involved in politics, mostly behind the scenes, though she did make a losing bid for a seat on the Tustin School Board. She was one of John Schmitz's most ardent supporters and considered him of tremendous intellect and ability. She invited her daughter to get involved in John's latest campaign and she agreed. She stuffed envelopes, made phone calls, ran errands, and watched her mother get closer and closer to her candidate.

Young Carla liked Schmitz, but she knew that politics was a sham. His brochure showed pictures of his wife and children—and yet he was sleeping with Carla's mother.

“It just confirmed my belief that all politicians were liars,” she said.

Carla Stuckle had a dream, a plan. She was going to be Mrs. John G. Schmitz, because she had a right to be. She saw herself as smarter, more beautiful, and certainly more of a political asset than Mary Schmitz. Once she had stolen the handsome dark-eyed politician's heart, once she had him in her bed, she was determined to get the rest of him.

All of him. She would not be denied what she had coveted, her ego would not allow it.

“My mother liked to be the center of attention,” Carla Larson said many years later. “I think in her fantasy world John was going to leave Mary for her, marry my mother, and she was going to be Mrs. Senator John Schmitz.”

Whenever the relationship seemed strained and Carla Stuckle thought she might be losing her lover, she did whatever she could to keep him.

“He would tell my mother, 'I can't see you anymore, Carla. We need to distance ourselves. That's where I belong—with my family. I'm not with my kids, I'm here with you. This is wrong.' And she would manipulate him back into it.”

One time Carla told her daughter that she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills in a mock suicide attempt to keep John from leaving. She called the doctor right after she made the attempt. She wanted to keep John, she didn't intend to die.

John Schmitz came back to her. He couldn't let go.

There were numerous times when Carla Stuckle threatened to tell Mary Schmitz the truth. She threatened to expose him during the campaign. Her mother's tactics disgusted her daughter. As much as she wanted to love her, it turned her stomach to think that her mother could be so evil to the man she purportedly loved.

“She blackmailed him. She taped their phone conversations. She had one of those little suction-cup things and a tape recorder. I saw her do it. And I listened to the tapes. Typical lovers' talk. 'I miss you. I wish I was with you… ' ”

Carla Larson considered John a victim of his own mistakes and of his involvement with her conniving mother. She saw how he had tried to break it off several times. Carla told her how John said he was violating his marital vows, he was putting his political future at great risk. But Carla wouldn't let him go.

Carla also taunted John. She'd show up at the Catholic church in Costa Mesa where the Schmitz family celebrated Mass. She'd run into him at fund-raisers and walk up to him and his wife simply to unnerve him. It was a kind of game for her. And maybe for him, too. Maybe the risk of being found out was as exciting to him as it was to her?