Sex. Murder. Mystery(114)
Back home, she got another call from her mother.
“They aren't going to let me take him home,” she said.
“What are you talking about?”
“They're saying I did something to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“That I wrapped hair around his penis.”
Carla Stuckle told her daughter that she had done nothing wrong, but was in big trouble. She had no idea what would happen to her or her son. She was tired and upset.
Sadly, suspected child abuse calls were commonplace in Orange County, and indeed in every jurisdiction in America. But a doctor calling from the Children's Hospital reported a most unusual injury—a hair had been wound around and tied so tightly to a little boy's penis that the member had nearly been severed. Tustin police detective Jim Hein answered the call and immediately went to the hospital.
The doctor explained that such injuries were not completely unknown. Human hair or similar fibers can work themselves into the folds of skin in a baby's diaper area, causing ulceration and infection. But this was quite severe.
The boy's penis had been so damaged that he urinated out a gash in the side of it.
“What was unusual here, the doctor told me,” the detective said many years later, “was that the hair had been tied in a square knot. It had been deliberate.”
He wanted the hair as evidence, but it had been discarded during the reattachment surgery.
“You've got to do something,” the doctor said.
“Well, you sure didn't help me by disposing of the hair.”
Doctor and detective were mortified at the extent of the injury. Although the surgery appeared to be a success, both men couldn't help but worry about the boy's future.
Who was the boy's father? Neither Carla Stuckle nor her daughter and reluctant protector would say. Custody issues were at stake. The detective was convinced that Carla had injured her son, that it was not a freak accident. Jim Hein returned to her house at Drayton Way for an answer.
It was a square knot, for crying out loud!
Carla Stuckle, looking a bit worn and weary, let him inside and offered him a seat. Under suspicion for child abuse, Carla didn't seem too concerned. She almost seemed relieved that her son was at the Albert Sitton Home, getting care, while she went on with the business of taking care of her baby daughter, Eugenie. She wasn't evasive, either. She just seemed to be slow, speaking in a cadence all her own.
Detective Hein figured there wasn't much chalk on that blackboard.
Even so, he wanted her to talk. He needed to know who the baby's father was. That might lead to an answer. He pressed the point and even threatened her.
“Until we find out and get this thing all done, you're going to jail. Chances are you'll never see your son again. Tell me who the father is so I can help place the boy back with the father… Tell me.”
Carla looked blank. She stared past the cop as if there were something of great interest on the wall behind him. Finally, she moved her thin lips.
“Well, it's John Schmitz.”
“John Schmitz?”
“John Schmitz, the senator.”
Jim Hein was dumbfounded. He repeated the name and Carla Stuckle nodded. He figured the woman was out to lunch, a nut, a troublemaker, certifiable. She had made it up to make trouble or get money from the politician. He didn't think it even close to true, but she went on. She said they had been lovers for years, that both her son and daughter were John Schmitz's progeny. Carla Stuckle told the detective how she and the senator would rendezvous at various hotels when he was traveling.
“He told me that wherever he was that I was to meet him there,” she said.
She talked about his family, how his wife and children didn't know. It would be a big shock to so many. And though she protested the release of his name, her demeanor suggested otherwise.
She wants the information out. She wants the world to know.
Jim Hein had a hard time believing it. The woman was so haggard, why in the world would John Schmitz want to meet up with her at some hotel?
“Political people normally have the pick of the litter, so to speak. They want to go out and play games, they don't have any problem finding someone to play with. Why he would pick something like that I can never figure out,” Hein said later.
“The only thing that occurred to me was that she had to be a demon in bed.”
The Tustin police detective drove away to find John Schmitz. He left messages all over town, his office, his home, anywhere he could imagine. But Schmitz never called back.
The case brought the inevitable headlines in papers all over the country. The senator who espoused family values was a phony, a hypocrite. Even the little Tustin News weighed in:
MOTHER ARRESTED FOR CHILD NEGLECT
THIRTEEN-MONTH-OLD VICTIM ALLEGEDLY SON