BY TOM O'NEILL and JANE PRENDERGAST
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A successful woman. Afraid of her estranged husband. Her life threatened. An alleged threat, caught on tape with an FBI informant, sounded familiar to investigators in Sharonville. They had worked a case 17 years earlier that also involved a 54-year-old woman, successful in her own right, and embroiled in a divorce complicated by big money.
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CASE CHRONOLOGY
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 May 19, 1965: Albert Schuholz Jr. and Marie Wright marry. It is the second marriage for both.
May 8, 1981: The bodies of Marie Schuholz, 54, and her roommate, Starla Burns, 56, are found in their Sharonville apartment. She had moved out of the Schuholzes' home five months before her death. Dec. 7, 1987: Mr. Schuholz marries his third wife, Audrey J. Stevens, in Grant County, Ky. Their divorce five years later was uncomplicated.
April 29, 1998: A judge orders Mr. Schuholz to stay at least 1,000 feet away from his wife's sister, Martha Schomaker, 52. She claimed he threatened her repeatedly and followed her home to take her picture. June 3: After his wife, Norma Schuholz, 54, says her husband threatened to shoot her if she messed with his money, another judge orders another domestic-violence order, saying Mr. Schuholz must stay at least 1,000 feet away from his wife, too.
July 8: Norma wins a court battle over two certificates of deposit, picking up a check for more than $364,000 after a judge decides there's no legal reason for her not to have it.
July 15: Mr. Schuholz is arrested at a Merrill Lynch office in Blue Ash. His attorney says he was going there to withdraw money for his bail because he planned to turn himself in. |
The common link: Albert Schuholz Jr.
Today, Mr. Schuholz, a 66-year-old multimillionaire, is accused by the FBI of orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot.For $5,000 and a getaway car, he wanted his fourth wife, Norma, and her sister killed, according to the taped conversations. Mr. Schuholz suggested using a knife to cut their throats and make them "bleed like stuck hogs," FBI Special Agent Larry Adams testified.
The new allegations, this time in Kentucky, have renewed Sharonville investigators' interest in a 1981 double slaying in that Ohio community. Police extensively questioned Mr. Schuholz numerous times in 1981, in the beating and stabbing death of his wife of 16 years, Marie Schuholz, but no one was ever charged.
"My mother's voice was silenced," said Marie's daughter, Patti Kammeyer. "She needs her voice back."
Mr. Schuholz remains in the Campbell County Jail, facing a federal charge of trying to hire someone to commit murder.
Since the past week's developments in Kentucky, attention also has shifted to what Sharonville police knew 17 years ago about Mr. Schuholz and the death of his wife.
The night of Marie's slaying, May 8, 1981, Sharonville police said they learned of death threats aimed at Marie by Mr. Schuholz. The information came from retired business owner Perry Baker of Reading, who spoke with The Cincinnati Enquirer in several hours of interviews last week.
"Al told me he would beat the (expletive) out of her and slit her throat," said Mr. Baker, 64, once a close friend of Marie and Albert Schuholz.
Mr. Baker said he warned Marie, over coffee at a local Frisch's, on a December 1980 night that Mr. Schuholz had told him of a plan to kill her.
Within days of the warning, Marie, 54, moved out of the Schuholzes' Blue Ash home and, for the fourth time, filed for divorce, on Jan. 2, 1981. This time, she said, there would be no turning back.
"I really didn't know how to tell her," Mr. Baker said. "How do you tell somebody he wants you dead. . . . He (Mr. Schuholz) wanted me to drive her car to Tennessee and leave it in a parking lot, then take a bus back. I thought he was kidding at first."
Sharonville Lt. Greg Homer, an original investigator into the slayings of Marie and her 56-year-old friend and roommate, Starla Burns, substantiated Mr. Baker's account.
He said at the time several people, including Mr. Baker, came forward with stories of Mr. Schuholz trying to enlist their help in Marie's murder. But nothing specifically tied Mr. Schuholz to the slayings.
Marie stayed in the marriage because her strong Southern Baptist roots decried divorce and because "he had threatened to kill her parents, my brother (James Wright) and me," said Marie's daughter, Ms. Kammeyer, of northwest Ohio.
Marie had always been a survivor. She had overcome childhood polio. When her first husband died of cancer, she became, at 32, a widow with two kids. She endured breast cancer and a mastectomy. And an increasingly violent marriage to Mr. Schuholz that included police-documented threats.
"She had reported to us his threats," Lt. Homer acknowledged, "but Al was never around when she'd say, "He's threatening me again.' Now, we look into these more closely."
In explaining why no charges were filed, Sharonville police note: Mr. Schuholz' new girlfriend at the time vouched for his whereabouts. No murder weapon was found. No physical evidence linked him to the killings. And no witness placed him at the scene.
Like Marie, Mr. Schuholz' current wife in Kentucky, Norma Schuholz, was in the process of a divorce, said his attorney, Bob Carran.
Also similar was a battle over the money of two successful wives. For instance, Marie alleged Mr. Schuholz forged documents several months before her death, in which Marie signed over all but $100,000 of the couple's more than $1 million in assets to Mr. Schuholz.
Marie by then was an award-winning real estate broker.
Mr. Schuholz had sued Norma, her sister Martha Schomaker and their company, The Dowd Corp., alleging that Mrs. Schuholz was trying to steal what belonged to him. The company, he claimed, was set up just to manage his assets.
A judge disagreed, saying there was no legal reason to keep the company from its assets. Court records say Mrs. Schuholz got a check for just over $364,000 on July 8, a week before her husband allegedly finalized the deal to have her killed.
Mr. Schuholz was supposed to stay away from both women. A Boone County judge ordered him this spring to keep at least 1,000 feet from his sister-in-law after she claimed he threatened her, followed her and took her picture. Another judge last month issued a similar order, after Norma said he threatened to kill her if she messed with his money.
Mr. Schuholz was not available to comment. Mr. Schuholz' third wife, Audrey Stevens of West Chester, declined comment. Though they divorced in 1992, they were living together until he was arrested July 18. He was there because he needs care for a serious heart condition, said his attorney, Mr. Carran.
Marie was known for compassion. After her first husband died in October 1959, she worked as a volunteer at the veterans' hospital, as a way to thank the doctors and nurses who cared for him.
Shortly after his death, Marie moved with the kids from Clifton to Foster Road in Mason, near her family. As a girl, Marie used to ride her bike to the Al-Char swimming pool and fishing lakes. The operators were Albert and Charlotte Schuholz. Their son was Albert Schuholz Jr., a Korean War veteran.
Marie and Mr. Schuholz Jr. began going out. He had charm, money and stability. On May 19, 1965, they were married.
"At first, yeah, you could say it was a good marriage," said Mrs. Kammeyer, an adult when her mother remarried. But increasingly, there were disputes over money, and threats.
On March 6, 1981 -- her 54th birthday -- Marie was granted a divorce pending the outcome of a property dispute initiated by Mr. Schuholz. Only two months later, May 8,with the divorce still in limbo, Marie was found face down in a pool of blood in her apartment living room. Ms. Burns, who shared living expenses while shuttling from Cincinnati and her other home in Pensacola, Fla., was found in her nightclothes slumped against a bedroom dresser.
There was no forced entry, no sign of a struggle.
"In 17 years," Mrs. Kammeyer said, "neither my brother nor I have ever given up the hope that some day the person who is responsible for my mother's senseless and brutal murder will be brought to justice."
