Douglas Gretzler and accomplice Willie Steelman embarked on a destructive spree of murder in the Southwestern US in the fall of 1973 that left 17 dead, including the massacre of two entire families. Gretzler was born in the Bronx, New York City on May 21, 1951, one of four children born to Norton and Janet Gretzler. Norton was a school board president and Janet a homemaker; in short, a fairly average 1950s American family. The Gretzlers, like many of their peers, joined the general exodus from urban New York City to the newly-constructed postwar suburbs when they moved to Tuckahoe in 1953. They were respected members of the community there.Norton Gretzler was a strict father and disciplinarian who demanded upstanding behavior and academic performance from his children and they were beaten or berated for displeasing him. The gretzlers' oldest son Mark was Norton's favorite; he did well in school and was popular with peers. Norton often insulted Doug and his sisters Joanne and Dianne for not living up to Mark's example. Doug was only an average student; once when he got a B on a 4th grade test and ran home to tell his father excitely, he was told that he expected an A from him. By age 11, Doug had become increasingly spiteful towards his father and spent a lot of time away from home or playing drums in the basement of the family home. He started smoking marijuana when he was 15. Norton soon found out and blamed his poor school performance on it. The two got into a fight that culminated in Norton shoving him into a bedroom partition. After that incident, Doug was regularly told he was a constant failure and disappointment. And then Mark committed suicide.
Mark would have been starting his senior year of high school in September 1966 but he was banned from all senior activities due to a prank he'd played where he gave classmates copied test answers from stolen exam papers. On August 9, he was found dead in his bedroom of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mark left a brief suicide note thanking an aunt for loaning him the gun but said nothing about why he decided to take his own life. The following January, Norton told Doug while drunk that he wished he'd killed himself instead of Mark.By 1968, Doug, now 17, had fully embraced the counterculture movement that was sweeping America. He began using hallucinogens and his relationship with his father further deteriorated. At Tuckahoe High School, he was actively involved in athletics but was only average at them. Aside from drugs, Doug's greatest love was his drum kit. He did not have many friends at school although his classmates later remembered him rather fondly. He graduated in 1969 and decided to study car repair; he apprenticed for a few months at a garage. Doug left home in 1970 and moved to Florida where he met a girl named Judy Eyl who had also grown up in the New York area. After a brief courtship they became engaged and got married in Miami on February 26. They went back to New York City and got an apartment in the Bronx.Judy was employed at a bank but Doug couldn't seem to hold a job down for any length of time and the two often quarreled over it. Their daughter Jessica arrived in 1972. Doug was happy to become a father although he wasn't overly interested in being a hands-on parent and largely left his wife to care for the baby while he spent increasing amounts of time away from home. Because Doug did not have stable employment and because he and Judy now had a child to feed, they were often short on money and he began resorting to petty thefts although he was not caught committing them.
Doug unexpectedly hit the jackpot shortly after his 21st birthday in May 1972 when a wealthy great aunt died and left him $7,000 in her will but he squandered most of the money on a '67 MG-B sports coupe and buying performance parts for it. In September, he got a job at a concrete plant in Tuckahoe and worked there until the day after Christmas when he quit and deserted his family. Doug packed his belongings, got into his MG-B, and drove out to the Western US with the idea of eventually settling in Colorado. He arrived in Casper, Wyoming and stayed there until the following summer, working several low wage jobs. On June 28, 1973, he was arrested for vagrancy and running a red light. In early August, he headed to Denver where he met Willie Steelman...
Willie Luther Steelman was born in Stockton, California on March 21, 1945, one of three children of Lester and Ethel Steelman. The Steelmans were classic "Okies" who had fled the Dust Bowl and come to California in 1935 where Lester obtained a job as a foreman on a farm in San Joaquin. Both parents were working most of the time and Willie was raised largely by his older sister Frances. He mostly grew up in Lodi and attended high school there; he was somewhat of a weirdo and outcast. Lester Steelman died of complications from rheumatic heart disease in 1958. Without a father figure in his life, Willie dropped out of school and began committing petty crimes; Ethel was unable to control the energetic teenager and he resisted all her attempts, even threatening her. Ethel remarried in 1959 and still cared a lot about her son but bemoaned his antisocial behavior and wished he could be more like his brother Gary.Willie joined the Navy in March 1962 after his mother and stepfather convinced him it would be a good idea and give some direction to his life but he was unable to handle the discipline required by the service and only lasted a few months. In November, he moved in with his sister Frances in Denver but she soon kicked him out of the house for his aggressive and threatening behavior around her and her children and he went back to California and his mother.
In January 1965, Steelman was convicted of forgery and involving a minor in a crime; he was put in the custody of the California Youth Authority and sentenced to seven months at the Pine Grove Work Camp. Released in August, he got a job as a farmhand. He met a 15 year old girl while working there and they later got married in Reno, Nevada. Steelman quit his job and took his teenage bride to move into his mother's home. An arrest warrant was issued for him in December after he'd been caught cashing stolen checks. He was arrested in January 1966 and booked into the Stockton County Jail, where he tried to hang himself. His wife's parents had their marriage annulled a few days later.After release from jail, Steelman was put in the Stockton State Hospital and diagnosed as mentally ill. Transferred to Atascadero State Hospital, he was said to make "excellent progress" and moved back to the Stockton facility. Deemed sane, Steelman was sentenced to 14 months in prison on the forgery charges and put in the California Men's Colony. He was paroled in only two months and released September 16, 1968. He went home to Lodi where he got a job as a shipping clerk and reportedly told acquaintances that he'd turned his life around. In December, Steelman was arrested for selling LSD to two teenage girls which got him 43 days in jail and a $625 fine. In jail, he met a young lady named Kathy Stone and after getting out in April 1969, moved in with her.
Through Kathy, he met another young woman named Denise Machell and they got married in June, moving to Sacramento and later Mountain View. Steelman was arrested several times in 1970-71 for various offenses but none of these resulted in any penalty greater than a small fine. He began using drugs more heavily during this time. Steelman began working as an orderly at Vista Ray Convalescent Hospital in Lodi, a comfortable job that netted him a $320 a month income but he was soon fired for forging prescriptions. Denise became fed up with her husband's refusal to straighten up his ways and left him on New Year's Day 1973, saying she'd had enough of his frequent arrests and their lack of money as well as his spending her paychecks on drugs.Steelman went to Colorado in August to visit his sister. Frances had apparently gotten over his previous stay there eight years ago and let him back into her home but he quickly made a nuisance of himself and refused to leave, camping out in an unused room and refusing to get a job or contribute any money. Frances was annoyed at her brother but couldn't do much about it. However, his niece Terry Morgan liked having him around and she hooked him up with a 17 year old acquaintance named Marsha Renslow who was awed by his crazy stories about his life. Not long afterwards he met Doug Gretzler. They met through Marsha, who talked them into stealing motorcycle parts for her.
Gretzler did not have big ambitions when he first arrived in Colorado; he hoped to earn just enough income to maintain his beloved MG-B and buy drugs. He and Steelman both talked about how they could obtain easy money through illicit means; the latter taught him the finer arts of purse snatching and stealing checkbooks. They managed to convince another teenage acquaintance into loaning them a shotgun and they discussed how they could commit crime and not get caught. On September 30, Frances moved out of her home shortly after her brother stole her purse. She took her kids to an apartment and informed her unwelcome guests that the house was going to be repossessed in a week.On October 4, Steelman announced that with winter coming he would prefer to go someplace warm, possibly Phoenix, Arizona, and Gretzler decided to come with. Renslow asked if she could come too since a 21 year old former acquaintance of hers named Kathy Mestites whom she had a lesbian crush on lived in Phoenix and she wanted to hook up with her again. They accepted and the three set off on the 9th. They stayed in a motel that night but got kicked out after Gretzler accidentally shot a gun through an open window, so they had to camp in Gretzler's car instead.
By October 13, they'd reached Globe, Arizona where Steelman found a couple sunbathing nude by the roadside. He robbed them of $5 at gunpoint. Continuing on to Tempe, they picked up a hitchhiker, took him to an orange grove, forced him to undress, pistol-whipped him, and robbed him of his engagement ring. The ring was sold at a Phoenix pawn shop for $60. They stayed at the Stone Motel in Phoenix on the 13th, resolving to go to the home of Kathy Mestites, who was living with a boyfriend named Ken Unrein on 18th Street. When they got to the house, however, they found that Unrein and Mestites were no longer together; she was living with a 19 year old named Bob Robbins now. Unrein gave them a fake address.When the party discovered the ruse two days later, Steelman was not happy and he was also out of money. He marched back to Unrein's place to confront him. The latter had a friend named Michael Adshade over that day and both men were forced at gunpoint to drive to Mestites's apartment. All of them went on a drug and alcohol binge there before Unrein and Adshade slipped away and went home. Once they departed, Mestites disclosed to her guests the reason she left Unrein; he'd beaten her up two months ago. Robbins then drove Gretzler and Steelman to their motel. Mestites and Renslow stayed together for a few days although the latter was too shy to tell Mestites she loved her. By October 22, with both Steelman and Gretzler AWOL, Mestites bought Renslow a plane ticket back to Denver.
On October 17, the two arrived back at Unrein's place and forced him and Adshade at gunpoint into the latter's VW Bus. Steelman ordered them to drive to California. The captives were not tied up although Gretzler and Steelman took turns watching them, a loaded gun in hand. By sunrise on the 18th they'd reached Oakdale and Steelman bought everyone drinks. After a couple hours of driving around in circles, Steelman ordered Gretzler to park near Littlejohn Creek in Knights Ferry. Unrein and Adshade were ordered outside at gunpoint and down a creek bed. Adshade asked the obvious question--what were they planning to do with them? The pair were tied up with speaker cords and rope before Steelman announced that they were just going to leave them there. He advised them that they shouldn't try to free themselves for at least an hour.A few minutes later, they came back and strangled and stabbed the two men. They were stripped naked and hidden behind some bushes. The next morning, Gretzler and Steelman visited a friend of the latter's in Clements. On October 20, Unrein's van broke down near State Route 1 so they thumbed a ride from a young couple named James Fulkerson and Eileen Hallock near Petaluma. The two were ordered at gunpoint to drive to Santa Clara, although Fulkerson was stopped near Marshall. He was tied up and a gun pointed at him as he begged them to not harm his girlfriend. Steelman didn't like that so he angrily told Fulkerson that he'd love to blow his head off. They tied him up and put him in the car trunk. Steelman tried to rape Eileen but couldn't get an erection so instead they were just robbed and dumped off in Mountain View after Gretzler and Steelman stole a '70 Ford LTD from a parking lot.
But now they were worried that Bob Robbins and Kathy Mestites could identify them in the disappearances of Unrein and Adshade, and also that the couple they'd just robbed would report them to police so they decided to split from California and head back to Phoenix. On October 21, they picked up an 18 year old hitchhiker named Steve Loughran near Monterey Bay; he agreed to go to Arizona with them. They bought gas for the thirsty full-sized Ford sedan, not an easy undertaking with the unfolding OPEC Embargo in the fall of 1973. When they arrived at Mestites's place, Steelman learned that Marsha Renslow was back in Colorado. He also introduced Steve Loughran as a friend from California. The five spent the night on a drug and alcohol binge.After a while Mestites and Loughran started annoying Steelman with their constant talking about their favorite subjects such as astrology, magic, and sports. On the afternoon of the 23rd, Robbins drove Mestites to her job at a massage parlor. While they were gone, Steelman got into a fistfight with Loughran, although he was a fairly big guy with a 180 pound frame and not easy to push around. In response, Steelman got out a shotgun and told him to step outside. They drove to a deserted gully near Superstition Mountains, where Loughran was marched out of the car, ordered to hand over his wallet, and then shot in the head. Steelman and Gretzler returned to the trailer calmy and like nothing had happened, and Robbins and Mestites did not ask what became of Loughran.
On the 24th, Steelman decided Robbins had to die and they devised a plot to kill him while Mestites was working. Gretzler strangled Robbins with an electrical cord that evening, shot him in the head to make sure he was dead, and put the body under a mattress. Later in the day, Steelman picked up Mestites from work and said he'd driven Robbins out of town for a few days. The next morning, the three drove to a local store in Robbins's '69 Camaro convertible as Mestites said she was happy to get Unrein and Robbins out of her life and that she wanted to do a fortune telling session after first snorting cocaine. Steelman wanted to get her out of the house for a few hours so he could dispose of Robbins's body but was unable to convince her to go anywhere. That evening, as Mestites was performing a seance at her homemade altar, Steelman snuck up behind her and shot her in the back of the head. Both her and Robbins's bodies were discarded outside of town and found on October 28.After the bodies turned up, police heard that two men named Bill and Doug had recently stayed in their trailer and there had been a teenager named Marsha, from Denver, about a week earlier. One witness named Monique Jered said that "Bill" claimed to be a native Californian while "Doug" had a pronounced New York accent. Both said they were planning to go to San Francisco. By Halloween, the cops identified Marsha Renslow and investigators went to Denver to talk to her. She initially refused to say anything until being shown photos of Robbins and Mestites's corpses. She said "Bill" was Willie Steelman and she believed Doug's surname was "Gritzler." Marsha also told of their multiple robberies, carjackings, and uses of stolen checks to pay for lodgings during their trek down from Denver to Phoenix two weeks ago. After that, a motel receipt from October 16 was found with Gretzler's name and Bronx address.
This was enough for arrest warrants to be issued for the pair on November 1. Detectives conducted a second interview with Renslow as Arizona police received a Telex from California announcing that they found Ken Unrein's abandoned VW Bus by the roadside in California and the couple gretzler and Steelman robbed said that they'd been driving that vehicle when "Bill" and "Doug" attacked them.Shortly after Mestites was killed, Steelman convinced Gretzler to come to Tucson with him. They set off in Robbins's Camaro on the morning of October 26 but soon abandoned the car on Van Buren Street. They got a bus ride to Tucson using money taken from Mestites to pay for the fare. Arriving there on the 27th, they stayed in a boarding house on 4th Avenue for a few days during which time they met a young woman named Joanne McPeek, the sister of the landlady Susan Harlan. On the night of November 1, they decided to steal a car to make their getaway with. The pair were walking near the University of Arizona campus when they flagged down a '69 Charger driven by 19 year old Gilbert Sierra. Steelman informed him that they needed a ride ASAP and forced Sierra into the back at gunpoint as Gretzler took the wheel.
Steelman told their captive that he was a professional hitman and had just shot a cop. Sierra just stared blankly at them and muttered something in Spanish. He was forced into the trunk as Gretzler and Steelman arrived at the Tucson apartment where McPeek and her boyfriend Michael Marsh lived. They asked if the two wanted to accompany them to go and score drugs, adding that they had an undercover cop tied up in the trunk. McPeek didn't believe him so Steelman dug in the glove compartment, found a student ID card, and yelled in the back "Hey, your name's Gilbert?" "Yeah," was the reply. Steelman added that he was going to kill their captive.After driving to a deserted canyon near Gates Pass, Steelman pulled Sierra out at gunpoint, told him to take off his shirt, and get on his knees as he accused him of being a narc. He tried to shoot Sierra but the gun jammed. Sierra tried to flee but Steelman shot him in the back. He stumbled and fell into a cactus patch, then ran down a ravine as Steelman chased after him and fired two shots into his head. The four drove back into Tucson, bought some amphetamines, and spent the night at a drug den on Mabel Street with a teenager named Donald Scott. Steelman wiped down the inside of Sierra's car to get rid of any fingerprints and left it in a parking lot. Sierra's body was found later that day and he was identified on November 5.
On November 3, a University of Arizona student named Vince Armstrong saw Steelman and Gretzler hitchhiking near where Sierra was abducted. He offered them a ride in his '71 Firebird and was immediately greeted with a gun to his side as Steelman ordered him to drive. Armstrong started panicking so Steelman punched him in the face and told him to pull over near an intersection. Armstrong got in the passenger seat as Gretzler began driving. Armstrong them jumped outside and tumbled onto the pavement as Gretzler turned the car around and tried to run him over but he managed to get away. Armstrong made his way to a friend's house and told what happened. They called police and he was taken to a hospital to get several bruises and scrapes treated. He was able to provide a description of Gretzler and Steelman.For a while, Steelman and Gretzler drove aimlessly around in Armstrong's Firebird until they arrived outside a condominium near Vine Street in Tucson. There a 28 year old Marine Corps veteran and student teacher named Mike Sandberg was washing his '72 Datsun 240Z. Steelman approached Sandberg, gun in hand, and told him to take them inside his condominium. They surprised his 32 year old wife Pat as she was working in the kitchen. Gretzler held a knife to her throat and announced that both would be held captive until sundown and then they'd be released. Pat was allowed to take a Valium to calm herself down. She made Gretzler a sandwich before Steelman decided they'd better disguise themselves. Gretzler dyed his hair brown as Steelman shaved off his mustache and tried to use Pat's makeup to hide a bruise on his face during the earlier brawl with Steve Loughran.
The two then helped themselves to some of Michael's clothes before Pat was tied up and told to sit in the bathroom. Michael was then tied up in his bed, his neck and ankles bound in such a way that he would choke if he tried to move much. Pat was then dragged to the living room sofa, tied up some more, and both her and her husband were shot execution-style in the head. Pat was shot through a pillow to muffle the sounds of the gun but this reduced the velocity of the bullets and although four rounds were dumped into her, it failed to kill her. Steelman beat her over the head with a golf club a few times until she stopped moving. After cleaning up any fingerprints from the Sandbergs' home, they took some of Michael's clothes along with a camera, credit cards, and other valuables before taking off in the Datsun, abandoning Vince Armstrong's Firebird outside. They drove back to the drug den on Mabel Street. Don Scott was still there and offered to accompany them back to California.With Scott in tow, Gretzler and Steelman spent the night at a motel in Stanfield. The night of November 4-5 was spent in another motel where they signed in under the name Michael Sandberg and paid for the room with a forged check taken from the Sandbergs' home. By the afternoon of the 5th they were in Pine Valley, California. Don Scott asked to be dropped off there and parted ways with them near I-8. Gretzler and Steelman then headed towards Victor as the latter spoke of wanting to rob United Market, a downtown grocery store there. Steelman knew the place pretty well; he'd been caught shoplifting from there once and assured Gretzler that its owners Walter and Joanne Parkin were quite wealthy. He added that they lived in a rural ranch home in wine country and speculated that they could net around $20,000 from robbing them.
On November 6, Gretzler and Steelman arrived in Lodi and stayed with a friend until Steelman convinced another acquaintance named Duff Nunley to call his 17 year old nephew Gary Steelman. Nunley told Gary someone was out to get his uncle and he needed his father's Derringer pistol. After Gretzler and Steelman received the weapon, they thanked Gary and said they were leaving California. The two drove to United Market hoping to rob the place but found it was closed for the evening so they headed towards Orchard Road. Walter and Joanne weren't home but their two young children, 9 year old Bobby and 11 year old Lisa were there with their 18 year old babysitter Debbie Earl and her 15 year old brother Richard. They convinced the teens that they were business associates of the Parkins before brandishing guns as Steelman yelled that they wanted Walter so everyone had better do as they said or else.Richard stood speechless as his sister cried and covered the children in her arms. Debbie said their parents were out at a bowling alley and wouldn't be back until evening. All were forced to sit on the sofa. Before Gretzler and Steelman had entered the house, Debbie called her father Richard Sr. and said something bad was up so he drove to the Parkins' house only to also be held captive at gunpoint. Steelman heard that Richard Sr. told his wife Wanda to call police if he didn't come back in 15 minutes so he ordered Richard Sr. at gunpoint to pick up Wanda. He threatened to kill all the hostages if both weren't at the Parkin house in 20 minutes. They arrived on time. Shortly after that, Debbie's 20 year old boyfriend Mark Lang came there to drive her home; he was also taken hostage.
When Walter and Joanne arrived home they were also taken captive. All adult hostages were ordered to hand over any money and jewelry they had on them. Joanne begged to be allowed to tuck her children into bed. Steelman then told the older hostages other than Walter to go into the bathroom where Gretzler tied them up with a nylon cord. All sat in a semicircle as gretzler watched them. Meanwhile, Steelman ordered Walter to drive to the grocery store and get money out of a safe he knew was in the back of the building. He collected $4,000 from the safe and took Walter back to the house where he was tied up and put in a closet. All adult hostages were bound and gagged. They wiped off their fingerprints from the house and Gretzler said that the heist had been successful, so it was time to go. But Steelman wouldn't have it; he said they couldn't leave any witnesses.Gretzler shot Bobby and Lisa in the head as they slept. The remaining hostages were then shot multiple times until all had stopped moving. Gretzler ate a snack in the kitchen as Steelman looked around the house for any valuables. They finally departed at 1:20 AM and went to a Holiday Inn where they checked in under the name W.J. Siems. An hour and a half after Gretzler and Steelman left, Carol Jenkins, an 18 year old employee at United Market who was also temporarily staying at the Parkins' house, arrived. She thought it was odd that lights would be on inside the place at 3:00 AM but didn't want to wake anyone. Jenkins went into the guest bedroom and nodded off to sleep.
As the sun rose on November 7, two of Mark Lang's friends went looking for him after his mother had gotten concerned when he didn't come home. They found his '67 Impala parked outside the house. The two knocked on the door and awoke Carol Jenkins, asking if she'd seen Mark. Carol had no idea about the massacre that had happened in the house and told them she'd go and ask Walter and Joanne, whom she believed were asleep in the master bedroom. When Carol walked into the bedroom, she got a little more than she bargained for...Lodi police arrived at the Parkin house a short time later to find two obviously disturbed young men outside trying to calm down a girl who was in a total hysterical panic and yelling "Omigod, omigod, omigod!" The cops went in the master bedroom and found Bobby and Lisa in the bed, both dead of a gunshot wound to the forehead. Learning that their babysitter, her boyfriend, and brother were also AWOL, police went to the Earl residence. Nobody was home but they found a loaded shotgun on Richard Jr.'s bed. Back at the Parkin house, Sgt. Steve Mello found the seven dead adults in the walk-in closet.
While investigation into what appeared to be a completely senseless massacre occurred, a couple witnesses reported seeing Gretzler and Steelman, including the manager of the motel they stayed in on the 5th who reported that they paid for the room with a dud check in the name of Michael B. Sandberg. They'd been driving a tan Datsun 240Z with Arizona plates. After running the license plate number, it was found to be registered to Michael Bruce Sandberg, DOB 5/5/45, and a resident of the Villa Paraiso apartment complex in Tucson. Shortly after the bodies were discovered on Orchard Road, Tucson police obtained updated arrest warrants for Gretzler and Steelman for the Mestites and Robbins murders, their bail set at $225,000. Detective David Arrelanes received a Telex informing the department about the massacre in Lodi.Arrelanes called up California police and updated them on his department's hunt for Gretzler and Steelman for two murders in Phoenix and that he believed they might have headed to Lodi. He gave them a recent mugshot of Steelman and copies of the existing arrest warrants. San Joaquin Sheriff Michael Canlis held a press conference where he said that they believed Willie Steelman had commited the massacre and probably also the murders of two people in Phoenix. The mugshot provided by Arrelanes was distributed to the press.On the 8th, California police were contacted by a man who'd briefly been with them the previous afternoon, demonstrating that Gretzler and Steelman had been in Lodi the day of the murders. Don Scott also said he believed they were responsible as they'd been talking about robbing Walter Parkin when he'd rode with them. California arrest warrants for both were issued.
Gretzler and Steelman departed from the Holiday Inn on November 7 and drove north for some time, the two agreeing that they would ultimately head to Nevada as Steelman said it might be smart to lay low for a few days. They parked the Datsun in a parking deck in Sacramento before buying new clothing and checking into the Clunie Hotel, paying for three days of lodgings. Steelman signed in as Will Simen while Gretzler used his real name. The next morning, Steelman was dismayed to find a copy of the Sacramento Bee in a newsrack with his mugshot on the front page and a headline stating that him and Gretzler were wanted for 11 murders. He decided they had to get out of California immediately. They didn't risk driving the Datsun again so they convinced a young woman named Melinda Kashula, whom they'd just met at a massage parlor, to help them go to Florida.As they walked out of the hotel, the clerk recognized them. Waiting until they were outside, he went into the back office and called police. Without moments a large force of cops arrived. At Kashula's apartment, she pretended to accept Steelman's offer before then declining to drive them to Florida. She said she might know of a place they could stay in Davis. Steelman then said they ought to go back to the Clunie Hotel in a taxi to pick up their belongings. He figured that although his mugshot was in the papers, he might not be so easily recognized in person. When Gretzler entered the hotel, he got in an elevator and rode to his room on the third floor. Police sealed off the second floor and positioned snipers to cover all escapes from the third. As Gretzler approached his room, he could hear a cop inside talking on the phone. Realizing the fourth floor was sealed off, he reluctantly headed to the second and prepared to be arrested.
Gretzler was taken into custody at 10:04 AM. He remarked that he was glad it was over and he didn't want to see any more people killed. He told police where Steelman was staying, adding that he was with a young woman, was armed, and had vowed to never be taken alive.At 10:50 AM, a force of 70 cops arrived outside Kashula's apartment. She became panicky as an officer shouted through a megaphone "Willie Steelman, this is gonna be your last chance to give yourself up peacefully!" Steelman told Kashula that they had the wrong guy and threatened to commit suicide until she talked him out of it. He then agreed to surrender but only if the media were there to film it and if the police convinced a DJ on a local music station to announce live over the air that he and Kashula would not be harmed if they both exited the apartment separately with their hands up. The negotiators agreed to this request. Just after the announcement was broadcast on KZAP, police shot a tear gas canister in the apartment as Kashula argued with Steelman over his promise to surrender. He said he would if Kashula could exit the apartment safety. She did so and threw his gun onto the front lawn. Steelman was handcuffed as he exclaimed "Guess I'm going back to Stockton."
Most of the money stolen from United Market was found with the suspects and Gretzler also had the Sandbergs' door key with him. Inside their hotel room were several gun cartridges, a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver determined via ballistics testing to have been used in some of the murders, and also the Sandbergs' checkbook and ID cards among other items of evidence. Shell casings that Steelman tossed by the roadside after the Orchard Road massacre were also found and proven to have come from his weapon. Upon locating the Sandbergs' vehicle on the evening of November 8, investigators discovered a blood stained pair of boots and jeans and a brown grocery sack filled with numerous wallets, purses, credit cards, driving licenses and items of jewelry belonging to those murdered at the Parkin residence.Police questioned the suspects, who were booked into jail in San Joaqin and then held in solitary confinement. Steelman refused to talk without an attorney present; after being given one, he still refused. Gretzler was more cooperative but also evasive, claiming the duo's crime spree was mostly Steelman's doing and he'd just tagged along for the ride but eventually admitted his guilt in several of the murders. Both were charged with nine counts of first degree murder and kidnapping with the intent of robbery. Soon they confessed to a total of 17 murders including those of Unrein, Adshade, and Loughran.Gretzler made a detailed confession on November 10 starting with the Orchard Road massacre. He said he'd become desensitized to death after watching Unrein and Adshade's deaths as Steelman garotted them. "That's the dirtiest way I know of to kill someone and after that I was steeled. I couldn't kill mine completely dead because it made me sick and he was kicking and shuddering and blood came out of his eyes and I'm sure he was half dead, brain damage or something, so I let up and Bill came over and helped me finish it."
Steelman then confessed in full; his account largely corroborated Gretzler's account. California and Arizona authorities arranged for them to be tried in the former state first. Both went on trial in June 1974 and Gretzler agreed to plead guilty to all charges while Steelman pled no contest. On July 8 they were both sentenced to life in prison--the death penalty was not possible as California then had no capital punishment statute. They would now have to stand trial again in Arizona. Steelman's trial in Apache County began July 10, 1975. The defense argued that Gretzler had done the dirty work and that Steelman had "fried his brain" from years of substance abuse and was of diminished mental capacity.Witnesses for the prosecution included Vince Armstrong, Don Scott, and a witness named James Nelson who saw them at the Sandbergs' apartment. other witnesses recounted seeing them in hotels and using Michael Sandberg's name and ID cards. Steelman's fingerprints were found in the apartment and bullets retrieved from the Sandbergs were matched through ballistics tests to Steelman's .38 revolver. His wife Denise Machell provided a 15 minute videotaped interview for the defense where she recalled Steelman's uncontrollable anger. He took the stand in his own defense to claim he'd had severe migraine headaches since tripping and falling outside a department store a few years ago. Apparently trying to convince the jury he was insane, Steelman broke into a rant about fighting "the Man" in the streets and he'd become addicted to drugs as a pain reliever. He said he killed Mike Sandberg due to his military background and being part of the "ruling class."
After two psychiatrists testified and claimed Steelman to be insane, the jury met to deliberate. They took three hours to find him guilty of two counts of murder, one count of kidnapping, two counts of robbery, and one count of burglary. He was sentenced to death as well as 80 years for the other offenses. Since Gretzler had already pled guilty to murdering the Sandbergs, his public defender tried to get him convicted on lesser second degree murder charges and to disprove Vince Armstrong's claims that they carjacked him. The defense also tried to discredit the testimony of Don Scott as he'd been a known junkie. Scott would identify the Sandbergs' Datsun as the car in which he'd rode with the suspects.When the prosecution called as a witness a forensics expert who performed the autopsies on the Sandbergs, the defense tried to discredit him by pointing out that their blood had an elevated alcohol level. The pathologist explained that the alcohol was the result of decomposition processes and both Sandbergs were "extensively" decomposed when they were discovered in the apartment. Aside from that bullets retrieved from them matched Steelman's gun. In the end, the jury took two hours to find Gretzler guilty of two counts of first degree murder, two counts of robbery, and one count of kidnapping. He did not take the stand in his own defense. Gretzler was sentenced to death as well as 25 to 50 for the other charges. Both him and Steelman filed numerous appeals over the years as they entered Arizona's death row at Florence State Prison.
Steelman was a troublesome inmate who often fought with prison staff and was put in solitary confinement for it. He and Gretzler remained friends. Steelman wrote to many different people and developed a fantastical series of claims about his life, that he was a Jewish child raised by a Japanese family (which was false--Steelman was not Jewish nor was his mother's second husband Japanese), that he turned to crime out of desperation for being neglected his whole life, that he was a Vietnam veteran (inflating his five months in the Navy back in 1962 into combat service in Indochina), that the Sandbergs and Parkins were murdered due to involvement in drug trafficking, and that he was studying to be a Pentecostal minister and was sorry about his crimes. Some of these individuals believed his stories and sent him gifts or money.By 1983, Steelman was suffering from hepatitis C and resultant liver damage due to complications from heavy drug use over the years. By 1986 he was told that his condition was terminal and he did not have long to live. His health worsened over the year and on August 7 he was found unresponsive in his cell. Taken to a hospital, Steelman died that afternoon at the age of 41. He was cremated. Patricia Sandberg's father Roderick Mays said he was unhappy that Steelman had been allowed to die of natural causes and never faced the execution chamber.
Doug Gretzler, following his conviction, broke off all contact with family members and refused to talk to the media for years. At first a troublemaker, his behavior in prison gradually improved and he expressed his regret for what had happened, stopped talking to Steelman, and resumed contact with family, saying he wished he hadn't done this to them and the families of the victims. By 1998, Gretzler decided not to appeal his sentence any further and he was executed via lethal injection that June 3. He was the first person Arizona executed during daylight hours as the state had customarily always performed executions at the stroke of midnight. Seventeen people witnessed the execution including four relatives of the victims.
>>16598206>>16598150>>16598044>>16598059wtf was wrong with boomers? seriously.
White people: The Movie
>>16597876>another case of a violent POS GI Generation dad who beat the shit out of his kids so one of them became a serial killer
>>16597968If a chick was yapping about astrology and seances I'd want to shoot her too.
>>16598111I wonder if this is the same Kashulahttps://www.mayofh.com/obituaries/Melinda-A-Kashula?obId=393725
>>16598257https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/125777235/melinda-a-kashulait's possible but this woman lived in the Northeast and there's nothing here to suggest she ever resided in Arizona
>>16598005>For a while, Steelman and Gretzler drove aimlessly around in Armstrong's Firebird until they arrived outside a condominium near Vine Street in Tucson. There a 28 year old Marine Corps veteran and student teacher named Mike Sandberg was washing his '72 Datsun 240Z. Steelman approached Sandberg, gun in hand, and told him to take them inside his condominium. They surprised his 32 year old wife Pat as she was working in the kitchen.Fact: A guy who marries a woman older than himself almost always has mommy issues
>>16598136>On July 8 they were both sentenced to life in prison--the death penalty was not possible as California then had no capital punishment statute.That's ok. Even if they did Gretzler would still be on death row to this day awaiting execution.
>>16598320Yeah the death penalty is de jure part of the legal system and is handed down in court but the sentences are subject to moratoria and the last one was like 20 years ago.
>>16597915>After release from jail, Steelman was put in the Stockton State Hospital and diagnosed as mentally ill. Transferred to Atascadero State Hospital, he was said to make "excellent progress" and moved back to the Stockton facility.Yep, it's 60s-70s psychiatry alright.
If they were black this thread would get 190 replies.
>>16597959>All of them went on a drug and alcohol binge there before Unrein and Adshade slipped away and went homeThat's just a normal day in Arizona.
And this is important because....
>>16597876Hey true crime anon, I enjoy your posts. But I also want to let you know that unironically your posts help motivate me to be the best father I can be. I notice that the thing most of these killers have in common is being raised by shitty parents.
>>16599057Steelman's dad died when he was a kid, that wasn't really anyone's fault. The other guy's dad was definitely an asshole though.
>>16597882>Aside from drugs, Doug's greatest love was his drum kit.literally me
>>16598073>>16598059man the 70s especially in California was insanely violent
>>16597926>Steelman went to Colorado in August to visit his sister. Frances had apparently gotten over his previous stay there eight years ago and let him back into her home butTypo? He was last there in '62 and this was '73 so it would be 11 years.
