Triple Murderer Charles Schmid Not In Makeup Tucson Arizona Collage Circa 1966-2013 #1 Acrylic Print

When arrested for multiple murders the former high school gymnast, Charles Schmid, had an oversized Band Aid on his nose, a beauty mark painted on his face over pancake makeup, whitened lips, dyed black hair, and newspapers and flattened tin cans stuffed in his cowboy boots to add three inches to his 5'4" height.


For a short period in the mid 1980's Mickey Rourke was seeking to play Schmidt in a motion picture.

'Smitty' was stabbed 47 times by two inmates in the South Unit of Arizona State Prison in Florence on March 10, 1975, losing an eye, a kidney and his life 20 days later. Rumor has it that he failed to deliver on a drug deal.

His mother buried him in Potter's Field behind the East Unit. No names are inscribed on the many white crosses.

I first became obsessed with photography and motion pictures while growing up in post WW2 Manila in the Philippine Islands in the late 1940's/early 1950's. Film noirs were a particular influence. But my first love remains the theater. I acted in numerous amateur productions from 1958 to 1978. In 1979 I earned a MA in drama from the University of Arizona; earlier getting a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, where I co-founded the first film society on campus and ran it for four years. While at the U of A, I studied with the master black and white photo essayist W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) the last year of his life. I am the last person cited in Jim Hughes' definitive biography of Gene, as I wrote about attending his final...