Douglas Gretzler

Douglas Gretzler
Booking photo taken after Gretzler's arrest
Born	Douglas Edward Gretzler (1951-05-21)May 21, 1951 The Bronx, New York, U.S.
Died	June 3, 1998(1998-06-03) (aged 47) Florence State Prison, Florence, Arizona, U.S.
Cause of death	Execution by lethal injection
Conviction(s)	Murder x 11
Criminal penalty	Death (Arizona) California (Life imprisonment)
Details
Victims	11–17
Span of crimes	October–November 1973
Country	United States
State(s)	California, Arizona
Date apprehended	November 8, 1973

Douglas Edward Gretzler (May 21, 1951 – June 3, 1998)^[1] was an American serial killer who, together with accomplice Willie Steelman, committed a series of murders spanning two months during 1973, in the states of California and Arizona. In total, the pair admitted to 17 murders, but were tried and convicted for eleven of them. Gretzler would later be executed at the Florence State Prison in 1998, while Steelman would die awaiting execution.

Biographies[]

Douglas Gretzler[]

Douglas Edward Gretzler was born on May 21, 1951, in The Bronx, New York, the second of four children. In the early 1950s, the family moved to the working class suburb of Tuckahoe, where Gretzler and his law-abiding family members became respected residents. In the 1960s, his father, Norton, served as President of the Tuckahoe School District.^[2]

Nevertheless, Douglas and his siblings' childhood was unhappy, as their father was strict and periodically subject them to his aggression. In the early 1960s, Douglas began to show signs of mental illness, and during a 1964 medical examination, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.^[3] A severely traumatic event struck the Gretzler family on August 16, 1966, when one of the children, 17-year-old Mark, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head for an unclear reason.^[4]

After his brother's suicide, Gretzler began taking drugs such as mescaline and LSD, as a result of which his relationship with his father deteriorated.^[3] He attended the Tuckahoe High School, where he was a member of football, baseball and basketball teams, but was not considered a good player in any of them.^[5] While Gretzler was not popular at school, his friends and acquaintances spoke well of him. After graduating in 1969, Gretzler chose not to finish his education, instead deciding to become an auto mechanic, working for some time in a local car service. The following year, he left New York and moved to Florida, where he met a girl named Judy.^[5]

After he married and had a child, Gretzler returned to The Bronx, where he bought an apartment. However, he could not find a job. He began to experience financial difficulties and started engaging in small-time crimes. During this period, he was arrested on several occasions for speeding and vagrancy. In December 1972, due to his worsening financial status, Gretzler left his family and New York altogether.^[5] He travelled across the country, first to Casper, Wyoming and then to Denver, Colorado, meeting Willie Steelman and his sister at the latter location. Finding that he and Steelman had an identical passion for pathological pleasures, as well as a desire to earn quick cash, the pair began devising how to commit crimes without being caught, as a result of which they soon became close friends, moving in together.

Willie Steelman[]

Willie Luther Steelman was born on March 21, 1945, in San Joaquin County, California. Shortly after his birth, his father died, after which his mother remarried.^[5] Steelman spent his childhood and adolescence in Lodi, where he attended the Lodi High School. During his school years, Steelman, due to his introverted nature, was not very popular with his peers and was considered a social outcast, but was not bullied by other students. In 1965, shortly before leaving school, he was convicted on three counts of forgery and involving a minor in a crime, for which he had to spend a short sentence in prison.^[5] While serving his sentence, Steelman attempted suicide. He was transferred to the Stockton State Hospital, where he spent several months in 1966. In 1968, he was granted parole and released, returning to Lodi, where he soon married high school student Denise Machell, just months after they had first met. After his marriage, Steelman continued to have problems with finding a job, changing professions frequently, having financial problems and developing an addiction to drugs such as heroin.^[5]

Murders[]

On October 11, 1973, Gretzler, Steelman and the latter's 19-year-old girlfriend, Melinda Ann Kashula, left Denver for Phoenix, Arizona. On the way to Phoenix, they stopped for the night in the small town of Globe, where they robbed a couple who were sunbathing of $5.^[6] Later that day, they picked up a hitchhiker and took him to the outskirts of the city, where, threatening to kill him, they tied him up to a tree and stole his clothes, ring and $20. Four days later, the trio arrived in Phoenix, where they sold the ring at a pawnshop and stole another $20 from a woman.^[5]

In Phoenix, Steelman met with acquaintances Ken Unrein and Michael "Mike" Adshade, both 21, who showed him the residence of his two friends, 19-year-old Robert "Bob" Robbins and 21-year-old Katherine Mestites, who lived in a trailer park in Apache Junction.^[5] All four of them visited the trailer, where they shared alcohol and drugs. The next day, Gretzler and Steelman hijacked Unrein's van, then threatened him and Adshade with guns, taking both hostage and travelling to Knights Ferry, California, where, on October 16, they stabbed them to death.^[7] Gretzler and Steelman later dumped the bodies in a wooded area, got rid of the van and began hitchhiking.^[8] Three days later, they stopped a young couple near Petaluma, after which they threatened to take control of their car and suppressed their victims. Soon after, Steelman raped the girl, but in the end, both criminals let go of their hostages and drove away in their car.

Concerned that Robbins and Mestites would end up linking them to the disappearances of Unrein and Adshade, Gretzler and Steelman decided to return to Phoenix and kill them. On the way, they picked up an 18-year-old Californian hitchhiker, Steven Allan Loughran, who travelled with them to the trailer.^[9] The next evening, the pair lured Loughran out into the desert and killed him for supposedly knowing something about the Unrein–Adshade killings, then returned to the trailer. On October 25, while Mestites was away, they strangled Robbins and got rid of his corpse, and after Mestites returned, they did the same to her.^[5] After these murders, the pair moved to Tucson, where they stayed until November 2, hitchhiking out of there in the evening. They were picked up by 19-year-old Gilbert R. Sierra, whom they shot several hours later after attempting to rob him. After destroying their fingerprints, Gretzler and Steelman left the murdered man's car in a parking lot.^[5]

The next day, the pair got into the car of Vincent Armstrong, whom they threatened to kill halfway during the trip. Armstrong fiercely resisted, however, and was able to jump out of the car while driving. He was driven to a nearby hospital and given appropriate medical attention, and then contacted police who, based on his testimony, drew up sketches of his two assailants.^[6] After dumping Armstrong's Pontiac Firebird at a parking lot in Tucson, Gretzler and Steelman noticed 28-year-old Marine captain Michael Sandberg washing his Datsun car. Threatening him with a gun, the pair forced Sandberg to take them to his condominium, where his wife Patricia was. While at the Sandberg residence, Gretzler dyed his blond hair to brown and exchanged his clothes with Sandberg's, before tying up and gagging their hostages. Later in the night, they shot Michael in the head and covered his head with a pillow, and then shot Patricia, who was left on the living room couch.^[3] Steelman then took the pistol and fired another shot into her body to make sure she was dead. After destroying the evidence incriminating them in the murders, Gretzler and Steelman stole some credit cards, a camera and other items of material value from the house, before fleeing in Sandberg's car. On their way to California, they met several acquaintances, but in the end, only one of them, Donald Scott, agreed to accompany them. The trio drove to Pine Villey, after which Gretzler and Steelman dropped him off without incident.

On November 6, the pair entered Steelman's hometown of Lodi, where they soon broke into the Victor ranch home of 33-year-old grocery store owner Walter Parkin, with whom Steelman had had a confrontation in the past.^[5] At the time, there were eight other people in the house, including two children. After Parkin opened his floor safe at the request of the criminals, from which Gretzler and Steelman stole about $4,000, Gretzler shot and killed Parkin; his 31-year-old wife Joanne; his neighbors Richard A. Earl, his wife Wanda as well as their two children, Ricky (15) and Debbie (18); and finally, 20-year-old Mark Lang, Debbie's fiancé.^[10] After that, the pair went up to the second floor towards the children's bedroom, where they shot Parkin's two other children (9-year-old Robert and 11-year-old Lisa, respectively) in order to get rid of potential witnesses.^[5]

Arrest[]

While investigating the murders of the Parkin family and their friends, police found several witnesses who gave a description of the two criminals, who also claimed that they had Arizona license plates on their car. From this, the California State Department contacted their colleagues in Arizona, who determined that the car was registered to the murdered Michael Sandberg, which was last seen in Phoenix.^[11] Soon after, police were contacted by Donald Scott, who claimed that his friends, Gretzler and Steelman, could be involved in the killings. Thanks to his testimony, arrest warrants were issued for the two men, and their photographs published in The Sacramento Union.^[10] On November 8, 1973, a Sacramento clerk recognized Gretzler and Steelman and tracked their car to the Clunie Hotel, before informing the police of their whereabouts.^[10] In the meantime, Steelman left the hotel and went to a nearby apartment block, where he was living in a rented apartment with his girlfriend. Later that day, Gretzler was arrested without incident during a police raid.^[10] Before Steelman could be arrested, authorities determined that he was listening to a rock radio station in his apartment; in order to force him out, the police contacted the radio station, which relayed a message to Steelman, telling him to surrender voluntarily. While Steelman heard the message, he refused to surrender, and so, the police forced both him and his girlfriend out using tear gas.^[10] While inspecting the apartment where the criminals lived, police found pistols and cartridges, a copy of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, as well as other evidence incriminating them in the murders.^[5][12]

After their arrest, Gretzler and Steelman gave detailed confessions of their crimes, additionally revealing where they had buried Unrein and Adshade, for whose murders they were not considered suspects up until then. By November 14, both of them had admitted to a total of 17 murders.^[13]

Having studied their travel routes, the investigators considered Gretzler and Steelman suspects in several more murders - two of them were the murders of an elderly couple in Chico, California. Chico police questioned Gretzler about the double killing, as the couple's car was later found abandoned on a street in New York, but neither he nor Steelman admitted responsibility for that.^[13] At this time, they gave explanations for one more killing: according to Steelman's testimony, in mid-October 1973, after arriving in Phoenix, he met with a friend nicknamed "Preacher", who was a drug dealer. The man asked Steelman to help solve a conflict with rival gang members, to which the former agreed and later killed the man, but not long after, "Preacher" and his brother were killed in retaliation.^[5] Steelman's account was considered unreliable, and eventually disregarded. Ultimately, it was decided that Gretzler and Steelman would first be tried in California for the nine murders, and thereafter extradited to Arizona for the other killings.^[5]

Trial[]

Gretzler and Steelman's joint trial began in early 1974. In June of that year, Gretzler pleaded guilty to all charges, while Steelman refused to do so.^[14] He was later found guilty in a jury verdict, and on July 8, 1974, both men were sentenced to life imprisonment, as California had enacted a temporary moratorium on the death penalty at the time.^[15] After the verdict was announced, neither man showed any emotion, and both said that they had only done to prevent any witnesses from testifying against them.^[16]

After their conviction, in early 1975, the pair were extradited to Arizona, where they were found guilty in the murders of Michael and Patricia Sandberg and sentenced to death on November 15, 1976. Despite confessing to six additional murders, neither man was tried in the other killings on the grounds that both had been sentenced to death already.^[17]

Aftermath[]

After their trial, both men were transferred to Florence State Prison to await execution. In the next two decades, Gretzler filed appeals to overturn his death sentence, insisting that his drug addiction and mental health were mitigating circumstances for the crimes, but all of them were dismissed.^[3][7] He later claimed to be repentant for his deeds, and for several years, wrote letters to his victims' relatives asking for forgiveness. In 1992, he was visited in prison by Jack Earl, the nephew of one of his victims. During the meeting, Gretzler told Earl about what had led to the events in 1973, expressing remorse for what he had done and saying that he felt shame.^[18]

On June 3, 1998, Douglas Gretzler was executed via lethal injection at the Florence State Prison, an event that was witnessed by 35 people, including victims' relatives, nine journalists, his sister and several close friends.^[18] His last meal consisted of a platter of six fried eggs, four slices of bacon, two slices of toast, a cup of coffee and two cans of Coca-Cola.^[15] Before his execution, he again asked for forgiveness, and as his final words, he said the following: "From the bottom of my soul, I'm so deeply sorry and have been for years for murdering Michael and Patricia Sandberg. Though I am being executed for that crime, I apologize to all 17 victims and their families."^[10] He then turned towards his sister, telling her in Romanian that he loved her and her granddaughters. At the time of his execution, Gretzler had been the longest-serving death row inmate in Arizona's history,^[19] and the first one scheduled to be executed during the daytime (most inmates are executed shortly after midnight).^[10] His accomplice, Willie Steelman, developed health issues in the early 1980s, most notable of which was a diagnosis of cirrhosis of the liver. Due to complications from the disease, he died in the prison hospital in August 1986.^[5][20]

See also[]

• List of serial killers in the United States
• Capital punishment in Arizona
• Capital punishment in the United States
• List of people executed in Arizona
• List of people executed by lethal injection

External links[]

• State v. Gretzler (1980)
• State v. Gretzler (1983)
• Gretzler v. Stewart (1997)

Bibliography[]

• Michael Newton (2006). The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 0816069875.
• Jack Earl (January 1, 2013). Where Sadness Begins. the True Story of Willie Steelman and Douglas Gretzler and the 17 People They Murdered in the Autumn of 1973. ASIN B07MX4VW4K.

References[]