Arrest made in 1984 killing of California high school football star
Mountain View Road, Burney, Calif. (Google Street View)
Four decades after an 18-year-old high school football star was shot to death while on a date in rural Shasta County, authorities say they've arrested the man responsible.
Roger Schmidt, 64, was taken into custody on Saturday at an apartment complex on the south side of Tucson, Arizona, according to the Shasta County Sheriff's Office. He's accused of fatally shooting 18-year-old Terry Arndt and sexually assaulting a young woman in Burney in 1984.
Arndt was a track and field star at Burney High School and made the regional all-star football team before attending Shasta College in Redding, where he lived at the time of his death. At about 10 p.m on the evening of Dec. 14, 1984, Arndt and his date were in a parked car in a wooded area on Mountain View Road in Burney, an unincorporated town about 50 miles northeast of Redding.
A large sedan with a dull finish reportedly drove close to the couple, so they drove on to a more private spot. The same car returned, and the driver flicked a cigarette at the side of Arndt's car. The driver parked, approached on foot and shot Arndt through the driver's side window with a .22-caliber rifle as Arndt was trying to protect the woman. The man then got into the car and sexually assaulted the unnamed woman. She was able to drive the car into town and flagged down a California Highway Patrol officer, as the suspect fled the scene, aided in his escape by the falling snow that covered his tracks. Arndt was declared dead that night at a local hospital.
Terry Arndt was attending Shasta College in Redding at the time of his death. (Shasta County Sheriff)
The assailant was described as a slim white male in his 30s, with a thick beard, mustache and a "hillbilly" accent. He was reported to be wearing a blue baseball cap and plaid shirt and was described as "very slow and deliberate in his actions." A reward was offered for any information leading to an arrest, but the case soon went cold. Arndt's death "really hit hard on the community," his high school football coach told reporters at the time. Five years after Terry's death, his mother and father, Keith and Judy Arndt, told reporters they had never visited their son's grave, as Terry was "in heaven, not a cemetery," the Record Searchlight reported.
In the summer of 1995, a break came in the case, when the Shasta County Sheriff's Office announced it had identified a suspect. That 43-year-old Fall River Valley resident was arrested and jailed for two years, only for his case to be dismissed by the Shasta County District Attorney's Office in 1997 when his DNA was found not to be a match to semen found on the woman's blouse.
This sketch of the suspect was released by officials in 1984. (Shasta County Sheriff)
The crime scene DNA evidence, however, did eventually lead to the arrest last week of the man authorities believe killed Arndt. After revisiting the case, investigators sent a DNA sample from the crime scene to Othram Labs in Texas. The analysis pointed toward a new suspect.
"That suspect was identified as Roger Neil Schmidt Sr., who was 23 at the time of crime," the Shasta County Sheriff's Office said in a statement Wednesday. "Detectives determined he lived in Burney at the time of the murder. He strongly resembled the sketch originally provided by the female victim."
Schmidt was recently living quietly in Arizona with his daughter, her partner and their children, KNVN-TV reported. He was arrested on Saturday, interviewed by detectives and subsequently booked into a Pima County jail on suspicion of the 1984 killing of Arndt and sexual assault of the woman. Schmidt is currently awaiting extradition to California, where he is expected to face charges.
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