With his caked-on makeup and pathological lies, Charles “Smitty” Schmid cut a distinctive figure among Tucson’s youth. The 22-year-old wanted to draw misfit teens to himself like moths to a flame, before holding a cultish sway over them. Schmid was a corrupting force. And by the summer of 1965, he had killed at least three young women, burying their bodies in the Arizona desert.

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