Watched the documentary on her case. The family that says she wasn't wasted on alcohol and weed are delusional. She straight up murdered those kids in the back seat of her minivan(even if it was unintentional). Such a sad case.
Anecdotal to my region/circle but 95% of people I know with DUIs have multiple DUIs.
It is very rare for me to see someone with a one-off DUI charge. Those would mostly be a 19/20 year old who isn’t an alcoholic but was binge drinking at a college party or something. (Which doesn’t make anything lesser at all, there’s been several fatalities in my small town due to this scenario. I’m just speaking here to how prevalent repeat offenders are.)
The adult alcoholics I know who drink and drive are repeat offenders.
My brother in law got a one off DUI, but he was driving a golf cart he kind of stole from the parking lot of the bar. He was actually returning it when he was arrested. Was definitely a dumb young adult thing to do, and he took responsibility for it and never did it again. Still was expensive as hell but a lesson definitely learned.
I would support civil asset forfeiture for the cars of DUI drivers. “But it will mess up their lives…” *good.*
I’ve been hit by a drunk driver and am fine with draconian penalties for the dumb dumbs.
I was hit by a drunk driver too, but civil asset forfeiture only hurts if it damages the driver. Often you are affecting family members who use the vehicle or rely on it for transportation. I have had clients with one offs but it’s usually because it greatly impacted a professional license and the arrest was a huge wake up call. And since I’m on my soap box, let me just add this…..the nursing board in my state has a very stringent program, far more restrictive than the medical board or state bar. I’ve been told that if you get through that program your chance of recidivism is less than 10%.
My uncle had a 1 off DUI in 1987. After that he never drank and drive again. He had gone out to celebrate his 42nd birthday and tried to drive home when he was stopped and arrested. After that he always planned for a DD or he didn’t drink. He told me he was never going to lose that kind of money again for something stupid like that. Up until he moved to a nursing home and stopped driving in 2019, he never did it again.
It's 87! I remember reading that when I worked as a bartender in a dive bar, and was sick to my stomach thinking about what I was doing. Ironically, I was in a head on collision with a drunk driver like 3 weeks after learning that.
I can’t imagine still feeling so entitled to driving after drunkenly committing vehicular manslaughter. Even the picture of her in online obituaries has her sitting in the driver’s seat (of a parked car).
I could tell from the very beginning that she was entitled.
After killing a 21 yr old girl, she’s asked if she has been drinking and answers
“Yeah, obviously too much”.
Not that anyone deserves to be killed by a drunk driver, but why this girl?!?!
She seems like such a wonderful person, she was on her way to pick up a friend from the bar!
The irony is just heartbreaking.
Lots of good people are killed by drunk drivers. Some years ago, a coworker of mine, a genuinely great guy, was killed on the way to work by a DUI in a borrowed truck. My coworker was driving a Corolla; he didn't stand a chance against the speeding red-light-running truck. At 7 am.
To be fair, I think it's preferable that she admitted it rather than try to lie about it and say she wasn't drinking, or only had "one beer" or whatever. But yes the irony is tragic.
The drunk driver that killed my grandfather was a state-hopper. He had DUIs in five other states, and I think at least one other fatality. AFAIK he never was punished for my papaw’s death either because he skipped to another state.
Granted this was probably about 30 years ago, but it’s still far too easy for repeat offenders to avoid repercussions.
Yeah that surprised me (although I guess it didn't surprise me too much). You would think that killing someone while driving drunk would possibly stop them from doing it again, especially since she went on the run because of it. But I guess some people never change.
This is not—to be very clear, NOT—an excuse for her behavior but she was almost certainly an alcoholic and the desire(/need) to drink overran the fear of being caught.
Yep. She was sick, no doubt. But when your sickness is harming other people, it becomes your responsibility to get treatment. If you don’t, you’re just as guilty as if you were doing that without the addiction IMO.
I get being an addict and being unable to stop drinking. I dont get having killed someone and then continuing to get in a car and drive when you know you're over the limit. Public transport, taxis, friends, walking is the solution to that. God, if I ever killed someone I don't think there would be an hour of my life from that point where I didn't think of them with intense guilt and remorse.
the problem, in my experience, is rural areas having no other transportation options. i grew up in the country and *so many* people drank and drove. you get off from a long, shitty day at work at the factory or whatever and you just want to have some drinks with friends at the one bar in town. cutoff time rolls around and your DD is sloshed and stumbling home, everyone else is asleep, nothing is open, no buses, no ubers. after cutoff time you'd have armies of drunk people driving back to their houses. idk about cities because i'm a lifetime hick but i know better transportation in rural areas would probably decrease the amount of drunk drivers by a lot
The issue here is that back then it was a lot easier to pick up a fake identity. Nowadays you can't - and you'll be denied entry at the border for serious crimes.
I’m shocked learning from this story that they don’t. It’s wild to hear that she was arrested for a DUI here in Canada and there was no flag on her at all for a previous DUI charge in the States.
It was my understanding that some things like licence suspensions apply across the border in deals with certain States/Provinces.
I understand that she changed her identity but you are fingerprinted for a DUI.
Apparently the penalties for drunk driving increased in late 2018 -- so for offences committed after that date, non-Canadians can actually be deported. (I'm still not sure what Schulze's status under her fake identity was ... one of the articles said she was Canadian, but I don't know if she'd obtained citizenship under it, or if her fake papers were maybe copied from a Canadian who had died, etc.)
Either she was careful not to get caught in recent years, or she was really lucky?
Especially since electronic records are available now. I can see why it would have been difficult, decades ago when they had to mail (or fax) photocopies of fingerprint records. I remember reading about a case in the 1970s where a perp was suspected to have driven from upstate New York into Ontario and committed a murder there. Authorities weren't talking to each other so this wasn't even considered until 3 or 4 decades later -- they didn't have 24-hour news channels then so the media didn't broadcast it widely -- and it turned out that he was responsible for crimes a couple of counties away in the same state, and it took awhile to figure that out.
But now, it ought to be possible to compare digital copies in the system very quickly. They could put AI to use, sifting through all those records.
And also put some money into digitizing backlogs of files -- and processing rape kits that have been sitting in storage for years, etc.
This guy was recently identified as a serial killer -- he'd committed crimes in California and in Alberta, and then was still doing it when he was sent back to the US. If there'd been better co-ordination, he might have been prosecuted while he was still alive.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-69030467
Went to school with a girl who killed her best friend while they were driving home drunk from a party. Not sure if it was because she was underage, but she ended up coming back to school a year later with a huge scar across her face.
10 or so years later I learned a few years prior she was on a country road, driving drunk, crashed into a pole and burnt to death in her car because she could t get out. A guy tried to help but flames were too hot.
Do the Canadian and/or U.S. border checkpoint staff keep records of people passing back and forth across the border? If her family members passed the border into western Canada between 1994 and 2019, then that might indicate that something was up.
Not entirely sure, but I'd wager definitely after 911. Border security got super strict afterwords. Not entirely sure when, but you didn't even need a passport to cross until (I wanna say) mid 90s.
As a US citizen, we only needed a valid state ID (like a driver's license) to cross into Canada for vacation until 2014. 2014 is when they started requiring a valid US passport.
That makes sense, I crossed before then but was not yet a legal adult, so I wasn't exactly too sure how that worked out.
Thanks for doing the research for my lazy ass!
You're partially right - after 9/11 almost everything security-related got stricter. However, US citizens only needed a valid driver's license for entry into Canada until well into the late 00's when a passport was needed.
The interesting thing is that the dates differed. The US required a passport for entry shortly after 9/11 - but Canada took over a decade to reciprocate. So it was entirely possible to legally pass into Canada with your driver’s license, do your thing, and then get stuck at the border as a U.S. Citizen if you didn’t have a passport. (I came very close to getting stuck in maybe 2004! Do not recommend.)
Compare with a few years earlier; I went to college near the border, and it was a rite of passage to go over and have a drink for your 19th birthday. I distinctly recall being DD for a car full of drunk teenagers, who had all zonked out, handing the agent a stack full of DL, and praying no one woke up and said anything stupid. He asked like two questions and waved us through lockets-split.
I had a coworker once who had a very similar story! They were just loser cruising and decided to go to Portland at some stupid hour (2 am, or so) on a whim. He didn't have a passport and was almost arrested by border patrol. Favorably forgetting some details, but is sort of an odd amalgamation of both your encounters.
To note, in BC we go to Alberta at 18 as the drinking age is a year lower there. Also a rite of passage.
If you’re an American, or Canadian from another province, and wondering about the drinking age it’s easy. It alternates 19, 18 when read left to right.
BC 19, Alberta 18, Saskatchewan 19, Manitoba 18, Ontario 19, Quebec 18. Then the Atlantic provinces screw it up as they’re all 19 but if you think of them as one big province it works out
Border crossings are definitely recorded. Things may have gotten more regulated post-9/11 and once you needed a passport to cross, but there were records even before that. I have multiple records of US/Canada border crossings from the 1900’s in my genealogical research.
Road tripped into and across Canada in 1994 with just our drivers' licenses. After 9/11 its passport only.
Edit: after 2014 it is passport only, turns out.
Yes, they have a record of when you cross back and forth. But unless there was a reason to, they wouldn't be comparing it to anything.
Customs has access to ALLLLL your information. And foreign customs has access to a lot of it.
I think it's variable -- I know that they gave people cards to fill out if you're arriving on a plane (or bus?), and if you drive up to the border in a car, they'll ask where you're going and if you have anything to declare. They give a more detailed examination on a random basis (or also if they notice anything a bit out of place -- like if you fit a demographic and if they've noticed a pattern that might make them suspicious that you're a drug smugger). Good question whether Border Services might keep track of the names (I don't know if the feds might have been notified to keep an eye out).
I don't know if there's enough continuity to notice whether the same vehicle was heading up to Yellowknife "for fishing" every summer or so? Heck, if there was a care parcel arriving from the States periodically, marked "General Delivery" (unclear whether Schulze had a stable mailing address), I have no idea if anyone might put two and two together.
I would imagine that Schulze's parents would have been the most inclined to try to visit, but if they're still alive, there was probably a point when they would have become too elderly to travel?
I agree. At the very least, they probably helped finance her escape. Within weeks of her disappearance, her parents sold their house and two cars that were registered to her. I can't find out if they are still alive.
I can’t imagine local authorities didn’t have warrants to access her parents’ bank records if they knew about the car and home sales. It doesn’t appear they ever got any evidence of them assisting her.
Yeah and the victim sounds like a cool person by all accounts. It's so unfair how often these accidents kill other people instead of the drunk asshole.
Hopefully she spent all those years feeling slightly unsafe and uncomfortable, but sadly I doubt it.
I've read somewhere how drunks who get into accidents tend to either walk away or have minor injuries (as opposed to the innocents they hit) because their bodies are already relaxed.
I remember something somewhat similar being said by a highway patrol officer in an Unsolved Mysteries episode about James White (who was wanted for the drunk driving deaths of an elderly couple). The officer said that in the cases he had investigated, more often than not, the drunk driver survives and the other party is killed.
I agree with this. Haven’t fallen off my horse in years.
Had too many ryes last weekend and fell off him twice. A bit sore the next day but fine. I’m almost 40! That shouldve put me in physio for weeks!
I mean, one reason she was killed is that she wasn’t wearing a seat belt. I am not blaming her for her death—obviously the drunk driver was at fault. But that was almost certainly a factor in why their different outcomes from the crash.
You can state a fact without it being victim-blaming.
For some further perspective, my additional thought is that seatbelt use in the 90s was also more lax than it is today.
It wasn’t a total free for all with seatbelts even at that time but I def didn’t always have a seatbelt on every single time I was in the car growing up in the early 90s.
The rule here where I am used to be that every seatbelt in the car should be in use but if you had extra people in the car than the number of seatbelts, that was a loophole. I believe it’s since changed.
Honestly, having to reset your entire life from Arizona to Yellowknife sounds WORSE than any conviction. No way your bid for this is 30 years, and while prison sucks at least you're not spending the rest of your days wondering if you'll ever be caught, which, if you are, you damn well know it will be a harsher sentence than had you owned up to it from the start.
For real.
Assuming this was her first offense and leaning into a drinking problem as a cause of her actions she would have likely gotten a pretty light sentence. Possibly, even avoiding actual prison time with a good attorney.
I've seen it happen for people, especially if they are wealthy enough to flea the fucking country...
I've worked in substance abuse treatment and for probation and parole for years. I've seen some people get nailed to the wall and others barely get a slap on the wrist.
Here's a couple from a quick Google search:
https://kfor.com/news/local/no-prison-time-for-man-who-killed-a-person-while-driving-drunk/
https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/11/us/texas-teen-dwi-wreck/index.html
There's others where people serve 30 days in county or work release. It isn't the norm but a good attorney absolutely can get a reduced sentence for you.
Having been to Yellowknife, there would be a *huge* adjustment to make from AZ. Not just going from hot desert summers to freezing taiga winters. Yellowknife really feels remote for a city its size. It is surrounded by unbroken taiga for countless miles/km in *every* direction. It is a long drive to any other settlement through this wilderness with absolutely nothing in between. Even when the lake is frozen over in the wintertime (and it’s a *huge* lake, even bigger than most of the Great Lakes) From the air it looks like the entire city was scratched out of the taiga by a very determined cat.
I’m sure she went there knowing that she was unlikely to ever be found … but only as long as she stayed there for the rest of her life.
>Yellowknife really feels remote for a city its size.
When they had to evacuate the place last year because of the fire, that made things even more challenging. I know the city has grown since I was there last (mid-1990s-- weird to think that I might have walked past Schulze in the grocery store without realizing it). But still, even back then it was pretty surreal to be in a place with traffic lights etc., when the bush was right at the edge of town ... and went on for hundreds of kilometres.
I wonder if she lived in Old Town?
I know someone who killed another driver while driving drunk. He was sentenced to 10 years. Not sure if that’s better or worse than living in Yellowknife.
Yeah, it sounds like a sad life, always having to hide your true identity and looking over your shoulder. Better to just take whatever sentence is handed to you and then go forward in life as best you can.
i'm sure if three witches had appeared to her at the time and presented her with her ultimate fate, her and her family probably would have reconsidered their plans.
It was probably something like "i'm not going to jail no matter what!!!" and this was the best plan they could come up with and likely something they saw as a temporary solution.
They apparently did pay for a good lawyer who was experienced in handling drunk driving cases. The lawyer was able to get a plea bargain for Schulze, which would get her a 14-year sentence. But she reportedly wasn't happy with that, so she decided to go on the run.
It appears that Schulze also got away with it for other reasons too. Almost immediately after her arrest, she was released on her own recognizance (even though she had no close ties to the area). She did not have to post bond and got to keep her driver's license. She was allowed to leave the state three separate times. Her trial was postponed six times. And, she missed six drug test dates and an appointment with a counselor without an alarm being raised (or the court or prosecutor being informed). I don't know if the police/investigators/court just didn't take the case seriously or what.
She could have basically 'got away with it' in any case. I lost a loved one back in the 90's to a drunk driver, 4 months jailtime and that was with legal aide attorney.
I'm so sorry about your loved one. That's terrible that the driver only spent 4 months in jail for taking someone's life. Unfortunately, it seems like sentences were often very light for these kinds of cases (especially back then).
>they can’t put her in jail
Couldn’t they still put her family in jail for aiding and abetting a fugitive? If so, then maybe we should see those phone records.
No prosecutor in the world would try that case. Plus, most of Angela's immediate family is dead and there's not really anyone to push the issue with LE.
Insane she got arrested for another DUI after successfully escaping a DUI manslaughter charge -
Yellowknife was so far away, no one would have ever thought to look there. She was known as a “pyrotechnic master” [and had fireworks lit in her honor](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5411848). Truly wild story.
Weird how she basically just made a straight shot up, almost as far north as you can go. I looked at driving directions from Scottsdale to Yellowknife it’s basically just a vertical line (assuming she drove or was driven).
Seems she was a well known (and liked) figure in Yellowknife.
https://www.mytruenorthnow.com/45871/news/friends-plan-to-honour-kate-dooley-with-new-years-fireworks-display-in-yellowknife/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/kate-dooley-fireworks-1.5411848
I'm sure it's the talk of the town. It's a city, but not very large, and the remoteness makes it feel more like a smaller community. (Probably the biggest news since the wildfire evacuation last year?)
> I would not be surprised if she had told someone at least some aspects of her story.
That seems quite possible to me -- after a couple of decades up there, especially with her liking to socialize (and probably not being able to go down to the States when she wanted to, so feeling isolated), she may have let things slip out. And there's also a chance that, if she picked someone to confide in, since then that person might either have moved out of town -- or died themselves.
(Also if she talked to anyone while she was doing those camp jobs ... I've worked in places like that, and it's not unusual to hear weird stories, then forget about them once you're back home. It can be hard to figure out whether they're true, or even remember the person's name -- they might be going by a nickname anyway, and they might end up in a different country so you'd never see them again.)
>It hasn’t featured in the local newspaper, CBC North
I guess the local papers have editions a couple of times per week? If they are short-staffed like a lot of other papers across the country, they might not be able to put anything out until later. I looked up the Yellowknifer and they said they come out on Wednesdays and Fridays.
https://www.nnsl.com/yellowknifer/
I suspect that the "unofficial CBC" (there's always that person in any neighbourhood) is pretty active right now though. I feel sorry for the people who knew her well -- or thought that they did.
Re: the drought, given how concerned people are about fire risk this year all across the boreal zone, no wonder.
If you want local Yellowknife news (and where this could be featured) look up Cabin Radio NWT - Ollie and crew provide the most in-depth coverage across the NWT. And this is making lots of chatter on the local FB groups.
I have sympathy for her friends, to find out that someone they cared about had killed someone and then hid in their community for years. It's also interesting to see things about "Dooley's" life line up: that she came to the area in the early 1990s, seemed to work odd jobs, was a private person, and was surrounded by friends when she died (no mention of family).
“Kate came to Yellowknife in the early 1990s,” Smale said. “During her time here she had many professions from cook to a house painter. She loved to camp, sit around a firepit with friends and be on the land, however, one of her biggest passions was *DUI.*”
FTFY
>‘She was everywhere there was something blowing up’
This quote in hindsight is very.....oof. This woman really left behind a horrible legacy in pretty much every way.
I think that you're correct. The article noted: "During her time here she had many professions from cook to a house painter." I knew an alcoholic myself once, and she also had to get a new job literally every 2 or 3 months (I would assume because she kept getting fired for showing up to work drunk or constantly calling in sick because of hangovers).
Yes, the alcoholics I know deeply struggle to maintain employment, obviously. And many end up picking up odd jobs. A few were extremely lucky to be in good unions where they basically couldn’t get fired no matter what they did and even though they barely worked for years cycling through relapses and recovery.
You're not wrong, but do we know that the photos were taken when she was ill?
And alcoholics frequently do get cancer (liver cancer is the most common, but also mouth, throat, and stomach cancers are common in alcoholics as well).
So strange that someone on the run would let their picture be taken and circulated in the media. You’d think she would have laid low instead of being actively involved with the community.
Poor Angela, she seemed like a thoughtful and kind young woman; may she continue to rest in peace.
As a PSA to anyone that may be reading this, please don't drink and drive. It is so easy to get home now with Uber, Lyft, using your phone to call family/friends. My Dad was hit by a drunk driver, and it changed the entire trajectory of his life. He even had complications from the accident up until his death. He always advocated for driving sober, and I am doing the same.
A couple of years ago I went to a casual get-together and a friend drove us. She and I weren’t together during the event but she was responsible and I trusted that she would stay sober or, like me, drink one drink. At the end of the party we walked to her car and she seemed completely normal- totally coherent, no slurring speech, no stumbling around, nothing. We got in the car and she said a couple of things that were just… off. She then mentioned that the guy she’d been seeing had broken things off with her and she wondered if we should go to his house to see what he was doing. That was WAY off for her to say, and I suddenly realized she was very, very intoxicated. I was sober (I’d had one beer a couple hours before) and got her to pull over and switch with me. I drove her home, got her into bed, and then got an Uber home. The next morning she called me sobbing- she hadn’t been just drunk, she was blackout. She had no memory of how she got home. She had been upset about the guy and started drinking and didn’t stop. I realized how lucky we were that there was no accident. That’s also the last time I’ve gotten a ride with someone after an event with alcohol where I haven’t been with them the whole night and seen exactly how much they have to drink.
Yes, I agree. It’s not like when I was young. Uber/Lyft are always available.
I plan on adding the apps with my CC and a no questions asked policy once my kids get to that age.
Agree wholeheartedly and I'm sorry for your experience. I lost a friend to someone's careless driving. They weren't drinking, but speeding down hill and being negligent. If you are intoxicated or cannot be responsible, don't get behind the wheel! Her young life was lost and a whole town + surrounding county was affected.
Sorry to hear about your father. My grandmother was run down by a drunk driver, and grandpa was never the same afterwards -- the effects of deaths or injuries on the families is often overlooked.
I stopped seeing one friend, after hearing that she lent her vehicle to someone who was an impaired driver ... I just couldn't trust her when she kept doing that.
I am so sorry about your grandparents.
I don't blame you. Some people my Dad used to know would talk openly with him about driving while drunk, when they knew the circumstances of his injuries... it was extremely frustrating.
Sadly, many don't think/plan ahead and after they are drunk, they don't think rationally about it.
My brother is no longer here because of a drunk driver, so I have much ire over stories like this. She continued it, was arrested again, and yet no time was she held in jail to change anything. I am tired of second-third-infinity chances for drunk driving!
I'm so sorry about the loss of your brother.
And I agree, it seems like many people get a slap on the wrist when it comes to driving under the influence.
I would add to your PSA, don’t drive while high or a little buzzed either. Weed laws are looser now in many places, but you still have to be careful with enjoying it.
I'm a parent, and I would do anything for my children, but I would not help them avoid facing the consequences of their actions. The fact that she continued to drink and drive is proof that she didn't learn anything from her terrible choices.
Not a chance on earth I would ever help my children this way. It would be a lot more understandable if they had gotten her help but nope just paid for her to relocate to a new place where she could endanger different people with her addiction.
Another case I thought wouldn’t be solved. Sad that her mom passed in 2021 without this resolution. [Findagrave link](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/130928642/angela-marie-maher)
Same here. When I would check the Unsolved Mysteries websites years and years later and saw this was still unresolved, I was like damn, she ain't ever getting caught. I didn't think a drunk driving vehicular homicide would be a cold case priority and clearly it wasn't.
I also thought it never would be solved. And I agree it's really sad that Angela's mom, Rose Marie, never got to see the case solved. She was very passionate about getting Schulze caught and making sure that Angela wasn't forgotten. I'm glad Angela's brother, Donald, got at least some resolution. In this article, he said, "At least now, the story is done. We can turn the page and move on....It's bittersweet. It's sad that my mother passed away before knowing the outcome, but also a happy ending in the sense that we know what happened to her."
[https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/woman-living-under-alias-canada-named-scottsdale-cold-case-suspect](https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/woman-living-under-alias-canada-named-scottsdale-cold-case-suspect)
I saw this on youtube last night, on one of those random around-the-country news reports. My jaw dropped. Having first saw this on Unsolved Mysteries decades ago, I always just assumed she'd never be caught, and because so much time had passed, would wonder if perhaps she was deceased. What a shock for the victims family.
It would be interesting to hear the whole story of how Schulze was able to establish a new identity and live in Canada. I suppose one could get by using false identifying documents such driver’s license and birth certificates but it would be difficult to hold a real job, open a bank account and it would all come crashing down if she was ever arrested or came to the attention of law enforcement. She was arrested in 2009 and her fingerprints were taken, but nothing happened regarding her immigration status. I suspect she was legally in Canada which suggests she had gone through the legal obstacles. I suspect there was a lot of money and perhaps legal assistance to help her pull it off. Vehicular Manslaughter is a serious crime but she was likely to serve only around 2 years. Fleeing the country and establishing a new identity seems a bit extreme.
From her obit it sounds like she just did odd jobs.
“Kate came to Yellowknife in the early 1990s,” Smale said. “During her time here she had many professions from cook to a house painter. She loved to camp, sit around a firepit with friends and be on the land, however, one of her biggest passions was fireworks.”
Yup. Not homeless necessarily but sounds like she was more of a drifter. This lady wasn't doing government jobs or anything that would really put her on the radar. They never ran the fingerprints outside of the country.
As a Canadian, I wonder about that too! I know there have been some US fugitives arrested up here (or while they were heading for the border), since the thing about hiding out in Canada has become a book/movie/TV cliche. But I'm curious about how feasible this is. An increasing amount of stuff up here, like employment and health care, requires ID. (Admittedly things have tightened up since 2001.) This source identifies her as "a Canadian woman", and it's not clear if she managed to get citizenship.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2024/05/29/scottsdale-police-idd-fugitive-in-30-year-old-homicide-case/73896216007/
It isn't that hard to get under the table work, 2 of my past jobs were, and my spouse has used emergency services several times without ID or a health card ( he has them just....forgets them). You could definitely manage, it'd be a little rough but not impossible by any means
In a writeup of a previous disappearance the commenters collectively established that it would be possible to live off grid in the UK with certain constraints:
- Would have to have bills in someone else's name e.g. a landlord [or own a RV!]
- Could not vote
- Could not claim State benefits or pension
- Could not travel to another country
- Would have to drive unlicensed or be driven by others
I do not see how Canada would be much different.
Someone who did cash in hand, no questions asked odd jobs or was self-employed similarly, almost until they dropped dead, would fit that profile.
(The notion that computerisation and digitisation killed off the ability to disappear is, at least here, false).
As you say, any arrest would have wrecked this (as was noted at the time).
>any arrest would have wrecked this
I mean, it should have -- since she got caught driving intoxicated in NWT too. But I suspect that things may have been handled differently. (I know that people up North joked about the new restrictions that started coming in during the 1990s, due to more public awareness about drunk driving -- saying that having to get used to driving without an open container of alcohol within reach would be a hardship.)
p.s. about getting caught drunk driving in Canada.
Either she was more careful in recent years, or she got lucky and wasn't caught.
The law changed recently so impaired driving is now regarded as much more serious. After 2018, it can now result in non-citizens being deported.
(Although if she'd been able to get citizenship, or her stolen identity was as someone who was born up here, that wouldn't have applied anyway.)
https://www.bordersolutionslaw.com/blog/can-i-get-deported-from-canada-for-drunk-driving
Given that she was "locally well-known" (and, no doubt, "beloved" and "a character") it is very likely that there was glossing-over.
If she had been low-profile and treated her exile as though she were in a GULAG there would probably have been no special treatment.
(All this suggests that her becoming high-profile was deliberate, counter-intuitive and a clever move on her part ... and not implausible given her other deceptions and deflections).
>All this suggests that her becoming high-profile was deliberate, counter-intuitive and a clever move on her part
That's an interesting point. The "beloved" and "character" part ... I was friends with a lady in Whitehorse (PJ Johnson) who was a proud member of what she called "the colourful 5%" in her territory. At least when I was in contact with her in the 80s-90s, people there were quite proud of local eccentrics (she's an artist/poet).
And Schulze gravitating to fireworks ... that's a type of art too. She'd be high-profile, but in a particular way that meant she'd be simultaneously honoured and dismissed. Cultivating that would be a definite advantage. People would put her in a particular category -- "that person's weird but harmless", not "that person's weird and we should look into that further".
I'm mostly sad for Angela and her family. She was only 21, and it's awful to think that she probably wouldn't have been on the road at all that night, if she weren't doing a favour for a friend (giving them a ride home from drinking).
[https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/130928642/angela-marie-maher](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/130928642/angela-marie-maher)
This article from OP says that Schulze was "a Canadian woman". I'm curious about whether she actually was Canadian (her family supposedly lived in California, but they could have moved when she was a kid). Or especially, if she managed to get real citizenship papers or ones that at first appeared legit.
[https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2024/05/29/scottsdale-police-idd-fugitive-in-30-year-old-homicide-case/73896216007/](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2024/05/29/scottsdale-police-idd-fugitive-in-30-year-old-homicide-case/73896216007/)
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/dead-and-gone-6424254
I know that "American fugitive hiding out in Canada" is a trope, but it's not the wide-open place that a lot of people imagine. However, if she had help from her family and fled up here in the 1990s, it might have been prior to when things started getting more rigorous after 9/11. I'm old enough to remember a time before photo ID was required for a lot of stuff (provincial health cards etc.), and you didn't always need a Social Insurance Number etc., way back then. And you could cross the border with a Canadian drivers license. (Now you can still do it with an enhanced license, but some provinces are phasing them out ... I haven't had my passport renewed for years, but will need to get that done soon if I want to go to the States by bus or ferry.)
I worked in Yellowknife for a brief stint (just before Schulze showed up there?) and have friends up there. It's the biggest city in the NWT, and it has a lot of amenities ... but you also need a bunch of money (a stable job with the mining companies or government) to be really comfortable. Stuff costs a lot in the stores because it's so remote -- and it's more extreme further out, because even areas with ice roads need to have stuff flown in if the ice isn't drivable. The long dark cold winters are difficult for a lot of people.
Especially in the winter, once the tourists leave, it's not a huge city. If she wasn't able to leave town, I imagine that Schulze's name could have become well-known in that circle. It's a small community and people can be nosy, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was some gossip if she stayed put and didn't talk about connections outside. (For example, the pilot who was known for a tragic case of cannibalism -- he'd eaten one of his deceased passengers -- worked up there for years. My boss used to point him out to people -- unfortunately.) If Schulze did go elsewhere, maybe she could only travel within Canada, or risk being caught at the border.
I wonder if Schulze's work with pyrotechnics was on an unofficial basis (kind of like the jobs she was doing at mining camps etc.) -- I think you need safety certificates etc. to qualify, but in a relatively isolated place like Yellowknife, she might have been able to wing it. (One of the things I noticed about up north is that being available can trump whether you're really qualified for something ... and she might have counted on that, for what turned out to be the rest of her life.)
It really pisses me off in situations like this- where someone has died before being arrested and brought to justice- and you read obituaries of them and the obituaries include details of the life that they got to lead. One article about “Kate Dooley” written shortly after her death describes someone who was a “pyrotechnics master” and liked putting on fireworks shows. “Dooley was a house painter and a dog lover. She worked at mining camps. She liked metal music and Etta James. She was a private person who spent time at her camper and in the outdoors with Smale's dogs.” She got to enjoy her dogs and her fireworks and her metal music while the young woman she killed- out of her own selfishness and stupidity- has been in the ground for 30 years.
Well, look at it this way. If she had stayed in the US and went to trial, with a good lawyer she wouldn’t have even served much time. Instead she upends her whole life and decides to go hide in Yellowknife for 25 years under a new identity. Looking over her shoulder every day for 25 years was probably a worse punishment in some ways.
If she had stuck around, Schulze was supposed to have pleaded guilty and received a 14-to-16-year sentence. So yeah she would have been out, at the latest, around 2010 (probably much earlier with parole). It probably wasn't easy for her to have to live in hiding for so many years. I just wish that they could have found her while she was still alive (and when Angela's mother was still alive).
Personally I’m not surprised at that so much as I am that her bogus identity stood up to the scrutiny of being arrested, booked, and convicted.
Further with socialized healthcare I’m further surprised that her assumed identity held up. Don’t they need to verify who you are at some point?
Though I assume she had at least a valid drivers license if she got a DUI.
She picked a good place to do what she did. In general, northern communities are more relaxed with things like paperwork and identification and such. Yellowknife is the big city up there and there are a bunch of reservations and other tiny communities nearby (and far away but still closer to Yellowknife than any other city) and many of the locals likely have almost no identifying documents. They just don't seem to see these types of things as important enough to keep up to date with things expiring or getting lost.
Normally yeah, you use your health card to identify yourself when you get to a hospital. I've only ever been to Yellowknife once and I didn't go to the hospital but I would guess it's very common for people to show up with no health card or any other kind of ID and still get treated.
Now, I have no idea how she made it through all the bullshit involved with the 2009 DUI conviction without someone figuring out something was up. It doesn't really inspire faith in the legal system but again, things are different in the north.
I said in a previous comment, my spouse has received health care with no ID. I would imagine it'd be even more lenient in yellowknife ESPECIALLY seeing that she was well known and well liked.
Look at it this way - she screwed herself. She agreed to a plea deal in exchange for a reduced sentence prior to going on the run. She most likely would’ve serviced 3-5 years max in prison.
She almost certainly would’ve been out of prison by 2000. So instead of getting to rebuild and go back to her life with her family and friends in Arizona for her last 20 years on this earth, she instead spent it living as a drifter in a tiny camper, working odd jobs, having little to no contact with anyone from her former life, having to live a lie with everyone she ended up becoming close to in Canada and always knowing in the back of her mind that she was a wanted fugitive.
Gloria, like a lot of alcoholics/addicts, chose immediate gratification and avoidance over the long term outcome and consequences of that choice. I’m not surprised she continued to drink because aside from being an alcoholic, in the back of her mind she always knew was living a lie. In many ways she got the punishment she deserved. Instead of 3-5 years, she served 25 years in her own prison.
I suspect she told someone close to her in her final days she wasn’t who she said she was and asked them to contact her brother upon her death.
At least according to her friends in Canada she lived a happy life for those last 25 years.
She even felt confident enough to continue to drink and drive.
I don't see any point in pretending there was any sort of justice here whatsoever.
I’ve known two families who have been ended because of drunk drivers; one was a married couple who was getting help moving to their new home with their two kids from the in-laws; the car that was ploughed into at what the police estimated to be over eighty miles an hour without any indication that the drunk driver tried to stop his giant ass pickup truck was carrying the wife, the two children, and the wife’s parents. Everyone was killed, except of course the one who deserved it — the drunk driver. The husband was driving ahead of them with a car full of boxes and whatnot and saw it happen in his rear view mirror. When he talked about it and I tell you that you could feel the pain in his voice, I’m not trying to be melodramatic; it was almost something you could reach out and touch hanging in the air. That drunk driver ended an entire family line in just seconds: mother, father, their only child, and their two grandchildren. Just gone.
The other family was new, in a way; several years prior, two men on some kind of drugs broke into a house while the husband was away. They wanted money or goods to sell for money, but decided to be assholes first and kill the mother, right in front of her child. It’s uncertain what exactly happened, but it appears that the child had a pseudo-seizure (this can happen without being epileptic, in case you’ve never heard of them, in reaction to extreme stress/emotional distress; it’s not faking, they are very real and outside of the control of the child having the pseudo-seizure) and that pseudo-seizure scared the living shit out of the druggie killers and they fled. It took some years, but the husband moved to a wholly different state and environment, slowly glued his heart back together for the sake of his son, and avoided dating in order to devote every ounce of himself to his son. They were and are magnificent people; when I met him I could honestly say that he was one of Life’s truly good people.
As his son got into his teens and started dating, he admitted to his son in a man-to-man talk that he was very lonely and when his son felt ready, and not before, he’d like to start dating again. Older now, his son saw for the first time the entirety of his father’s loss and sacrifice, and told him to get out there and have fun.
It took a few years and a few mismatches, but this man finally believed he had fallen in love again with a woman from his church (the church proper, not the singles’ group he’d been going to for a while with no luck), one of the places he hadn’t expected. She was a nurse, and had just moved to the area because of the enormous demand for medical personnel. They dated for quite a while before she was introduced to his son, and the son thought she was wonderful, especially because she was so thoughtful about respecting things he had from his mom, like an unfinished crocheted blanket that he used and didn’t want finished; she immediately understood and helped both of them preserve their good memories without any hint of jealousy. This was about the time I met the family; she hadn’t moved in yet, but the son agreed with his father that it was time to propose after a few years of growing closer and closer, so he did.
Since his previous marriage had been a spring wedding, they decided that they would all respect that date by having a wedding ceremony in the autumn, and the families were brought together, the celebration was beautiful, and after a honeymoon, she moved in and everything was wonderful.
They’d been married for about two years when she was driving home from work, a late shift, and was hit by a drunk driver. She was taken back to the hospital where she worked (the same hospital my father worked at), and they fought to keep her alive with tooth and nail, but ultimately the brain swelling she sustained was too much, and no meaningful activity was detected for three days in a row; her car had been hit so hard that despite being belted in, she’d been ejected from the car, sustained lacerations everywhere, and landed head first on the pavement. Guess who walked away from the accident with only a broken arm or leg (I forget) and a couple broken ribs? Yeah; the drunk driver.
Alcoholism is a disorder, but it’s a disorder that often hurts others more than it does the victim of the disorder. Please get help if you’re affected; even if you aren’t the alcoholic yourself, you are doing what is right and necessary. Please get help.
Drunk drivers make me so mad. It's such a disgustingly selfish act. It's not difficult to make arrangements to get home. If you know you might drink, don't take your damn car. If you can't afford to get somewhere and back without driving, you stay in! Other people's lives are worth more than a person's desire to have a good time. It's incredible how many people don't think that's the case :( selfish and entitled.
I wonder how many times that cow drove drunk AFTER killing an innocent person too.
The Northwest Territories (of which Yellowknife is the capital) would be a fantastic place to hide, unfortunately, much like Yukon, Nunavut, Labrador or even Alaska. The fact that she was still driving drunk and the RCMP caught her means she never learned anything - just how to hide.
What’s crazy is she probably wouldn’t have even had to serve that much time.
I remember reading somewhere a cop or a lawyer joking that if someone wants to murder someone just hit them with a car while drunk. For some reason the sentencing isn’t that harsh.
Kind of sad that the victim seemed such an advocate against drunk driving that she helped found a SADD chapter at her school and would be the designated driver for friends, but she wasn’t wearing her seat belt in the crash.
Yeah, especially for someone keenly aware of the dangers of other drivers out there. To not use the simple device in your car there to protect you seems so odd.
Holy cow imagine being the friend in this article
https://www.mytruenorthnow.com/45871/news/friends-plan-to-honour-kate-dooley-with-new-years-fireworks-display-in-yellowknife/
I know if you have a DUI, it can be a challenge to enter Canada. How did they arrest an American back in 2009 but not deport her back to the USA? How did they not discover she was there on an assumed identity? Canada’s crime policies are kinda wacko.
That's a good point. Apparently the Canadian law about this changed in 2018. "For non-citizens residing in Canada, this law means that you could face deportation if you’re convicted of drunk or drugged driving on or after this date."
So if she'd been caught more recently, she could have been forced to leave the country.
Although -- I'm not clear on whether Schulze's fake identity was Canadian (like if she was impersonating a dead person who was born here), or if she'd been able to get citizenship under it.
https://www.bordersolutionslaw.com/blog/can-i-get-deported-from-canada-for-drunk-driving
This is why it's a cruel world we live in. Poor lady gets killed trying to save other people's lives from the same thing she fell victim to. Smh. Not even worth it to be a good person sometimes.
This is so sad. Not only did angela die trying to do the right thing by picking up a drunk friend, but it's scary that drunk driving is so common that a friend of angela's died in a drunk driving accident before this. Damn.
Wow she was arrested again in 2009 for dui. What a piece of shit
Just imagine how many times she *didn’t* get caught?
I think I read somewhere that the average drunk driver gets behind the wheel something like 80 times before their first arrest.
Diane Schuler was probably *not* driving drunk for the first time that day, either …
It still infuriates me that her family denies the results to this day.
Watched the documentary on her case. The family that says she wasn't wasted on alcohol and weed are delusional. She straight up murdered those kids in the back seat of her minivan(even if it was unintentional). Such a sad case.
Her family were such enablers.
Yikes
Anecdotal to my region/circle but 95% of people I know with DUIs have multiple DUIs. It is very rare for me to see someone with a one-off DUI charge. Those would mostly be a 19/20 year old who isn’t an alcoholic but was binge drinking at a college party or something. (Which doesn’t make anything lesser at all, there’s been several fatalities in my small town due to this scenario. I’m just speaking here to how prevalent repeat offenders are.) The adult alcoholics I know who drink and drive are repeat offenders.
My brother in law got a one off DUI, but he was driving a golf cart he kind of stole from the parking lot of the bar. He was actually returning it when he was arrested. Was definitely a dumb young adult thing to do, and he took responsibility for it and never did it again. Still was expensive as hell but a lesson definitely learned.
I would support civil asset forfeiture for the cars of DUI drivers. “But it will mess up their lives…” *good.* I’ve been hit by a drunk driver and am fine with draconian penalties for the dumb dumbs.
I was hit by a drunk driver too, but civil asset forfeiture only hurts if it damages the driver. Often you are affecting family members who use the vehicle or rely on it for transportation. I have had clients with one offs but it’s usually because it greatly impacted a professional license and the arrest was a huge wake up call. And since I’m on my soap box, let me just add this…..the nursing board in my state has a very stringent program, far more restrictive than the medical board or state bar. I’ve been told that if you get through that program your chance of recidivism is less than 10%.
My uncle had a 1 off DUI in 1987. After that he never drank and drive again. He had gone out to celebrate his 42nd birthday and tried to drive home when he was stopped and arrested. After that he always planned for a DD or he didn’t drink. He told me he was never going to lose that kind of money again for something stupid like that. Up until he moved to a nursing home and stopped driving in 2019, he never did it again.
It's 87! I remember reading that when I worked as a bartender in a dive bar, and was sick to my stomach thinking about what I was doing. Ironically, I was in a head on collision with a drunk driver like 3 weeks after learning that.
Probably a couple of 100 here and I never got arrested. Not a threat now, I quit drinking 25 years ago.
I’m proud of you, internet stranger-friend. 🤗
Thanks, though I can’t take the accolades for quitting. God delivered me from the addiction.
Okay, I've got two more to go and *then I'll quit I swear.*
Imagine how many times she may have and disappeared again.
Piece of garbage.
I can’t imagine still feeling so entitled to driving after drunkenly committing vehicular manslaughter. Even the picture of her in online obituaries has her sitting in the driver’s seat (of a parked car).
I could tell from the very beginning that she was entitled. After killing a 21 yr old girl, she’s asked if she has been drinking and answers “Yeah, obviously too much”. Not that anyone deserves to be killed by a drunk driver, but why this girl?!?! She seems like such a wonderful person, she was on her way to pick up a friend from the bar! The irony is just heartbreaking.
Lots of good people are killed by drunk drivers. Some years ago, a coworker of mine, a genuinely great guy, was killed on the way to work by a DUI in a borrowed truck. My coworker was driving a Corolla; he didn't stand a chance against the speeding red-light-running truck. At 7 am.
Have you ever seen the body cam footage from Stephanie Melgoza?
To be fair, I think it's preferable that she admitted it rather than try to lie about it and say she wasn't drinking, or only had "one beer" or whatever. But yes the irony is tragic.
The drunk driver that killed my grandfather was a state-hopper. He had DUIs in five other states, and I think at least one other fatality. AFAIK he never was punished for my papaw’s death either because he skipped to another state. Granted this was probably about 30 years ago, but it’s still far too easy for repeat offenders to avoid repercussions.
I'm so sorry for your loss
I'm sorry for your loss. It's horrible that the driver killed more than one person and got away with it.
If it makes you feel any better, that person probably had a long, painful, sad death from alcohol.
Yeah that surprised me (although I guess it didn't surprise me too much). You would think that killing someone while driving drunk would possibly stop them from doing it again, especially since she went on the run because of it. But I guess some people never change.
This is not—to be very clear, NOT—an excuse for her behavior but she was almost certainly an alcoholic and the desire(/need) to drink overran the fear of being caught.
Yep. She was sick, no doubt. But when your sickness is harming other people, it becomes your responsibility to get treatment. If you don’t, you’re just as guilty as if you were doing that without the addiction IMO.
I get being an addict and being unable to stop drinking. I dont get having killed someone and then continuing to get in a car and drive when you know you're over the limit. Public transport, taxis, friends, walking is the solution to that. God, if I ever killed someone I don't think there would be an hour of my life from that point where I didn't think of them with intense guilt and remorse.
There is always the option to just drink at home
the problem, in my experience, is rural areas having no other transportation options. i grew up in the country and *so many* people drank and drove. you get off from a long, shitty day at work at the factory or whatever and you just want to have some drinks with friends at the one bar in town. cutoff time rolls around and your DD is sloshed and stumbling home, everyone else is asleep, nothing is open, no buses, no ubers. after cutoff time you'd have armies of drunk people driving back to their houses. idk about cities because i'm a lifetime hick but i know better transportation in rural areas would probably decrease the amount of drunk drivers by a lot
Shame her prints were not sent to Canada. She could have spent her last decade in prison.
Yeah it would be nice if North America at least had a joint fingerprint system for people who may cross borders and commit heinous crimes
The issue here is that back then it was a lot easier to pick up a fake identity. Nowadays you can't - and you'll be denied entry at the border for serious crimes.
I’m shocked learning from this story that they don’t. It’s wild to hear that she was arrested for a DUI here in Canada and there was no flag on her at all for a previous DUI charge in the States. It was my understanding that some things like licence suspensions apply across the border in deals with certain States/Provinces. I understand that she changed her identity but you are fingerprinted for a DUI.
Apparently the penalties for drunk driving increased in late 2018 -- so for offences committed after that date, non-Canadians can actually be deported. (I'm still not sure what Schulze's status under her fake identity was ... one of the articles said she was Canadian, but I don't know if she'd obtained citizenship under it, or if her fake papers were maybe copied from a Canadian who had died, etc.) Either she was careful not to get caught in recent years, or she was really lucky?
Especially since electronic records are available now. I can see why it would have been difficult, decades ago when they had to mail (or fax) photocopies of fingerprint records. I remember reading about a case in the 1970s where a perp was suspected to have driven from upstate New York into Ontario and committed a murder there. Authorities weren't talking to each other so this wasn't even considered until 3 or 4 decades later -- they didn't have 24-hour news channels then so the media didn't broadcast it widely -- and it turned out that he was responsible for crimes a couple of counties away in the same state, and it took awhile to figure that out. But now, it ought to be possible to compare digital copies in the system very quickly. They could put AI to use, sifting through all those records. And also put some money into digitizing backlogs of files -- and processing rape kits that have been sitting in storage for years, etc. This guy was recently identified as a serial killer -- he'd committed crimes in California and in Alberta, and then was still doing it when he was sent back to the US. If there'd been better co-ordination, he might have been prosecuted while he was still alive. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-69030467
Went to school with a girl who killed her best friend while they were driving home drunk from a party. Not sure if it was because she was underage, but she ended up coming back to school a year later with a huge scar across her face. 10 or so years later I learned a few years prior she was on a country road, driving drunk, crashed into a pole and burnt to death in her car because she could t get out. A guy tried to help but flames were too hot.
My first thought reading that. 😡
Yeah, that’s incredibly infuriating to me
I don’t believe for one second that her family had no contact with her.
Do the Canadian and/or U.S. border checkpoint staff keep records of people passing back and forth across the border? If her family members passed the border into western Canada between 1994 and 2019, then that might indicate that something was up.
Not entirely sure, but I'd wager definitely after 911. Border security got super strict afterwords. Not entirely sure when, but you didn't even need a passport to cross until (I wanna say) mid 90s.
As a US citizen, we only needed a valid state ID (like a driver's license) to cross into Canada for vacation until 2014. 2014 is when they started requiring a valid US passport.
That makes sense, I crossed before then but was not yet a legal adult, so I wasn't exactly too sure how that worked out. Thanks for doing the research for my lazy ass!
Nah, you're good!
Or a passport card, or the enhanced driver’s licenses some US border states issue.
You're partially right - after 9/11 almost everything security-related got stricter. However, US citizens only needed a valid driver's license for entry into Canada until well into the late 00's when a passport was needed.
The interesting thing is that the dates differed. The US required a passport for entry shortly after 9/11 - but Canada took over a decade to reciprocate. So it was entirely possible to legally pass into Canada with your driver’s license, do your thing, and then get stuck at the border as a U.S. Citizen if you didn’t have a passport. (I came very close to getting stuck in maybe 2004! Do not recommend.) Compare with a few years earlier; I went to college near the border, and it was a rite of passage to go over and have a drink for your 19th birthday. I distinctly recall being DD for a car full of drunk teenagers, who had all zonked out, handing the agent a stack full of DL, and praying no one woke up and said anything stupid. He asked like two questions and waved us through lockets-split.
I had a coworker once who had a very similar story! They were just loser cruising and decided to go to Portland at some stupid hour (2 am, or so) on a whim. He didn't have a passport and was almost arrested by border patrol. Favorably forgetting some details, but is sort of an odd amalgamation of both your encounters. To note, in BC we go to Alberta at 18 as the drinking age is a year lower there. Also a rite of passage.
If you’re an American, or Canadian from another province, and wondering about the drinking age it’s easy. It alternates 19, 18 when read left to right. BC 19, Alberta 18, Saskatchewan 19, Manitoba 18, Ontario 19, Quebec 18. Then the Atlantic provinces screw it up as they’re all 19 but if you think of them as one big province it works out
Those are the only provinces that matter anyways. I kid, I kid!
Border crossings are definitely recorded. Things may have gotten more regulated post-9/11 and once you needed a passport to cross, but there were records even before that. I have multiple records of US/Canada border crossings from the 1900’s in my genealogical research.
Pre 2001 it was really easy going back and forth across the border
Road tripped into and across Canada in 1994 with just our drivers' licenses. After 9/11 its passport only. Edit: after 2014 it is passport only, turns out.
Yes, they have a record of when you cross back and forth. But unless there was a reason to, they wouldn't be comparing it to anything. Customs has access to ALLLLL your information. And foreign customs has access to a lot of it.
I think it's variable -- I know that they gave people cards to fill out if you're arriving on a plane (or bus?), and if you drive up to the border in a car, they'll ask where you're going and if you have anything to declare. They give a more detailed examination on a random basis (or also if they notice anything a bit out of place -- like if you fit a demographic and if they've noticed a pattern that might make them suspicious that you're a drug smugger). Good question whether Border Services might keep track of the names (I don't know if the feds might have been notified to keep an eye out). I don't know if there's enough continuity to notice whether the same vehicle was heading up to Yellowknife "for fishing" every summer or so? Heck, if there was a care parcel arriving from the States periodically, marked "General Delivery" (unclear whether Schulze had a stable mailing address), I have no idea if anyone might put two and two together. I would imagine that Schulze's parents would have been the most inclined to try to visit, but if they're still alive, there was probably a point when they would have become too elderly to travel?
They somehow got her across the border while she was facing charges and out on remand, so they must have had some way figured out to do that…
I agree. At the very least, they probably helped finance her escape. Within weeks of her disappearance, her parents sold their house and two cars that were registered to her. I can't find out if they are still alive.
I can’t imagine local authorities didn’t have warrants to access her parents’ bank records if they knew about the car and home sales. It doesn’t appear they ever got any evidence of them assisting her.
Vile woman. Literally killed someone and was still drink driving in 2009?
Yeah and the victim sounds like a cool person by all accounts. It's so unfair how often these accidents kill other people instead of the drunk asshole. Hopefully she spent all those years feeling slightly unsafe and uncomfortable, but sadly I doubt it.
I've read somewhere how drunks who get into accidents tend to either walk away or have minor injuries (as opposed to the innocents they hit) because their bodies are already relaxed.
I remember something somewhat similar being said by a highway patrol officer in an Unsolved Mysteries episode about James White (who was wanted for the drunk driving deaths of an elderly couple). The officer said that in the cases he had investigated, more often than not, the drunk driver survives and the other party is killed.
That’s such cruel irony. I wish the wrongdoers suffers more than victims, maybe then they’ll act better
I agree with this. Haven’t fallen off my horse in years. Had too many ryes last weekend and fell off him twice. A bit sore the next day but fine. I’m almost 40! That shouldve put me in physio for weeks!
Been riding for almost 30 years- can confirm.😭🤣
I mean, one reason she was killed is that she wasn’t wearing a seat belt. I am not blaming her for her death—obviously the drunk driver was at fault. But that was almost certainly a factor in why their different outcomes from the crash.
You can state a fact without it being victim-blaming. For some further perspective, my additional thought is that seatbelt use in the 90s was also more lax than it is today. It wasn’t a total free for all with seatbelts even at that time but I def didn’t always have a seatbelt on every single time I was in the car growing up in the early 90s. The rule here where I am used to be that every seatbelt in the car should be in use but if you had extra people in the car than the number of seatbelts, that was a loophole. I believe it’s since changed.
That bitch. Her family was wealthy though, that’s how she got away with it. Poor Angela and her family.
Which is wild because they could have just paid for a good lawyer and lessened her convictions.
But then she would have had to face consequences /S
Honestly, having to reset your entire life from Arizona to Yellowknife sounds WORSE than any conviction. No way your bid for this is 30 years, and while prison sucks at least you're not spending the rest of your days wondering if you'll ever be caught, which, if you are, you damn well know it will be a harsher sentence than had you owned up to it from the start.
For real. Assuming this was her first offense and leaning into a drinking problem as a cause of her actions she would have likely gotten a pretty light sentence. Possibly, even avoiding actual prison time with a good attorney. I've seen it happen for people, especially if they are wealthy enough to flea the fucking country...
If you kill someone while drunk driving, I don’t think it matters if it’s a “first offense.” There’s usually jail time.
I've worked in substance abuse treatment and for probation and parole for years. I've seen some people get nailed to the wall and others barely get a slap on the wrist. Here's a couple from a quick Google search: https://kfor.com/news/local/no-prison-time-for-man-who-killed-a-person-while-driving-drunk/ https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/11/us/texas-teen-dwi-wreck/index.html There's others where people serve 30 days in county or work release. It isn't the norm but a good attorney absolutely can get a reduced sentence for you.
Having been to Yellowknife, there would be a *huge* adjustment to make from AZ. Not just going from hot desert summers to freezing taiga winters. Yellowknife really feels remote for a city its size. It is surrounded by unbroken taiga for countless miles/km in *every* direction. It is a long drive to any other settlement through this wilderness with absolutely nothing in between. Even when the lake is frozen over in the wintertime (and it’s a *huge* lake, even bigger than most of the Great Lakes) From the air it looks like the entire city was scratched out of the taiga by a very determined cat. I’m sure she went there knowing that she was unlikely to ever be found … but only as long as she stayed there for the rest of her life.
>Yellowknife really feels remote for a city its size. When they had to evacuate the place last year because of the fire, that made things even more challenging. I know the city has grown since I was there last (mid-1990s-- weird to think that I might have walked past Schulze in the grocery store without realizing it). But still, even back then it was pretty surreal to be in a place with traffic lights etc., when the bush was right at the edge of town ... and went on for hundreds of kilometres. I wonder if she lived in Old Town?
Might’ve been easier to stay out of sight there, yeah. Long as she didn’t live on Ragged Ass Road …
She made her own prison.
But one where she could wake up and go to bed when she wanted, drink all she wanted, wear what she wanted , etc. …
I'm curious how she even got a fake ID. Like was it a driver's license social security?
I know someone who killed another driver while driving drunk. He was sentenced to 10 years. Not sure if that’s better or worse than living in Yellowknife.
Yellowknife is a beautiful place.
Yes, I love it. Bad place for a problem drinker though.
Oh no doubt, but what a change from Arizona!
Yeah, it sounds like a sad life, always having to hide your true identity and looking over your shoulder. Better to just take whatever sentence is handed to you and then go forward in life as best you can.
i'm sure if three witches had appeared to her at the time and presented her with her ultimate fate, her and her family probably would have reconsidered their plans. It was probably something like "i'm not going to jail no matter what!!!" and this was the best plan they could come up with and likely something they saw as a temporary solution.
They should have paid for a locked door rehab.
They apparently did pay for a good lawyer who was experienced in handling drunk driving cases. The lawyer was able to get a plea bargain for Schulze, which would get her a 14-year sentence. But she reportedly wasn't happy with that, so she decided to go on the run.
It appears that Schulze also got away with it for other reasons too. Almost immediately after her arrest, she was released on her own recognizance (even though she had no close ties to the area). She did not have to post bond and got to keep her driver's license. She was allowed to leave the state three separate times. Her trial was postponed six times. And, she missed six drug test dates and an appointment with a counselor without an alarm being raised (or the court or prosecutor being informed). I don't know if the police/investigators/court just didn't take the case seriously or what.
Rich white lady syndrome.
She could have basically 'got away with it' in any case. I lost a loved one back in the 90's to a drunk driver, 4 months jailtime and that was with legal aide attorney.
That makes me so angry. FOUR MONTHS for killing someone?!
I'm so sorry about your loved one. That's terrible that the driver only spent 4 months in jail for taking someone's life. Unfortunately, it seems like sentences were often very light for these kinds of cases (especially back then).
Anonymous call my ass.
I'd bet it was a family member. Sure, we'll hide her while she's alive, but then the guilt sets in after she's dead and they can't put her in jail.
>they can’t put her in jail Couldn’t they still put her family in jail for aiding and abetting a fugitive? If so, then maybe we should see those phone records.
No prosecutor in the world would try that case. Plus, most of Angela's immediate family is dead and there's not really anyone to push the issue with LE.
That was my initial thought but if bro was making that up why didn't he just give LE her new name as well?
Insane she got arrested for another DUI after successfully escaping a DUI manslaughter charge - Yellowknife was so far away, no one would have ever thought to look there. She was known as a “pyrotechnic master” [and had fireworks lit in her honor](https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5411848). Truly wild story.
‘She was everywhere there was something blowing up,’ says long-time friend. Wow that's quite true in retrospect
Tbh she looks drunk af in that picture ! Her friends didn't have a better picture?This is incredibly sad story but that picture made me laugh.
She was a fugitive. Probably didn't let people take many photos of her.
I think it's cut off, there's another one that shows the whole thing, shes holding a dog and looking down
Alcoholism and fireworks, what a winning combo. Nothing could possibly go wrong
Weird how she basically just made a straight shot up, almost as far north as you can go. I looked at driving directions from Scottsdale to Yellowknife it’s basically just a vertical line (assuming she drove or was driven).
Seems she was a well known (and liked) figure in Yellowknife. https://www.mytruenorthnow.com/45871/news/friends-plan-to-honour-kate-dooley-with-new-years-fireworks-display-in-yellowknife/ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/kate-dooley-fireworks-1.5411848
God I can only imagine how her friends feel, if/when they learned she was a fugitive.
Right!? A lot of people's jaws are on the floor right now.
I'm sure it's the talk of the town. It's a city, but not very large, and the remoteness makes it feel more like a smaller community. (Probably the biggest news since the wildfire evacuation last year?)
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> I would not be surprised if she had told someone at least some aspects of her story. That seems quite possible to me -- after a couple of decades up there, especially with her liking to socialize (and probably not being able to go down to the States when she wanted to, so feeling isolated), she may have let things slip out. And there's also a chance that, if she picked someone to confide in, since then that person might either have moved out of town -- or died themselves. (Also if she talked to anyone while she was doing those camp jobs ... I've worked in places like that, and it's not unusual to hear weird stories, then forget about them once you're back home. It can be hard to figure out whether they're true, or even remember the person's name -- they might be going by a nickname anyway, and they might end up in a different country so you'd never see them again.)
>It hasn’t featured in the local newspaper, CBC North I guess the local papers have editions a couple of times per week? If they are short-staffed like a lot of other papers across the country, they might not be able to put anything out until later. I looked up the Yellowknifer and they said they come out on Wednesdays and Fridays. https://www.nnsl.com/yellowknifer/ I suspect that the "unofficial CBC" (there's always that person in any neighbourhood) is pretty active right now though. I feel sorry for the people who knew her well -- or thought that they did. Re: the drought, given how concerned people are about fire risk this year all across the boreal zone, no wonder.
If you want local Yellowknife news (and where this could be featured) look up Cabin Radio NWT - Ollie and crew provide the most in-depth coverage across the NWT. And this is making lots of chatter on the local FB groups.
I have sympathy for her friends, to find out that someone they cared about had killed someone and then hid in their community for years. It's also interesting to see things about "Dooley's" life line up: that she came to the area in the early 1990s, seemed to work odd jobs, was a private person, and was surrounded by friends when she died (no mention of family).
“Kate came to Yellowknife in the early 1990s,” Smale said. “During her time here she had many professions from cook to a house painter. She loved to camp, sit around a firepit with friends and be on the land, however, one of her biggest passions was *DUI.*” FTFY
>‘She was everywhere there was something blowing up’ This quote in hindsight is very.....oof. This woman really left behind a horrible legacy in pretty much every way.
I’d say based on that pic in first link, she aged fast. Guilt may do that
Alcoholism will also do that
I think that you're correct. The article noted: "During her time here she had many professions from cook to a house painter." I knew an alcoholic myself once, and she also had to get a new job literally every 2 or 3 months (I would assume because she kept getting fired for showing up to work drunk or constantly calling in sick because of hangovers).
Yes, the alcoholics I know deeply struggle to maintain employment, obviously. And many end up picking up odd jobs. A few were extremely lucky to be in good unions where they basically couldn’t get fired no matter what they did and even though they barely worked for years cycling through relapses and recovery.
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Alcoholism will do that, too
Having cancer will make you look bad
You're not wrong, but do we know that the photos were taken when she was ill? And alcoholics frequently do get cancer (liver cancer is the most common, but also mouth, throat, and stomach cancers are common in alcoholics as well).
More likely, alcoholism will do that.
So strange that someone on the run would let their picture be taken and circulated in the media. You’d think she would have laid low instead of being actively involved with the community.
Poor Angela, she seemed like a thoughtful and kind young woman; may she continue to rest in peace. As a PSA to anyone that may be reading this, please don't drink and drive. It is so easy to get home now with Uber, Lyft, using your phone to call family/friends. My Dad was hit by a drunk driver, and it changed the entire trajectory of his life. He even had complications from the accident up until his death. He always advocated for driving sober, and I am doing the same.
A couple of years ago I went to a casual get-together and a friend drove us. She and I weren’t together during the event but she was responsible and I trusted that she would stay sober or, like me, drink one drink. At the end of the party we walked to her car and she seemed completely normal- totally coherent, no slurring speech, no stumbling around, nothing. We got in the car and she said a couple of things that were just… off. She then mentioned that the guy she’d been seeing had broken things off with her and she wondered if we should go to his house to see what he was doing. That was WAY off for her to say, and I suddenly realized she was very, very intoxicated. I was sober (I’d had one beer a couple hours before) and got her to pull over and switch with me. I drove her home, got her into bed, and then got an Uber home. The next morning she called me sobbing- she hadn’t been just drunk, she was blackout. She had no memory of how she got home. She had been upset about the guy and started drinking and didn’t stop. I realized how lucky we were that there was no accident. That’s also the last time I’ve gotten a ride with someone after an event with alcohol where I haven’t been with them the whole night and seen exactly how much they have to drink.
Crazy how adept some people are at disguising intoxication
Yes, I agree. It’s not like when I was young. Uber/Lyft are always available. I plan on adding the apps with my CC and a no questions asked policy once my kids get to that age.
Same!
Agree wholeheartedly and I'm sorry for your experience. I lost a friend to someone's careless driving. They weren't drinking, but speeding down hill and being negligent. If you are intoxicated or cannot be responsible, don't get behind the wheel! Her young life was lost and a whole town + surrounding county was affected.
I'm so sorry for your loss as well. It is always so tragic when a young life is taken to something that could have been prevented.
Sorry to hear about your father. My grandmother was run down by a drunk driver, and grandpa was never the same afterwards -- the effects of deaths or injuries on the families is often overlooked. I stopped seeing one friend, after hearing that she lent her vehicle to someone who was an impaired driver ... I just couldn't trust her when she kept doing that.
I am so sorry about your grandparents. I don't blame you. Some people my Dad used to know would talk openly with him about driving while drunk, when they knew the circumstances of his injuries... it was extremely frustrating.
That's awful, that anyone would say such things to your dad's face. Pretty heartless.
Sadly, many don't think/plan ahead and after they are drunk, they don't think rationally about it. My brother is no longer here because of a drunk driver, so I have much ire over stories like this. She continued it, was arrested again, and yet no time was she held in jail to change anything. I am tired of second-third-infinity chances for drunk driving!
I'm so sorry about the loss of your brother. And I agree, it seems like many people get a slap on the wrist when it comes to driving under the influence.
I would add to your PSA, don’t drive while high or a little buzzed either. Weed laws are looser now in many places, but you still have to be careful with enjoying it.
That is definitely true. My state is anti weed, so that didn't even cross my mind.
I'm a parent, and I would do anything for my children, but I would not help them avoid facing the consequences of their actions. The fact that she continued to drink and drive is proof that she didn't learn anything from her terrible choices.
And she might have actually gotten help for her alcoholism and been able to live near her family had she faced the music 30 years ago.
Not a chance on earth I would ever help my children this way. It would be a lot more understandable if they had gotten her help but nope just paid for her to relocate to a new place where she could endanger different people with her addiction.
Another case I thought wouldn’t be solved. Sad that her mom passed in 2021 without this resolution. [Findagrave link](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/130928642/angela-marie-maher)
Same here. When I would check the Unsolved Mysteries websites years and years later and saw this was still unresolved, I was like damn, she ain't ever getting caught. I didn't think a drunk driving vehicular homicide would be a cold case priority and clearly it wasn't.
I also thought it never would be solved. And I agree it's really sad that Angela's mom, Rose Marie, never got to see the case solved. She was very passionate about getting Schulze caught and making sure that Angela wasn't forgotten. I'm glad Angela's brother, Donald, got at least some resolution. In this article, he said, "At least now, the story is done. We can turn the page and move on....It's bittersweet. It's sad that my mother passed away before knowing the outcome, but also a happy ending in the sense that we know what happened to her." [https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/woman-living-under-alias-canada-named-scottsdale-cold-case-suspect](https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/woman-living-under-alias-canada-named-scottsdale-cold-case-suspect)
I saw this on youtube last night, on one of those random around-the-country news reports. My jaw dropped. Having first saw this on Unsolved Mysteries decades ago, I always just assumed she'd never be caught, and because so much time had passed, would wonder if perhaps she was deceased. What a shock for the victims family.
It would be interesting to hear the whole story of how Schulze was able to establish a new identity and live in Canada. I suppose one could get by using false identifying documents such driver’s license and birth certificates but it would be difficult to hold a real job, open a bank account and it would all come crashing down if she was ever arrested or came to the attention of law enforcement. She was arrested in 2009 and her fingerprints were taken, but nothing happened regarding her immigration status. I suspect she was legally in Canada which suggests she had gone through the legal obstacles. I suspect there was a lot of money and perhaps legal assistance to help her pull it off. Vehicular Manslaughter is a serious crime but she was likely to serve only around 2 years. Fleeing the country and establishing a new identity seems a bit extreme.
From her obit it sounds like she just did odd jobs. “Kate came to Yellowknife in the early 1990s,” Smale said. “During her time here she had many professions from cook to a house painter. She loved to camp, sit around a firepit with friends and be on the land, however, one of her biggest passions was fireworks.”
Yup. Not homeless necessarily but sounds like she was more of a drifter. This lady wasn't doing government jobs or anything that would really put her on the radar. They never ran the fingerprints outside of the country.
As a Canadian, I wonder about that too! I know there have been some US fugitives arrested up here (or while they were heading for the border), since the thing about hiding out in Canada has become a book/movie/TV cliche. But I'm curious about how feasible this is. An increasing amount of stuff up here, like employment and health care, requires ID. (Admittedly things have tightened up since 2001.) This source identifies her as "a Canadian woman", and it's not clear if she managed to get citizenship. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2024/05/29/scottsdale-police-idd-fugitive-in-30-year-old-homicide-case/73896216007/
It isn't that hard to get under the table work, 2 of my past jobs were, and my spouse has used emergency services several times without ID or a health card ( he has them just....forgets them). You could definitely manage, it'd be a little rough but not impossible by any means
Probably how Lori Ruff did it, by stealing the identity of a dead child around the same age.
In a writeup of a previous disappearance the commenters collectively established that it would be possible to live off grid in the UK with certain constraints: - Would have to have bills in someone else's name e.g. a landlord [or own a RV!] - Could not vote - Could not claim State benefits or pension - Could not travel to another country - Would have to drive unlicensed or be driven by others I do not see how Canada would be much different. Someone who did cash in hand, no questions asked odd jobs or was self-employed similarly, almost until they dropped dead, would fit that profile. (The notion that computerisation and digitisation killed off the ability to disappear is, at least here, false). As you say, any arrest would have wrecked this (as was noted at the time).
>any arrest would have wrecked this I mean, it should have -- since she got caught driving intoxicated in NWT too. But I suspect that things may have been handled differently. (I know that people up North joked about the new restrictions that started coming in during the 1990s, due to more public awareness about drunk driving -- saying that having to get used to driving without an open container of alcohol within reach would be a hardship.) p.s. about getting caught drunk driving in Canada. Either she was more careful in recent years, or she got lucky and wasn't caught. The law changed recently so impaired driving is now regarded as much more serious. After 2018, it can now result in non-citizens being deported. (Although if she'd been able to get citizenship, or her stolen identity was as someone who was born up here, that wouldn't have applied anyway.) https://www.bordersolutionslaw.com/blog/can-i-get-deported-from-canada-for-drunk-driving
Given that she was "locally well-known" (and, no doubt, "beloved" and "a character") it is very likely that there was glossing-over. If she had been low-profile and treated her exile as though she were in a GULAG there would probably have been no special treatment. (All this suggests that her becoming high-profile was deliberate, counter-intuitive and a clever move on her part ... and not implausible given her other deceptions and deflections).
>All this suggests that her becoming high-profile was deliberate, counter-intuitive and a clever move on her part That's an interesting point. The "beloved" and "character" part ... I was friends with a lady in Whitehorse (PJ Johnson) who was a proud member of what she called "the colourful 5%" in her territory. At least when I was in contact with her in the 80s-90s, people there were quite proud of local eccentrics (she's an artist/poet). And Schulze gravitating to fireworks ... that's a type of art too. She'd be high-profile, but in a particular way that meant she'd be simultaneously honoured and dismissed. Cultivating that would be a definite advantage. People would put her in a particular category -- "that person's weird but harmless", not "that person's weird and we should look into that further".
What a shame. Schuze had no real accountability for her BS.
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5411848 “She was a private person” Yep, I bet.
I'm mostly sad for Angela and her family. She was only 21, and it's awful to think that she probably wouldn't have been on the road at all that night, if she weren't doing a favour for a friend (giving them a ride home from drinking). [https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/130928642/angela-marie-maher](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/130928642/angela-marie-maher) This article from OP says that Schulze was "a Canadian woman". I'm curious about whether she actually was Canadian (her family supposedly lived in California, but they could have moved when she was a kid). Or especially, if she managed to get real citizenship papers or ones that at first appeared legit. [https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2024/05/29/scottsdale-police-idd-fugitive-in-30-year-old-homicide-case/73896216007/](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/scottsdale/2024/05/29/scottsdale-police-idd-fugitive-in-30-year-old-homicide-case/73896216007/) https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/dead-and-gone-6424254 I know that "American fugitive hiding out in Canada" is a trope, but it's not the wide-open place that a lot of people imagine. However, if she had help from her family and fled up here in the 1990s, it might have been prior to when things started getting more rigorous after 9/11. I'm old enough to remember a time before photo ID was required for a lot of stuff (provincial health cards etc.), and you didn't always need a Social Insurance Number etc., way back then. And you could cross the border with a Canadian drivers license. (Now you can still do it with an enhanced license, but some provinces are phasing them out ... I haven't had my passport renewed for years, but will need to get that done soon if I want to go to the States by bus or ferry.) I worked in Yellowknife for a brief stint (just before Schulze showed up there?) and have friends up there. It's the biggest city in the NWT, and it has a lot of amenities ... but you also need a bunch of money (a stable job with the mining companies or government) to be really comfortable. Stuff costs a lot in the stores because it's so remote -- and it's more extreme further out, because even areas with ice roads need to have stuff flown in if the ice isn't drivable. The long dark cold winters are difficult for a lot of people. Especially in the winter, once the tourists leave, it's not a huge city. If she wasn't able to leave town, I imagine that Schulze's name could have become well-known in that circle. It's a small community and people can be nosy, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was some gossip if she stayed put and didn't talk about connections outside. (For example, the pilot who was known for a tragic case of cannibalism -- he'd eaten one of his deceased passengers -- worked up there for years. My boss used to point him out to people -- unfortunately.) If Schulze did go elsewhere, maybe she could only travel within Canada, or risk being caught at the border. I wonder if Schulze's work with pyrotechnics was on an unofficial basis (kind of like the jobs she was doing at mining camps etc.) -- I think you need safety certificates etc. to qualify, but in a relatively isolated place like Yellowknife, she might have been able to wing it. (One of the things I noticed about up north is that being available can trump whether you're really qualified for something ... and she might have counted on that, for what turned out to be the rest of her life.)
Yes, in the 90s, we all head health cards with no photo ID here.
It really pisses me off in situations like this- where someone has died before being arrested and brought to justice- and you read obituaries of them and the obituaries include details of the life that they got to lead. One article about “Kate Dooley” written shortly after her death describes someone who was a “pyrotechnics master” and liked putting on fireworks shows. “Dooley was a house painter and a dog lover. She worked at mining camps. She liked metal music and Etta James. She was a private person who spent time at her camper and in the outdoors with Smale's dogs.” She got to enjoy her dogs and her fireworks and her metal music while the young woman she killed- out of her own selfishness and stupidity- has been in the ground for 30 years.
she'd have gotten to enjoy those anyway after a shortish sentence. meh
Well, look at it this way. If she had stayed in the US and went to trial, with a good lawyer she wouldn’t have even served much time. Instead she upends her whole life and decides to go hide in Yellowknife for 25 years under a new identity. Looking over her shoulder every day for 25 years was probably a worse punishment in some ways.
She was still drink driving in 2009 so I highly doubt she even cared.
Exactly. And the RCMP not finding out about her true identity after the '09 incident more then likely cemented in her mind that she was in the clear.
If she had stuck around, Schulze was supposed to have pleaded guilty and received a 14-to-16-year sentence. So yeah she would have been out, at the latest, around 2010 (probably much earlier with parole). It probably wasn't easy for her to have to live in hiding for so many years. I just wish that they could have found her while she was still alive (and when Angela's mother was still alive).
It’s hard to believe how easy it was to hide in Canada pre-Sept 11. Wonder why nothing came up during the 2009 arrest.
I wouldn’t expect anything to come from the 2009 arrest in a different country.
Personally I’m not surprised at that so much as I am that her bogus identity stood up to the scrutiny of being arrested, booked, and convicted. Further with socialized healthcare I’m further surprised that her assumed identity held up. Don’t they need to verify who you are at some point? Though I assume she had at least a valid drivers license if she got a DUI.
She picked a good place to do what she did. In general, northern communities are more relaxed with things like paperwork and identification and such. Yellowknife is the big city up there and there are a bunch of reservations and other tiny communities nearby (and far away but still closer to Yellowknife than any other city) and many of the locals likely have almost no identifying documents. They just don't seem to see these types of things as important enough to keep up to date with things expiring or getting lost. Normally yeah, you use your health card to identify yourself when you get to a hospital. I've only ever been to Yellowknife once and I didn't go to the hospital but I would guess it's very common for people to show up with no health card or any other kind of ID and still get treated. Now, I have no idea how she made it through all the bullshit involved with the 2009 DUI conviction without someone figuring out something was up. It doesn't really inspire faith in the legal system but again, things are different in the north.
I said in a previous comment, my spouse has received health care with no ID. I would imagine it'd be even more lenient in yellowknife ESPECIALLY seeing that she was well known and well liked.
Wow I thought this case would never be solved. It’s too bad she got away with it until she died of cancer
Look at it this way - she screwed herself. She agreed to a plea deal in exchange for a reduced sentence prior to going on the run. She most likely would’ve serviced 3-5 years max in prison. She almost certainly would’ve been out of prison by 2000. So instead of getting to rebuild and go back to her life with her family and friends in Arizona for her last 20 years on this earth, she instead spent it living as a drifter in a tiny camper, working odd jobs, having little to no contact with anyone from her former life, having to live a lie with everyone she ended up becoming close to in Canada and always knowing in the back of her mind that she was a wanted fugitive. Gloria, like a lot of alcoholics/addicts, chose immediate gratification and avoidance over the long term outcome and consequences of that choice. I’m not surprised she continued to drink because aside from being an alcoholic, in the back of her mind she always knew was living a lie. In many ways she got the punishment she deserved. Instead of 3-5 years, she served 25 years in her own prison. I suspect she told someone close to her in her final days she wasn’t who she said she was and asked them to contact her brother upon her death.
At least according to her friends in Canada she lived a happy life for those last 25 years. She even felt confident enough to continue to drink and drive. I don't see any point in pretending there was any sort of justice here whatsoever.
My cousin was one of 27 people killed in one drunk driving accident. Her killer is on the street again.
I’ve known two families who have been ended because of drunk drivers; one was a married couple who was getting help moving to their new home with their two kids from the in-laws; the car that was ploughed into at what the police estimated to be over eighty miles an hour without any indication that the drunk driver tried to stop his giant ass pickup truck was carrying the wife, the two children, and the wife’s parents. Everyone was killed, except of course the one who deserved it — the drunk driver. The husband was driving ahead of them with a car full of boxes and whatnot and saw it happen in his rear view mirror. When he talked about it and I tell you that you could feel the pain in his voice, I’m not trying to be melodramatic; it was almost something you could reach out and touch hanging in the air. That drunk driver ended an entire family line in just seconds: mother, father, their only child, and their two grandchildren. Just gone. The other family was new, in a way; several years prior, two men on some kind of drugs broke into a house while the husband was away. They wanted money or goods to sell for money, but decided to be assholes first and kill the mother, right in front of her child. It’s uncertain what exactly happened, but it appears that the child had a pseudo-seizure (this can happen without being epileptic, in case you’ve never heard of them, in reaction to extreme stress/emotional distress; it’s not faking, they are very real and outside of the control of the child having the pseudo-seizure) and that pseudo-seizure scared the living shit out of the druggie killers and they fled. It took some years, but the husband moved to a wholly different state and environment, slowly glued his heart back together for the sake of his son, and avoided dating in order to devote every ounce of himself to his son. They were and are magnificent people; when I met him I could honestly say that he was one of Life’s truly good people. As his son got into his teens and started dating, he admitted to his son in a man-to-man talk that he was very lonely and when his son felt ready, and not before, he’d like to start dating again. Older now, his son saw for the first time the entirety of his father’s loss and sacrifice, and told him to get out there and have fun. It took a few years and a few mismatches, but this man finally believed he had fallen in love again with a woman from his church (the church proper, not the singles’ group he’d been going to for a while with no luck), one of the places he hadn’t expected. She was a nurse, and had just moved to the area because of the enormous demand for medical personnel. They dated for quite a while before she was introduced to his son, and the son thought she was wonderful, especially because she was so thoughtful about respecting things he had from his mom, like an unfinished crocheted blanket that he used and didn’t want finished; she immediately understood and helped both of them preserve their good memories without any hint of jealousy. This was about the time I met the family; she hadn’t moved in yet, but the son agreed with his father that it was time to propose after a few years of growing closer and closer, so he did. Since his previous marriage had been a spring wedding, they decided that they would all respect that date by having a wedding ceremony in the autumn, and the families were brought together, the celebration was beautiful, and after a honeymoon, she moved in and everything was wonderful. They’d been married for about two years when she was driving home from work, a late shift, and was hit by a drunk driver. She was taken back to the hospital where she worked (the same hospital my father worked at), and they fought to keep her alive with tooth and nail, but ultimately the brain swelling she sustained was too much, and no meaningful activity was detected for three days in a row; her car had been hit so hard that despite being belted in, she’d been ejected from the car, sustained lacerations everywhere, and landed head first on the pavement. Guess who walked away from the accident with only a broken arm or leg (I forget) and a couple broken ribs? Yeah; the drunk driver. Alcoholism is a disorder, but it’s a disorder that often hurts others more than it does the victim of the disorder. Please get help if you’re affected; even if you aren’t the alcoholic yourself, you are doing what is right and necessary. Please get help.
Wow what a remote place to hide out. I hope she hated the cold, coming from Arizona and all.
Fuck drunk drivers. One strike and you’re out; no more driving.
Drunk drivers make me so mad. It's such a disgustingly selfish act. It's not difficult to make arrangements to get home. If you know you might drink, don't take your damn car. If you can't afford to get somewhere and back without driving, you stay in! Other people's lives are worth more than a person's desire to have a good time. It's incredible how many people don't think that's the case :( selfish and entitled. I wonder how many times that cow drove drunk AFTER killing an innocent person too.
The Northwest Territories (of which Yellowknife is the capital) would be a fantastic place to hide, unfortunately, much like Yukon, Nunavut, Labrador or even Alaska. The fact that she was still driving drunk and the RCMP caught her means she never learned anything - just how to hide.
What’s crazy is she probably wouldn’t have even had to serve that much time. I remember reading somewhere a cop or a lawyer joking that if someone wants to murder someone just hit them with a car while drunk. For some reason the sentencing isn’t that harsh.
Kind of sad that the victim seemed such an advocate against drunk driving that she helped found a SADD chapter at her school and would be the designated driver for friends, but she wasn’t wearing her seat belt in the crash.
Strange, right? I remember in the 90s passengers didn't always wear seatbelts but the driver was always supposed to, even back then.
Yeah, especially for someone keenly aware of the dangers of other drivers out there. To not use the simple device in your car there to protect you seems so odd.
As someone who lost a 3 year old cousin to a drunk driver, I don't feel bad saying that she got what she deserved.
Holy cow imagine being the friend in this article https://www.mytruenorthnow.com/45871/news/friends-plan-to-honour-kate-dooley-with-new-years-fireworks-display-in-yellowknife/
I know if you have a DUI, it can be a challenge to enter Canada. How did they arrest an American back in 2009 but not deport her back to the USA? How did they not discover she was there on an assumed identity? Canada’s crime policies are kinda wacko.
That's a good point. Apparently the Canadian law about this changed in 2018. "For non-citizens residing in Canada, this law means that you could face deportation if you’re convicted of drunk or drugged driving on or after this date." So if she'd been caught more recently, she could have been forced to leave the country. Although -- I'm not clear on whether Schulze's fake identity was Canadian (like if she was impersonating a dead person who was born here), or if she'd been able to get citizenship under it. https://www.bordersolutionslaw.com/blog/can-i-get-deported-from-canada-for-drunk-driving
Ugh this makes me so mad I’m glad she was found but the fact that she doesn’t have to face the consequences for killing Angela pisses me off.
This is why it's a cruel world we live in. Poor lady gets killed trying to save other people's lives from the same thing she fell victim to. Smh. Not even worth it to be a good person sometimes.
She ran fire work shows for 15 years in Yellow Knife. The bigger the better.
This is so sad. Not only did angela die trying to do the right thing by picking up a drunk friend, but it's scary that drunk driving is so common that a friend of angela's died in a drunk driving accident before this. Damn.
How do people just create a new identity and move to another country?