Here’s why a 30-year-old fatal Scottsdale DUI case has come to a conclusion
May 29, 2024, 1:56 PM
Scottsdale fatal DUI suspect Gloria Schulze disappeared from Scottsdale for more than 20 years. (Scottsdale Police Photo)
(Scottsdale Police Photo)
PHOENIX — A 30-year-old fatal Scottsdale DUI case has come to a close after detectives determined last month a suspect who had been on the run and changed her name died in Canada.
Gloria Schulze was charged with manslaughter and endangerment after she allegedly got into a crash with 21-year-old Angela Maher in north Scottsdale on the night of July 29, 1994. Maher was a college student in town for her mother’s birthday and was giving a friend a ride home from the bars in Old Town when the crash occurred.
Schulze, who was 31 years old at the time, was arrested but fled Arizona before her trial.
It took until April of this year for authorities to know where Schulze went.
Where did fatal Scottsdale DUI suspect flee to?
Schulze’s family told detectives that they had severed ties with her and had no clue where she could be.
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She was tried in absentia in May 2001 and was convicted, but clues about where she had fled to were scarce.
Scottsdale Police Department’s Vehicular Crimes Reconstruction Unit initially worked the case before a detective with the Criminal Investigations Unit took it over in 2014.
An analyst then took it over in 2020 and a breakthrough occurred.
The analyst spoke with Schulze’s brother, who said he had received an anonymous call that Schulze had passed away from cancer in Yellowknife, a city in the northern part of Canada.
The tip eventually led the analyst to an obituary for a woman named Kate Dooley, who died of cancer in Yellowknife in December 2019. The photo in Dooley’s obituary was similar to an age-progressed photo of Schultz.
How did police confirm that woman who died of cancer was Scottsdale suspect?
The analyst reached out to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and was told that Dooley was arrested for DUI in 2009. Canada still had her fingerprints on file as a result, leading Scottsdale Police to send a copy of Schulze’s fingerprints up north to check for a match.
The FBI, which handled the request through INTERPOL, sent the prints to RCMP.
The match between Schulze and Dooley was confirmed on April 17, 2024.
