Ex-Wife Says He Was Controller but Not Violent

Relatives of David L. Schoenecker on Saturday depicted him as a domineering husband and father and a man to whom money, status and superiority were extremely important.

But they also said he was a man they could not imagine as violent.

“I never knew his violent side,” said Traci Schoenecker, 22, of Grafton, Wis., his daughter by a previous marriage. “Even if he got upset, he kept everything within him. Maybe it just built up.”

Her mother, Kathy Schoenecker, who was married to David Schoenecker from 1962 to 1977, said there was never any hint of violence in his behavior.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “I cannot believe he did it. When I saw the paper tonight with the picture of him being captured, I said, ‘Oh, my God, I feel so sorry for him. He never did a violent thing.’ Our kids, I don’t remember him even spanking them. I don’t remember us arguing.”

On Punishment List

Instead, Kathy Schoenecker, one of those on 48-year-old David Schoenecker’s list of people to “punish,” remembers him as a person who wanted to control those around him.

“He was an overachiever, I think,” she said. “He’d go to dinners and I was expected to play the role. He would drill me as to who was who and who their wives were. I felt as if I was a statue: ‘This is my wife.’ He wanted to control my life, and I didn’t want my life controlled.

“He loved to be superior. He wanted everyone to know he knew more than they did. . . . He had to be good, and he loved attention.

“I can’t give you any reason why he would have any of those people on his list. He loved power. The only thing I can surmise is that some of the people on the list he couldn’t overpower.”

David Schoenecker insisted on total control of the family’s money, Kathy Schoenecker said. “He controlled the household. I didn’t know anything about the money,” she recalled.

David Schoenecker pressured his second wife, Gail, a teacher, into obtaining a law degree and passing the Bar exam in North Carolina, said her sister Patricia Schmid of Greendale, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee.

“He was always after that buck,” Schmid said. “But she didn’t like law when she graduated. She went back to teaching.”

Schmid said David Schoenecker was deceptive when it came to how the family’s money was spent and refused to show his wife the family checkbook or savings passbook. “Dave thought the way to live was the American way--on plastic,” she said.

“He hid a lot of things (from his wife). They had no car or house insurance; there was no money for that. The rent was like $1,000 or $1,100. The cost of living is great out there” in Anaheim Hills.

Planned to Adopt

Schmid said David Schoenecker and his wife were saving to add a room to their house because they were on the verge of adopting a child. “From what I understand, they were very close to it. They had had their home interviews. They told me they were sending me papers; they needed a character reference.”

Gail Schoenecker’s father--Earl Borchardt, 64, of Milwaukee, a construction superintendent--said he does not know what his son-in-law may have been doing with the family’s money.

“When I came to California, he and I went to race tracks together, to various restaurants, and it always seemed he wasn’t honest,” Borchardt said. “With money. It’s hard to put into words. I just never felt confident with him with money.”

Borchardt said he telephoned David Schoenecker’s employer last week and was told Schoenecker had telephoned to say he was taking a 7-week leave to go to Bulgaria. Borchardt said he called the principal at the school where his daughter taught and was told that David Schoenecker had called to report that his wife was taking 2 weeks off.

“They were here a week at Christmastime,” Borchardt said. “He kept talking to me about he was going to invest in sugar commodities. With this story he made up, I just wonder if he just didn’t go into these commodities and lost a lot of money.”

Family members said it will take a while before things return to normal.

Would Have Turned 41

Gail Schoenecker’s 41st birthday would have been this Thursday, and the family said they are not looking forward to living through that day.

Traci Schoenecker graduates today from the University of Wisconsin with a bachelor’s degree in economics. She had sent a graduation announcement to her father despite strained feelings between the two, said Schmid.

Schmid has returned home, where she fled after authorities told her she was on David Schoenecker’s punishment list. She was gone only one day, she said, “but he could have died up there in the mountains and we would have never known.”

And the Borchardts wait to make funeral arrangements for their daughter “as soon as they tell us they are releasing the body,” Earl Borchardt said.