Frank Schilt told police his wife wagged her finger in his face after learning he had depleted her inheritance and their life savings – but that her ensuing death was accidental.
Prosecutor David Lamb, however, said Monday Schilt killed his wife Terri, 51, and tried to kill his daughter. He described Schilt’s tale as “incredible and unbelievable.”
A judge Monday ruled that Schilt would stand trial for first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.
“The evidence is that this is far from an accidental death,” Lamb said during Schilt’s preliminary hearing. “He murdered Terri Schilt and tried to murder (his daughter) Melody Schilt.”
Schilt and his attorneys claimed Monday that Schilt, at most, was guilty of reckless behavior.
Authorities have never recovered Terri Schilt’s body, although Detective Tyrone Campbell testified that hundreds of officers spent 87 days searching one landfill and 18 days searching another.
Defense attorney Demetria Trujillo said Schilt had never been violent toward his wife, their children or anyone else.
“It was an accident,” Trujillo said.
Campbell testified that in two jailhouse interviews in Arkansas, Schilt first said Terri abandoned the Schilt family. In the second, he said she died accidentally.
Schilt said that when his wife wagged her finger, he grabbed her arm, fell against her and she hit her head twice on the bed headboard, killing her. Over the next six days, he threw away or destroyed bloody items including carpet, a mattress and her body, he told Campbell. He concocted an elaborate story that his wife had gone to Cleveland, Chicago and then returned to Denver.
But those stories, Lamb said, were a stream of lies designed to deceive his family, cover up the murder and throw police off track.
“His story defies common sense,” Lamb told the judge. Blood-spatter evidence showed that when Terri Schilt died, her head was 17 inches from the headboard and there was nothing on the headboard to indicate Terri had hit her head, Lamb said.
Police believe Schilt killed his wife in his home in the 9500 block of West Chenango Avenue on Feb. 25.
Authorities believe he tried to kill his 15-year-old daughter about a week later by pumping exhaust from a family vehicle into the house. At the time, Melody believed her mother was traveling and Schilt told her he was trying to get rid of a “critter” in the garage, Campbell said.
He later said he was trying to kill himself. Schilt was arrested March 29 in Arkansas where he was found jumping off a log with a noose around his neck in a suicide attempt.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-820-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
