GUNNAR SCHUMACHER - 14 yo/ Suspect: Father; Ludwig "Sonny" Schumacher (suicide) - Essex VT

EXCLUSIVE: Christina begged police for help for TWO DAYS before her son, 14, was found strangled by her husband. Then she was locked in a psych ward for six weeks. Here, she tells her harrowing story

• Two weeks short of his fifteenth birthday Gunnar Schumacher was drugged and strangled by his father
  
• Former National Guard Colonel, Ludwig ‘Sonny’ Schumacher then hanged himself in Vermont apartment
  
• Within 24 hours grieving mother, Christina, was locked in a psychiatric unit and held against her will
  
• Says she begged police to intervene to save her son in the days and hours before he was found murdered but they did nothing
  
• Claims she told family court of Sonny’s violence towards Gunnar FOUR MONTHS earlier but they didn’t believe her
  
• Says officials dismissed her fear as madness and cost her son his life
  
• Claims 18 years of abusive marriage led her to mental breakdown
  
• Lead detective describes meticulously planned crime as ‘complicated and unusual’ with investigation ongoing
  
• Christina believes Sonny intended to kill her too and believes her life is still in danger
  

By Laura Collins In Essex Junction, Vermont


PUBLISHED: 11:16 EST, 12 February 2014
UPDATED: 13:56 EST, 12 February 2014


Christina Schumacher knew her son was dead before she reached the top of the stairs. And she knew that his father had killed him.

The moment her eyes locked with those of the officer blocking the apartment door ahead she knew that the worst had already happened.

Forty-eight hours earlier she had pounded the desk of the local police station saying, ‘Help me my son is in danger.’ She had called family and friends. Finally she had called Amber Alert.


Indescribable grief: Christina Schumacher had to cope with the murder of her son at her husband's hands and then nearly six weeks on a psych ward against her will. She is pictured in her son's bedroom



Evil: Ludwig 'Sonny' Schumacher Jr. murdered Gunnar, 14, by drugging him then strangling him. Schumacher then hanged himself in his apartment


Warnings: Christina had been tearing her hair out, warning police, friends and family that Gunnar was in danger. She even called Amber Alert. She claims the police told her they were short-staffed and would investigate further the following morning

She had done everything she could to prevent this moment and now it was too late. She let out a scream that seemed endless.

On Wednesday December 18, Christina’s estranged husband, Ludwig ‘Sonny’ Schumacher, 49, and their fourteen year old son, Gunnar, were found dead in Sonny’s Essex, Vermont, apartment. Sonny drugged and strangled Gunnar before hanging himself several hours later.

But for Christina, 48, that wasn’t the end of the nightmare. Within 24 hours she had been involuntarily admitted to a secure psychiatric unit.

She stayed there for five-and-a-half weeks before a judge ruled that the grieving mother should never have been locked up in the first place. He released her with an apology for all that she had gone through.

Now in an exclusive interview with MailOnline, Christina, has revealed the litany of systematic failures that she blames for her son’s death.

She has told how her fears and pleas for help were dismissed as the rantings of a madwoman.

 'He would kill me if I tried to leave. And if I’d tried to run with the kids he’d have hunted me down and I was afraid I’d lose them. I stayed to survive and I stayed to protect my kids'


She has revealed the truth of the abusive marriage that led her to mental breakdown and despair.

And she has shared the chilling knowledge that on the night that he murdered their son, Sonny had intended to kill her too.

She said: ‘He invited me over for dinner that night too. That same day he changed his will to cut me out and leave everything, including my daughter and the house, to his sister because he thought I was going to be dead with them. He planned on murdering me.

‘I’m numb to it now.’

In a cruel twist, she said, Sonny had planned to commit his crimes and kill himself on their 17-year-old daughter, Elise’s birthday.

The sprawling house in which Christina sits in a quiet neighborhood in Essex Junction is in a state of disarray. 

This was once the family home but since returning to it two weeks ago she has set about purging it of everything connected to ‘him.’

The debris of the carefully constructed façade of the Schumacher’s perfect life is all around.

Family albums and home-made calendars burst with pictures of the family posing together in Bermuda, Cape Cod, Rome, France, London, Washington, Alaska, Montana…on and on it goes.

Christina explained: ‘We would go on all these trips and Sonny would insist that I boast about where we’d been, how much we’d seen. But look at the kids in all the pictures. See how miserable they look?


Spite: Christina says Sonny even planned to kill Gunnar on their daughter's 17th birthday.


Outwardly perfect: Christina says the family looked perfect from the outside. They had a nice house, good wage, expensive holidays... but behind the scenes Sonny was abusive and controlling. Their life was misery


‘Everything with Sonny was for show. The house, the private school, the new fence, the four-by-four, the dirt bike, the hot tub, the boat, the summers at Cape Cod, the canoe… We were the "perfect" family.’

But in reality, she said, ‘He beat and abused us for years but he was getting worse.’

Christina and Sonny married in October 1994. They met by chance at the local gym after Sonny moved to Vermont as a pilot with the National Guard.

Handsome and charming, Sonny introduced himself and said he was new in town. Christina, then a dancer, told him she was going jet-skiing that afternoon and he asked to join her.

‘I told him if he made it in time he could come. He arrived at the jetty just as we were pushing off.’

Today she can’t remember a time when the marriage was truly happy but she said, at first, Sonny's abuse was 'more verbal and emotional.’

In 1996 their daughter Elise was born and son Gunnar arrived three years later.

The physical abuse steadily escalated over the years.

She says: ‘He would do it in sly ways. With Gunnar he would say, “Let’s wrestle” but every time my son would end up crying for help. With me he would do things that wouldn’t leave marks. He had all sorts of military pinches and holds, he’d do stuff to my neck so I couldn’t breathe.

‘He would say “It’s my word against yours and I’m a military officer so who’s going to believe you?”’

Sonny was proud of his academic and military credentials. He graduated from the University of Connecticut magna cum laude and went on to study law. He served with the Vermont National Guard as an F-16 pilot and instructor while working part-time as an associate at a local Vermont law firm. He flew commercially for Delta.

He was the head of a successful, ideal family.

According to Christina: ‘He created his own identity. He created Sonny – he used to be Ludwig. His whole life was a façade. I was his Stepford Wife. And he controlled my poor kids, especially Gunnar.

‘He made Gunnar sign “the rules” before he could even write.’


Success: Sonny graduated from the University of Connecticut magna cum laude and went on to study law. He served with the Vermont National Guard as an F-16 pilot and instructor while working part-time as an associate at a local Vermont law firm. He flew commercially for Delta





Charming: The pair met when Christina was a dancer and Sonny was 'new in town'. They hooked up after they went jet-skiing together. But then the verbal, then physical abuse began


Controlling: Sonny made a three-year-old Gunnar sign these 'House Rules' which he couldn't even read

Christina offers up a framed document. Once pinned to the wall of Gunnar’s bedroom it is Sonny’s, ‘House Rules.’

Among them ‘I will not tolerate anyone who lies, cheats or steals. I will keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight'.

At the bottom of the page, is the then three-year-old Gunnar’s heartbreaking attempt to please and ‘sign’ this contract with his father.

More recently Sonny had been working on his ‘manifesto’ ‘A Practical Guide to Life.’ Part military manual, part evangelical diktat the lengthy document – hundreds of pages long – was aimed at his children.

Christina says, ‘Sonny always had to be in control.’

Though she worked full time as a financial officer in GE Healthcare Corporation Sonny was in charge of all the family’s finances.

‘He kept them secret from me,’ she says. ‘He insisted I pay everything on the credit card and he checked transactions 10 times a day.

‘He wrote me a check for $3,000 every month for bills. He kept everything else locked in the safe.’

He held the purse strings. He exerted mental control and he administered beatings.

So why didn’t Christina take the children and leave?

 'I told the (custody) judge everything. I told him about the Easter incident and he didn’t believe me..‘I hate him. I f***** hate him. If he had listened to me my son would be alive'


She says: ‘Because he would kill me if I tried to leave. And if I’d tried to run with the kids he’d have hunted me down and I was afraid I’d lose them.

‘I stayed to survive and I stayed to protect my kids.’

But at the beginning of 2013 the pressure was became too much to bear.

She says: ‘I had a nervous breakdown. I literally started shutting down. I couldn’t even do laundry or go grocery shopping. I hated being in the house.

‘By January, February, I was crashing.’

It was the beginning of what would be a catastrophic end to this damaged marriage and family.

Christina left her job in February and sought psychiatric help. With Sonny always at her side she saw a psychiatrist and was prescribed medication for depression and anxiety.

She recalls: ‘They thought I might be bi-polar because we have it in our family.’

Christina claims that Sonny controlled her illness just as he had controlled everything else, keeping her medication locked in his study and administering it each evening. She became convinced he was trying to kill her.

It is impossible to know whether or not Christina’s fears then were the stuff of paranoid delusions or rooted in reality. But less than a year on Sonny did meticulously plan his suicide, and Gunnar and Christina’s murders.

Weeping openly Christina recalls how Sonny terrorized the family, subjecting Gunnar to one particularly brutal attack last Easter.


Abuse: Gunnar had the 's**t beaten' out of him by his father just because he was playing with a toy in the house




Love: When Christina and Sonny separated, Gunnar still went to stay with his father despite the fears

Gunnar’s latest gadget was a smoke machine she had told him not to use in the house. That Easter Sunday he did just that and filled the bathroom with smoke.

She admits, ‘I was mad. I said to Sonny “Do something.”

‘Sonny just started beating the s*** out of him. I started trying to get him to stop.

‘Gunnar ran down the stairs and out the back door and Sonny chased him and pinned him down, put his knee into his back, and held him in a pinch hold - Gunnar’s screaming, I’m trying to pull Sonny off.

‘Sonny picks him up, holding him in a bear hug to bring him back in and Gunnar literally kicks the siding of the house off struggling.’

The damage is still visible today.

Back in the house, Christina recalled: ‘Gunnar tries to run away, he tried to escape through the window but Sonny gets his foot and pulls him to the ground, and beats him. It was a nightmare.’

‘I should have called the cops that day.’

 'Gunnar tries to run away, he tried to escape through the window but Sonny gets his foot and pulls him to the ground, and beats him. It was a nightmare'


By June, Christina says, she couldn’t take it anymore. She checked herself into an intensive out patient regime of therapy and psychiatric care and The Seneca Center in Burlington.

For the first time Christina spoke about the abuse she and her children endured at Sonny’s hands. She was put in contact with Women Helping Battered Women.

In July she finally summoned up the courage to leave. She filed a Relief from Abuse Order with the Family Court, which meant that for 30 days the only contact Sonny could have with her was by email to discuss childcare arrangements.

From the narrative Christina tells it is clear that both Gunnar and his older sister spent as much time with friends, staying at their houses, as they could. After their parents’ separation the shape of their living arrangements remained oddly disjointed with one sibling staying in one place, the other staying in another on a regular basis.

Christina remained in the family home while Sonny rented an apartment just five minutes away.

He texted her relentlessly. He said he would attend counseling, couple therapy, seek psychiatric care himself and help her with her own.

Christina viewed every offer, in the texts which range from appeasing, to cajoling, to threatening, as a trap.

Meanwhile the wheels were well and truly coming off Sonny’s ‘perfect’ life. That summer he lost his job as Executive Director of Timberlane, a medical practice.

In August Christina went to court requesting the couple’s make-shift living arrangements be formalized and she be given full custody.

Instead a Temporary Order was put in place giving equal shared custody.

Christina’s rage flares violently to the surface as she recalled: ‘I told the judge everything. I told him about the Easter incident and he didn’t believe me.


Fight: Christina tried to get an order to get custody of Gunnar but she claims he did not share her concerns




Innocence: Gunnar's untouched room shows his model planes, probably inspired by his father's flying career

‘I hate him. I f***** hate him. If he had listened to me my son would be alive.’

Elise, 16 at the time, was told she could decide where she wanted to live. She remained with her mother. Gunnar spent alternate weeks with his father and mother.

But, Christina said: ‘Sonny convinced Gunnar to spend more time with him. My goal was to get full custody so I was being really, really cautious with Sonny and agreed to it.’

If she hadn’t, Christina feared, Sonny would abduct their son and take him out of the country.

Every Wednesday night and every other weekend Gunnar went to his mother’s. The rest of the time the Essex High School freshman stayed with his father.

It was a tense arrangement, but Christina tolerated it and hoped for a better permanent arrangement.

Two weekends before his murder Gunnar was meant to be in Sonny’s care. But according to Christina, the boy called her repeatedly because his father was out of town and he was alone.

Christina offered to bring him to her house but Gunnar refused. ‘He was scared of what his dad would do if he came to the house.

'I said I need full custody of Gunnar now. He’s in danger. You know what they said? It’s the holidays and we’re really busy and the courts are backed up'


‘I don’t know what Sonny was saying or threatening but Gunnar was a smart kid. He knew he was in trouble and I knew it too.’

Christina’s voice breaks as she remembers arranging a clandestine meeting with her teenage son so that she could hand over a ‘secret’ phone to him. ‘I went to AT&T and got him an iPhone and told him dad didn’t need to know about this. This was his secret phone he could call me on – because Sonny checked his phone.’

On Monday 9 December Christina went to her attorney’s office: 'I said I need full custody of Gunnar now. He’s in danger.

‘You know what they said? It’s the holidays and we’re really busy and the courts are backed up. I went back to them or called them almost every day and they didn’t do s***’

That Wednesday Christina took Gunnar shopping – to his favorite clothing store Polo Ralph Lauren.

She says: ‘I bought him a whole bunch of new clothes to keep at mine so he wouldn’t always have to take a bag. He was so excited.

‘He didn’t like posing for pictures but that night he posed in one of his new shirts for me.’

It was the last picture taken of Gunnar. He stands smiling at the camera.

Christina says: ‘That was the shirt I buried him in.’

Gunnar spent his last weekend his mother. Christina recalls it as ‘awesome.’

His friend Johnny stayed and the boys messed around on the four wheeler and shot apples off the back porch with Gunnar’s potato gun.

They went skiing and on Saturday night they watched a movie.

‘He was doing what a good 14-year-old should be doing,’ Christina recalled.

On Monday morning she made him his favorite breakfast – Belgian waffles and dropped him at school. That afternoon Gunnar called Christina and asked her to pick him up as he’d left some things at her home by mistake.


Secret: Christina gave Gunnar an iPhone without her father knowing, so he could call her if he was in trouble. Pictured is Christina's home where she desperately wanted Gunnar to live full-time


Choices: Elise, 16 at the time, was told she could decide where she wanted to live. She remained with her mother. Christina said: ‘I told Gunnar this whole thing is temporary you’re going to live with me full time. I told him he wasn’t going back to Sonny after Christmas'

Christina treated him to McDonalds, though she hated doing so, and took Gunnar to choose a keyboard for his birthday, which was two weeks away.

Gunnar was due to spend Christmas week with her and, as she dropped him back at his father’s she said: ‘In my mind he was never going back to Sonny’s after that.

‘I told Gunnar this whole thing is temporary you’re going to live with me full time. I told him he wasn’t going back to Sonny after Christmas.’

Earlier that day Sonny had left a message telling Christina they needed to talk about Gunnar and asking her to come round to dinner. She ignored it.

Instead Gunnar walked alone up the stairs to his father and his death.

At 7pm on Tuesday December 17 Gunnar’s friend Johnny called Christina.

She says: ‘He was worried. Gunnar wasn’t answering his phone or responding to texts. Gunnar literally sleeps with his phone - slept with his phone.

‘I called it and it went straight to voicemail which means it’s off. I called Sonny’s phone, straight to voicemail. I called Sonny’s mother – her home and cell, no answer.

‘I called the principal of the school and said how do I find out what the details are with Gunnar not being at school today? He said he’d have to call me first thing in the morning.’

It transpired that Sonny left a voicemail at 10pm on Monday night saying Gunnar would be out of class for a couple of days.

Christina continues: ‘I was getting really worried. I had a couple of friends over. They said let’s go to the police department and tell them. We drove by Sonny’s apartment and his truck is sitting in the lot with snow on it. It hadn’t snowed since early that morning. That was my confirmation something was up.

‘I went to the police and said: “I need help now. My son is in danger.”

‘They were like, “Woa, slow down. We need to interview you.’

Lt George Murtie, the lead detective in the homicide-suicide case, confirmed to MailOnline: ‘Christina came to the police department on the evening of December 17 and reported concerns for her son’s welfare. She spoke to a patrol officer.’


Too late: Despite all her warnings driven by her mother's intuition, a friend called her to say there had been an incident at Sonny's apartment. She said: 'One officer looked at me and I just knew he was dead. I started screaming'

According to Christina: ‘After an hour and a half they said they were short staffed and it would have to wait until morning. I’m like, morning is going to be too late. I need help now.’

She says she called her sister, who ,Christina says, told her to go to bed. She says she called a friend who told her ‘it was late and it wasn’t a good time.’

Lt Murtie believes that it was, in truth, already too late and that Gunnar was almost certainly dead by this time, though Ludwig may not have been.

In desperation Christina contacted Amber Alert – Sonny had family in both France and Russia. But while they started an international search, Gunnar was getting killed, or already dead, just minutes round the corner from his home in Vermont.

The next day a friend of Christina’s called to tell her she was seeing reports of some sort of incident on the news, there were police at Sonny’s apartment and that she was coming over to get her.

They drove to the apartment together. Christina said: ‘There’s a bunch of police there and I go up and one officer looked at me and I just knew he was dead. I started screaming.’

Detectives took Christina home where she broke the news to her daughter. She remembers a house full of people. She remembers her sister arriving and rushing towards her. She remembers grabbing her hair, shaking her and yelling ‘You didn’t listen and now he’s dead.’

And she remembers hugging her, apologizing and weeping.

Christina had an appointment with her psychiatrist the following day which she kept. When she arrived there were four security guards there.

According to Christina: ‘My sister had called my psychiatrist and said I’d attacked her and that I was a danger to myself and others and needed to be locked up.'

Christina's sister has not responded to MailOnline's request for comment.

 'There’s a bunch of police there and I go up and one officer looked at me and I just knew he was dead. I started screaming'


Christina continues: ‘The decision was made before anyone had even seen me!'

Outraged, Christina made a hell of a fuss and as a result, she yells, ‘I was put in handcuffs.’

She was admitted to Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington. In a Kafkaesque twist Christina found herself locked in the secure psychiatric unit, doped up on anti-psychotics and powerless to prevent it.

Her son’s funeral mass had to be held in the hospital chapel with just 35 people present. She was separated from her daughter at a time of intense loss when all she wanted was to comfort and grieve with her.

Today Christina credits Disability Rights Attorney Lindsay Owen with making her aware of her rights and aiding her release as a result.

She started to refuse medication and stopped co-operating with medical staff whom she saw as her jailers.

Truth be told the behavior she describes – hissing at staff, slamming doors on doctors, throwing chairs – sounds disturbing and disturbed.

But this is a mother whose son had just been murdered by his father who then hanged himself. This is a woman locked in an abusive marriage and controlled for years, now locked out of her life and grief and controlled once more. What is the appropriate or normal reaction to that? How should she have behaved?

She said: ‘I woke up one morning to an obituary that someone else wrote about my son, talking about services for him that I couldn’t be at.

‘Nobody should have to endure what I endured.’

On January 24 Vermont Superior Court Judge Kevin Griffin ordered Christina’s immediate release from Fletcher Allen Health Care.




Favorite: Gunnar, pictured wearing a top that his mother bought him just days before he died. It was the top he was buried in. Her son’s funeral mass had to be held in the hospital chapel with just 35 people present because by then she had been put on a psychiatric ward. Right is Sonny in his National Guard uniform


Last days: Christina clearly remembers the wonderful last hours she had with Gunnar. She made him his favorite breakfast of waffles, treated him to McDonalds and helped pick out a keyboard for his birthday

Judge Griffin said in his ruling that he disagreed with the assessment made before Christina had arrived for her appointment that day.

He said: ‘The court did not find, by clear and convincing evidence, that the Respondent was a person in need of treatment at the time of admission…nor a patient need of further treatment at the time of hearing.’

In a statement to MailOnline Mike Noble, spokesman for Fletcher Allen Health Care responded: 'I can't speak to the specifics of this case, but I can say that in all matters such as this we make decisions that we think are in the best interests of the patient.

'Our clinicians make a judgement about risk of harm using medical standards of care. We consider in every case whether our judgement is consistent with the legal framework that governs involuntary care. These are complex decisions and there is room for disagreement. Every person detained has at least three concurring clinician opinions, and usually more.

'The judge is the ultimate decider and makes a decision based on legal standards. Where there might be legitimate differences of opinion related to risk, the judge decides. We would like the judge to make these decisions as soon as possible. That way, if the patient is entitled to leave, the patient can do so. If the patient should stay, that decision has the backing of the court.

'We welcome judicial review. For that reason we have been advocating for a speedier review system and will continue to do so during the legislative session.'

The police investigation into Sonny and Gunnar’s deaths is ongoing. Sonny sent Fedex packages containing letters and other materials to family members and law enforcement officers containing instructions and information that remains of interest to detectives.

Lt Murtie described the investigation into Sonny’s death as ‘detailed, complicated and unusual.' He said: ‘Of course one of the first things we have to do is eliminate the possibility that anyone else is involved. But I also take it as a professional responsibility to develop a timeline and figure out when planning started. It’s complicated.’

He revealed that a search warrant has been issued for the retrieval of one email and 10 subpoenas for financial documents.

Christina believes her life may still be under threat but will not elaborate further.

With remarkable compassion she said: ‘I’ve finally got to the fact that my daughter still has to live her life and it’s still her father. I decided he was a good guy that did bad stuff because he was messed up and mentally ill and HE needed help and he didn’t get it.

‘It’s taken a lot to get here. I had a lot of anger for Sonny.’

Christina still has a lot of anger. But it is directed at the people who dismissed her fears as mania and paranoia.

Shouting with unbridled fury she said: ‘Nobody ever believed me! I told the judge in the summer. I told an attorney the week before they didn’t believe me. I told the local police they didn’t believe me.

‘And I hate them. I hate them for it. Because nobody listened and now my son is dead and they could have saved him and I couldn’t.’