Christopher Scholtes suicide: Arizona dad kills self on the day he is to be formally sentenced in the hot car death of his infant daughter after admitting to causing her death. Had faced 30 years jail and no parole.
An Arizona man who pleaded guilty to murdering his 2-year-old daughter after she died in a hot car parked in the family’s driveway was found deceased this morning.
The father’s death comes as he was to set to appear in court Wednesday morning where he would be formally sentenced to 20-30 years jail with no bond.
Christopher Scholtes, 38, was listed as deceased by Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office after the man’s body was found at a Phoenix area residence.
Arizona dad kills self on morning of court sentencing hearing
‘The father took his own life last night,’ Pima County Attorney Laura Conover said in a statement Wednesday.
Confusion ensued after Scholtes failed to appear for the hearing where he’d been directed to hand himself over to police, according to ABC 15, with courthouse officials apparently unaware that he’d died.
An autopsy will now be performed but results are not expected until early 2026.
The dad — who had a known habit of leaving his kids in the car — pleaded guilty in October to second-degree murder and was expected to be officially sentenced to between 20 and 30 years in early November.
The man’s death comes more than a year after his two-year-old daughter, Parker, was found dead in the driveway of their Marana home outside Tuscon on a scorching July afternoon in 2024, when the temperature soared to 109-degrees Fahrenheit.
Christopher Scholtes suicide the culmination of years of abuse and disregard
Scholtes had left Parker to nap in the back seat of the family Acura, along with turning on the car’s air-conditioning on, not realizing (or perhaps ought to have realized…) that after a certain time it would turn off.
The dad returned inside to play video games, drinking beer, along with watching adult movies for more than three hours, only for the two-year-old girl to die in the searing heat after the vehicle’s air conditioning automatically turning off.
During police questioning the father even admitted knowing the car’s air conditioning would shut off automatically within a half-hour.
Scholtes had previously rejected a plea deal in March that would have let him off with 10 years behind bars only to be forced to accept a worse deal last month where he pled guilty to second-degree murder and child abuse and be jailed for 20 to 30 years without parole. The guilty plea came just days before trial was set to commence.
Police bodycam footage shows 37-year-old Christopher Scholtes moments after learning that his 2-year-old daughter had died after being left in a hot car in 109°F heat.
Scholtes was arrested in July, and accused of leaving his daughter, Parker, in the car while he played video… pic.twitter.com/Yuex3R67M1
— Morbid Knowledge (@Morbidful) August 16, 2024
Damning texts
The father was allowed to stay out on bail until Wednesday when he would be taken into custody, only to commit suicide prior to the commencement of his jail term.
Leading up to sentencing, Scholtes had moved to a house in the suburbs of Phoenix about an hour away. His wife, anesthesiologist Erika Scholtes, 37, who has continued to maintain that their daughter’s death was an accident, purchasing a $1.025 million four-bedroom, 2,369sqft home in April.
On the day of their daughter’s death, Erika was at work as an anesthesiologist at Banner University Medical Center, the same hospital Parker was taken to, after the toddler being left in the car.
She strongly defended her husband in court by calling their daughter’s death ‘a mistake’.
In addition to facing decades in jail, Scholtes was sued last week, along with Erika, by his eldest daughter, now 17, for emotional distress, assault, battery, and fraud going back to as far when she was seven years old.
Texts between Scholtes and Erika revealed the father repeatedly leaving the children in the car for extended periods.
As Parker was rushed to the hospital, Erika texted Scholtes saying: ‘I told you to stop leaving them in the car, how many times have I told you.’
She later added: ‘We’ve lost her, she was perfect.’
Scholtes replied: ‘Babe I’m sorry! How could I do this. I killed our baby, this can’t be real.’
Previous abuse and distress with eldest daughter
The couple’s other two other children, then aged nine and five, told police their father regularly left all three siblings alone in the car.
The youngsters told police Scholtes ‘got distracted by playing his game and putting his food away’, according to the criminal complaint.
A Playstation and other electronics were taken away as evidence.
On the day of the toddler’s death, Erika had returned home from work just on 4 p.m, only to notice Parker not inside the family home leading to a frantic search for the missing girl before she was found ‘unresponsive’ and the parents calling emergency services.
Affidavits showed the father returning home at 12.53 p.m, despite the father claiming he had returned home 2.30 p.m.
Less than an hour after Parker was rushed to hospital the two year old would be declared dead.
Court documents also revealed Christopher Scholtes struggling with alcoholism, prior drug abuse along with previous allegations of child neglect.
The older daughters said their parents often fought about Scholtes’s behavior, especially how much he drank.
‘He still drinks too much beer, and he keeps leaving us in the car when my mom told him to stop doing this,’ one of the girls said, according to documents.
‘That’s how he made my baby sister die.’
Scholtes promised to ‘find relief and happiness elsewhere’ but Erika countered that the last time he did that he merely replaced booze with cocaine.
Scholtes also had a history of similar behavior with his oldest daughter, now 16, whom he had with a previous partner the dailymail reported.
Some of her family told investigators that back then, he also left her and his other two daughters in the car alone long enough for the air-conditioning to shut off.
Fortunately, the older girl knew how to restart the car and prevent them all from meeting the same fate as Parker.
Scholtes was also allegedly abusive towards the eldest girl, and she on one occasion called police to say she was afraid to go home because she lost some money and was worried her father would hit her.
Department of Child Services investigators wrote in their reports that she told them ‘she would frequently be slapped, thrown, have her hair pulled, have her head pushed into walls, and be picked up by her shirt or her arm’.
Scholtes eventually lost custody of the girl and after her mother died earlier this year she was instead given to another guardian.
