At 20-years-old, Robert Schoengarth could have kicked heroin and started over. But heroin is a hard habit to break. Heroin attaches to opioid receptors in the brain and nervous system, like natural endorphins, so the brain adapts with regular use. Getting clean isn’t a matter of willpower. You are fighting your altered chemistry. Withdrawal from heroin, while not often life-threatening, can be so painful you pray for death.
In September 1957, Robert married June Leach in Las Vegas. They had a daughter, but the marriage didn’t last. We can only speculate about what drove them apart.
From the time he was a teenager, Robert moved between California and Colorado. He had trouble with the law in both places.
In January 1963, an anonymous tip alerted the LAPD’s Hollywood division that Colorado wanted Robert for felony robbery and theft. They busted him near Klump Avenue and La Maida Street in North Hollywood. 6
Robert confessed to stealing from a Ventura Boulevard business after his arrest for suspected burglary. He had drugs on him—a vial with 45 pink pills in it. He told officers he came to North Hollywood to score dope.
Robert’s brother, William, had his own problems. In 1956, Burbank police arrested William and two other men for burglarizing an Apple Valley men’s clothing store on New Year’s Eve, 1955. Zeke Eblen, chief of detectives for the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office, said the men stole expensive suits, sports jackets, and other clothing, which they took out a side door and loaded into a car.
Like Robert, William’s heroin addiction caused his troubles. In court on the burglary charges, he pleaded guilty and admitted to being an addict. Assistant County Probation Officer Merle Kay, said William was, “resigned to a life of institutional care without hope of rehabilitation or permanent treatment for his addiction.” All his previous attempts to get clean failed. He told Kay he would try to quit the habit if given probation, but confessed he had said the same thing a “thousand times” before.
In July 1967, police arrested William and his wife, Gloria, in Fort Worth, Texas, for forgery after a state computer detected a fake check they had tried to cash.
Working together, Robert, William, Robert’s wife Connie Sue, and an accomplice, George Pauldino, landed in U. S. District Court in Denver for passing stolen savings bonds in banks in Colorado Springs and Boulder.
According to U.S. Assistant Attorney Theodore Halaby, the group cashed some of the $200,000 worth of bonds they stole on December 12, 1971, from the safe of the Denver Public Administrator.
The brothers spent most of the 1970s either in court or prison.
The Schoengarth brothers paid a terrible price for making a dumb mistake as teenagers. Their addictions were a prison without walls. Reading between the lines, I realize they struggled to lead normal lives.
I’ve had many friends grapple with addiction. Several of them died of an O.D. Smart, funny, talented, each one had so much to give. I will never stop missing them.
Robert died in 1988, and William passed in 2005. The brothers may never have realized their potential, but I bet family and friends who saw the best in them mourn them still.
