In a tragic and deeply unsettling case, a father failed his daughter in an unimaginable way and took his own life before facing justice.

Christopher Scholtes spent three hours drinking beer, watching explicit videos, and playing video games while his two-year-old daughter, Parker, succumbed to heatstroke in the driveway of their Marana, Arizona home on July 9, 2024.

The 38-year-old reportedly died by carbon monoxide poisoning on November 5, seemingly to avoid a potential prison sentence of 20 to 30 years for second-degree murder charges.

Recently acquired police interview records with his mother-in-law, Cynthia King, provide a disturbing glimpse into Scholtes’s behavior in the 16 months leading up to his death, as reported by the Daily Mail.

King described Scholtes as a narcissistic individual who was “coddled” by his wife, Erika, 37, and who avoided taking responsibility for Parker’s tragic death.

Instead of mourning as a grieving father might, Scholtes reportedly focused on gaming, even replacing his PlayStation quickly after police confiscated it as part of the investigation, according to King.

He showed almost no remorse during the two weeks King stayed with her heartbroken daughter and son-in-law, breaking down only when he was forced to sell his beloved red convertible to help cover his legal fees.

‘He was doing things that made me believe that he was just going about his business and that he wasn’t grieving,’ King told police, as recorded in their report. 

‘It wasn’t even a week and he asked her [Erika] to have another baby.’

As she waited with Scholtes and Erika on the couch for police to arrive and arrest him three days after Parker’s death, he suddenly blurted out a bizarre denial.

‘I swear to you guys, I wasn’t playing the game. I wasn’t playing a game,’ he said, according to King.

She reflected: ‘We weren’t talking anything about that, so he was pretty much admitting he was playing the game.’

Police seized his PlayStation 5 as evidence and, through electronic analysis and interviews with his surviving daughters, proved he spent most of those three hours doing just that.

But such was his obsession with gaming that just two days after burying his daughter, Scholtes had a new console and was back to his old ways.

His mother-in-law was so disgusted with his behavior that she left after only two weeks, as painful as it was to leave her distraught daughter.

‘Now, I understand that people grieve in different ways, but he was playing his PlayStation and I had to leave, and that was the last time I was in that house,’ she said. ‘I was in disbelief that another PlayStation was purchased.’

Even at Parker’s funeral, King didn’t feel that her son-in-law was genuinely mourning his daughter, and instead made it about himself.

‘I had such rage in my body… even at the funeral, he was prancing around like it was a wedding,’ she said.

She claimed that his ‘fake eulogy’ was mostly copied from Erika’s and he only shed crocodile tears while reading it.

As Parker’s family mourned, detectives uncovered one of the most egregious cases of a child dying in a hot car. 

Instead of simply forgetting she was there, Scholtes deliberately left her to nap in the car as he had many times before – while the temperature rose to a lethal 108.9F.

After he was charged with murder on July 12, mounting legal bills, starting with a $90,000 up-front retainer, put great strain on the family’s finances.

Though Erika had a salary of at least $300,000 a year as an attending anesthesiologist at Banner University Medical Center in Tucson – the same hospital where Parker was declared dead – she only recently finished her low-paid residency.

Extended family stepped in to help, but pushed Scholtes to sell his beloved red Honda S2000 as a ‘show of good faith’.

King claimed that Scholtes cried more when he handed over the keys at his father’s used car dealership than he did over Parker’s death.

But his disappointment was short lived as his best friend Ryan bought the car and signed it over to him within days. 

‘So it’s just like let’s coddle, coddle, coddle someone who’s a narcissist, and he’s always been,’ King said. ‘You know, every vacation, he’s thrown a fit.’ 

She told police that if shown a picture from a past vacation, she could recall what Scholtes did to ruin the trip for everyone – claiming that he drank to excess, became belligerent and caused a scene.

King said Scholtes also wanted to keep the 2023 Acura MDX, ‘the car that his daughter died in’. 

‘What’s wrong with his brain?’ she wondered aloud to the detectives. 

Scholtes’s bail conditions banned him from being alone with his surviving daughters. Because he was no longer any use as a babysitter, King suggested that he should get a job.

‘Even if he works a part-time job, he needs to start pulling in some money,’ she told her daughter – which apparently didn’t go down well. 

‘I think she got irritated that I said he needs to step up. What is he doing? He can’t be alone with the kids, right?’ she told police.

Scholtes never did get a job and Erika hired a nanny instead.

Cynthia recalled when people were around Scholtes after Parker’s death, there would be moments when ‘he felt it was the right time to start crying and invoke sympathy from whoever was there’. 

‘She said he would lean over the counter and cry but there were never any tears. She said she knows people grieve in different ways, but it always felt so orchestrated,’ police wrote in their report.

Meanwhile, Erika was a mess during the two weeks that King stayed with the family after Parker died.

‘Cynthia stated [that] Erika really needed her; she would cuddle her like an infant with her sobbing in her arms,’ police wrote.

‘Erika wanted her around, and that was the first time that she said, “I want my mom. I don’t want you to leave.”‘

But their relationship deteriorated over the following months as Erika staunchly supported her husband and made excuses for his behavior.

King told police that Erika accused her of siding with ‘all the noise’ – meaning the police reports and coverage of his case in the media.

‘She said, “You’ve known him for 13 years. How can you do that?” I’m thinking, “Because I didn’t like him from day one…” I just got bad vibes from him,’ she said.

King recalled that the first time she was introduced to Scholtes over dinner at Oslo Sushi Place in Phoenix, he would not look her in the eye.

By the time of the police interview, Erika no longer trusted her mother to be around her daughters by herself, fearing she would tell them negative things about Scholtes.

King told police she believed that Scholtes had ’emotionally abused’ and ‘brainwashed’ Erika because ‘there is no way a girl as smart as she is could be this blind’.

‘She is dealing with [Parker’s death] alone. And it is hard for her to imagine her family that she thought she had, although it wasn’t what she was on the outside,’ police wrote that she told them.

‘There was a lot of s**t happening behind closed doors but she wanted that image of the perfect family. And it was just an image. 

‘There were probably times of happiness but it wasn’t what everybody saw. So she has to deal with that first.’

Despite their toddler being killed by her husband’s negligence, Erika stuck by Scholtes and even successfully petitioned the court for bail and for him to be allowed to go on a family holiday to Maui.

She also bought them a stunning $1 million four-bedroom, 2,369sq ft Italian villa-style home in Phoenix in April, boasting a pool and neo-classical column façade.

King told police that she came forward on hearing that Scholtes would be offered a plea deal – which he later rejected – because she didn’t think he deserved one. 

She realized that speaking to the police would only strain her relationship with Erica even further but the risk was one she was willing to take because Scholtes was ‘never going to change’.

‘If that means me losing my daughter for the rest of my life, I will because maybe when she’s 60, she’ll realize. Maybe when I’m gone, she’ll realize it.

‘But somebody’s got to stand up for Parker, what about her and those little handprints trying to get out,’ King said, in reference to what police described seeing on the car.

‘This is not normal, and they are normalizing murder,’ she added, ‘He wasn’t taking care of the kids, and my granddaughter died because of it, and that’s murder. 

‘I truly believe from the bottom of my heart… something will happen again. Because he doesn’t really think he did anything wrong.’

The interview record included an email that King sent to police before she was interviewed.

‘He is a sociopathic narcissist who will continue to make decisions that he feels will have zero repercussions,’ she wrote.

‘I am worried about my other granddaughters being around that type of person and how it will affect them emotionally in the long term.’

King told the Daily Mail after Scholtes’s death that she had not spoken to her daughter in more than six months but was trying to repair their relationship.

As these emotional dramas played out around him in the family home, Scholtes’s case worked its way through the courts. 

The investigation revealed that he left Parker napping with the engine running and air-conditioning on but lost track of time and the vehicle shut off.

The Pima County Medical Examiner said the temperature inside the car was 108.9F when first responders arrived, and confirmed Parker died of heat exposure.

Their other children told police that Scholtes ‘got distracted by playing his game and putting his food away’, according to the criminal complaint.

Prosecutors wrote in court documents that he also searched the internet for men’s clothing at Nordstrom and for pornography from 2.02pm to 2.30pm.  

The killer dad rejected a plea deal in March that would have seen him serve up to 10 years behind bars.

Just six months later, Scholtes had no choice but to accept a far worse deal to plead guilty to second-degree murder and be jailed for 20 to 30 years without parole.

But he was allowed to stay out on bail until November 5 when he would be taken into custody, and used that time to plan his suicide.

Scholtes was ‘found deceased in his car, which was parked in the garage’, police said. He is believed to have died from carbon monoxide poisoning. 

For help and support call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline on 988