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The harrowing tale of Douglas Gretzler and Willie Steelman unfolds as one of the most notorious murder sprees the nation has ever witnessed, beginning as a drug-fueled escapade and spiraling into a chilling sequence of violence.
Over a span of merely three weeks, these newly recognized serial killers left a trail of devastation, claiming the lives of 17 individuals. Their rampage reached a horrifying peak with the slaughter of two entire families, leaving communities in shock and despair.
For years, the motives driving Gretzler and Steelman remained shrouded in mystery, puzzling both investigators and the public. However, a breakthrough came when a journalist’s recordings with Gretzler were discovered, shedding new light on their sinister deeds. The Oxygen special, Charmed the Devil, delves into these revelations, allowing the killers’ own words to paint a disturbing picture of their crimes.
In one stark admission to journalist Laura Greenberg, Gretzler confessed, “I killed a lot of people. What can I say?” This haunting statement underscores the cold detachment with which he viewed his actions.
Who Were Douglas Gretzler and Willie Steelman?
Douglas Gretzler, at the age of 22, sought to escape the burdens of being a husband and father by leaving New York behind and heading to Colorado. There, immersed in a lifestyle dominated by drugs and alcohol, he encountered Willie Steelman. Steelman, then 28, was a deeply troubled individual with a history of psychiatric institutionalization.
Their meeting marked the beginning of a dark partnership, leading both men down a path of unimaginable violence and leaving a permanent scar on the fabric of American history.
“It was almost like an instant understanding,” Gretzler later said of their bond. “That’s something that I had been looking for, almost like finding a brother.”
Not long after meeting, Gretzler agreed to make a “pact” with Steelman, promising to do anything that Steelman asked of him as they embarked on a cross country road trip hoping to rob and steal money and drugs.
“And he would say, ‘If anything went wrong, would you be prepared to kill?’” Gretzler, who was executed in 1998, remembered in one conversation replayed in the documentary. “To which I said, ‘Yes.’”
For Gretzler, Steelman—the more dominant of the pair—served as somewhat of a stand-in for his own brother, who died by suicide as a teenager.
“Doug and Willie were separate human beings. After they met, this symbiotic relationship formed a third personality,” Retired Tucson Police Detective Weaver Barkman explained. “When you put them together they turn into something that is extremely dangerous.”
Douglas Gretzler and Willie Steelman’s Killing Spree Begins
In October of 1973, Gretzler and Steelman decided to leave Colorado for a warmer climate in Phoenix, Arizona, taking the trek with a young, hippy girl named Marsha. Once in Arizona, Marsha took them to meet her friend Yahfah Mestistes, so they could stock up on drugs.
There, they met Ken Unrein and Mike Adshade. After the two men took them to their hotel, Gretzler and Steelman decided to rip them off and kidnapped the men, hoping to steal their vehicle and money.
They led Unrein and Adshade down into a ravine, tied them up and then strangled them both on Oct. 18, 1973.
“Willie didn’t want to use guns because he felt somebody would hear the shots,” Gretzler remembered. “I didn’t really know at the time how long a strangulation by belt was supposed to take…It seemed long to me.”
According to Greenberg, this was “Willie’s test to see how far Doug would go for him” and marked a point of no return in the deadly dynamic.
“It didn’t take a lot for me to kill, Laura,” Gretzler would later tell her. “I didn’t have standard roadblocks in my mental roadway that would have stopped me from killing.”
Douglas Gretzler and Willie Steelman Find More Victims
In the stolen van, the pair drove to California. But when the van broke down, they were picked up by a couple. They pulled guns on the unsuspecting victims and Steelman raped the woman. Although they stole their car, they let them live in a rare show of mercy during the killing spree.
Back in Arizona, others wouldn’t be so lucky. Police estimated the pair killed hitchhiker Steve Loughran sometime around Oct. 22, 1973, then claimed the lives of Bob Robbins and Mestistes in the days that followed.
According to Greenberg, “They’re killing and they don’t even know why they are killing.”
On Nov. 1, 1973, they claimed the life of another hitchhiker, Gilbert Sierra, after chasing him into an embankment and shooting him to death.
“I don’t think anything effected Doug anymore,” author Jack Earl said of Gretzler’s increasing desensitization to the murders. “You kill one, you kill two, you kill ten. I don’t think he gave it much thought.”
After Sierra’s shooting, the pair were looking for somewhere to lay low and went to a Tucson apartment complex where they spotted Michael Sandberg out washing his car in the parking lot.
“Michael Sandberg was dressed in Marine fatigues and sitting out there with this bucket of water,” Gretzler recalled. “And we walk over and Willie flashes the gun on him and told him to get up and to go back to his apartment.”
Inside, they found Michael’s wife Patricia Sandberg and took them both hostage as they waited for nightfall. As they were preparing to leave, Steelberg turned up the music in the apartment to muffle the sound, instructed Gretzler to kill Michael and then shot Patricia himself, before they stole the couple’s car.
When Greenberg asked Gretzler in one conversation why the couple had to die, he told her Steelberg wanted to eliminate any potential witnesses and because of the pact he’d made with him, he “couldn’t second guess him.”
“Sandbergs were innocent. There were a higher class of person,” he said. “The others were street people. Nobody really gave a s–t. They died because of Willie’s paranoia and my willingness…to kill.”
Douglas Gretzler and Willie Steelman Kill Two Families
The murder spree reached a crescendo on Nov. 6. 1973, when the pair took the lives of nine people, wiping out two families, in a cold-blooded massacre.
By then the pair had traveled to Steelman’s hometown of Lodi, California, hoping to rob the United Market store in an attempt to get some quick cash, but when they arrived in the parking lot that night the store was already closed.
Steelman knew the owner of the store was a man named Wally Parkin and they drove to his home. Unbeknownst to the killers, Wally and his wife Joanne were out bowling and had left their two small children Lisa, 11, and Robert, 9, with babysitter Debbie Earl.
Debbie lived just down the street and brought her 15-year-old brother Ricky along for the babysitting job. When Steelman and Gretzler knocked on the door, Debbie answered and told them that Wally wasn’t home. The two men left, but there was something about the interaction that unnerved Debbie, who called her father Richard Earl. He agreed to go check it out and told his wife Wanda if he wasn’t back in a few minutes she should call the sheriff’s office.
Gretzler and Steelman returned to the house and pulled out a gun, taking Debbie, Ricky and the children hostage.
“A little bit later the headlights pull up to the drive, it’s my uncle Richard,” Jack Earl recalled in the documentary of his family’s tragic fate. “He walks in and Willie puts a gun at the back of my uncle’s head and he said, ‘I told my wife if I’m not back in a couple of minutes, call the sheriff.’ Willie didn’t blink. Willie said ‘Well, go get her’.”
Together, Steelman and Richard went to collect Wanda and brought her back to the house. Debbie’s fiancé Mark Lang also arrived and they all waited for Wally and Joanne’s return. When the couple got home, they were surprised to find the killers and a room full of hostages. Steelman took Wally to the market, where they grabbed some cash, while Gretzler continued to hold the others at gunpoint.
“While Willie and Wally were gone Doug is now in charge and Doug is tying everybody up while trying to hold a gun on them,” Jack explained. “I can’t imagine the scene, but they submit.”
When Steelman and Richard returned with the money, the gunman moved all the adults into the closet, then ordered the two young children onto the bed and told them, according to Gretzler, to “go to sleep.”
“Finally Willie said, ‘Well, we can’t have these people here,’” Gretzler explained. “‘They’re witnesses. They all know me.’”
Steelman ordered him to shoot the children first and then the two systematically killed the others.
Gretzler would later admit to Greenberg, “I am responsible and I know that.”
What Happened to Willie Steelman and Douglas Gretzler?
After the killings, Steelman and Gretzler headed to the Clunie Hotel in downtown Sacramento. By then, the FBI had a warrant for their arrest in the Arizona murders and the hotel clerk recognized the wanted men and called authorities.
Gretzler was taken into custody at the hotel and later gave up Steelman’s location at his girlfriend’s home.
The two men were convicted and sentenced to life for the killings in California. However, they were placed on death row in Arizona for the murders there.
Steelman died behind bars of liver failure, while Gretzler was executed in 1998.
