This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A Florida man confessed Wednesday to raping and murdering a 16-year-old Salt Lake City girl in December 1977, police say.
An arrest warrant filed in 3rd District Court accuses 59-year-old Patrick Michael McCabe, of Bell, Fla., of breaking into Sharon Schollmeyer's apartment and killing her.
Jeffrey Hall, a chief deputy in the Salt Lake County district attorney's office, said Thursday he anticipates formal charges will be filed Friday. Schollmeyer's body was found Dec. 5, 1977, by her mother, the warrant said, who had been let into the apartment by McCabe, the then-20-year-old building manager at 125 E. 1st Avenue.
She discovered her daughter naked, blindfolded and gagged in her bathtub in 6 inches of water, according to the warrant. An autopsy performed the next day determined the teen's cause of death to be strangulation and suffocation, and classified her death as a homicide.
Police submitted the halter top with which Schollmeyer had been gagged for DNA testing in 2013, which yielded a single male profile, the warrant states. In December 2016, the profile was matched to McCabe, who had been convicted of a sexual offense against a minor in 1999, the warrant said.
On Feb. 13, 2017, McCabe told police that he and a companion had left the state of Utah in February 1978 and he had never returned, the warrant said. On Wednesday, McCabe admitted to entering Shollmeyer's apartment, where he raped and strangled her, the warrant said.
Also Wednesday, McCabe was booked into the Gilchrist County Jail, in Florida, where he was awaiting extradition to Utah. His bail is set for $2 million cash-only.
Schollmeyer lived alone at the Salt Lake City apartment, as an emancipated teen, who worked as a waitress to support herself, the warrant said. The day before she was killed, she had been shopping with her mother, who told police the teen had been behaving "normally" and did not express any fear about her safety. But Schollmeyer told her mother during the visit she wanted to move from the apartment building because she had been burglarized a few weeks prior, the warrant says.
Schollmeyer was known as an "extremely dependable" employee, the warrant said, and the day her body was found, her employer contacted her mother when she didn't show up for work.
Her mother went to the apartment and, after finding the door locked, asked McCabe to use his key to open the dead bolt, the warrant said. Both went inside and McCabe waited in the living room while Schollmeyer's mother found her daughter in the bathtub. McCabe then returned to his own apartment and called police, the warrant said.
Police found open windows in Shollmeyer's bedroom and living room, and below the bedroom window was a fire escape, the warrant said. The bottom end of the fire escape ladder was 10 to 12 feet above the ground, according to the warrant, and there was no sign of forced entry.
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