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The 1980 killing of 34-year-old Richard Wheeler was carried out by German national Peter Marschner on the order of Bucks County methamphetamine dealer Leslie Schmidt, claimed District Attorney Matthew Weintraub in a release on Friday, March 31.
Both suspects have since died — Marschner in 2006 and Schmidt in 2022, according to Weintraub's office — but prosecutors and state police investigators say they have uncovered evidence that officially closes the case.
According to authorities, Peter Marschner was a known yacht thief and criminal in the Caribbean islands in the 1970s. "The captain," investigators say, did a two-year prison stint beginning in 1974 for stealing a 41-foot sailboat from Martinique.
Somehow avoiding deportation to his native Germany, Marschner was released and found work as a crew member on a private yacht, the release says. One night in February, 1977, when the boat's owners were ashore in Saint Lucia, Marschner commandeered the yacht and made off, police wrote.
He managed to steal another sailboat from a port in the US Virgin Islands before his arrest that May, the DA's office continues. Marschner pleaded guilty to grand larceny in a US court and was sentenced to serve his time at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, authorities said.
There, Weintraub's office wrote, Marschner "met Wheeler, a marijuana dealer who escaped a California prison, and Schmidt, a Bucks County methamphetamine dealer."
From prison, the trio cooked up a plan for a meth operation in Bucks, the release goes on. Wheeler, the first of the three to be released, was instructed to buy land in Nockamixon from a friend of Schmidt to be used as the site of the meth lab, authorities wrote.
Wheeler was also given $250,000 to keep Schmidt's family afloat while he was still in prison, investigators believe.
The next summer, in July 1980, "Captain" Marschner was released from Danbury. He was escorted to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City by immigration officials for deportation, but his flight was delayed, and he was able to slip away from guards "during the confusion," officials said.
Marschner made his way to the Nockamixon property, where Wheeler was living in a camper and working on setting up the meth lab, authorities continued. For a while, the "Captain" served as Wheeler's bodyguard and driver while Schmidt continued to fund the venture from inside federal prison, they added.
But at some point, Schmidt and Wheeler had a falling out, the DA's office writes. Schmidt began to suspect that Wheeler was using the $250,000 family nest egg for his own purposes, and ordered the "Captain" to take action, investigators believe.
Wheeler, who was 34 at the time, was found dead of four gunshot wounds, police said. Detectives suspect he was killed by Marschner sometime in September 1980.
After commandeering his alleged victim's pickup truck and charting a course for New Jersey, "the Captain" disappeared, the release says. Investigators would later speak to witnesses who claimed Schmidt got a "German guy to pull the trigger," but Peter Marschner's trail had gone cold, officials wrote.
The next break in the case would not come until early this year, when detectives found that Marschner had been living under a pseudonym. His finger print samples recorded during his 1977 case were a perfect match for "Charles McLaren," who was arrested in New York on drug charges in 1982, police said.
Further investigation revealed that Marschner had created a full life for himself as "McLaren," raising a family in New Jersey and running a successful limousine business in New York City until he died in 2006.
"The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office considers this case solved due to the deaths of all the participants in the murder," officials said. "Additionally, this office has consulted with the victim’s family, and they are grateful that this crime is now solved."
County Detective David Hanks, Deputy District Attorney Megan A. Hunsicker, and State Trooper Christopher Cleveland investigated the case, the release added.
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