She was one of the most glamorous convicted murderers the world had ever seen.
Blonde, attractive, a former Playboy bunny and the height of a runway model at 5’10 – Lawrencia ‘Bambi’ Bembenek commanded every room she walked into with her good looks.
And so when Lawrencia, known more commonly as Laurie, was arrested and put on the stand for fatally shooting her police detective husband’s ex-wife, she became the centre of a media circus that soon led to her getting interviewed on Oprah.
On 28 May 1981, at 2am in the morning, Christine Schultz and her two young sons were sleeping when someone broke into their house on Ramsey Avenue in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
She was tied up, shot in the back and left to die face down in her own bed as her terrified children heard their mother’s last words: ‘Please don’t do that!’
Laurie – who died from liver failure in 2010 – was arrested almost a month after the brutal killing and was later found guilty by a jury, receiving a life sentence at just 23 years old. She was sent to Taycheedah Women’s Prison in Fond du La – from where she later ran away with her lover in a cinematic-like prison escape.
Her gripping story was told on the Apple podcast ‘Run, Bambi, Run‘, with American journalist and host Vanessa Grigoridadis. She interviewed people who knew Laurie and experts who were familiar with the case, along with using snippets from the real trial in the 80s.
But did she kill Christine Schultz? Laurie’s case is still leaving people divided 40 years on because of a barrage of conflicting evidence.
Blonde, attractive, a former Playboy bunny and the height of a runway model at 5’10 – Lawrencia ‘Bambi’ Bembenek commanded every room she walked into with her good looks. Pictured while working as a security guard in 2981
Laurie became a Playboy Bunny waitress at Lake Geneva Playboy Club after getting fired from the police force. Pictured: American actress Tatum O’Neal playing Laurie in the film Woman on Trial: The Lawrencia Bembenek Story
Growing up in a Polish-American neighbourhood of Milwuakee, Wisconsin, Laurie was the perfect Catholic girl.
She got straight As at school and practised playing the flute every evening. She dreamed of going to University but her parents did not want to fund her.
So she found work as a model and took classes in fashion merchandising from a trade school before signing up to the police force, following in her father’s footsteps.
She had seen a newspaper advert that the department was encouraging women and minorities to apply for roles.
But when Laurie stepped into the station enquiring about the advert in March 1980, she was told by a policeman: ‘A pretty little thing like you wants to be a big bad policeman?’.
Undeterred by the sexism of the police in the eighties, Laurie soldiered on and joined up, eventually earning her nickname Bambi by another cop during training.
Kris Radish, Laurie’s biographer and friend, told the podcast: ‘Somebody looked at her and said: “Oh look at her. Her eyes are as big as deer. I’m going to call her Bambi”. Oh she absolutely hated the nickname. Just absolutely hated it.’
After passing her exams, Laurie started becoming more and more friendly with local journalists and would often tell stories about the ‘dark side’ of the Milwaukee Police Department to them.
On 28 May 1981, at 2am in the morning, Christine Schultz was tied up, shot in the back and left to die face down in her own bed. Many doubt Laurie was the one who killed her
Bambi Bembenek story was made into a TV film. Laurie was played by Lindsay Frost
She told journalist Timothy Maier everything she saw during her time as a cop and claimed she witnessed officers selling porn from the car trunks, seeing their girlfriends while their wives thought they were at work, sleeping in their cars while on the night shift and even said some used unnecessary force on suspects in handcuffs.
This made her, one of only 11 women on the force, unpopular with many officers.
But she did befriend her colleague Judy Zess – a friendship that ultimately led to her downfall on the force.
Judy – who passed away in 2018 – was said to have lit up a cannabis joint at the gig while Laurie went to the bathroom.
When she came back, her co-worker was arrested by a plainclothes officer.
Judy told them Laurie, who was still a trainee, was involved, which led to her being fired. Police told her that simply being in front of someone who was doing drugs was a sackable offence.
Frustrated and angry, she felt as though she had been unfairly dismissed by the PD.
After being fired, Laurie discovered several photos of veteran police officers – including Elfred O. Schultz (her future husband), dancing nude on picnic tables.
She then filed a complaint about it with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, arguing female officers were let go for minor issues, while male officers were kept on despite serious infractions.
After her complaint became well known, Laurie started to received threats.
She received a note saying ‘Bembenek, we’re going to get you’.
She even found a dead rat under the windshield wiper on her car.
Laurie is seen aged just 23 years old speaking on the stand for the murder trial in 1982
What followed was – what Laurie claims – a frame job by the police department – when Laurie was arrested – and found guilty – of murder.
Immediately after being let go from the police – and in need of money – Laurie applied to become a Playboy waitress at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club.
Kris said: ‘Laurie knew the power she had in her beauty.
‘She knew the power she had in her intellect and the power she had to combine those two things.’
Clad in the well-known bunny ears, bunny tail and a leotard, Laurie was taught to smile and serve drinks to customers, using her good looks to gather as many tips as possible.
It was in the restaurant, where Laurie first met Detective Fred Schultz – a veteran police officer who she went on to marry.
Kris described Laurie as ‘one of those kinds of women who has to have a boyfriend’, and said that Fred – who did not want to be interviewed for the podcast – was ‘confident’, ‘strong’ and ‘just the kind of man that Laurie seemed attracted to’.
The pair started to go on jogs together, he bought her bouquets of roses and it wasn’t long before they wanted to move in together – however, they needed a roommate to afford the rent, so they asked Judy Zess.
Fred – who had recently divorced Christine Schultz – popped the question. He and Laurie ran off to Illinois without telling any of their friends and family and got hitched.
Four months after Bembenek and Schultz married in January 1981, Laurie was arrested for Christine’s murder.
‘I was a Milwaukee police officer and well there were several things that were going on at the time,’ Laurie told Larry King’s talk show at the time.
‘I was going to be a federal witness against the chief of police. I had a sex discrimination claim against the police department.
He asked her: ‘So you think they were out to get you?’ Laurie responded: ‘Well it certainly did look that way.’
Laurie and her lawyer, Donald S. Eisenberg, prepared to face the jury at the start of her trial on 22 February 1982 and it was the first gavel-to-gavel televised trial in Wisconsin history
Even now, people are still debating if Laurie was involved in Christine’s death – or if she was framed.
At 2am on 28 May 1981, Christine, Sean and Shannon were sleeping soundly when somebody broke into their house.
Fred and Christine’s eldest son Sean woke up to the noise. He was then tied up, before managing to break free from the restraints.
Kris told the podcast: ‘The terrified boys hung there for a few minutes.
‘They didn’t know what to do. The next thing they heard was their mother screaming “‘Please don’t do that!” And then something that sounded like a firecracker to them went off.’
After entering Christine’s room, they found her lying face down on the bed with a gunshot wound in her back.
The murderer had wrapped a cord around her left hand, put a gag over her mouth and a scarf put around her head.
Sean tried to stop the bleeding before he ran to the phone and called Stu Honeck, who was Christine’s boyfriend at the time.
He was also a police officer and was one of Fred’s good friends. Stu then called the police and reported Christine’s murder.
According to Kris Radish, Laurie’s biographer and friend, Laurie got the nickname ‘Bambi’ during her police training, when someone pointed out her eyes were big like the cartoon deer
Fred was working the evening his ex-wife was killed.
When he found out the news, he rang Laurie, who was home alone that night.
She was due to go out drinking with her friend but they cancelled on her. ‘It was the one night she should’ve got out drinking,’ Kris said.
Fred rang Laurie at 2.45am to inform her of the tragic news.
‘I was really sleepy and I thought for a second that he was joking because I mean cops do joke about everything,’ Laurie said at the time.
Laurie called her friend Joanne who told the podcast: ‘It was the middle of the night and I was dead asleep.
‘I answered the phone. The phone was next to my bed.
‘She was crying and she goes “Get up, wake up”.
‘She said “Christine’s been shot. Christine’s been killed” I said “What the hell are you talking about?”
Fred and his partner for the shift, Michael Durfee, then drove to Laurie’s house.
He asked Michael – who did not want to be interviewed for the podcast – to check the hood of Laurie’s car to see if the vehicle had been driven that evening, but it was cold, indicating she hadn’t used it to travel anywhere.
Fred then gave his off-duty gun to Michael so he could examine whether or not it had been fired that night. He said it hadn’t as it was dusty and there was no carbon residue on it.
But when Michael handed the gun back to Fred, he never wrote down the serial numbers and when the MPD asked him for his notebook that night, Michael said he no longer had it on it, later claiming he was not obliged to keep it.
Eager to solve the case, the MPD wanted all suspects to take a lie detector test, but Laurie refused to, which furthered their suspicions.
After finding blonde hairs at the crime scene, the police department sent Detective Jim Gauger to Laurie’s house to question her.
In the hopes of finding the murder weapon, he decided to send Fred’s off-duty gun to the lab for ballistics testing.
Despite Michael saying the weapon hadn’t been shot that evening, Monty Lutz, head of ballistics for MPD , said it had been fired and that he believed it was the murder weapon.
Laurie was arrested on 24 June 1981.
‘There were two police officers and they said you’re under arrest. It was like a punch to the stomach, it was so unexpected. It was nightmareish,’ she said.
The MPD took her headshots and told her that she was being charged with first-degree murder. She was in prison for three days and three nights before her Aunt Mary was able to pay the $10,000 bail.
Laurie then decided to give an interview about her experience to Georgia Pabst, a journalist at Milwaukee Journal.
Georgia said: ‘She said she felt the arrest might’ve been retaliation for her sex discrimination suit.
‘She described herself as a feminist who was interested in bettering the lives of women and curbing violence against women.
‘She said: “I could never do that to another woman”. She also complained about the coverage.
‘She said that Christine had even visited her and Schultz in their apartment once or twice and that there had been no animosity between them.
‘She said “In fact, she brought over a blender for us to use one time”.’
Laurie and her lawyer, Donald S. Eisenberg, prepared to face the jury at the start of her trial on 22 February 1982 and it was the first gavel-to-gavel televised trial in Wisconsin history.
The prosecution painted Laurie out to be someone who was after Christine’s house and claimed that she wanted to scare her into moving back to Appleton.
They said that Laurie may not have had plans to kill Christine, but panicked and shot her.
But Sean, Christine’s 11-year-old son who was called to the stand as a witness, said Laurie could not be the killer. He was certain that a man murdered his mother.
‘Even if it would have been Laurie, it couldn’t have been because even if she would have been wearing shoulder pads, it was the same width all the way down,’ he told the court.
The prosecution then argued that Laurie may have been in disguise that evening and therefore could have passed as a man. However, Laurie was 5ft 10in and Sean said the murderer was around 5ft 8in to 5ft 9in.
Sean and Shannon had different descriptions of what the killer was wearing that fateful evening. One said they were wearing a green jogging suit and the other said they were in an army jacket.
A store clerk also alleged that Laurie had stolen clothes from her store and said one of the pieces she had taken was a green jogging suit.
The MPD said they found fibres at the scene synonymous with a wig, so the prosecution brought a woman to the stand who owned a wig store.
She claimed Laurie had bought a wig in the same colour and shape as the killer’s wig.
Laurie had previously purchased a wig when she was serving as a police officer as they were required to have short hair, but the wig she bought was blonde, not brown like the killer’s wig.
Kris said the woman who owned the wig store was adamant that it was Laurie because she said she recognised her name on the cheque. However, it was later discovered that Laurie didn’t have a checking account.
Laurie applied to be a political refugee so that she could stay in Canada after fleeing prison, but she was refused and sent back to Taycheedah women’s prison in 1991
Surprisingly, Laurie’s friend, ex-housemate and former colleague Judy Zess was also brought in by the prosecution.
Judy said: ‘[Laurie] had four jogging suits actually, red, blue, brown and green.’
She also said that the wig was Laurie’s and that she even knew where Laurie had stashed it in the apartment after the murder.
Judy said she had flushed it down the toilet in their old apartment and that a plumber had found it in the pipes.
She said: ‘My mum invited Laurie and Fred over to our house to say congrats for their marriage.
‘And at the dinner, Laurie was acting really weird. She said she wanted to live in the Ramsey Avenue house because Fred was paying for it. She also thought the alimony Fred was paying Christine was too much, like 700 bucks a month. Laurie said ‘It would pay to have Chris dusted. Blown away’.’
On 9 March 1982, the jury reached a verdict and found Laurie guilty of first degree murder and she was sentenced to life in prison at just 23 years old.
Speaking about the moment she was taken away to be locked up, Laurie said: ‘I mean my back was to the camera, but the sheriffs who took me up in the elevator could be my witnesses.
The ex-cop was held at Metro West Detention Centre for a year after escaping prison in 1990
‘I was sobbing so hard. I could barely breathe. It’s like a defence mechanism.
‘You can’t even bring yourself to believe that you just got a life sentence. You’re not going anywhere. You’re convicted, that’s it, that’s all.’
Fred said at the time: ‘We attempted to prepare ourselves for everything, but I was of course, very, very shocked by what had happened.’
Laurie was sent to Taycheedah Women’s Prison after being convicted and described herself as being ‘depressed, scared and freaked out,’ in old letters she had sent to Kris, who also claimed she contemplated suicide.
She also wrote to her lawyer Eisenberg: ‘Oh my God, am I going to die in here?’
After her trial was televised and covered extensively by the media, Laurie received a lot of mail from people who were following her case – but she also got a note from Fred, who wrote that he was breaking up with her. He also left the police department.
While in prison, Judy sent her a cryptic letter which said she was ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’, while a neighbour of Laurie and Judy’s put in an affidavit that Judy had planted the wig in the pipes.
One year after the trial took place, Judy sat down with Laurie’s lawyer Eisenberg and recanted most of the testimony she gave in court. It was also alleged that she was sleeping with the lead detective on the case at the time.
Laurie and Dominic’s prison escape was going well until a tourist from California recognised her
In 1984, Judy made another damning statement, which Vanity Fair reported in 1991.
She wrote: ‘The police know I know a lot more about this case and they’re afraid, you know, if I let any of this cover-up, which, you know, I’m sure by now you figured that someone else has been involved in this….
‘You guys would just s*** if you knew who did it. I mean, the Police Department did a fantastic cover-up on you. You guys are sitting right on top of it and don’t even know it.
‘I know who killed Christine Schultz, but I ain’t mentioning nothing.’
The magazine also reported that after the murder, Fred Schultz went into a meeting with an inspectors’ conference room, where several superiors were waiting for him.
No minutes were taken and no police report was filed.
One veteran Milwaukee detective who knew Fred spoke on the condition of anonymity to the outlet and said: ‘There are a lot of cops throughout the department who feel that that meeting was where Bambi’s fate was sealed.
‘They needed a fall guy – don’t ask me why – and that fall guy was Bambi.’
Dean Strang, an attorney who was interviewed on the podcast, said Fred should’ve never been allowed onto the crime scene because Christine’s murder hit too close to home for him.
Dean also thought it was strange how the medical examiner was not called until an hour and a half after the death was reported.
Laurie is pictured here in 1991, a year after she escaped Taycheedah Women’s Prison
The medical examiner who dealt with Chrisine’s murder, Elaine Samuels, accused the MPD of placing the blonde hairs at the crime scene.
She said at the time: ‘I found no blonde hairs. The blonde hairs have to have been planted by the police. Nobody else could’ve planted them.’
Laurie also argued that if she did kill Christine, she would’ve concealed the weapon better, rather than placing it at home for the police to find.
She said: ‘I was a cop, of course. You’d throw it in the middle of Lake Michigan, you’d do anything but to use your husband’s gun and bring it home. Why don’t you put up a neon sign? I mean that’s crazy.’
Before the murder took place, Fred’s father said he got a series of strange, aggressive calls from an unidentified male who said: ‘You f***ing son of a b****. I am going to get even with you.’
His father believed the threats may have been aimed at his son and the man had called the wrong number.
In the final call, the stranger said: ‘I live in Pewaukee.’ Police were informed and put a trace on the number but he never called again.
There was a wave of Bambi fans who thought she was innocent and they had car bumper stickers, t-shirts and coffee mugs printed off with the slogan: ‘Run, Bambi, Run!’ Others held rallies and she was even mentioned in a song.
Another interesting figure that was discussed on the podcast was Fred Horenberger, a convicted criminal who was believed to be sleeping with Judy at the time.
Horenberger – who was thought to have been an acquaintance of Fred Schultz – robbed Judy after Christine’s murder.
It is said Horenberger and his team used disguises, including wigs and threatened Judy with a snub nosed 38 gun – the same type that was used to threaten Christine.
However, after he got out of jail for robbing Judy in 1991, Horenberger shot himself.
It was said that before he died, he said: ‘I had nothing to do with the murder.’
Laurie herself said that Schultz had hired Horenberger to kill Christine and then framed her.
Laurie had appealed her conviction three times, citing that the MPD made errors when handling key evidence – but they were all unsuccessful.
But now single, Laurie managed to find love again from behind bars.
She met Dominic Gugliatto, her cellmate’s sister, in the visiting room.
The pair started sharing steamy letters and were engaged within six months.
He saw how upset Laurie was about the rejected appeals and decided to help her break out of Taycheedah Women’s Prison.
‘I was so desperate that even one night of freedom was worth it. Even one night.’
Laurie is seen posing by a window in her parents’ house where she stayed after her murder conviction was reduced
Dominic managed to get fake birth certificates so that they could run away to Canada and claim they had forgotten their passports.
Their new names were Jennifer Vogel and Anthony Gazzana.
Laurie was able to escape the prison by climbing out of a window in the laundry room and scaling the fence, where Dominic was waiting for her on the other side in a getaway car.
Laurie and Dominic moved to Thunder Bay in Ontario in 1990 and rented an apartment for 500 Canadian dollars a month and even got a cat and called her Laurie, as an ode to her past life.
She got a part-time job teaching aerobics and was also a waiter, all while the police back in the US were trying to track the escaped convict.
Everything was going smoothly for the couple – up until a tourist from California visited Laurie’s restaurant.
He later went home and watched America’s Most Wanted, where Laurie’s face popped up on the screen. He called the police in Canada and it wasn’t long before an inspector went to Laurie’s work to question who she was.
But she denied knowing who Laurie was or anything about the criminal case.
Dominic then picked her up before the pair rushed home to pack up their stuff and run.
However, a Canadian Mountie showed up with reinforcements to arrest them both.
During this time, Laurie had started becoming somewhat of a celebrity in the US via her nickname, Bambi.
There was a wave of Bambi fans who thought she was innocent and they had car bumper stickers, T-shirts and coffee mugs printed off with the slogan: ‘Run, Bambi, Run!’ Others held rallies and she was even mentioned in a song.
Laurie ‘Bambi’ Bembenek is pictured with actress Tatum O’Neal in 1993 as she played her in a film
This was happening all while Laurie was being held in a Canadian detention centre, refusing to go back to the US – despite Wisconsin pressing for an extradition.
Kris described seeing her at the time and said: ‘She looked like a shadow of the woman I had seen.
‘I remember leaving and I can’t break down when I’m in front of her but I remember going outside and I just cried for a while. I was like “Oh God, is she even going to live through this?”‘
Laurie applied to be a political refugee so that she could stay in Canada, but she was refused and was sent back to Taycheedah women’s prison in 1991.
She and Dominic later broke things off.
A year later, he was then offered a deal. She would be sentenced to time served if she pleaded no contest to second-degree murder.
No contest means that Laurie was not admitting she was guilty but she was choosing to accept the legal consequences.
A judge at the time said that ‘significant mistakes’ had been made in the investigations of Christine Schultz’s death and Bembenek struck a deal to receive 10 years of probation.
Laurie accepted the plea and was released three hours after the hearing in 1992, ten years after being locked up for the murder. She says that she agreed to the plea because she wanted to spend time with her parents before they died.
When Laurie was released from prison, she continued to live in Milwaukee in a high rise building and even dated a member of the city council – despite her new lawyer, Sheldon Zenner, advising that she move out of the area.
She became a local celebrity who was recognised on a daily basis and even had one person ask for a signed autograph when she was out in public.
Laurie maintained a good relationship with journalists and was invited to speak about her experience on Oprah in the 90s.
However, four years after being freed, Laurie was arrested for cocaine and cannabis possession on a routine parole visit in 1996, but nothing came of the charges.
She then decided to move to Vancouver, Washington – but nobody would hire her because she had a second-degree murder conviction.
There, she met her second husband Marty Carson.
Laurie eventually got a job helping women at risk but she still wanted to prove her innocence.
In 2001, there was a new law in Wisconsin where convicts who claimed they were innocent could apply for DNA testing.
She wanted a company in Tennessee to do the testing as she didn’t trust the Milwaukee lab, but to raise this money, she did TV appearances again.
Phil McGraw, known for his TV show, Dr Phil, said he would donate $20,000 to DNA testing if she opened the results on his show.
In 2002, he put her up in an apartment but to keep the results a secret, his team took away her means of contact to the outside world.
Laurie freaked out and attempted to escape by jumping out the window but she fell onto the concrete, cracking two major bones and severing an artery in her right foot, which later led to her leg being amputated for knee down.
She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and heavily relied on alcohol to cope.
She got a settlement and disability payments, which is what she lived off for the rest of her life until she passed away from liver failure in 2010, aged 52.
Laurie’s and Hornberger’s DNA were not found at the scene of the crime – but it did not exonerate her completely, as it could have meant that the DNA just hadn’t been picked up.
In the years after she passed away, Laurie’s family have continued to try and clear her name by applying for a pardon, which is has been unsuccessful so far.
