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Where is Dale Scheanette now? Details about the bathtub killer

TheoJune 8, 2024

Dale Schneatte never showed the slightest remorse for his actions. Some believe he deserved his punishment.

If you need support, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or visit RAINN.org to chat personally with a support specialist online at any time.

Content warning: This article contains mentions of sexual assault and murder.

According to the Arlington, Texas visitor website, the city, located between Dallas and Fort Worth, has something for everyone. In the 1930s and 1940s, it was a popular destination for gamblers, surpassing even Las Vegas in that regard. If you’re a fan of the kind of nachos you can buy at a baseball game, you have Arlington Stadium to thank for its creation. And people who are obsessed with dinosaurs should definitely take a trip to the Arlington Archosaur Site to find all the fossils.

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Unfortunately, Arlington has its share of tragedies. In the mid-1990s, citizens were held hostage by a serial rapist who eventually worked his way up to become a murderer. He was later dubbed the “Bathtub Killer,” although not everyone he targeted died at his hands. Where is Dale Scheanette now?

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Dale Scheanette is now in a place where he can’t hurt anyone.

On February 10, 2009, it was reported that Scheanette was executed and pronounced dead at 6:21 p.m. When asked if he had any final words, Scheanette said, “My only statement is that no case ever tried was without error. Those are my words. No case is without error.” It sounds like he refused to accept responsibility for his actions until the end. Scheanette was responsible for the deaths of two women. Six of her family members witnessed the execution.

Former Tarrant County District Attorney Greg Miller prosecuted Scheanette in 2003. He told the newspaper, “I’ve been doing this for 35, 36 years. I’ve had others behind me who have killed and done bad things. But he’s at the top of the list.” While in prison, Scheanette represented himself and filed numerous appeals to federal appeals courts. These, as well as the pardon, were denied.

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What did Dale Scheanette do?

Between September and December 1996, according to the Clark County District Attorney’s Office, the bodies of two women were found in their homes. Both were bound with duct tape and lying face down in their bathtubs. Both had been sexually assaulted and both died of strangulation. To add to these already harrowing crimes, they lived in the same apartment building and were killed just feet away from each other.

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Christine Vu, 26, and Wendie Prescott, 22, did not know each other, but now they were connected in unimaginable ways. Vu taught third grade at Moore Elementary and although her life was tragically cut short, her sister WFAA that Vu’s lifelong dream had been to become a teacher. Prescott was murdered on Christmas Eve and, like Vu, worked as a substitute teacher at another elementary school. She had just enrolled in a cosmetology school.

Evidence was left at both crime scenes. In Vu’s apartment, police found a fingerprint and collected DNA samples. In Prescott’s bathroom, police officers were able to find more evidence, including a “high-quality fingerprint from a television stand” and semen samples. Unfortunately, no matches were found in any databases. Four years passed before an arrest was made.

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In the summer of 2000, police expanded their search by submitting the fingerprint from Prescott’s television stand to an FBI database. It was a hit, and the fingerprint belonged to Schneatte, who had been in their system for less than a year. After his arrest, police were able to obtain a saliva sample from Scheanette that matched the semen sample that had been kept as evidence for nearly five years. It was a hit.

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It later emerged that Scheanette was also responsible for the sexual assaults of four other women in their homes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area from September 1998 to October 1999, according to the Clark County District Attorney’s Office. One of these women was Adrienne Fields, who KVUE in February 2015.

It happened on October 26, 1999, in Fields’ apartment in Grand Prairie, Texas. She woke up at 3:00 a.m. to find Scheanette in her bedroom with a nylon stocking over her face and a gun pointed at her. She remembered him saying, “The devil keeps making me do this.” He also said, “You’re not like the others.” That’s when she realized this wasn’t the first time he had raped a woman. It lasted two hours, and for reasons she may never know, Scheanette left after he was finished. He was executed on her birthday.