Tom Cruise Extortionist Dead
In the beginning, there was Bill Clinton. In the end, there was Tom Cruise.
David Hans Schmidt, a notorious peddler of celebrity and skin, who launched his career by helping broker a deal between Playboy and reputed Clinton mistress Gennifer Flowers, and looked to have lost it over a series of wedding-day photos of Cruise and wife Katie Holmes, was found dead Friday in the Phoenix home where he was under house arrest for his alleged role in the Cruise case.
Police termed Schmidt’s death an apparent suicide; the man’s twin, Doug Schmidt, told the Arizona Republic that his brother hanged himself.
Schmidt was 47, and facing up to two years in prison after agreeing to plead guilty to a charge he tried to extort as much as $1.3 million from Cruise. He was due in federal court in Los Angeles on Oct. 11.
New York Daily News gossip columnist George Rush, who talked to Schmidt frequently in recent weeks, told his paper that Schmidt had been demoralized by his possible upcoming prison stint, and confessed to having put a belt around his neck in the shower in a would-be suicide attempt.
“He loved doing these deals. When he had something in the works, he was pumped up. Full of energy. But he couldn’t do it anymore,” Rush said. “He was afraid the prosecutors would use it as evidence that he was unrepentant.”
