Court papers from Pima County Superior Court show that Christopher Scholtes, 38, wanted to be authorised to go to Hawaii with his wife and t...
Court papers from Pima County Superior Court show that Christopher Scholtes, 38, wanted to be authorised to go to Hawaii with his wife and two daughters from May 1 to May 9.
Judge Kimberly Ortiz consented to hear arguments on the case in an order filed on April 3. After a hearing on April 15, she finally decided to approve Scholtes' motion.
According to an initial complaint seen by PEOPLE, the trip happened ten months after Scholtes' two-year-old daughter died because Scholtes allegedly left her alone in his car as he played video games.
The accusation states that his wife found the toddler three hours later, when she got home and found the toddler passed out in the car.
The lawsuit says that the temperature inside the car at that time was 109 degrees.
Scholtes is said to have informed Marana police detectives that he left his daughter in the car with the air conditioning on while he conducted errands that day because she was asleep in her car seat.
The lawsuit says that Scholtes informed officers he knew that his car motor would turn off after 30 minutes.
During interviews, Scholtes's two surviving daughters, who were 6 and 9 at the time, also said that their father had left them alone in the car for long lengths of time before.
The complaint says that Scholtes and his wife had a text conversation in which she allegedly said, "I told you to stop leaving them in the car. How many times have I told you?"
The Pima County Attorney's Office charged Scholtes with first-degree murder and wilful child abuse after looking at the case's evidence.
At his arraignment, he pleaded not guilty to both charges. Court records show that in March, Scholtes turned down a proposal from prosecutors that would have dropped the charge to second-degree murder if he agreed to plead guilty.
Just days after turning down the plea agreement, Scholtes asked the court for permission to go to Maui with his wife and surviving children from May 1 to May 9.
Judge Ortiz stated in her ruling allowing the request that Scholtes would still have to follow all the rules of his parole. She also highlighted that he must be in touch with pretrial services while he is away and not have any unsupervised contact with children, including his own.
Then, prosecutors asked the court to make Scholtes give up his passport before he made the almost 3,000-mile trip to Hawaii, but Ortiz turned down that request, according to court papers.
KOLD was the first to say that the court had agreed to Scholtes' request to go to Hawaii with his family.
His murder trial was supposed to commence in September, but it has been moved back to October 27.
If Scholtes is found guilty, he might spend the rest of his life in prison.
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