NE Valley Times

On July 29, 1994, a fatal traffic collision occurred in the north area of Scottsdale. The victim, Angela Maher, was a 21-year-old woman who was home from college visiting her mother for her birthday. On the evening of her death, she was on her way to Old Town to pick up a friend who had called for a ride home from a local nightclub because they had been drinking. Ironically, while attending Xavier College Preparatory High School, Maher founded a chapter of Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD).

Through the course of the investigation, the suspect driver was identified as Gloria Schulze, who was a 31-year-old Scottsdale resident. The investigation revealed Schulze had been drinking and smoking marijuana on the night of the collision. She was charged with manslaughter and three counts of endangerment but fled Arizona before the case went to trial. Schulze's family claimed they had severed ties with her once she left. No one knew where she had gone.

On May 3, 2001, Schulze was tried in absentia and convicted on all four counts. Scottsdale PD's Vehicular Crimes Reconstruction Unit initially worked the case and attempted to locate Schulze. In 2014, the case was reassigned to a Criminal Investigations Unit detective who worked it until his retirement in 2020 when it was reassigned to Sr. Analyst Cohen.

Sr. Analyst Cohen continued the investigation and spoke to Schulze's brother who had received an anonymous phone call that she had passed away from cancer in Yellowknife, Canada. Cohen utilized open-source searches on the internet using keywords such as “Yellowknife, Canada.” Through these searches, he located an article about a tribute celebration for a woman named Kate Dooley who passed away from cancer on December 1, 2019. The article contained a photo of Kate Dooley which resembled an age-progressed photo of Gloria Schultz.

Cohen contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and learned that Kate Dooley had been arrested in Yellowknife in 2009 for DUI. Due to this arrest, Canada still had Dooley’s fingerprints on file but purged her booking photo and driver's license information due to her death.

Cohen then worked with the Scottsdale Crime Lab to send fingerprints to Canada for confirmation of identity through INTERPOL via FBI coordination. On April 17, 2024, Cohen received confirmation that fingerprints matched those of Gloria Schultz confirming that Kate Dooley was indeed Gloria Schultz and she died on December 1, 2019.

With this confirmation of identity established by INTERPOL and RCMP cooperation through fingerprint analysis conducted by Sr Analyst Cohen's team alongside FBI involvement; this long-standing case spanning three decades is now officially closed.