ST. LOUIS – A man who admitted in court that he’s a killer received an unusual plea deal Thursday. Moments after Darin Schmidt, now 37, admitted his crime, he learned he’ll soon be eligible for parole.
Three witnesses took the stand in Schmidt’s 2019 St. Louis murder trial, all testifying that defendant Schmidt admitted to them that he shot and killed music promoter David Bewig Jr. A jury returned a guilty verdict that an appeals court later overturned on a technicality. The three witnesses then failed to continue cooperating.
In a cruel twist for the Bewig family, this was the first day in five years that the defendant took accountability, in court, for shooting and killing their loved one.
“He admitted to it, and he gets a deal,” David Bewig Sr. said.
Bewig Jr. was shot and killed while sitting in his car in north St. Louis in 2016.
“He wouldn’t take the stand in the first trial,” Bewig Sr. said.
A unanimous jury convicted Schmidt of first-degree murder in 2019 and a judge sentenced him to life. The Missouri Court of Appeals then threw out the verdict based a technicality – that a prosecutor improperly asked a follow up question to witnesses who testified Schmidt confessed.
That question: whether or not they believed Schmitt when he confessed to them.
“I want to thank all the people who were on the jury, last time, that found this gentlemen guilty of what he was guilty for,” Bewig said. “And I feel they should have taken a survey of them people and asked them if this question really made them take the decision to this point, because it’s just not fair.”
A retrial was set for Monday. However, because the witnesses stopped cooperating, prosecutors feared Schmidt could’ve been immediately released from custody due to a failure to re-prosecute. So, they struck a plea deal in which the defendant admitted “firing two shots into David Bewig’s head, causing his death.” He’ll serve 13 years for voluntary manslaughter and armed criminal action.
Schmidt’s already served about five of that, making him eligible for parole in just over a year.
“He’s out and going – six years of his life done,” Bewig said. “How many years of my son’s? I’ll never see him again.”