Her husband just admitted murdering their two year-old daughter in a roasting car, but Dr Erika Scholtes brazenly showed she is standing by her man.
Erika, 37, and her husband Christopher Scholtes, 38, bought a stunning $1.025 million four-bedroom, 2,369sqft home in Phoenix, Arizona.
They did so in April, without a mortgage, even though Scholtes now faces at least 20 years in prison for the July 9, 2024, death of their daughter Parker.
The couple moved 110 miles away from their former home in Marana, Arizona, where Parker died an agonizing death on a 90F summer’s day.
Parker was left to nap in the back seat of the family Acura by her father, parked on the driveway of the family home, while Erika was at work.
Scholtes sat inside playing video games and watching pornography for more than three hours, believing the car’s air conditioning would keep Parker cool.
It was a fatal mistake and on Wednesday he pleaded guilty to daughter’s second-degree murder and child abuse at Pima County court.
Scholtes will go into custody on November 5 and faces 20 to 30 years behind bars when he is sentenced on November 21, and will not be eligible for parole.
Christopher Scholtes, 38, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to second-degree murder and child abuse 15 months after his daughter Parker died on July 9 last year
The Scholtes family upgraded their existing property to this gorgeous new home in Phoenix complete with a huge backyard swimming pool
He and his wife have not made any public statements since Parker’s early court hearings after death and it is unclear if he will speak at his sentencing next month.
When Scholtes is released sometime after 2045, he will have a home of considerable comfort to return to.
The family’s new property boasts a well-tended front yard, neo-classical column façade and four tastefully decorated bedrooms.
Modeled on a gaudy Italian villa, it has solid oak and mahogany floors and luxury finishes for the couple and their two surviving daughters to enjoy.
The pièce de résistance is an enormous backyard pool and huge shaded patio.
True crime fans questioned whether Erika has only stayed with Scholtes to get a more favorable divorce settlement after his conviction.
Weeks after buying the new property, the couple applied for an alteration to Scholtes’s bail conditions to go on vacation to Maui, suggesting their union remains strong.
To execute the luscious property upgrade, the couple put the Marana property into a trust and put it up for rent at $3,000 a month in June.
Their new home was also bought using a trust, BRP Rental Properties LLC, possibly to protect the asset after Scholtes was sent to prison
Scholtes played video games and watched porn for three hours while two-year-old Parker slowly died in the driveway
The front of the Scholtes’s new home in Phoenix, which they bought for cash this year
Scholtes’ stepmother Kelly, who is a realtor at Prestige Realty, facilitated the sale as the buyer’s agent but family sources said she did not contribute financially.
Kelly refused to comment when contacted by the Daily Mail on Thursday.
The couple’s main source of income appears to be Erika’s job as an anesthesiologist, as Scholtes is not believed to have been employed in some time.
Erika was working at Banner University Medical Center, the same hospital Parker was taken to, but had to find a new job when they moved to Phoenix.
Records also show they took out a $100,000 line of credit against the Marana house at about seven percent interest on December 20.
Neither of the couple’s parents are believed to have helped them pay the mounting bills.
Scholtes’ protracted legal defense has not been cheap as he pleaded not guilty last year and rejected a plea deal in March that would have let him off with as little as 10 years behind bars.
Just six months later he had no choice but to accept a far worse deal for 20 to 30 years jail on second-degree murder and child abuse charges.
The Scholtes’s old home in Marana, Arizona. Daughter Parker died in the back of a hot Acura SUV parked on the drive seen on the right
Another view of the new family home. Christopher Scholtes will spend at least 20 years in prison with no option for parole from November, meaning he’ll be well into middle-age by the time he returns home
Scholtes left Parker napping in his 2023 Acura running with the air-conditioning on outside his house during the scorching weather.
But he lost track of time while he played on his PlayStation, drank booze and watched adult videos, and the vehicle shut off.
The Pima County Medical Examiner said the temperature inside the car was 108.9F when first responders arrived, confirming she died of heat exposure.
Texts between Scholtes and Erika revealed leaving his children in the car for extended periods was a pattern of behavior for him.
As Parker was rushed to the hospital, Erika texted Scholtes saying: ‘I told you to stop leaving them in the car, how many times have I told you.’
She later added: ‘We’ve lost her, she was perfect.’
Scholtes replied: ‘Babe I’m sorry! How could I do this. I killed our baby, this can’t be real.’
Erika was at work as an anesthesiologist at Banner University Medical Center, the same hospital Parker was taken to and tragically declared dead.
She strongly defended her husband in court by calling their daughter’s death ‘a mistake’.
Erika Scholtes, 37, was an anesthesiologist at the same hospital her daughter was rushed to
Scholtes’s two other children, then aged nine and five, told police their father regularly left all three siblings alone in the car.
He claimed he did so because they liked to sleep inside the vehicle.
The youngsters told police Scholtes ‘got distracted by playing his game and putting his food away’, according to the criminal complaint.
A PlayStation and other electronics were taken away as evidence.
Prosecutors wrote in court documents that Scholtes also searched the internet for men’s clothing at Nordstrom and for pornography from 2.02pm to 2.30pm.
Scholtes also left Parker alone in the car on his way home that day while he shopped at a gas station and a supermarket.
He shoplifted beer from both shops, some of which he later drank while Parker was dying, according to the documents.
Security camera footage showed him swipe the alcohol from the gas station, go into the bathroom, and emerge with fewer cans than he went in with.
Scholtes’s two other children, aged nine and five, told police that Scholtes had left all three siblings alone in the vehicle regularly
Scholtes finally arrived home at 12.53pm, just as his older daughters returned from a trampoline park he let them go to unattended.
He initially told detectives he pulled in at 2.30pm, but changed his story after it was proven a lie by security footage.
Parker was left to nap in the car while they all went inside, and was not retrieved until after 4pm when Erika got home from work.
Erika came inside and asked where the toddler was, prompting a frantic rush to the car by both parents and the arrival of first responders soon after.
Parker was declared dead in hospital just an hour later.
Investigations into how she died revealed a disturbing pattern of alcoholism, child neglect, and past drug abuse.
The older daughters said their parents often fought about Scholtes’s behavior, especially how much he drank.
‘He still drinks too much beer, and he keeps leaving us in the car when my mom told him to stop doing this,’ one of the girls said, according to documents.
‘That’s how he made my baby sister die.’
Scholtes, 37, was charged with murder after leaving his two-year-old daughter (pictured as a newborn) in the back of a hot car in 109F heat while he was inside their house
Police outside the house in Marana, north of Tucson, Arizona, as they investigated the scene. Parker was left in the blue Honda Acura SUV behind the police tape
Other texts between the couple showed Erika increasingly furious about her husband letting his drinking put the children’s lives at risk.
‘You haven’t shown me you can stop putting the girls in danger or not treat me badly,’ she wrote on March 11 last year.
‘Even yesterday, you drove home drunk with two minors. You drink to excess every time. You can never have just one. I’ve been asking for three years to cut back and it’s actually gotten worse.’
Scholtes promised to ‘find relief and happiness elsewhere’ but Erika countered that the last time he did that he merely replaced booze with cocaine.
‘At least this one is legal, right?’ he replied.
‘I’m a piece of shit addict and I need to get addicted to healthy things like running again.’
But just ten days later she raged at him for allegedly driving 138mph after drinking, with Parker in the car, calling both ‘shitty decisions’.
‘You hate me,’ he replied. ‘And she was sleeping, it’s fine.’
While on bail, the court gave Scholtes permission to go on vacation to Maui with his doctor wife Erika and their surviving children earlier this year.
Scholtes also had a history of similar behavior with his oldest daughter, now 16, whom he had with a previous partner.
Scholtes was allowed to go on holiday to Hawaii with his wife Erika Scholtes, who has stood by him and even strongly defended him in court, and their children earlier this year
Some of her family told investigators that back then, he also left her and his other two daughters in the car alone long enough for the air-conditioning to shut off.
Fortunately, the older girl knew how to restart the car and prevent them all from meeting the same fate as Parker.
Scholtes was also allegedly abusive towards the eldest girl, and she on one occasion called police to say she was afraid to go home because she lost some money and was worried her father would hit her.
Department of Child Services investigators wrote in their reports that she told them ‘she would frequently be slapped, thrown, have her hair pulled, have her head pushed into walls, and be picked up by her shirt or her arm’.
Scholtes eventually lost custody of the girl and after her mother died earlier this year she was instead given to another guardian.
