Schroedel had initially pleaded innocent to slaying Barbara Vogt and slashing her 11-year-old son in Sullivan County in 1999, but he pleaded guilty while county District Attorney Stephen Lungen was still deciding whether to bring capital charges against him.
22.
In New York on Friday, Justice Robert Williams of state Supreme Court in Monticello, acting on a request relayed by Sullivan County District Attorney Stephen Lungen, ordered the case record sent to federal prosecutors in Los Angeles, but directed that it remained sealed to the public.
23.
There was considerable debate over that issue in Sullivan County, where in 1998 District Attorney Stephen F . Lungen first pursued the death penalty the death penalty against a mother and her friend in the torture and murder of a 3-year old boy in Bloomingberg, N . Y ., but then agreed to let them plead guilty to first-degree murder.
