Rutgers student accused of killing girlfriend at Cranford home may have taken 'bath salts' drug

Published: Tuesday, March 15, 2011, 9:57 PM     Updated: Tuesday, March 15, 2011, 10:31 PM

 By Star-Ledger Staff 
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Robert Sciarrino/The Star-LedgerView of the family home of William J Parisio, right, a 22-year-old Rutgers University student located in Cranford who is alleged to have killed his girlfriend.

CRANFORD — William J. Parisio was descending into a world of paranoia he feared he might never escape, his mother, Diane Parisio, said.

He was unable to shake off the irrational worries that grew as his drug addiction festered, she said, fighting through tears and anger during an interview at the family’s Cranford home, where her son allegedly killed his long-time girlfriend last weekend.

Over the past few months, she said, the 22-year-old college student who has struggled with mental illness and drug dependency for years traveled from hospitals to drug rehab to a halfway house and back home again.

"He was really scared. I’d never seen anything like this at all," Diane Parisio said.

"Will it ever go away?" she said her son asked her in January.

It was a blur of mania she believes was caused — or made worse — by "bath salts," powders that act like powerful stimulants, such as methamphetamine, and are sold, legally, at convenience stores across the country. Her son, known to friends and family as "Bill," may have begun using "bath salts" in late December, said Parisio, who was speaking publicly not to defend him but in hopes of warning others about the dangers of the powders.

"Bill is an example of the devastation that this drug (causes) in people’s lives," she said.

Early Sunday morning, police discovered the body of Pamela Schmidt in a basement room at the Parisio home on Greaves Place in Cranford. The 22-year-old Rutgers University student from Warren Township died of "traumatic injuries," said Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow, whose office was waiting for forensic results before releasing more information.

courtesy of FacebookA recent photo of Pamela Schmidt, of Warren, who died Sunday.

Bill Parisio, who withdrew from Rutgers this semester due to his drug problems, was charged Monday with murder. That’s the same day he was scheduled to check into a treatment center in Marlboro, his mother said.

He is being held at the Union County jail in Elizabeth on $400,000 cash bail.

Schmidt, who often stayed at the Parisio house in Union County, came in around 11 p.m. Saturday, took a shower, then went to the basement to watch television with her boyfriend, Diane Parisio said.

"They were here to have a nice night together. Everything was fine," she said, adding that the couple had been dating for "four to five years."

When she went to call her son the next morning to take him to a doctor before entering rehab again, she had trouble waking him and called 911. He had taken anti-anxiety medicine, which wasn’t one of the two prescription drugs he takes for his bipolar disorder, she said.

Parisio would not talk about Schmidt’s death, but said the young woman was like a daughter to her.

"She was a very pleasant, Type A person," she said. "Any success Bill had could be related to Pam."

Schmidt was expected to graduate from Rutgers this spring with degrees in labor studies and employment relations, as well as psychology, according to a student directory. She planned to return to Rutgers next fall to pursue a master’s degree in human resource management, according to her LinkedIn page.

Schmidt’s family could not be reached but several friends expressed their grief on Facebook today, posting "rest in peace" messages on their profile pages.

Vanessa Morales, 21, of Warren, said she had been friends with Schmidt since the sixth grade.

"She has such a great loving family and was so close to her siblings. She was always a strong person," Morales said.

Victor Lopez remembered Schmidt as one of "the nicest people he had ever met." The 23-year-old North Bergen man said he interned with Schmidt at SiriusXM Radio, where Bill Parisio had also spent a few weeks working on the Howard Stern show.

"She was a real go-getter. Everybody in the HR department was really fond of her. She was always a helping hand," said Lopez, who graduated from Rutgers last year. "If she entered a room, the place would light up. This is a real terrible, tragic thing."

It was near the Rutgers campus in New Brunswick on Christmas Eve last year, where Parisio, a graduate of Cranford High School, first purchased bath salts, his mother said. She showed credit card statements today that included numerous $41 purchases at convenience stores and a smoke shop that appeared to support that, as well as her claims that his use continued weeks into January.

Parisio said her son, who has a prior criminal record she said was the result of his substance abuse, told her he first learned about "bath salts" while in rehab.

Bath salts typically cause users to experience "extreme" agitation, paranoia and sometimes vivid hallucinations, several medical experts said. The powder, which can be snorted, smoked or ingested, can have effects similar to cocaine or methamphetamines. It started to become a problem in England two years ago before appearing in Louisiana late last year and spreading to the southern and western parts of the United States, said Zane Horowitz, medical director at the Oregon Poison Center.

"From our brief experience this is a very dangerous drug that is at least, if not more, dangerous than methamphetamines," Horowitz said.

Bath salts can have range of bizarre effects on the user, said Horowitz, including aggravation, racing heart rates, seizures and psychotic episodes. There have been scattered reports of violence and self-mutilation incidents tied to bath salts, he said.

Use by someone with pre-exiting mental illness could prompt paranoia and possibly violent tendencies, said Cheryl Kennedy, a psychiatrist and vice chair of clinical services in the Department of Psychiatry at New Jersey Medical School-UMDNJ.

"The problem is it’s in the stimulant category and stimulants in excessive use can make anybody psychotic, nevermind those who might have an underlying psychiatric illness," said Kennedy, who would not comment on Parisio directly since she had not examined him.

By Ryan Hutchins and James Queally/The Star-Ledger