Franz's high school friend Bruce Anthony Curtis, a Canadian citizen who was visiting the Podgis home, was convicted of the aggravated manslaughter of Rosemary.
The two teenagers (both born 1964) had met at King's-Edgehill, a private Canadian boarding school in Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they had recently graduated.
Moments later downstairs, Rosemary was shot dead by a rifle carried by Curtis, who maintained he had accidentally discharged the firearm while attempting to flee the house after hearing the gunshot upstairs.
[2] After an appeal in 1984 to the Superior Court of New Jersey was dismissed, Curtis's supporters successfully lobbied to have him repatriated to Canada to serve out his sentence there.
[12] In March 1992, Franz escaped from custody for two weeks after he and a fellow inmate absconded from a New Jersey halfway house and fled to the West Coast.
[14][15] In 1986, Canadian author David Hayes published a book about the case, No Easy Answers: The Trial and Conviction of Bruce Curtis (reprinted in the U.S. as Blood Knot ).
[4][16] A Canadian television film directed by Graeme Campbell, Journey into Darkness: The Bruce Curtis Story (screened in the U.S. as Deadly Betrayal ), was released in 1991.