RIP: Sultan of Sleaze

That would be David Hans Schmidt, the Phoenix agent who tried to shake down Tom Cruise for $1 million in exchange for stolen wedding photos of the mega-star and his bride, Katie Holmes. The extortion effort ended with Schmidt winding up in custody. He later agreed to plead guilty and face two years behind bars. But along the way, according to NY Daily News gossips Rush & Molloy, Schmidt turned suicidal. "I did something really stupid," Schmidt told them. "I put a belt around my neck in the shower. Fortunately, it didn't work." Gossip columnists are around stalkers and swindlers all the time, and Schmidt was hardly a Boy Scout. He specialized in acquiring celebrity sex videos and nude photos. But R&M say they noticed something especially strange about Schmidt's behavior. So they called Cruise's attorney, Bert Fields, to see if Cruise might show some mercy. Might he or Fields be willing to recommend to the sentencing judge that Schmidt get probation?

Fields said the matter was in the hands of federal prosecutors. He said that neither he nor Cruise wanted to see Schmidt kill himself. Then again, he noted, the self-proclaimed Sultan of Sleaze — who once donned a bath-towel turban for a TV appearance — was prone to exaggeration and drama. We talked to Schmidt about getting psychiatric help. He said he had started taking Xanax but said, "It wears off." In the past, he'd been able to work out deals with Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx in which everybody walked away happy. But now he could no longer ply his trade. Bankrupt, he was due to lose his car and condo.

Monday of last week, Phoenix magazine ran a long-delayed profile of him in which his estranged father, Fred, was quoted as saying he did not love his son. "The farther away I can get, the better off I am," said Fred. Thursday, we received a voice message from Schmidt, 47. "I'm trying to stay positive," he said. "But time's running out. The sand is trickling through the hourglass." The next day, police found him hanging in his shower, just as he'd rehearsed.

It should be noted that long before the Cruise case, Schmidt had talked to R&M about taking his life. "I was very sorry to hear about Mr. Schmidt's death," said Fields. "Perhaps the scathing article pushed him over the edge. In any event, it's very sad." Computer expert Marc Lewis Gittleman, who allegedly took the pictures when he worked on a computer belonging to the wedding's authorized photographer, still faces charges.