Fake High Schooler Was 52

He said he wanted to show the flaws in the system

By LEANNE GENDREAU and DOUG GREENE

Updated 10:53 AM EDT, Mon, Aug 31, 2009

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Christopher M. Schildt concocted an elaborate scheme to become the oldest student to attend Waterford High School, police said. The 52-year-old told police he went to all the trouble to write a book about America's vulnerability and show breaches in our security systems.

“Nothing in this country is safe. Nothing. No one,” Schildt said. “This was to find the holes in the systems, find what's wrong, and take action and correct it and in the process I'm gonna write a book on all of this.”

Schildt, who lives in Waterford, Conn. forged school records, a birth certificate, guardianship papers and made up a story, Principal Donald Macrino told the Day of New London.

“I know he portrays this as service to mankind. He showed a breach in our security, but in order to breach a security system he had to break the law to do it several times,” Randall Collins, the superintendent of schools in Waterford. “He is, I would say, disturbed.”

In June, Schildt met with Macrino and Collins and said he’d be bringing his nephew, “Matt,” into the school in the fall from Florida, Collins said.

“Matt,” he told them, had been sexually abused by Schildt's twin brother and the brother killed himself. Making the story even more tragic, Schildt said “Matt” had a condition that made him sensitive to light, so he has to wear sunglasses and had throat cancer so he could not say much, Macrino told the Day.

By the end of the first day, a few teachers became suspicious. “Matt,” they thought, might not be a legitimate student. In a scene out of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the principal called the house to get Matt but the mystery student could not come to the phone.

It didn’t end there. They called Waterford police who went to the house and arrested Schildt, who also happened to have been a Montville police constable from 1977 to 1993, when he retired on a disability, the Day reports.

This country, Schildt said, has a tragic history and pattern of waiting for a building to be blown up or a mass shooting in order to act on a problem.

“We found the means of enabling terrorist groups like Al Qaida, individual terrorists and criminals, how they're forging documents, we now know,” he said.

He was charged with three counts of first-degree forgery, second-degree criminal trespass and breach of peace. He was released on $10,000 non-surety bond with a court date of Sept. 10.