How does something like this happen? How can one man go on a 35 year rampage hunting children? Well here is one problem that just jumps right out from the story:

Schwartzmiller’s criminal record began 35 years ago, but he never registered as a sex offender and spent just 12 years in prison.

Why do we rely on these deviants to be responsible and register themselves? Why is he not automatically registered in all 50 states after the first offense?

Obviously the guy is quite gifted in hiding his actions and somehow is able to play the legal system like a fidel:

Wily, charismatic and “smarter than heck,” is how James Kevan, one of his defense lawyers in the mid-1970s, described Schwartzmiller on Friday. “He could write up legal documents better than most lawyers.”
…
When they first met, Schwartzmiller was coaching a youth football team. “I helped him coach,” Kevan said. “The parents all thought he was great. No one suspected a thing.”

But then again, there were obvious signals which we, as a society, cannot let slip by:

In retrospect, there were signs something was wrong — like the time he took the team to a game in Boise, and they “stopped in the desert to do a jock strap check.” Kevan said he was not on the bus at the time, and only later realized that Schwartzmiller may have been picking out potential victims.

There needs to be an invesigation into why this sicko was able to do what he did over and over again for 35 years. This cannot be allowed to happen again.