Hans Schmidt: The Bloodlust Priest - Part 1

This is Part 1 of a very in-depth tale that is dark and twisted. (You can't say we didn't warn you!) 

When pieces of a lady washed ashore along the banks of the Hudson River in 1913, investigators had no idea just what a nightmare had been unearthed. The whole thing really began across the ocean decades earlier and now it was there at their feet in New Jersey and, ultimately, New York City.

In this episode you'll hear about the gruesome discovery of the few body parts that were recovered, the investigation that led the detectives to their man, and Hans's life after arriving in the United States in 1909. 

"Marvel Whirling Spray Douche" ad from the Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York.

"Coward Shoes" ad from The New York Times, New York, New York.

Transcript

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What do St. Elizabeth, pillows, and the Hudson River have in common? Stay tuned to find out on this episode of Forgotten Felonies. Welcome back to Forgotten Felonies. I'm Monica. And I'm Olivia. And this is where we take you back in time to rediscover the crimes that time forgot. Now there is so much to this story that it just has to be a two-parter. I must warn you that this story has a very high... high ick factor. Part one isn't too bad, but part two has a lot of potential to make you squeamish. I guess this one does too, but part two is going to be. Far worse, hands down. Now, the deeper I got into this case, the more twisted it became and the more my skin started crawling. And I think the best way to give you the same experience I had is to take you through the story backward in the same order that I encountered it. Because it was kind of fun having all of those what moments followed by all of those, oh, epiphanies later. I got a lot of texts. Yeah. So with that being said, we're going to travel right back in time to September 5th of 1913. Mary Ban, an 18-year-old girl, was standing on the front porch with her 11-year-old little brother, Albert, around 8 o'clock in the morning. They lived across from the Hudson River in Woodcliffe, New Jersey. There was a large brown bundle floating down the Hudson along with the tide, right by the New Jersey shore. They watched it float for about half an hour, wondering what it was, before they lost interest. Around noon, 11-year-old Albert saw the same bundle caught in some driftwood down by an abandoned dock that extends out into the river. The dock was almost directly in front of their house. It had initially floated up past the dock a bit, but then drifted inshore when the tide receded. Albert grabbed a big stick, and he was able to pull the bundle over to him. He told his mother what he had found, but she told him not to open it. Albert told his buddies about this mystery bundle he'd fished out of the Hudson, and they were all very excited about the possibilities. These were a bunch of 11 and... 12-year-old boys who were coming down from a long summer just about to start school again. And maybe this was the treasure they'd been hoping to find for months. Their curiosity ran so high that finally Mary and Albert's mom gave them permission to open it. It was about three o'clock when they started to unwrap it. The brown paper was very thick. It had been wrapped in twine as well as some insulated electrical wire. The twine and wire had come somewhat loose in the water, so it wasn't too hard to pull off. Once the paper was off, the children found themselves looking at a red pillow. It was like a fancy throw pillow you'd buy at a furniture store. It was about 27 inches by 20 inches, and the seam on one end had been ripped open. Something fairly heavy was inside the pillow. So excited he could hardly stand it, Albert dumped the contents of this pillow onto the dock. Feathers dumped out all over the place, hundreds of feathers, and something else rather large and heavy wrapped in what appeared to be white cloth. When the cloth was unwrapped, it turned out to be a woman's nightgown. What had been wrapped inside of the woman's nightgown was going to turn New York City upside down for the next few months, because wrapped inside that woman's nightgown was part of the woman herself. Hehehehe! What Mary and Albert Band had fished out of the Hudson River that morning was the upper torso of a woman. The head had been cut off at the shoulders, the arms had been cut off as close to the shoulders as possible, and the torso had been cut off right below the ribcage. All of the internal organs were present inside of the torso, with only the intestines being severed out of necessity. Ew. There were feathers stuck to the stumps where the head and arms had been. The authorities were notified immediately, and county physician George W. King examined the upper torso. Dr. King said that the dismemberment of the body had been done so skillfully that it might be the work of a surgeon. The flesh had been cut clean with a sharp knife, and the bones had been cut evidently with a surgical saw. He said that the softness of the cartilage in the joints showed that the woman was certainly under 30 years of age, possibly not more than 20. The skin was of fine texture, and Dr. King gave the opinion that the woman had been of light complexion and probably good-looking. What? A booby man. What? What? Obviously, because this is so soft. She was probably very attractive. Oh my gosh. Right? Yeah, Olivia definitely got a text when I read that. I was like, um... You see this piece of body and you come to the conclusion that she was probably good-looking. I know what your criteria is, sir. Oh my gosh. We got some laughs over that. But anyway. Ready. Anyway, so he said that she was probably five foot four, maybe five foot five inches tall, weighed about 120 to 130 pounds. He said her chest measurement was 33 inches and the waist was 27 inches. Good lord. No, he did find that there was a mark on the back of her right shoulder, four bluish marks. And he thought maybe it was a birthmark, maybe a test. And he said it didn't have any specific shape, like the largest of the of the bluish marks was kind of in the shape of an E, but he wasn't quite sure what it was. And he was hoping that this mark on the back of her shoulder could be used to identify the remains. They found that the heart had been completely contracted, which you only find in death from hemorrhage, specifically rapid hemorrhage, meaning that she bled to death very quickly. And none of her veins or organs or anything had... Any blood in them at all. She did have blood in the chest cavity surrounding her lungs, but not inside of her lungs. So they think, after her throat was cut, the blood would have seeped down into the chest cavity from that wound around the outside of her lungs. And so, because of that, they do believe that her throat or her neck had to have been the first cut, because it would have still had to have the bleeding from there in order for it to have seeped down into the chest cavity. And then, from there, all of the blood that went in around the outside of the lungs, that actually caused so much pressure that it collapsed her lungs completely. So they found evidence of that. So that's why they believe that the first cut had to have been the head. A gruesome but quick death. Yes, rapid, rapid hemorrhage. All right. Anyway, but what a find, you know, for those kids. Can you imagine finding that? I mean. No. What a discovery. You're like, it's going to be treasure. And you dump it out and you're like, oh. It's boobs. Feathery boobs. What? Very soft. Mom, what are those? Cheers. Cheers. Nice skin. Oh, honey, go inside. Go inside. It's a mannequin. Mannequin. Go inside. Intestines? Oh, man. Super crazy. That must have been a really big pillowcase. Well, 20 by 27. Yes. Almost two feet. Yes. Well, yes. I mean, two feet, over two feet on one side, almost two feet on another. Yes. So, like, almost two-foot square, like, pretty crazy. Yes. The newspapers broke the story on September 6th. So, obviously, like, the next day it's in the papers. And at first, the police thought maybe some medical students had just put the body parts in the river after they had finished their experiments. Like, I saw one where it said 'torso of woman tied to a dock in the river.' And it was, I mean, there were some weird headlines the next day that I saw. Um, but there was one very good clue. And it turned out to be the clue that cracked this case wide open. That fancy pillow still had the price tag attached. price was 89 cents and it was handwritten on a sticker, and the sticker was attached to the manufacturer's tag. One side of the manufacturer's tag said 'Restwell brand 20 by 27 Newark, New Jersey.' I've been there. Now, that upper part of the torso had been located on September 5th. News hit the papers on September 6th, and then on September 7th, a man named Henry Ravier went down to the banks of the Hudson River in the morning to do some crabbing. Henry had been a truck driver at the time, but crabbing was one of his favorite hobbies. He liked to go crabbing at the edge of the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey. According to an article in the September 8th edition of the New York Times, Henry goes crabbing at a place that is used for the graveyard of barges, schooners, and small boats which have been burned or wrecked along the Hudson. Here's a quote. At low tide, the rotting hulls of hundreds of small craft are exposed, but high tide submerges everything except the tops of the ribs of the larger wrecks. I wonder what happened to all those. I don't know, but it sounds really cool. It just sounds neat. Let's go scuba diving! Yeah, yeah.

He left the house around 5: 11:11

30 that Sunday morning with his crabbing net. He would walk out into the shallow part of the water past some of the boats. He'd walk a ways out to where the good spot was for crabbing. When he walked out to the crabbing spot early in the morning, he noticed there was a bundle alongside the front of one of the boats. Now, these were not ultra-fancy boats. Right? I mean, this was a graveyard. So being at low tide, the water was not more than an inch there. And the tide was definitely out. And the bundle had... floated to that spot when the tide was in. But now it was stuck there, mostly out of water, sitting beside this old boat. Now, just like the first bundle, this one was wrapped with heavy brown wrapping paper. It had some insulated electrical wire around it as well. Henry didn't touch it at all when he first saw it,

and he just went about his business crabbing until about 12: 12:08

30 that afternoon. When he walked back to leave, he saw that the bundle was still sitting there where it had been before, and nobody had come to claim it. So he did what any sane person would do. And he opened it. I mean, we wouldn't have a case if... He didn't. Right. So he gets the wire off first, then he peels off the thick brown paper. Then he finds this big, flat, nine-pound rock. It's over a foot long. He moves the stone to the side and now the whole bundle is wrapped in newspaper. It's the August 31st edition of the New York Times. Henry peels off the newspaper and underneath is a white pillowcase. Henry decides to just tear through the pillowcase, so I imagine it wasn't the highest quality cotton if he could literally rip it like that. I mean, it had been in the water. I mean, I wash pillowcases and they aren't like tissue. I don't know. They weren't in the Hudson River. True. And inside of this pillowcase, he finds more wadded up newspapers and a lower torso of a woman. I know, imagine. Now, the rock was another clue. It was a greenish-gray rock glittering with mica. This kind of rock is all over Manhattan Island, but is never seen on the New Jersey side. This led the detectives to believe that the victim must have been murdered in New York City. Nice deducing. Yeah. Also on that white pillowcase was an embroidered letter A that detectives later determined to have been embroidered by an amateur rather than by a professional. Thank you. So this lower piece of torso was examined, of course, and what they found was pretty intriguing. When compared with the upper torso, the only organ that was truly missing was the pancreas. Other than that, it was all there. The uterus was was enlarged. And it turns out the woman had given birth just before being murdered, like within a day or two or three. But it didn't appear that she had been full term. One of the medical examiners said she was at least six months pregnant, and another said she was six to seven months pregnant. They were judging by the size of the uterus at the time she died. They could also tell that the baby was gone. As was the placenta or afterbirth, but the amniotic sac was still present in her womb. And the place where the placenta had been attached to her uterus was still a bright red color, where it had detached and it was still healing. Her cervix was still somewhat soft since she had just given birth. And her vagina was still enlarged or stretched from having passed a baby through it. There was no sign that any instruments or tools had been used to cause her to give birth. So it was a natural birth as far as they could tell. Now, ever since the first piece of torso was found, men started coming forward saying, 'It must be my wife' or 'It must be my daughter.' This body was identified multiple times, bringing multiple people to the morgue to look at the body parts. Which, I mean... You know, they were looking at the body parts. That was actually like a really big thing back in the day. Oh, yeah. Like, remember Mabel Schofield. They just had tons of people coming through. Just like touring through to see, does anyone know this girl? And just everybody coming on through looking at her body. Not just that. But it was like a pastime that people would just go to the morgue. And like look at the bodies. Weird. I know. Hmm. Yeah. Well, I mean, they were like, come and look at these boobs and this butt now. Yeah. And well, people also back in the day would go to like murder scenes. And... They ruined the crime scene, but they would take souvenirs. So if the body was still there, they would cut. Like, hair and... Clothes. They used to do that at lynchings too. They would like lynch. Yeah. Okay. So in this case, that nine-pound rock that was like over a foot long at the trial, they had two really small pieces of it. Because newspaper people who had shown up to photograph things took it over and broke it so that they could take pieces with them. Idiots. Yeah. And so they had like the guy who had found it, they were like. Did the rock look like this? And he's like, no. They were like, Well, it. Are there pieces missing? And he's like, yeah. Because, yeah, two newspaper men were like, here, let's break it. We can both take a piece. Ridiculous. Like, that would never fly now. Nope. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, lots of people came forward saying, oh, it's got to be my daughter. And so, yeah, that weird mark on the back of the shoulder. is what people were using to be like, oh, yeah, I think my daughter had one of those or, you know, something like that. But then the long-lost daughter would turn up. Or someone would say, no, I saw your wife with her new husband last Tuesday. Or... Hey, she was never even married to you. What are you talking about? She and her real husband just moved out of the country last month, stalker. I love it. I found the craziest stuff. Craziest stuff. And then there was a sad one where this guy was like, 'I think it could be my wife.' If you find her left arm, she'll have my initials tattooed. And it was like, 'Oh, my gosh.' If you find an arm. I'm honest, I think. Because women getting tattooed back then was not common. Yeah, well, it wasn't actually a tattoo. And. I didn't. Yeah, but I mean, like, that guy saying that. Yeah. Made me think of them. Yeah, it's just like, well, if you find an arm, let me know. Yeah. So, yeah, the upper torso was found on September 5th. The lower torso was found on September 7th. And then, three days later, on September 10th. Keensburg, New Jersey, far from where either piece of torso was discovered, a section of human leg, 14 inches long from thigh to just below the knee, was found out of the water up in the sand. Keensburg is 20 miles away from Woodcliffe, New Jersey, where the lower torso is found. This one was not wrapped in anything. It would appear all of the wrappings had come completely off in the leg's travels down the river. Now, later on in the trial, a doctor said that there was no possible way that the leg would have been able to float, so I'm not entirely sure how it wound up that far away from New York City. I mean, I don't know— maybe it got caught up in like a fishing net or something. Maybe a bird picked it up. I don't know, because it was... weighted down with a rock. You know, so I don't know how it would have wound up. All the way down there. I have no idea. But anyway. It got fished out, and I have no idea. Maybe someone else found it first and was like, 'Ah, the horror,' and then, like, discarded it. I don't know. And then didn't report it. So Irving Broander found it. It was about one o'clock in the afternoon, and he could tell that it had been sawed off, and he didn't want to touch it. So he picked it up with sticks, and he wrapped it up in newspaper, and then got it to the proper authorities. And that was that. That is all they ever found, those three pieces. And they never even said anywhere that I saw which leg it was. Was it the right or the left? I never even saw. I want to know if the knee was like bent when it was sticking out. I don't know. I don't know. Would be interesting. But... You. Did text me and didn't you say they almost found part of a head? Yes, about that. Interesting story. On Thursday, September 4th, the day before the first piece of body was found, okay, the day before the upper torso, there was a retired policeman, okay, retired policeman named Anthony Elder. He and his buddy, John Reed, as well as John Reed's 13-year-old son, also named John Reed, were out rowing a boat in the Hudson River. Young Johnny happened to see something in the water that he thought was a piece of driftwood. So he reached into the water and he grabbed it and it was part of a skull. With long dark hair, so 13-year-old Johnny freaks out, as is normal, I would too, and he dropped it back in the water. Ex-policeman Anthony Elder, quote, thought nothing of the incident. Until he read of finding parts of a dismembered body later. What an idiot. And then, on September 9th, five days later, after two portions of torso had been found, that's when he decided to tell the police. Oh, by the way. We happened to find, like, part of a skull. Also, on the 9th, the same day that ex-policeman Elder decided to say something, a 17-year-old girl in a rowboat saw that same section of skull floating past her boat on the outgoing tide, and it was never recovered. Oh, no! Yep. So, yeah, they almost had part of the head. Every woman is interested and should know about the wonderful marvel whirling spray douche. Ask your druggist for it if he cannot supply the marvel. Accept no other but send stamp for an illustrated book sealed. It gives full particulars and directions invaluable to ladies. For sale by Drake Drug Co. Now... Listeners, you may be wondering who this poor, probably good-looking young woman was. And how she wound up in pieces in the Hudson River in 1913. But most of all, you want to know who would do such a thing. And now, Olivia needs to introduce you to the man of the hour, Father Schmidt. Yes. So, Johann B. Schmidt was born in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, Germany in 1881 to his parents, Gertrude Miller and Heinrich Schmidt. His mother and father were very religious people. They had 10 children, including Johan. Three of his sisters died at birth. One of his brothers died as a very young child. Including Johan, his sisters Elizabeth and Catherine lived, as well as his brothers Carl, Leo, and Wilhelm. Wonderful. All right. And, you know, it was tough finding this stuff. Apparently, Germany has really strict privacy laws, and I believe that's probably due to. All of the things that happened in World War II. So luckily. Olivia happened to find... The complete trial transcript. And what a treat. From 1913. And let me tell you. I have been eyeballs deep in over. And over 1, 400 pages of trials. I've been getting updates at what page you're at. I'm like... Volume 4, page 322. Oh my goodness, this guy said this and that. I can't believe it. It's been crazy. It has been crazy. And that is where I have like just through different. Testimonies and stuff. uncovered names of siblings and names of family members. And that is how we have been. I tried. I, I tried. Yeah. Manifests. Oh yeah. There's just, you can't find stuff. And so that's, that's how I was able to find. like names we don't have like when they were born. I know that his sister Elizabeth is 10 and a half years older because she said that when she testified. I know that Wilhelm is the oldest brother because he said that. Um, Other than that, their life is a mystery. I know, yeah. And the victim, we don't know anything about her family. Yeah, she... Came over by herself. Yeah. I mean, I know that she was raised by her aunt. And I know one of her cousins. And I know that there was a sister. Well, I saw, I found her ship. Manifest. Like when she came over, but she was alone. Mm-hmm. She was supposed to come over with her another cousin, but she came by herself. So I know that from testimony. That's all. Wow. Yep, there's some drama. I just want to say she was very pretty. Yes. So the doctor was right. It's all in the boobs. Yes, that's how you can tell. But anyway, all right. So here we go. Hans Schmidt arrived in the United States from his home country of Germany in the summer of 1909. He had officially been a Catholic priest for two and a half years, but he'd been hoping to be a priest since he was about seven. This man was born to be a priest. Part of this was because his mother was very devoutly Catholic. Hans' mother, Gertrude, was so religious that she would go to church multiple times per day. Her daughter Elizabeth, who was ten and a half years older than Hans, had to do most of the housework so that Gertrude could go to church three or four times per day. Elizabeth helped raise her younger siblings, Hans included, because her mother was too busy being Catholic. And as Hans grew older... He would go along with his mother. She would call him her little priest. He was the only one of the Schmidt children that seemed to catch the religion bug that his mother had. Hans was a different kind of priest, though, and he didn't seem to fit in well anywhere. His first church in America was in Louisville, Kentucky at St. Mary Church. Hans would stay out late and Father Leo, the bishop, didn't like it. Hans would also play the violin, which Father Leo didn't like. Hans would also dress in regular clothes and go to the theater and go to concerts, which Father Leo didn't approve of. There were sisters next door, and he wanted to go over and pay them visits. Also a no-no. After three months, Hans was transferred to Trenton, New Jersey, to the St. Francis Church. The bishop there was Father Rathner. Hans liked it here, but the bishop and the other priests didn't like Hans. Once, Hans performed a marriage for a couple that were not part of that parish, and the priest complained to the bishop about it. Hans didn't think it mattered, but the bishop wrote a letter and told Hans to get out immediately. The priests there said Hans had no common sense. Hans, for his part, believed that Father Rathner had Irish spies watching him the whole time he was there. So he was actually very well behaved as far as dressing appropriately and not going out to theaters or concerts. But after he was removed from there, he was transferred to New York. It was 1910 when he got his position at St. Boniface Church. And this is where he met Anna Aumuller. It was the very beginning of December when he got there, and Anna had actually been hired on November 30th, just a couple days before. She was a chambermaid in the parish house. When he saw her, he was seized with convulsions and collapsed in the hallway. She picked him up from the floor and helped him get to the bed in his room. She would bring him things secretly from the cellar and the kitchen. When he was feeling better, he told her he loved her, and she said it back. Good lord. Convulsions? He did. It was seized with convulsions. They had sex almost the first day they met, as soon as he was feeling up to it. At first, they had sex in the daytime, and later she would come to his room nearly every night. Now, this is behavior that is strictly forbidden for priests. When asked later if he felt bad about this, he said, 'Sometimes I felt wrong, but again, I thought if God gave me those powers, I could use them.' When asked if he'd ever been given a sign from God that God actually approved of his relationship with Anna, he said, 'One day I wanted to find out what God thought about it.' At night, I brought her to the altar and I had intercourse with her before the altar. I kept looking at the host all the time. There was no change. Either God would speak or show a light or something, some sign he would have given to express his disapproval. He said that God could have destroyed them at any time, but he didn't, so he must approve. Now, I am murky on these details, but at some point in 1911, Anna left her job at St. Boniface Church and just got a job as a domestic housekeeper somewhere else in New York while Hans continued being a priest at St. Boniface. They would get together on her days off and go out to eat and go to plays together, and they would meet at Bronx Park and have intercourse there. Now, you'd think with all of this intercourse that pregnancy would be something to be concerned about, and you'd be right. Well, Hans was prepared for that. See, in the past, he had eaten ground lentils, and he said it had made him, quote, make water more frequently. It made him have to pee, okay? So he was sure that it would make a baby pass away if she got pregnant. So he would give her ground lentils to stir into her water and drink. Well, would you be surprised if I told you she got pregnant anyway? Uh... Ground lentils are not a form of birth control. Yeah, well, Hans explained later that he was sure God could transform them into birth control if God so desired. Oh, yeah, 100%. Apparently, God didn't want to, and Anna's usual methods of bringing on the monthly sickness, that's what they called it back then, her methods weren't foolproof either. So. In the summer of 1912, Hans sent Anna Aumuller home to Germany by boat so she could go get an abortion. Now, Olivia, tell us a bit about Anna. What little did we find about her? I know she should have used the Marvel Whirlydouche. Well, you should explain this. Because when you looked it up, it was a secret format. Birth control. Because that's not in the ad. A secret contraceptive. The marvel won't— I'm sorry. Okay, Anna Aumuller was born in 1893 in Hungary. And again, it was really hard to find stuff. She was raised by her aunt, whose last name was Igler. People who didn't know her well assumed that she was a daughter, so she was often called Anna Igler. Cousin Joseph Igler, who was raised with her as a brother. Anna came over to the United States in 1910 and first stayed with her cousin Joseph and his wife Marie for two weeks until she was hired at St. Boniface Church on November 30, 1910. That's all we know because of you. No, well, because of you. You found the trial transcript. Yay! Thank you, New York! Okay, so they both started working at St. Boniface Church at the end of 1910. And, you know, they started up this hot and heavy romance like right off the bat after, you know, he gathered his strength after going into convulsions. It's like a fan fiction thing. The priest and the maid. Right. Yeah. Crazy, crazy. And, you know, she's, you know, drinking down the ground lentils at his direction to make any fetuses pass away, you know, until one pregnancy just. sticks maybe she needed more lentils, I don't know. So in the summer of 1912, he sends her home to her family and she goes over to Vienna, Austria, with 150 bucks from Hans to get an abortion from a midwife, Olivia. How much was 150 equal to back in 1912? It was worth $4, 971. 11. Wow. Crazy. That's wild. I have no idea what abortions cost these days, but I mean, that's a lot of money. Well, with insurance. Yeah, I have no idea. But... That's, I mean, that's that's a lot of money in the trial, like we're not in the trial, but like when he was talking to investigators later and they were like, 'how did you have that kind of money?' And he was like, 'well, I get paid 50 bucks a month. plus fees, like every time I do a wedding and every time I do a funeral and everything, you know?' So, I mean, he made pretty good money. So a crazy thing happened when Anna went back across the ocean for that abortion. She went in the summer and she stayed there until November. So she was over there for quite a while. Her cousin's wife, Marie Igler, was also home for a vacation. They didn't go together; it wasn't planned, but they just happened to both be there. And since Joseph and Anna were both raised by the same woman, Joseph's mom, that's where Anna was. Now, somehow Marie, Joseph's wife, heard that Anna had been talking a lot of crap about Marie. And they were fighting words, apparently. So Marie heads straight to Mama Igler's house to confront Anna. She said she needed to have words with her, so Anna and Marie went to the bedroom. The two start screaming at each other, and Anna actually took a revolver out of her suitcase and was pointing it at Marie. So Marie grabs the gun and they're now wrestling for control over this revolver. Mama Igler comes running in and sees the gun and faints. So Marie lets go of it to rush to Mama Igler's aid. And then Marie, you know, after all of this calms down, she sits down to write a letter to her husband, Joseph, who's back in New York. And she tells Joseph what a nasty wench his cousin Anna Aumiller is. And that Anna was threatening to shoot her. And that Anna said Hans was sending her more money so she could go back to New York. So Joseph back in New York gets this letter and he goes straight to Father Hans Schmidt and tells him, if you send Anna money for a ticket. I'm going to go to Ellis Island and I'm going to report it, and they're going to deport her straight back over to Germany. And Joseph never did actually say anything to Ellis Island. And Hans did send her money. And Anna Aumuller was on a boat back to the United States. And she came back in November of 1912. This is very... soap opera, yeah. But she never spoke to Joseph or Marie ever again. Also, Joseph told father Schmidt that, while Anna was over there across the ocean, that she was staying out all night with different German soldiers. Now, I don't know if that was true or not. He may have just been saying that so that Hans would not bring her back. So that Hans would be like, 'Oh, I want nothing to do with her.' Or Marie was lying. And she really was a lying wench. Yeah, I don't know. But that was, I mean, Joseph said that, you know, they were trying to make sure that that Anna did not come back over to New York. I wonder why. I don't know what happened. But I think they were worried that Anna, if she did come back to New York, she was going to shoot Marie. I don't know. Well, maybe she deserved it. In the trial. I'm kidding. In the trial later when Marie was, you know, testifying and talking about this incident. Then, um, I think it was the... Was it the prosecutor? I forget which side it was. But then they asked Marie, 'What kind of a girl was Anna?' And then the other side objected, and the judge wouldn't allow it in. But I really wanted the answer. Like, 'Yeah, tell me more.' Sounds really fascinating. What was she saying? Sounds so fascinating, but they wouldn't. Spill the tea, girl. I know. They would not allow it in. Oh man, this is about to get juicy. They would not allow it in. So anyway, bummer. But yeah, so when Anna returned to the States, she got her job back at St. Boniface's church. So she was back there. But just prior to her coming back, Father Braun, who was the main pastor at St. Boniface's church, he had finally gotten rid of Hans Schmidt. He couldn't stand Hans. Hans was always mysteriously slipping in and out. He was just so sneaky. And for some reason, whenever he conducted the mass in church, he would never put his thumb and index finger together like every priest does in the entire world. Like this, I'm showing. If you Google it, you'll see. They talk about this a lot in the transcripts, like a lot. And so anyone who is Catholic and listening, they would know exactly what I'm talking about. I am not Catholic, so I had to Google it and find like... information about this. I couldn't even find if there's a name for it. Honestly. But basically. Basically, when they are doing the mass and. You know, they have wine and they have like the wafers. And they do the. What's it called? The consecration? Is that what it's called? Where they turn it into like the blood and body of Christ. Um, So they... It's, I mean, obviously symbolic or whatever, but they say it is basically the body of Christ or the host, we call it. And so the priests touch it only with their thumb and forefinger. When they touch the wafers and like pass them to people. And then they keep those fingers together because if there are any crumbs or anything. They don't want to get crumbs of Christ anywhere. Like, that would be so disrespectful because that is the Savior. Or, I mean, well, they believe in the Holy Trinity, so, like, that is God. Like, you would not want to get God. Anyway, you don't wipe your fingers. You don't wipe God on your robe. You don't like dropping crumbs of God all over the floor, you know. And so they keep their fingers together unless they're touching. God, you know what I mean? Um, so, and it's always, and it's just, it's their own rule. It's not in the Bible. It is just the church made that rule, but it is so impressed upon them in their training and everything that every Catholic priest everywhere literally the whole world over knows that it is these two fingers— the thumb and the index finger— that you hold together. Is it like this? How your hands are doing it? Or could they go like... With fingers, like, more spread. Like, are you looking... Like, this. I mean... Those two together. And I don't, if you look up pictures, they have the other fingers like this, but they also pick up like the chalice. So if they're picking things up and stuff, they have, they have these fingers together while they do everything. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah. Anyway. We'll post a picture. Yeah. So yeah, anyway, but Hans would not do it with his thumb and his forefinger. He did it with his thumb and his middle finger. And people would see this everywhere he went and they would be like, 'What are you doing?' Because nobody does that. Nobody does that. And they would say to him, like, 'You're doing it wrong.' I saw that you did it with the wrong fingers. And he would just be like, 'Hm, is that so?' Like he was just very dismissive. Like, 'Oh, is that what they say?' 'Are you right?' 'Oh, whatever. Okay.' Like, you know, and that's just how he was. He was very dismissive. He was just progressive. I guess that will. He was pretty progressive. There was a lot of different things about him. And I'll talk about that in a bit too. So... Now, he was just dismissed from another position, right? And this time at St. Boniface's church. And so he found another position over at St. Joseph's church, which was not too far away. Now, Anna's days off at St. Boniface's were every other Wednesday and Sunday afternoon and evening. So she didn't even get a whole day. She still had to work those mornings, but then she had the afternoon and evening off, but it was every other Wednesday and every other Sunday. So it wasn't a whole lot of time off. But when she had that time off, she would meet with Hans on those days for their love affair. And she wanted so badly to marry him. And he wanted to marry her as well, but he didn't want to leave the priesthood. He was very, very torn. But that's not the only thing he... was torn over. Because you see, in December of 1912, he'd been to the dentist. Oh? Pray tell? The dentist? Yes. And the dentist? Had a lovely voice. I can see you keep up well with your oral hygiene. And lovely hands. He resembled a priest that Hans was once quite fond of. The priest that gave Hans his first communion, actually. The priest that Hans thought was so dreamy. And here was Dr. Ernest Arthur Muray. Now, it took about three weeks for Hans to get up the nerve to make a move on Dr. Muray. And at first, Dr. Muray wasn't all that into it. But finally, Hans broke him down. The two got really hot and heavy, and suddenly Hans found himself not dying. To see Anna quite as badly as he once had. He still loved her a lot, don't get me wrong, but he wasn't feeling as possessive and jealous. As he used to be. He wasn't yearning for her like he once was. I mean, he had to wait for Anna's days off, but he could sneak out of St. Joseph's church every single day and be with Dr. Mireille. And admittedly, Hans started to prefer Dr. Mireille. But he still loved Anna very, very much. But she was 20 years old and not educated. And Dr. Mireille was a sophisticated grown man who was a doctor. So there was a big difference between the two. Now, Hans had a very special place in his heart for St. Elizabeth. In fact, when I mentioned that he wouldn't hold his thumb and index finger together while conducting mass in church, he used his thumb and middle finger. He said that this was the sign of St. Elizabeth and she had given that to him personally because he was her special priest. He said that she had actually been the one to ordinate him as a priest the night before the real bishop had really ordained him as a real priest in 1906. You're my special priest. So Olivia, what is St. Elizabeth known for? Okay, St. Elizabeth. She was actually a princess. Fun fact, back in the day. She is the patron saint of Hungary. She was born in 1207, got married at the age of 14, and was widowed. She died at the age of 20. She and her husband both gave to the poor, the sick, and the needy everything that they could. They were known for being charitable. After her husband died, she regained her marriage dowry and she used all the money to build a hospital where she herself took care of the sick. She died at the age of 24, but she spent her life serving the poor and she became a symbol of Christian charity. She died in 1231 and was canonized as a saint four years later in 1235. All right, so St. Elizabeth died in 1231, you say? I did say yes. And we know that Hans was ordained as a priest in December of 1906, which was several hundred years later. Perhaps. But he says that St. Elizabeth ordained him as her special priest personally, herself, the night before his... Actual ordination. And she gave him that special sign, and that's why he holds his fingers together in a different way than every other priest. Because he's special. He's not just special. He's her special little priest. Nothing weird about that. Nope. Since Hans was so certain that he was St. Elizabeth's special priest, he also took it upon himself to give to the needy. Anytime someone came to whatever church he worked at and said they needed something, he would give whatever he could. Even if it was a drunk person showing up and saying they needed more money to buy more alcohol, he would give them money. He would give away all of his clothes, too, even when he was little. He was constantly giving. He was very much a socialist and thought that rich people should die so that wealth could be dispersed amongst the poor. And at one point, he actually stole a book of blank death certificates from a doctor with the intention of filling them out and submitting them for all of- the rich people that he was somehow going to facilitate the deaths of, he hadn't figured out their deaths. And I assume God or St. Elizabeth or Saint Augustine or whatever other saint was appearing to him at the time. I assume he believed they were going to handle that part for him. Just going to submit the death certificates. He also thought that birth control and abortions should be allowed. He was really, truly convinced that those ground lentils— just a tablespoon of uncooked ground lentils in a glass of water— would keep a woman from getting pregnant. So he bought some lentils at the store and ground them up himself. He printed up about 500 cards with an advertisement on them, and he called himself Dr. Lasserre, saying he was a top doctor of women's health from France. He attached the cards to baggies of ground lentils and had them marked for sale at $2. 80 each. He never did put them up for sale, but several of them were packaged and ready to be sold. Hans also believed that suicide should be allowed for those who are terminally ill or just really want to die. I mean, he really was a different sort of Catholic. Progressive. Yes, he was. But back to charity. Hans told Dr. Muray that he really wanted to make a lot of money. And when I say make a lot of money, I mean manufacture a lot of counterfeit money. He wanted to actually make the money and he wanted it to look so real that he wouldn't get caught and he could use the money to build a really big church and he could buy all the things that all the poor people needed. He felt that would be what God would want. So Hans and Dr. Muray went into the counterfeiting business together in early 1913. They built a counterfeiting apparatus, some kind of printing machine. They rented an apartment on 134th Street where they could make their money and have their little love nest and enjoy each other's company in secret. Meanwhile, in February or March of 1913, Anna got pregnant again. Keep in mind, she'd just returned from her abortion trip the previous November, and it had cost $150. Those darn ground lentils weren't working. Anna really just wanted Hans to marry her already. They went and got a marriage license and paid the $1 fee. They didn't get legally married though. Hans said he was a priest, so he had the power to do the ceremony himself. And so he did whatever it was, and they just considered themselves married in their hearts. He gave her a wedding ring and that was that. She wasn't happy with that, though, because she wanted to actually live with him as man and wife. She was still living at St. Boniface's, and she wasn't even allowed to tell anyone that she was in a relationship with him. What kind of marriage was that? Well, it was also in February of 1913 that Hans was conducting Mass on a Sunday at St. Joseph's Church. He was doing the consecration part. turning the wine into Christ's blood. He was staring into the chalice when suddenly he heard God's voice, plain as day, speak to him in German. God told him, 'Anna shall be a sacrifice of love and atonement.' It was a gentle voice that, interestingly, sounded quite similar to Dr. Muray's voice, which also sounded very similar to that dreamy priest that gave him his first communion back when he was 12. While the message repeated itself only seldomly at first, Hans started to hear the same thing from God more and more often. After a while, it was on repeat in his head like a song that gets stuck all day. It was the last thing he heard before he went to sleep and the first thing he heard in the morning. He finally told Anna, 'God told me you are to be a sacrifice of love and atonement.' Anna laughed and told him, 'Hans, you are getting crazy.' Hans told her several times and she just told him he was crazy. Meanwhile, the months were going along and Anna's belly was getting bigger. It was harder to hide her pregnancy. She had a very dear friend that she worked with. At St. Boniface's church, and Anna was doing her best to explain away her changing appearance. Anna would say things like, 'I'm getting so swollen in the middle. I think I'm getting dropsy.' Now, this word 'dropsy.' When I saw the term 'dropsy,' I thought it was just an old-fashioned slang term that meant 'frumpy' or something. And I texted Olivia and said, 'Oh my gosh, what a cool word.' I needed to bring it back. And then I realized that there was no autocorrect on it. And I said, 'I thought, oh, this must be an actual word.' And so I looked it up, and it is an actual medical condition. It means edema or retaining water. So she was just trying to explain it away. You know, she was swelling up with water. So basically, like bloating? Yeah, basically. But I mean, if you look up pictures, it's kind of gross. Oh. Like actual retaining water. Yeah. Close. Like you can like push, like and it'll make an indentation that stays because you're so full of water. Yeah. So she thought she was getting dropsy. Um, But anyway, so. Now, she told her friend that she had a fiancé. I mean, she'd been talking about Hans forever, but she wouldn't say his name. She just kept referring to him as her intended. And she did once show a picture, and I actually found the picture that she showed him. It was a picture of him with a beard. from before he came to the States. Oh, I think I've seen that one. Yeah, and I saved it to my phone, so we will wind up sharing that one. Anyway, and her friend, whose name was also Anna, which is why I keep just calling her her friend, but... Her friend said, 'I think he's funny-looking. He looks kind of old. And she was like, 'He's only 18 years older than me, which is funny because he wasn't. He's actually only 12 years older than her. He's only 18 years. Not that much. It's like, 'Oh my gosh, when you're 20, 18 years older would have been a lot. But yeah, Anna was 20. He was 32. But anyway, she just kept calling him. I mean, Anna would refer to Hans as her intended and would not say his name ever, which red flag, like something's up if your friend will not even tell you the name. Yeah, kind of annoying. Yeah. Pretty strange.' But so her friend clearly had not ever met Hans. She must have started working there after Hans left St. Boniface and went to St. Joseph's. So anyway, Anna kept saying, 'Oh, we're going to get married.' And Anna would embroider. Like, remember, I mentioned that her lower torso was in a pillowcase that had that 'A' embroidered. Anna and her friend would embroider together an 'A' and her friend actually on that pillowcase, that same pillowcase, French knots. Her friend had done them herself. Thank you. on that pillowcase, that her lower torso. arrived in. Yeah. So anyway. Ana told her, you know, we're looking for a place to live. I'm going to move out soon. We're going to be together. We're going to get married and all this stuff. Now, the head priest at St. Boniface's, so Father Braun, his actual sister, Magdalena Braun, she was a housekeeper there. And Magdalena had been gone for a month or two on vacation, and she came back in August of 1913. And it was plain as day to her that Anna was pregnant because she hadn't seen her in a couple months. So very obvious change in a couple months. So Magdalena. Magdalena pulled her aside and she didn't actually say, 'You're obviously with child, right?' She didn't say that, but it was just obvious to Magdalena. And so she just said to her, 'You can go at the end of the month.' August 30th is your last day. And Anna said to her, 'I want to explain to you.' I know I've lied to you before, but what I want to tell you now is the truth. And Magdalena said, 'I don't want to hear it.' And just dismissed her. And man, do I wish that Magdalena had let her speak because I would love to know what she was going to say. So Anna told her friend, who, again, was also named Anna. Anna Hurt was her name. That she couldn't tell her where she was moving or what her married name was going to be. But that after she moved out, she would come back and meet with her. She said she'd meet up with her on September 2nd. and that she would tell her her new last name and where she would be living. And then, after August 30th, she left St. Boniface's church and nobody ever saw her alive again. The Coward Shoe. How are your children shod when they go to school? Are you as careful of their feet as you are of their food? Do you watch how they stand in their shoes as well as where they stand in their studies? It is important that your boy or girl be properly shod because 33 out of every 100 school children have some form of arch trouble. or correct it by letting your children wear Coward Shoes with Coward Extension Heels. Coward Arch Support Shoe and Coward Extension Heel have been made by James S. Coward. In his custom department for over 30 years. Coward shoes are imitated, but not duplicated. Sold only from the one Coward Shoe Store. It was August 21st when Magdalena Braun told Anna she had to leave by the 30th, and it was August 25th that Hans had gone to 68 Bradhurst Avenue to see about an apartment for rent. Hans paid the deposit that very day, and then he went to Saks Furniture Store just a block away to look for a bed. He found a used white bed, a box spring, a mattress, and he bought a couple pillows. He arranged to have them delivered in care of Mr. Brookings, the janitor at 68 Bradhurst Avenue. On August 27th, Hans sent a messenger boy over to St. Boniface's church to pick up Anna's big trunks. They were packed with all of her things. She of course had all of her clothes and toiletries, but she also had things that she'd collected through the years for when she would someday be married and start a family. She loved to embroider, and she had pillowcases that she and her friend at work had embroidered together, by hand, with the letter A. A for Anna, that Anna planned to put on her marital bed after her wedding. The trunks were sent over to 68 Bradhurst Avenue, and when she finished up her day on August 30th, she said goodbye to everyone, and she walked away from St. Boniface's church for the last time. September 1st of 1913 was Labor Day, and she spent the day at the festivities in New York City with Hans. The next, September 2nd, they went to a movie together, and they made love. He was rough with her a lot and would bite her. He liked to see his teeth marks, but she didn't like it. He really liked to see when he made her bleed, but she really didn't like that, so he didn't do it often. At around 10 o'clock that night, he left her at the apartment and he went back to his parish at St. Joseph's Church and went to sleep. He woke up again around 11 and heard God's voice again. God told him, 'Anna must be a sacrifice of love and atonement.' God had been very insistent lately, very persistent. Hans got out of bed and went to the altar. He knelt and prayed about it, asking God if this is really what he should do and if now was the time. God didn't tell him no, so Hans realized he had to do it. He had a sharp knife that he'd purchased two weeks prior with this task in mind, so he retrieved it from his room and he went back to 68 Bradhurst Avenue. The moon was shining as he went in, and he got completely undressed. He got up onto the bed, and she turned slightly toward him. He kissed her for the last time. He had bitten her early in the evening and had tasted some of her blood, and he was now overcome with the desire to taste more of it. He said that she didn't fully awaken when he kissed her, but that her eyes opened a little and she had smiled just as he ran the knife across her throat. What carried him through the rest of his life was the fact that she died with a smile on her face. The knife was so sharp that it cut almost through her neck with the first cut. Jeez. The blood, of course, ran all over, and this got him very excited. He attempted intercourse with her while the blood was flowing, but he ejaculated prematurely between her legs while pressing himself against her and drinking the blood. Ew. Thank you. See, remember all the texts I sent you? I was like, 'I have to,' I was like, 'my notes are getting embarrassing.' I have to say these things out loud. I'm just imagining it like. Gross. I know. What do vampirism in some spots it was he said he did have intercourse with her and in others it was like, 'well he said he prematurely ejaculated and he couldn't—and then... Then in the trial, the scientists said that it was actually impossible to actually have sex with a dead body.' And it's like. I'm pretty sure it's possible to put your penis. Like, pretty sure that it's been done. He finished cutting off her head and he carried it to the bathroom. He mixed some of the blood from her throat with some water in a cup and he drank it. Then he went and retrieved the rest of her body and carried it into the bathroom, where he placed it in the tub. After getting himself mostly cleaned up, he went back to the parish at St.

Joseph's Church and went to sleep until 6: 1:02:36

30 a. m. Then he got up and celebrated Mass. He felt like he was continuing the same sacrifice and was acting more in accordance with the will of God than ever before. When he was done with that, he went back to 68 Bradhurst, and this time he took the saw with him. He had purchased the saw a couple weeks back because he needed to cut some wooden blocks for his counterfeiting apparatus. He needed to cut wood pieces to back the electrotypes. Back at the apartment, he first wrapped the head up. He put the head in a pillowcase and wrapped picture wire around it. Then he walked over to get on the Fort Lee ferry that goes to the airport. Across the Hudson River. When the ferry got to the middle, he dropped the bundle off the back of the ferry. On his way back home, he stopped at a newspaper store and bought 12 sheets of big brown wrapping paper. He took that back to 68 Bradhurst Avenue and got to work cutting up the rest of the body, wrapping the pieces. And then taking the bundles a couple at a time to drop off the back of the ferry. After all the body parts were dropped in the river, which he did over September 3rd and 4th, he started disposing of bedding and the mattress. He actually carried the bloody mattress a few blocks away and set it on fire in an empty lot that was just 20 feet away from a religious tent that was set up. Anyone could have seen that and probably did see that. Gutsy. Very gutsy. Just a priest carrying a bloody mattress down the street. Nothing to see here. Except he was probably in his regular clothes. But still, even that is really weird. Hey, he was her special little priest. He does what he wants, really. I wonder if a mule helped him. Apparently he didn't know anything about it. I don't know. Sure, Jan. He got a big metal bucket and he burned the bedding in there. And then he started cleaning up all the blood in the apartment. He scrubbed the blood off the wallpaper, which apparently there was a... bunch on the wallpaper and the floors. He even rented an additional apartment on 8th Avenue under the fake name of Schneider and moved. A couple of Anna's suitcases into it on September 5th. Now his plan was to move everything out of 68 Bradhurst Avenue and leave no trace of himself or Anna there at all. So there would be no connection whatsoever to the crime. It was September 6th that he read in the newspaper that the upper torso had been found. And that is when he completely panicked. And he decided he better not go back to 68 Bradhurst Avenue or the new apartment on 8th Avenue at all. Or they might catch him. So he just went back home to the rectory at St. Joseph's Church. He went back to doing his priestly duties. and he hoped and prayed that it would all go away. Hmm. Hmm. Now, ever since finding that first piece of Anna in the pillow, the detectives were on the trail. That manufacturer's tag was exactly what they needed. Needed, and they struck gold. They contacted the manufacturer in Newark, New Jersey, and they found out that only 12 of those pillows had ever been made, and all 12 of them had been sold to George Sachs at his furniture store on 8th Avenue. The detectives raced over to talk to George Sachs and his wife. Now, it took a little while to get it all figured out because George Sachs had a license as a used furniture. Dealer, and as such, he was only required to keep detailed records of his used furniture sales. When he sold new items, such as these pillows, he didn't have to keep as detailed of records. He may write down that he sold a pillow, for example, but not an exact item number for that pillow. Well, it turns out that of those 12 pillows, only two had ever been sold. And they found that one had been sold to a woman who they easily tracked down. That woman had bought it as a wedding gift for her building's janitress's daughter. Janitress? Yes. Back in the early 1900s, a female janitor was called a janitress. Hmm. Yeah. I wonder what the difference between a janitor and a maid was. Like, is janitor just... building, not like a house. Yeah, I think so. Guess I answered my question. I would think so. Yeah. But yeah, I learned that while researching this case, I came across, you know, the word 'janitress'. Now. After speaking to that lady, they found that, you know, she clearly had nothing to do with this heinous crime. Now, the other pillow was sold to a man by the name of Hans Schmidt. Who, on August 25th of 1913, had purchased a used bed, used box springs, and a used mattress, which, ew. Along with two new pillows. And he had his furniture order delivered to an apartment at 68 Bradhurst Avenue, just a block away from Saks Furniture Store. Now, that pillow, it turns out, had been fished out of the Hudson River on Friday, September 5th, and they had the name of their man by Monday, September 8th. So detectives staked out the apartment on Bradhurst Avenue to watch and see who this man was, who might be coming and going, just who. Were they up against? So they watched and they waited, but no one came because, if you recall, two days earlier was when Hans saw that, you know, the body part had been found and he was terrified to go anywhere near the apartment. So literally no one came or went from 68 Bradhurst Avenue. So finally, on Saturday, September 13th, around 7 p. m. The call was made to just make entry into the apartment. Detective Casasa went in through the fire escape window. He was, like, hardcore. This guy was amazing. And, you know, he just busts in, and oddly enough... in the dining room. was a white bed. Because that's where they didn't use the bedroom. They just put the bed in the dining room. And it had a box spring on it. There's no mattress, right? It's the only furniture in the entire apartment. And by the way, that strange mark on the back of her shoulder was because... Hans made her put together the bed. He did not help her. And as she was putting it together, a piece fell over and hit her in the back. So that's what that was from. But anyway, so here's this bed. There's no mattress, but there's the box springs. There are a couple of trunks in the room. There's a woman's hat box. There's a woman's bathing suit. Drinking glasses, odds and ends, a spool of insulated wire. There's some cord in there. There's cleaning supplies. The apartment is spotless, other than a big, obvious blood stain on the wall. And they're like, 'I think we found her crime scene.' There's some blood spatter on this white bed frame, which obviously it had been cleaned, but, you know, whoever cleaned it, like, missed some. So there's, you know, some blood spots on it. But yeah, I mean, they found their crime scene, obviously. In the kitchen, there was brown paper, like, covering the floor, like, to keep it clean from whatever was going on in there. Um, yeah. So they found their spot. Now they opened up one of the trunks and in it they found a large knife and a saw. And they found several pictures of a beautiful young woman and hundreds of letters all addressed to either an Anna Aumuller or an Anna Igler. And they were addressed to the care of Father Braun at 304 East 47th Street, which was St. Boniface's church. So the police all got into their automobile and they headed straight to St. Boniface's church. Now they go straight there with the pictures of Anna Aumuller and a few of the letters. And Father Braun and his sister identify the girl in the pictures as Anna, and they told the officers she has a cousin, Joseph Igler, who lives up near 70th Street and First Avenue. So the officers hightail it up to 70th Street, and they knock on every door until they locate Joseph Igler. He identified Anna from the pictures and he told the officers she had been romantically involved with a priest, Hans Schmidt, who was now living and working at St. Joseph's Church. The officers loaded Joseph Igler into their old Model T and they made the drive over to St. Joseph's Church at 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. So Joseph could positively identify Father Schmidt as Anna's lover. The officers arrived at St.

Joseph's Church at around 11: 1:11:44

30 on the night of September 13th and rang the bell. It was Officer Casasa, Chief Inspector Fuaro, and Detective John O'Connell. The door was answered by Father Quinn, who led the detectives into the reception room. They told Father Quinn they needed to speak to Father Schmidt, and soon they had Father Schmidt in the reception room sitting at a desk, his whole body trembling. They asked his name, and he said it was Hans Schmidt. They asked where he was born, and he said Germany. They asked when he rented the flat at 68 Bradhurst Avenue, and he remained silent. Detective Casasa then pulled out the two pictures of Anna that he'd brought along and he put one of them in front of Hans. Who is this? Who is she? Do you know her? Who is she? Hans just stared at the picture. Kasasa then put the other one in front of him, and he trembled even harder. Kasasa then asked, Is this Anna Aumuller? Hans answered, 'Yes,' and then he dropped his head onto his hands with his forehead on the crook of his left arm. Officer O'Connell, who was the stenographer and was in charge of writing down a transcript of this whole interview, he then asked, 'Did you kill her?' He asked him this question three times, with about a five-second pause between the questions. After the third question, 'Did you kill her?' Inspector Fuaro stood up and went over to Hans, put his hand on his back and said, 'Speak up now, tell us the truth.' Hans raised his head and said, 'Yes, I loved her.' Then he put his head back down and his whole body shook violently. From there, the officers took him upstairs to his room, where they made a search of all of his belongings to see if they could find any evidence linking him directly to the apartment at 68 Bradhurst Avenue. They had Hans Schmidt seated on the bed, and Detective Casasa was sitting to the right of Hans. In Detective Casasa's left coat pocket, on the side nearest to Hans, he had the two pictures of Anna Almuller. Twice, Hans tried to stealthily reach over and get the pictures out of Detective Casasa's pocket, and Casasa was able to move away enough to stop him. The third time, Casasus said to Inspector Foirot, 'Look, he's doing it again.' Foirot said, 'Just let him. See what happens.' Hans got a picture of... Anna from Casas' pocket, looked at it for a moment, then pressed it to his lips, then to his chest, and then he collapsed face-first into his pillow with his legs sticking straight out in front of him into the room. He remained in that position for a solid minute at least, like at least 60 seconds. Try looking at a clock for a full 60 seconds and imagine this. And the detectives are all looking at him and each other with incredulous looks of 'WTF.' And he remained like that until they found another item that they needed him to identify. Oh, the dramatics. I laughed so hard when I read that. Oh my gosh. Anyway, Casasa took the photo back and said to him, 'You can have it back when you tell us where her head is.' And Hans responded, 'In the deep water.' I love a dramatic. Now, listeners, if you're anything like me. You've heard little nuggets that I've dropped in here, like he tasted the blood and he wanted more. And you're like, 'What's wrong with this guy, right?' You're thinking there's got to be more to this puzzle to explain how it all got to this point. And you're correct. The fact of the matter is that when Hans Schmidt landed here in the United States in 1909, Nobody knew who this guy really was. All of those priests and bishops who thought he was off, oh, they were right. But they didn't know the half of it. All right, so that's it for part one. Be sure to join us for part two, where we will cover every disturbing detail from Hans' childhood, what the forensic psychology take would be for Hans, the outcome of the trial, and what might have happened to Anna's baby. Shout out to the little bit of help that Ancestry. com was. Find a grave. Family search. Big shout out to newspapers. com. Shout out to Christian. Shout out to the Lloyd Seeley Library Digital Collections through the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. For the trial transcripts and I downloaded the whole shebang. If you guys want it, I mean, it'll suck years out of your life, but I can I don't know. I can provide. Okay, is it? Marvel Whirling Douche Spray or Whirling Spray Douche? Um... Um... Whirling spray douche. It's because— I don't know, I kinda like whirling douche spr-Because on, I don't know, the big bulb thingy, it says whirling spray. So yeah, it's a whirling, Marvel whirling spray douche. Marvel, okay, Marvel. I got this. Let's give this a try. 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