Hans Schmidt: The Bloodlust Priest - Part 3

This is the 3rd and final part of the Hans Schmidt series. In this episode we:

• Explore the investigation into Dr. Muret's true identity, and then reveal his real identity!
• Discuss what may have happened to Anna Aumuller's baby, as well as her cause of death
• Reveal the outcomes of both Dr. Muret's and Hans Schmidt's trials
• Muse over some thoughts into Hans Schmidt's pathology
• ...and discuss a "true crime" book about this case that turned out to be fictional.

Historical ads featured in this episode are for Wrigley's Spearmint Gum and New York Telephone Company.

Bonus info:

Monica corrected Hans Schmidt's Wikipedia page!

The full "True Crime" eBook we found (full of incorrect information) can be fully accessed and reviewed at the website Internet Archives.

The trial transcripts—all 7 PDF scans with almost 1800 pages—can be accessed at the following website:

https://dc.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/7003

Transcript

0:00

What do aliases, junk science, and baby clothes have in common? You're about 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 tales of vintage villainy that time forgot. This is part three of the most convoluted, twisted, creepy tale that we have covered to date. If you have not listened to parts... one or two, you need to stop right now and go back. If you start here, you will hear all kinds of spoilers that will simply ruin the experience for you. Head right back to part one or part two, wherever you need to be, and don't listen to this one until you're supposed to. Where we left off last time was that Inspector Fuaro was sitting down to question the dentist, Dr. Ernest Muray, after he'd found a rent receipt in Hans Schmidt's room at the St. Joseph's Rectory under the name of George Miller. This apartment was full of counterfeiting equipment and photography equipment. When police talked to the janitress of the building, she told police that she could take them to George Miller, who paid the rent on the apartment. She led them straight to a man who turned out to be Dr. Muray, who was also the lover of Hans Schmidt. What Inspector Foirot noticed was was that Dr. Ernest Muray looked awfully familiar. He knew he hadn't seen this exact man before, not this very individual sitting before him in the flesh. But he knew he'd seen someone who looked very similar to him before. This man, Ernest Arthur Muray, had a face that looked quite similar to the face of Hans Schmidt. And I don't mean they had the same shaped face, same eye color, and same haircut. It wasn't anything as simple as that. I mean they had the same eyes, the same forehead, the same ears, the same nose, possibly, thought Inspector Foirot, even the same genes. These two looked so similar that Inspector Foirot could not be convinced that these two were not related. That's how similar these two looked. Listen to this quote from Inspector Foirot from the New York Times on Wednesday, September 17, 1913. I have questioned Muray at length regarding his remarkable resemblance to Father Schmidt. He would have me believe that this is a mere coincidence. I have devoted much of my life to the study of methods of identification. I went abroad last year to study identification by the facial features, as it is practiced by the police in France. This is the most perfect method in the world. It is as certain as the taking of fingerprints. Now, I have to be honest with you guys. I thought this was probably complete nonsense when I read this. We are talking about the year 1913. All know now that there can be doppelgangers out there who we have zero familial relationship to. So knowing what I know, I was thinking that it was very unlikely that Dr. Muray was related in any way to Hans Schmidt. I mean, let's talk about phrenology for a second. Phrenology was junk science that basically said that you could tell if a person was a criminal based on the shape of their body. Their skull. Or you could tell if they were intelligent or if they were an evolutionary throwback. It was a way to excuse racism and eugenics. It was largely discredited by the mid-1800s. But I saw in the trial transcripts that they actually had a phrenologist come in and look at Hans Schmidt. And give his expert opinion on how he stacked up. So when I saw Inspector Fuaro say that he had training in the study of identification by the... And he knew definitively that Hans Schmidt and Ernest Muray were blood relatives just by looking at them. I was skeptical. Is this just more junk science? I mean, most definitely this science is junk. But are these two related? I mean, you never know with this priest. So I did some digging. Now, none of this was in the trial, and I have spent the last month poring through the trial transcripts and hardly any time looking through the old newspaper articles. Hardly anything about Dr. Muray came into Hans' murder trial because Hans wasn't actually charged with the counterfeiting. He was just charged with the murder. And likewise, Dr. Muray wasn't charged with the murder. Hans swore up and down that Muray didn't have anything to do with the murder at all. And in fact, Hans swore that Muray didn't know anything about the counterfeiting either. But they had solid evidence to prove otherwise. Now, it wasn't until I had finished writing parts one and two of this story when Olivia threw a few more articles at me that left me completely shaken and stirred. And I was like, holy moly, like there has to be a part three because, oh my gosh. Now, I believe I sent her a text with an OMG. With about like a dozen Gs when the truth behind Dr. Muray's identity was revealed in the papers. And even then I didn't fully buy it until I did the research to prove it to myself. And then there's still a twist. Let's take a look at this. So who is Ernest Arthur Muray? Our dear, dear Ernie first claimed to have been born in Chicago in 1884 to a French mother and a German father, and he said that they moved to Germany when he was three. He said that is why he had a German accent. To someone else, he said that he had been born in Chicago and didn't move to Germany until 1903 when he would have been 19. But there's no way his German accent would have been that strong if he had moved back to the U. S. in 1911, if that had been the case, right? Now, shortly after his arrest, he was seen by a doctor for an earache. And when asked about his place of birth, he said he had actually been born in Hamburg, Germany. So right there, we know something's amiss. That's three different stories, like right off the bat, clearly something here stinks. Well, the same day that that that the article came out in which we got that quote from Inspector Fuero saying that he knew they had to be related. That article was September 17th of 1913. There was another... search conducted on Hans Schmidt's room at St. Joseph's Church. They just so happened to find a promissory note stating that Dr. Muray would pay back $300 to Father Schmidt, and it was dated April of 1911. 1911? Yes, and that is over two years earlier. And this is very significant because, if you recall from way back in part one of this story, Hans and Dr. Muray had told the police that they met in December of 1912 when Hans went in to get some dental work done. That was just 10 months earlier, not two years ago. Yeah, so suddenly it's becoming clear that Hans and Ernest have known each other quite a bit longer than they would like us to think. Now, the police realized they needed to take a much deeper look into all of this. Dr. Muray claimed to have finished dental school at Berlin Dental College. And would it surprise you to know that a search through their records back through 1899 showed no such name as Ernest Arthur Muray? You don't say. Mm-hmm. Next, the police conducted a raid on the fake dentist's fake dental office at 301 St. Nicholas Avenue. and they found scores of letters that showed he used tons of fake names himself. Among them were Dr. Ernst Stein, Dr. Ernest, and Dr. Arnold Held, and Herman Arthur Heibling. Now, many of the letters came from a woman named Vera Harris, who lived in London and who signed one of the letters as your loving wife. And in one of them, she implored him to come back home and assured him that the Scotland Yard weren't looking for him anymore. Hmm. Yeah. Now, I just want to add here that I, in the beginning, thought he really was a dentist. And I was thinking, for one of our old-time ads, it would be really fun if I found one. One of his dental ads to use. And so I was like scouring the papers, like looking for ads. And I'm like, he must not have like advertised or like been part of, you know, some office where he was one of multiple people. So his name just wasn't in the ad. And I looked and looked, I couldn't find anything. And it's all making sense now why I couldn't find anything. I'm like, oh, he wasn't actually a real dentist. He was a scam artist. Ooh, this guy. All the time I spent looking for ads. You wasted your time. Man. Anyway, now he practiced medicine in Chicago as Dr. Arnold Held in 1909. He taught languages in London as Dr. A. Ernest in 1910. He was practicing medicine in London as Dr. Ernest Muray in 1911 and also as Dr. Ernst Stein. And then he showed up in New York in 1911. Now, additionally, those letters proved that this man, whoever he was, was in Hamburg, Germany, two months before he was in Chicago. So he was in Germany. In March of 1909. There was even a membership card to a YMCA in Hamburg made out to an Arthur Heibling from 1904 in his possession. A newspaper reporter asked him about this last one, the Arthur Heibling, and he insisted he knew Arthur Heibling from years ago. He simply had his card. On September 20th, a cablegram arrived from Germany saying that the Herman Arthur Heibling that they had a record of, it had been like... born on February 7th of 1884, and their records of what he looked like was identical to this Ernest Arthur Muray, and the one that they had, Hermann Arthur Heibling, was wanted in Hamburg and Berlin on charges of swindling. Oh, well, what do you expect? Another alias was used. So anyway, also in his fake dental office was a fake mustache and beard. Both Hans and Ernest, if that's his real name, swore that Ernest had nothing to do with the counterfeiting business. But see, Hans had bought the car, and had to have them cut down to size by a guy named A. G. Hover at 126 West 130th Street. Hover telephoned Inspector... Foirot and told him that he'd seen the photographs in the papers and recognized the two men as the same two men that had come in together to get the copper plates cut. The strip that they'd brought in was 36 inches long and 12 inches wide, and Hans told him to cut it down into plates that were 8 inches by 4 inches. So, Ernest was with Hans several times when Hans came in to visit the shop, said Hover, and that certainly made Ernie Boy seem a lot more guilty than he was. Like the police to think, 'Yep,' so Inspector Fuaro was still following that trail, thinking they must be related. Things in 1913 weren't as easy as they are today, though. So he couldn't just— you know— look things up on Facebook or pick up the phone. So things do take a little bit of time. But somehow, Foirot got his hands on a photograph of Ernest Muray that bore the imprint of a photographer in Mainz, Germany, where Hans Schmidt had been a priest. So this strengthened the belief that they must be related. But what really sealed it for Foirot was the telegram that arrived on September 18th from Ascheffenburg, Germany, the birthplace of Hans Schmidt. The officials there, in his very hometown, said that the photographs made it clear to them that the person here in New York City who claimed to be Dr. Ernest Arthur Muray was none other than... Oh my gosh, you just got goosebumps. Hans' cousin, Adolf Miller. Meet your man first by telephone. The courteous, business-like way to introduce yourself to a busy man is by telephone. You assure yourself a hearing. You avoid unnecessary trips and wasteful waiting in his outer office. You show him that you appreciate the value of his time. You leave the impression that you appreciate the value of your own time. You establish yourself on a satisfactory basis for future appointments or conferences or telephone orders. Wasteful waiting in an outer office is no longer an evidence of efficient salesmanship. Meet your man first by telephone. New York Telephone Company. Now, in case you have forgotten, let me refresh your memories. Hans' uncle Leo never married and had a lot of money. He died of stomach cancer. He didn't like most of his siblings, but he really liked— to Sister Gertrude and her kids, so he left his fortune to them. This included Hans Schmidt, cousin Adolf Miller, whose father Lorenz and Sister Elizabeth had hung them themselves in 1905, was angry because he wanted some of Uncle Leo's money. So he started showing up at Gonsenheim, where Hans was a priest. Adolf Miller was black. blackmailing Hans, threatening to go to the newspapers to expose him for having forged his doctorate certificate in philosophy, and to expose all of his siblings for who knows what. Probably incest. This blackmail and these threats are why Hans went AWOL from Gonsenheim. Adolf is why he ran off to Munich and ultimately got kicked out of the priesthood in the first place. And now they're partners in crime. So it would seem. So still, I saw these reports that they thought he was Adolf. I mean, it was like in the papers, like... You know, fake dentist is priest's cousin. And I was like, what? This is the one you sent me where I was like, 'OMG, GG, GG.' You've got to be kidding me. I think there was an SDFU in there with a lot of U's. I was like, 'oh, my gosh.' Yeah, it was like, 'holy cow, mind blown.' alone. So yeah, still though, I saw these reports that they thought he was Adolf and I was like, 'oh, come on.' Was he really? But of course, I mean, both of them were still denied. It up and down. Just absolutely. No, we are not. No, we are not. And I mean, it was 1913. I have little faith in their science and their methods of identification. But, you know, that apartment that they rented for their counterfeiting apparatus and their love nest. All throughout the trial transcript, they kept talking to Hans as if it were Hans who had rented that apartment, and Hans took full responsibility. They even asked him, 'Why had he had used the name Miller?' And Hans said he used the name Miller to avoid detection. Now, Miller is Hans's mother's maiden name. So it made sense to me why he'd used Miller. Miller, you know, is a family name. I thought nothing of it. Well, it turns out that Dr. Muray is the one who actually rented it. And he rented it under the name of George Miller. And in fact, during his trial, the landlady kept referring to him as Miller while she testified because that's how he introduced himself and how she knew him. And I think the fact that he used Miller out of every possible name in the world gives a little more strength to him, really being Adolf, because Miller is Adolf's last name. And even Hans Schmidt used his real name for a lot of things. I mean, he rented the 68 Bradhurst murder apartment under his real name, right? Now, furthermore, everybody back in Germany, the whole Miller family and all of Adolf's friends said that Adolf did indeed disappear from Germany. In 1909. And that is when all traces of this man, this imposter, this phony, that's when these traces emerge and can be traced. And what's intriguing is that he was wanted in London for sex trafficking, which they called white slavery. He was also wanted for the creation of illicit images or porn. pornography. And then later he was wanted for practicing medicine without a license. And anyway, he and Hans were like two peas in a pod. It was like they were cut from the same cloth. It's like they came from the same family tree. Right? Almost. I know. It's crazy. So after finding all of this information and then after seeing a side-by-side picture of the two of these guys. I was finally convinced that Muray is, in fact, none other than Adolf Miller. This man was quite a cunning guy, and apparently he had actually taken some classes in dentistry. He had taken some classes in medicine, and that is how he was able to pull off his schemes. Hans Schmidt even had studied some medical books when he was in the seminary to impress his classmates with essays, which is likely why he was able to pretend that he was a doctor sometimes. But those ground lentils. Right. I mean, somehow he got the idea that eating lentil soup, making him have to pee more often, would make a woman not get pregnant. So how he thought... peeing, and pregnancy were related, I will never know. He clearly didn't study enough medical books or the right medical books. But, you know, Hans was full of magical thinking and thought, God and St. Elizabeth would just pull some strings. Because he was their special priest. Yes, yes, he was. Well, at the time that all of this was going on, Dr. Muray actually was also taking some law classes through a correspondence school in Chicago. So when he was arrested and questioned by the police, he was well aware of his legal rights and he knew exactly which questions he should and should not answer. And I mean, so your average Joe doesn't know this stuff. And without a lawyer present, we'll wind up answering questions that they probably shouldn't answer. But Muray knew exactly what to do. And Inspector Foirot marveled about this in the papers, actually. He said he was remarkably shifty for a correspondence school lawyer. Now, according to Dr. Muray, who was still insisting that he was not related in any way to Hans and who insisted he was actually a real dentist, he and Hans had simply planned to go into business together to make postcards. And that's what the counterfeiting equipment was for. And according to him... According to him, it was Hans who suddenly said, 'Surprise! We're going to make money.' And Muray was very upset with him and refused to have anything to do with it. Also, according to Muray, he had no idea that Anna Almuller existed. And he had no idea that his priest boyfriend had any girlfriend on the side at all. Um, wife? True, yeah, they did. Mary-ish-ish each other. Beyonce. Yes. Now, additionally, he said that in August, so the month before the murder, that Hans had told him that. St. Elizabeth was speaking to him. And that was why he needed to, you know, make the money to give to the poor people. And that Hans said that he had been commanded by God to make the money so it wouldn't actually be counterfeit. It would be real because God told him to do it. And he also said that he wanted to use the money to build a church and he wanted to be crucified on a cross inside the church. Because he was the second coming of Christ. Yeah. Now Hans had told Muray that he was just like Jesus. He was also a Holy Trinity. Now this Holy Trinity part, he also had said to the psychiatrist. So he had said this in the interviews with them. I saw this in the transcript. He was a priest, he was a doctor, and he was a counterfeiter. So that's what... he told them this was his Holy Trinity. Okay. So the doctor part, he would go by Dr. Mollier, which was the birth control ground lentils scheme, and then the counterfeiter, the moneymaker part. So those were his three personalities, just like there was God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit making up the Catholic Holy Trinity. So anyway, Dr. Muray said that when Hans told him all of this, he told Hans that he was legitimately, certifiably insane. And that Hans got really, really mad at him. Like, 'I am not insane. Like, this is true. I talk to God all the time.' And so the two of them were not speaking. They had basically like broken up in August because Muray told him, 'Dude, you are actually nuts. There's something wrong with you.' So Dr. Muray then burned the several like $10 bills of counterfeit money that Hans had attempted to make, because, according to Dr. Muray, he wasn't even on board with making money anyway. It was supposed to be postcards. That's his story. And so they and they did find burned money. So that was his story. He had burned that. And that Muray didn't see Hans again until after the murder took place, because Hans had a nasty cut on his hand and Hans came to him and said, 'Can you help me with this?' And his excuse was that he had broken it on a glass at dinner at the rectory. So, and it does sound like a good story. It sounds like a plausible story, right? Now, the cops, of course, thought that Mireille was completely in on everything. They were like, 'We know very well you were making money with him. We know that you... knew about the murder. You had a part in it. I mean, that's kind of how cops are, right? We're going to prove it. We're going to prove you had a part in everything. And so they were convinced that he had burned the money like to hide evidence. Yeah, all of that. They did somehow trace, like his last call to Hans, that they were able to see was on September 6th. And that was the day that the news broke in the papers about the first piece of her body being found.

So their idea was: 23:01

he saw in the papers or something that it was found, he must have called Hans and said, 'We have to hide all the evidence and never speak again.' Like, cause that was the last time he called Hans. And so they were thinking, 'Okay. Probably that's when he burned the money and all of that.' But who knows? The police literally could not find any evidence against Muray to link him to Ana's murder at all. There's nothing. And Hans swore up and down until he was blue in the face that the fake dentist had nothing to do with it. He did, however, say that the dentist knew that Anna existed. And that the dentist wasn't happy that he had a girlfriend. Um, But he did say that the dentist had nothing to do with it. Hans also said that after he had sacrificed Anna, he did inform the fake dentist that he had done it and that the fake dentist said that he just hoped that Hans had cleaned it up in a way that he wouldn't get caught. So clearly there were conflicting stories here. So the... It's like a mishmash of truth and confusion. Yeah, but they couldn't find any evidence, so they never charged Mireille with anything. But ultimately, Dr. Murray finally confessed as to who he really was. And sadly for us, he was not actually Adolph Miller. I was so excited at the prospect. That would have been such a good story. He was not Cousin Adolph. He was not. I was hoping. I know. It was like, this is amazing. And it wasn't until last night, actually, that I found out that he wasn't. And I was like, oh, such a bummer. He was, in fact, Herman. Arthur Hybing. Perman had been charged with two things. First, he was charged with making and possessing an apparatus for the purpose of counterfeiting. And second, he was charged with conspiring with Hans Schmidt to counterfeit American bills. After four hours of deliberations, he was convicted on the first charge, making and possessing the apparatus, and then he was acquitted on the second charge of conspiracy. And this is because Hans went on the stand and swore that the initial plan was... just to make postcards, not money. And it was completely his idea to make money. And that Herman Haibing was not on board and was upset. And that's when he was like, 'Absolutely not.' And yeah, so that's how it was. It's interesting that Han's like... Went to bat on that. Yeah, he wanted Herman to not get in trouble for anything. Interesting. Until later. Yeah. Anyway, so Herman was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, and he never stood charges for anything having to do with Ana's murder. I wonder if he changed the story later because he wanted Herman to be in the same prison with him. Spoilers! Hmm, maybe. As for Hans' trial, it all boiled down to whether or not he was insane. The majority of the psychiatrists who... interviewed him believed he was faking or shamming as they called it back then. Today, we call it malingering. I personally feel like he was mentally ill for sure. Now, I found a really intriguing type of OCD called religious scrupulosity. On mcleanhospital. org, it says, when people have religious scrupulosity, one form of obsessive compulsive disorder, they experience significant... doubt, anxiety, and distress about their moral beliefs or religious practices. For example, people who have scrupulosity may worry if they are performing the rights, observations, prayers, or other obligations of their religion correctly. They may even place extra demands on themselves that their spirituality or religion Religion does not even ask of them. The obsessive thoughts of scrupulosity can lead to a never-ending sense of doubt. People who experience such feelings are faced with a relentless desire to make up for their perceived failings. I think this fits Hans very well. I think so. And then we know that mental illness to the point of being hospitalized runs very strongly in his family on both his mother's and his father's sides. We know that Hans was having hallucinations. As early as the age of seven, which would be a very early onset of psychosis. And the most well-known psychotic disorder is schizophrenia. Back in 1913, schizophrenia was called dementia precox. And that just so happens to be what the psychiatrist diagnosed Hans Schmidt with while he was awaiting trial. Precox basically meant early. So they were saying that a schizophrenic person just got dementia early. Now, if you look it up, there is actually... a significant overlap between schizophrenia and OCD. This means there are a lot of people who meet the diagnostic criteria for both of these disorders. even though they are two distinctly different disorders. So I'm pretty confident that Hans Schmidt was suffering from both schizophrenia and religious scrupulosity. Putting those together, we wound up with a very unfortunate blood sacrifice, in my opinion. Backing up my opinion would be the testimony of Hans' sister, father, and brother from Germany who told of his visions and behaviors as a child, as well as the priests and even the courts in Germany prior to his coming to America. He was found to be insane and even removed from the priesthood for it. But at the conclusion of his trial, which ended in February of 1914, Hans was found to be shamming insanity, and he was found to be fully criminally responsible for the murder of Anna Aumuller. He was sentenced to death and sent to Sing Sing to await his date with the electric chair. And Hans, all throughout the trial, was asking for that— the whole time. It's so wild that they thought he was faking it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Hans was saying all along, he wanted to die. He just wanted to be with Anna. Judge me according to your law. I am not insane. Like that's what he was saying. He didn't want them to think he was insane because if he was, that means that God didn't really tell him to do it. And he was positive that God told him to do it. So he was very glad that they said he was not insane. He got exactly what he wanted. Until, that is, it wasn't what he wanted anymore. Oh, pray tell. At one point. He decided he didn't want to die after all. So, you know, he and St. Elizabeth, they had a lot more poor folk to help, right? And see, we never ever found out what happened to Anna's baby. Mm-hmm. Shortly after going to Sing Sing Prison, he was trying to get a new trial, and there was an appeal coming up. So he thought it would help if he made a... confession with a completely different story. And in this confession, he said that he had made up the whole story. The sacrifice. He said that what really happened was that he had convinced Anna to end the pregnancy, which she agreed to do willingly. Paid some people to handle it privately, but she died during the procedure. He didn't want them to get in trouble because he had paid them to do it. So he just disposed of the body himself and made up the whole sacrifice story to try to get off for insanity and to protect the identity of the people who had done the illegal operation. That's what he said. He confessed to that. Later, he said that it was none other than Dr. Muray and his assistant, Bertha Zeck, who had performed the abortion. And of course, they emphatically denied this. Just absolutely, no, we did not. But do you think it could be true? I don't know. I mean, I don't. But Dr. Muray did have some books on, like, obstetrics in his office. Which is interesting. But did he actually read them or were they just for show? I don't know. Why would a dentist need those books? Yeah, that's true. I don't know. But I don't know. So, oh, gosh, I'm so torn about this. In the trial transcript, the first people, I mean, some of the first people to testify were medical examiners. And they talked at length about the cause of death. And according to them, Anna died from bleeding to death, right? And it was rapid. We know this from the heart being fully contracted. Is that indisputable? I don't know. It was 1913 and the science was different from today. Science was in baby form. Right, right. So they were also asked about whether... or not she could have died during childbirth and they both said no because they said that there would have been a blood clot left in the uterus and there was no blood clot in the uterus. That is So yesterday I reached out to two friends, one who works in a morgue and one who used to work as, I believe, an assistant medical examiner. Um, and so I reached out to both of them and both of them said, 'It is possible to hemorrhage from childbirth without there being any blood clots left behind in the uterus.' Like if the hemorrhage was so severe, all of the blood can exit the body without clotting. Like it could all be gone. Right? It can all be gone. So. It is possible. Now, the coroners also said, back in 1914, that they knew from the upper torso that the first cut was the neck because of the amount of blood that seeped out into the lung cavity from that wound. That's probably also disputable. Right? I don't know. But that's what they said. But we do know that she bled to death. At least we know that for a fact. Yes, we know that she would. So what do you think happened to the baby? Well, we never did find out for sure, aside from Hans saying that she died from a botched abortion, not a sacrifice, and that he was in a... of murder because she was already dead when he cut her up. And he said all of this because he didn't want to die after all, after he got to Sing Sing and it really, you know, reality slapped him in the face. As for the actual baby itself, I think the baby was probably a 10th little bundle dropped into the Hudson River. Um, I can't imagine the baby was disposed of any differently. Yeah. I wish he would have told us what he did with the baby, though. It's just such a mystery. I know. It's all I want to know. Wrigley's Spearmint. Soothes your throat. After smoking, it cools your mouth, makes it moist and refreshed. Heartburn and flatulence disappear. Enjoy smoking more by enjoying this goody that improves your breath, teeth, appetite, and digestion. Be sure. Its wrigglies. Caution! Dishonest persons are wrapping rank imitations to look like the clean, pure, healthful wrigglies. These will be offered principally by street fakirs, peddlers, and candy departments of some five and ten stores. Refuse them. Be sure it's Wrigley's. Buy it by the box of most dealers for 85 cents. Each box contains 25 cent packages. Chew it after every meal. Now, he said at one point while awaiting trial that sacrificing a pregnant woman would be more meaningful to God. And he also said that it would be more meaningful if it were a baby. But there was no baby in her uterus when they found her lower torso. And we know from the autopsy that the birth had been natural, without any trace of surgical tools having been used. Inserted inside of her. I looked up what medications they may have used to induce a natural birth in 1913. Because remember, she was six to seven months pregnant. So it wasn't like she was just barely like a few weeks pregnant. Like she was pretty, you know, far along. She was looking dropsy. That's right. And so I found that there was a medication used back then called ergot, E-R-G-O-T, which is a fungus. And it's apparently very poisonous, and it often resulted in the death of the mother, very often. But it would induce contractions, and natural labor, to cause an abortion. Often they would use that. But interestingly, ergot causes vasoconstriction. which is the narrowing of blood vessels, which actually reduces blood flow. So if indeed this is how he induced her natural labor at six or seven months of gestation, she most likely would not have hemorrhaged from childbirth. So I wonder if maybe Hans slipped some ergot into her drink and she wound up having the baby and like she was incredibly distraught about losing the baby. Because what I failed to mention in part one, you guys, is that we know she was planning on having this baby. So I mentioned to you guys after he had killed her and he was cleaning up the apartment, he went and rented another apartment on 8th Avenue. And his plan was to move all of her belongings out of Bradhurst Avenue and put them in the apartment on 8th Avenue. He had moved two suitcases into 8th Avenue on the 5th of September. And then on the 6th, he saw that they found one of her body parts and that freaked him out so much. He did not go back to either apartment when they opened those two suitcases in the eighth avenue apartment. They found an outfit of baby clothes she had been actually sewing baby clothes for this baby. Oh my heart. I know there was one, I forget what they called it. It was like a little like sweater or something that was complete. And then the other pieces that she hadn't completed. Yet, it would have made up a full outfit for the baby. So she fully intended on being a mother and being married to Schmidt. She was, you know, they were going to live together as a family. Like this is what she thought was going to happen. She thought they were going to be a family. So I bet that he induced labor against her will with ergot poisoning, probably slipped it in a drink. And you know, that's, that's what I found. So remember her last day at work was August 30th. And the autopsy showed that she gave birth within three days of her death, which we know was the night of September 2nd. So that leaves August 31st, September 1st, and September 2nd for her to have the baby. She was originally supposed to go visit her former co-worker, Anna Hurt, from St. Boniface's church on September 2nd to tell her where she was living and what her new last name was going to be. But she didn't show up. So she was either having the baby that day or recovering from having the baby. Do you think he killed her because he felt bad for killing the baby? Or maybe she was mad and he thought she was going to expose him for revenge? So maybe he murdered her on purpose and just made up the sacrifice story? So I don't think so. I honestly think that the sacrifice was also legit. Like, I think he both made her lose the baby on purpose. And I think he also sacrificed her. Because he also thought that God told him to. Okay. I think that Hans Schmidt had a lot of eggs in a lot of baskets. I really do. Think about it. He was going to make money to build a church, right? He was also going to crucify himself as the second coming of Christ. He was also going to leave the church altogether to get married to Anna. Like he went so far as to pay the fee to get an actual legal marriage license to marry her. He was also madly in love with Herman Hiving, right? He was also posing as Dr. Mollier to try to promote birth control and send that. Out you know, lentils. Yeah, with the ground lentils. Um, he was also shopping around for life insurance for his baby, because you could cash it in after so long, and he was going to use that money to get a really good education. I mean, he had all of these different plans, all of these eggs in all of these different baskets. And, you know, but then also, he was trying to not have a baby and not get married, because he still wanted to be a priest. Like, there was just all of this stuff. He was a mess. He was all over the place all the time. And he had been since he was a teenager. Like, he never had one. Specific path. There was always all of these things. He was torn in all of these directions and he never knew which way to go at any given time. I think he was just— he was really mental. You know? Ugh. Oh, Hans. I, like, have no words for how... Sad, I feel for him, but also disappointed in him. Yeah, I mean, it was like, well, you know, yes, I'm going to marry you. Yes, you're right. So on this track, yeah, we're going to get this apartment and we're going to get married. And then it's like, oh, but yes, I need to be a priest. I can't have a family. I need to take care of this problem. Oh, yes, yes, God, you're right. I do need to sacrifice her. You've been telling me this for weeks now. Like, you know, it's like all of these things. Like he woke up and was like, 'Oh, tonight's the night.' Got it. Yeah. You know, and it was, I feel like just all of it. I mean, all of these things, all of these things were true. All of these things were going on all at the same time. Now I do have another. Theory I want to bring up that popped into my head because I have been seriously just absorbed by this case for a month. It's true. I blame myself for that. We need simpler cases for a while. Uncle Leo, the old bachelor uncle who left his money to Hans' family. I think that he never got married because he wasn't interested sexually in people his own age. I think perhaps, and I could be wrong, please don't sue me. I think perhaps he was a pedophile. And I think the reason Leo liked Gertrude's family so much much is because she had seven little children that he had access to i am completely just pulling this out of thin air and i am not a psychic nor do i speak to the dead so please take this with a grain of salt. But I personally think it's awfully weird that Hans Schmidt, at the age of seven, would have been the catalyst for an entire family of children to have started having sex with each other and for that to snowball into the neighborhood boys in a scheffenberg to all be having sex with each other in a slaughterhouse for the next what seven years yeah i just have this weird feeling that somehow an adult might have kicked that off I don't know. I don't know. It wasn't the animals. It wasn't the rooster. You know? Yeah. It's just, I don't know. But again, I don't speak to the dead. I don't have documents that say anything of the sort. It's just an idea that popped into my head. Take it or leave it. It, but don't sue me. Uncle Leo died about 120 years ago, so I think I'm safe. But I will say, for the sake of not being sued, that this is most likely wrong and Uncle Leo was probably a swell guy. But it's something to think about. I love how honest you are about what is fact and what isn't, like pointing out what is just your opinion and what is actually part of the case. Yes. And on that note, can we talk about the true crime book you found? Yes. When you sent me the link to that true crime book about this case the other day, called Killer Priest, The Crimes, Trials, and Execution of Father Hans Schmidt. I thought it was going to be full of lovely information in a nice tidy package. I assumed the author read through the trial transcripts and the newspaper articles. Put all of the information in an organized place. And it would be so easy to find everything that I've found in these 1400 plus pages and put in my city. pages of notes. Now you had first told me that a book existed a month ago, you know, when we were first getting started on this case. So I knew that there was a book and I assumed that it would have made a wonderful resource for facts if I needed it. But you had also sent me a link to the seven PDF scans of the full trial transcript. And I was using that as well as the newspaper articles from 1913 and 1914 as my research. Instead, but two days ago, you had sent me a screenshot of something that said, 'Dr. Muray's true identity was Herman Hybing.' And I hadn't yet found the newspaper article that said that he'd admitted prior to his trial what his true identity was. So, you know, I was still thinking that he was Adolf Miller. So when I saw your screenshot. I was like, you know, where did you see that? And you told me it was from the true crime book. And then you gave me the link to the full ebook, which, by the way, is uploaded in its entirety. To a website called Internet Archive, just so you guys know. So I followed the link because I thought, oh, the author of this book must, you know, have found a resource that I haven't found yet. So I was going to go look at that part of the book to see what he had to say about it. And so... There I was at the book, and I start going through the pages, trying to specifically find that part, you know, about Mireille. And to my complete surprise, I found it. An utter horror, Olivia? I found that this book was not actually true crime at all, but was instead a work of fiction. Now, listeners, bear with me. Imagine, if you will, spending an entire month of your life, day after day, every spare moment you have being consumed by the facts of one of the most perverse cases you've ever come across. I know this case as well as I know my own face. I have been drowning in bloody, priestly, incestuous perversion for a month. I cannot stress to you enough how much time I've spent on this. Now, if you were paying attention to part one, when the first piece of torso was found, then you should recall that Mary Bann was 18 years old and her 11-year-old brother Albert was with her on their porch when they saw the bundle floating down the river around eight o'clock in the morning. It was noon when 11-year-old Albert saw it again. It was caught in some driftwood by an abandoned dog, right? Is this sounding familiar? So he grabbed a stick and he pulled it over to him and, you know, pulled it up onto the dock and then he told his mom about it and she said, 'Don't open it; just leave it alone.' Then Albert and his friends, they still had a week before school started, and they talked about, like, 'Gosh, what could be in it?' They got excited about it. And then, around three o'clock, their mom said, 'Okay, fine. You can open it.' And it was Albert who dumped it out, and the feathers went everywhere. Okay. You remember that? Those are the facts. Well. Now I'm going to tell you what it said about this in the true crime book. And I put that in quotes, okay? True crime. So according to this author, Mary was 11, and her brother Albert was 9. They were down at the water's edge, splashing in the waves and building sand castles when they saw the oddly shaped package floating by. Mary's friend, Alice... McKnight, was there too. And when Alice first came down to the water, she had asked Mary if Mary had seen the new cute boy in class that day. And when Alice noticed the package in the water. She asked Mary what the package was. Mary said she wasn't sure, but it was heavy. And the girls giggled as they dragged it onto the rocky shore. And Alice told Mary to unwrap it right away. And as soon as the torso fell out of the, quote, bedding, several crabs crawled out of the torso. So, I mean, it's complete nonsense, and you can probably imagine that I was in absolute shock. I would love to have seen my own face while I read this. I immediately, like... Immediately went to the book's introduction, thinking there must be something that says this is a work of fiction based on a true story. Because, I mean, it has to say that, right? It has to because none of that was anything close to accurate, right? But no. It says in the introduction that the author used trial transcripts and newspaper articles and basically everything that I used. And here's a question.

Quote: 48:35

through this abundance of material, the author was able to faithfully reconstruct the events of September 1913 to a very high degree of certainty. I was shocked. Absolutely, completely, utterly shocked. The newspaper articles clearly state that Mary Bann was 18 and her brother was 11. Mary Bann testified in court that school had not yet started. She and Albert, who was home because school hadn't started yet, were on their porch at 8 a. m. when they first noticed it floating by, and so on. It is made clear in court testimony that it was 11-year-old Albert who opened the package, not Mary. I just don't understand why on earth these details were changed. The actual opening of the package with all of the feathers stuck to the stumps, that was f***ed. far more interesting than what the author made up. So I just, I don't understand why he changed it. So at the time, you know, that I discovered this and I'm reading this, I was a mix of both speechless and rapid fire texting Olivia. I got... I got flurries of texts about this. Now, I don't typically use bad language, but I was like... Who the f*** is Alice? When you said that in a text, that was so funny. Now, you may be thinking, well, if it's just that one little part that's off, I mean, that's not too bad, right? Just that one little part. But no, guys. Remember how the apartment where Anna was killed had just a bed in it and no other furniture? And the bed was set up in the dining room. Do you remember that? This is important because the police believed that, since Hans had furnished it with literally nothing else, this was proof to them that he got the apartment with the sole purpose in mind of murdering her. Like they believed that, that's why he rented the apartment. Like he had in mind, I'm going to rent this place, just going to get a bed. That's all I'm going to need because I'm going to kill her, right? That's what they thought. That was like part of their whole prosecution. You know, that was proof. Like, you know, gentleman of the jury, this proves that's what he had in mind. In this book, when you read about the actual sacrifice itself, he says that Hans first walked in, set the knife down on the sofa, and then he could see through the bedroom door that Anna was asleep in the bed. So when I saw this, I had to wonder, like, did the author even read the transcripts at all? I mean... I don't know. I guess since Hans didn't give like a detailed account of like every single movement he made, the author just had to make something up for the story. And I guess that's why he had to concoct a sofa sitting in the apartment. But adding a piece of furniture, I mean, that changes the case. Like, that changes the prosecution's case, you know? I feel like that's important. So again, I go back to the introduction of the book because again, I'm like. There has to be an explanation for this. And he actually says that, yes, he does take some literary license to recreate pride. Private conversations, because obviously it's impossible to know what was said, you know, behind closed doors or in isolated cell blocks. Now, this next part is a quote, but in no occasion were the essential facts of the case altered or disturbed in any way. Don't you think the fact that the bed was the only piece of furniture in the apartment was an essential fact? I don't know, but now still you may think, okay, that's not so bad, right? He just changed the story a little bit here and there. Well, now let me tell you something else I found. I had to take a look at Hans' Wikipedia page. I'm so glad I didn't look at this stuff before I— did the podcast episodes, you guys— because I would have given you the most wrong information. Oh, it's just crazy. So I looked at his Wikipedia page, you know, just yesterday, or two days ago, or whatever, after I found this book. And to my horror. I realized that this book was the main resource used by whomever wrote the Wikipedia article. And it very well may have been the author who wrote it. I don't know. I have since rewritten the article. But I realized that so many more of the facts of the case had been altered by the author because I saw the quote facts attributed to him. His book on the Wikipedia page. Cause, trust me, I didn't sit down to read his entire book. Like it's, it's fiction. So I'm not going to do that. But for example, okay. Detectives, this part is fact. When the detectives went to the 68 Bradhurst Avenue apartment, it was rented under the name of H. Schmidt, okay? It had been cleaned up. He had cleaned it up, okay? Aside from the blood stains on the wallpaper and the floor by the bed. Anna's trunks were still in there. apartment. He had not finished moving stuff out of it, right? And the bed was still there, some other belongings. When they opened one of her trunks, they... found the knife and the saw inside. Both had been cleaned already, and they found hundreds of letters in the trunk, all addressed to either Anna Igler or Anna Aumuller. Now remember, she was raised by her cousin Joseph Igler's parents. And people, you know, back home who didn't realize that she wasn't a biological child of the family had... believed her name was Anna Igler. So that's why some of the letters were addressed to her under that name. The address on the letters was to the St. Boniface's church address. In the care of Father Braun. That's how the detectives knew to go there and ask about her and any known associates. Now... Those are the facts, okay? Those are the facts. The author of this book changed these details considerably. He said that the Bradhurst apartment was rented under the name of A. Van Dyke. And that they found the bloody knife on the kitchen counter. That's not true. And that they found hundreds of letters addressed to Hans Schmidt in the apartment, written to him from multiple women. And he said that most of the letters were from Anna Aumuller. And her most recent address was for some like private apartment somewhere. And so the detectives went to this private apartment and were told that she had moved out of there when she had gotten the job at St. Boniface's. Isn't that weird? Why change the facts when the actual facts are fantastic? You know, I mean, why not use the real facts? I just don't get it. Why change the evidence? Because the real, the real facts are, it's a great story, you guys. I mean, you guys are invested. You're on. episode three right now. This is fantastic. I just don't get it. Anyway, additionally, and I had to rewrite the entire Wikipedia page. It was just so wrong. Additionally, he said that Hans was, quote, supposedly ordained in 1904. But that's not true. He said that he was arrested for the fraud charges in Germany while he was still in seminary. He completely left out the fact that he had failed. seminary in 1904. Remember, he was there from 1901 to 1904, and he was not ordained with his class. They told him, 'You have an unbalanced mind.' We are not going to to ordain you, you know, you fail, get out of here. And so instead he went to the University of Munich for a year and he couldn't even make it there. So he forged his doctorate of philosophy. Remember that? And then he took it back to the guy at seminary, Bishop Kirstein, and Bishop Kirstein said, 'Oh, okay, well, you've done well for yourself. I will ordain you after all.' It was in 1906. He was actually ordained in 1906. That didn't even make it into the book. That wasn't even on the Wikipedia page. It just said he was, quote, 'supposedly ordained in 1904.' So, I mean, now the Wikipedia page has the truth. He was ordained in 1906. And that arrest for fraud wasn't until 1908. So I had to just put all of this stuff in there. Also... the author of this book. Now this, this part is important. You guys, this is important. The author of the book completely fabricated a bunch of info about Hans having mutilated animals all over his neighborhood when he was little. That simply did not happen. Now, truth be told. His father did say during the trial that when he was around 10, 11, or 12, he had killed some geese or chickens on the farm and had played with them. With the blood and he had put the heads in his pockets. Now I had missed that. I did not put that in episode two. Um, and I went back to the transcripts yesterday. When I was working on episode three and the Wikipedia page and saw that I had missed that. But I went back because I was fact-checking for the Wikipedia page and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, he did say that he had killed some geese and chickens.' So. He did actually kill their own geese or chickens on the farm, just so you know. But he did not mutilate random animals. The author put in there that he was mutilating... squirrels, like horribly mutilating squirrels, like especially the squirrels and rabbits and all of this stuff all over the neighborhood. They never could prove it was him, but the neighbors knew very well and like all of this stuff. And so the author was trying to really make it sound like he was a serial killer. Um, because naturally, when anyone is caught for a murder, anyone, they always look to see if maybe they're connected to other murders. And of course, that was the case with Hans as well, of course. So they did question him about other things. Like they found there had been a letter written to him by this woman whose last name was Green. And she had written to him like a couple months prior and said, 'Oh, you know, I love you' or, you know, 'I can't live without you' or something. And then she had moved. She had moved to like Chicago. And so they tried to find her and they couldn't figure out where she moved. And so they couldn't locate her. So they said, 'Oh, I think she disappeared. Maybe you killed her.' And they never did locate where she moved to. And so. He's implying she must have been murdered. And even on the Wikipedia page, they said he's suspected in the murder of this woman. And the fact of the matter is there is no murder. They don't know that she was murdered. There's no body. There's no evidence that she's murdered. They just don't know where she went. And then there was another woman who, when he came to the United States in 1909, he had said she was his wife, and she had sent him a couple letters, but she went to some other state. And then they lost contact with each other, and they had tried to figure out where she went, and they didn't know where she was. And so they were like, 'Well, we can't find her either.' Did you kill her? And he's like, 'I don't know where she is.' And so, of course, the Wikipedia page says he's suspected in her murder. Well, there is no murder. There was no body. They just don't know where the lady moved. It was hard to track people down in 1913 and 1914. It was. But anyway. There was a little girl named Alma. I can't remember her last name. You can find it in the book. But there was a little girl who she... was killed and buried actually in a church, St. John's Catholic Church in Kentucky, somewhere in Kentucky. Now, the janitor, I believe, of this church had been convicted of her murder. They found like bloody clothes at his house and all of this stuff. And he had been convicted. After Hans was arrested, they were like, 'Well, maybe you're the one who killed her.' So they looked into that and they found that he had visited another priest at that church once. But he was not there when she went missing and he had no connection to it at all. And so they even put in the newspapers, 'There is no connection.' There's no evidence to connect him to that murder. You know, the janitor's the guy who's sitting in jail. They did eventually let the janitor out and said he probably didn't do it after all, but that's it. This author actually... changed the facts and said that Hans had actually been assigned to that church, that he had been a priest. To that church. And he changed all of this. He concocted, he created evidence to say that Hans likely was the murderer of this little nine-year-old girl. And it's, I mean, there's a whole chapter in the book. And so actually on Amazon, if you go and look at the reviews of this book, one of the reviewers actually says that the whole part about the murder of the... Little Girl in Kentucky is complete fiction because the reviewer has been studying and researching basically that case for years. They're not completely familiar with the whole case of Hans. They haven't looked at Hans' case. It said, 'so all of that stuff about Hans is very interesting.' However, everything... about Alma is complete fiction. So it's very interesting because it sounds like everyone who knows facts about anything that this guy put into this book knows that he just made it up. So it's very, very interesting. But I feel like the author really just wanted to make it sound like he was a serial killer. But yeah, so I have rewritten the Wikipedia article to make it factual. I removed all of the references to the author of this fictional book. I have linked to the trial transcripts for everything. So, if anyone in the future wants to write a paper about Hans Schmidt, they will have the real... story. But listeners, please do, please do go to Amazon or go find the book on the website Internet Archives. And please leave a review. Make it clear that the book, Killer Priests, the Crimes, Trials, and Execution of Father Hans Schmidt, make it clear that it's not actually true crime, because other people who love true crime, who love this genre, who want the facts. They need to know, they need to be aware that they will be lied to if they are... that book. I want people to know because I mean, I'm still in shock and I feel my trust has been really broken. And it's going to take me a while to trust other people who create true crime media for a while. I feel like I can only trust myself right now. Anyway. Yeah, so. Let's move on. What ended up happening to Hans? So, um... Let's see here. On February 18th of 1916, Hans surprised everyone when he walked rather hurriedly toward the execution chamber rather than walking slowly, as is usually done for that death march. And he suddenly turned when he reached the rubber mat in front of the chair. He held his long ebony and silver crucifix aloft and then slapped away the reaching arms of the waiting guards. And at first they thought he was going to put up a struggle, like when they were trying to sit him down. But then he said, 'One minute, please.' 'One minute until I say my say.' Hans turned toward the witnesses on the benches and said, 'Pardon me, I beg the forgiveness of all whom I have offended and of all whom I have scandalized.' I forgive all who have offended against me. Now, the prison chaplain, Father Cashin, tried to interrupt Hans at this point and say, like the prayer he was going to say. So he interjected with, 'My Lord, my God, I'm.' Must. And so that's the beginning of the prayer. And Hans was supposed to repeat after him. So after the third repetition, Hans then interrupted, like broke, broke the prayer. Part and continued with his own statement. My last thought is for my mother. Please give my mother my last goodbye. It is for her. I... And then Father Cashin interrupted him with, 'My Lord, my God.' And then Schmidt then started repeating the prayer again, like he was supposed to. When it was done, when the prayer had concluded, he allowed the guards to hook him up to the electrodes. He quietly closed his eyes and he died without another sound. Nobody had come to Sing Sing to say goodbye to him, none of his family or anything. But he did say goodbye to all the other men on death row who he had befriended. And he, you know, he had called goodbye to each of them as he was being led down to that green door to his execution. Now, after he had changed his story prior to that appeal and said that Anna died during an abortion, Hans never did change his story again. He went to his death, saying that his only sin was just lying about it, lying about having sacrificed her and pretending that he had been insane to save the fake. Dentist, Herman, from prosecution for the illegal abortion. But I don't believe that's how it happened. But we will absolutely never know the truth. Yeah, because they're all little liars. Yep. You officially, almost officially, are done with Hans. Yes. Just got to do all the editing. Listen to the story again all the way through and edit. Shout out to Christian for the quotes and ads. Shout out to FamilySearch, Ancestry, Newspapers . com, FindGrave. um, send us a little email at the link in the description. Leave us a review. Follow the show. Join the Facebook group. which is Forgotten Felonies. Join the Instagram, which is at Forgotten Underscore Felonies. Share the podcast with your friends. Yes, definitely. Please do. I mean, it would make it go faster. I could do that too. I could read one article. And then be like, 'Ooh. Let me just make up a whole backstory.' Mm-hmm. Like Alice. Maybe he had a daughter named Alice. He even gave her a last name. Alice McKnight. But yeah, the reason I pointed out school hadn't even started yet was because, in the book, he was like, 'Alice McKnight was like, did you see the new boy in class today?' They specifically asked Mary in there like and you guys were home because school hadn't started yet and she was like, 'You're right. It's like... It was in the transcript that school hadn't started yet!' Well, we don't trust true crime books now. I'm gonna have to—just newspapers . com forever for me. My own podcast is the only thing I'm going to listen to. Only trust myself. You should have mentioned how Mark put the a ship captain going by said, 'Ahoy there! I know.' OOF! What is that package at my bow? I should find it. Where's the book? Weehawken. Oh yeah, it's right here! Ugh! He says, 'Hagman and Parkman went together. They caught dozens of blue claws in a respectable hall for their morning's work as they waited to pull up the traps.' Blah, blah, blah. Ahoy, ahoy there! Yards distant to Erie County Railroad workers, blah, blah, blah. Ahoy, I say, called Hamilton. Aye, Hagman answered. You calling us? What? Be in the water there, Hamilton yelled back, pointing to the stern. I think he's pointing to us, said Parkman. What's he mean? The tide had receded and the water line was much lower than when the men first set out in the morning. The depth of the water now was only a foot or two, even less in some places. When Parkman looked to the stern, he noticed a large bundle partially submerged in the water. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with strings, similar to the kind used in a butcher's shop. Hey, this damn thing's heavy!