BATS IN YOUR ATTIC, and Other Crimes

 

I can’t say she was beautiful, but then photographs are a poor record of personality. The newspapers called her “comely”, which the dictionary defines as “pleasing and wholesome in appearance.” But I suspect 33 year old Dolly Oesterreich (pronounced "Ace-strike") (above) had always been skilled at seduction.

For 15 years Dolly had been married to Fred Oesterreich (above), a man whose only selling point as a husband was that he was wealthy. He owned an apron factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he was constantly berating his 60 seamstresses to work faster.

He pinched every penny and drove himself as hard as he drove his employees. Of course, he was better paid. As a result of his dedication to his job, the Oesterreiches grew richer. And Dolly grew lonelier. So it should have come as no surprise in 1913, when Dolly asked her husband to dispatch a particular repairman she had seen about his apron factory, to fix her personal sewing machine.

His name was Otto Sanhuber  (above) , and when our story begins, he was all of 17. Again it seems, the photographs do not do him justice, either. To the casual observer he looked like a mousy milk toast of a man. But Dolly must have recognized that, beyond Otto’s nebbish exterior, loomed an undiscovered Hercules of passion.

Dolly (above) answered Otto's knock attired only in a robe and slippers. She showed him to her bedroom, where she kept her Singer. 

She lounged on the bed while Otto adjusted her bobbin. Dolly brushed back her hair. Otto tightened her belts. Dolly lifted a leg. Otto greased her shuttle shaft. Dolly let her robe fall open. And according to Otto, he threaded her needle eight times that first afternoon.

They began by sneaking assignations in the Oesterrich home while Fred was at work, but a needling neighbor warned Fred about the man who was constantly coming and going from his house. Dolly was forced to hem and haw an excuse. Then the lovers substituted Otto’s depressing rooms, and then a hotel. But every rendezvouses ran the risk of rendering their affair. Eventually, Dolly conceived a simple pattern for their love. Otto quit his job and secretly moved into the attic of the Oesterreich home (above). A curtain was thus drawn and there would be no more comings and goings - none visible to the neighbors, anyway.

The thread of Otto’s life had found his spool. The hook of Dolly’s life had found her eye. For three years they pulled the wool over Fred’s eyes. For three years Otto slept above his mistresses’ marriage bed, slipping out of his hidden attic room by day to help Dolly with her housework, and once the dishes were done, to pump her treadle and spin her crank. There were loose threads, of course, that threatened to unfray the fabric of their lives. But with a little tacking, awl was mended.

Eventually Fred got the notion of moving his factory to Los Angeles, and in 1918 he bought Dolly a grand home on North St. Andrew’s Place (above)  in that city. Dolly made certain the new home had a tidy tiny attic pocket room, so Otto would feel at home too.  And for the next four years, life was a perfect fit for Dolly and Otto. And Fred. As long as Fred never noticed how much it was costing him to feed and clothe one woman.

This happy scene unraveled on the night of Tuesday, 22 August, 1922, when Fred and Dolly returned from a dinner party and a fight broke out. Fred lost his temper and actually struck Dolly. 

And that was when Otto, listening upstairs, rushed to the rescue from his hidden room,  carrying a .22 pistol. Now why did he have one of those? The two men struggled. Otto’s gun went off three times, and Fred went down. His thread had run out. 

A few moments later the police arrived to discover an apparent house robbery gone bad. The husband was dead on the living room floor and the hysterical wife was locked in the hall closet. Still, there was something which made the police suspicious. When sweated by the cops, Dolly insisted the couple had never fought. The police, many of them married men,  knew that had to be a lie, but they couldn't prove it.

Dolly was arrested, and charged (above) with the murder of her husband. While she was in lockup Dolly pleated with one of her lawyers, Herman Shapiro, to do her a tiny  favor. Dolly claimed to have an addled half-brother named Otto who lived in her attic, and who must be running short of food by now. Already under Dolly’s beguiling influence, Herman agreed to deliver sustenance to the man.

When he tapped on the hidden attic door, a be-speckeled little face appeared and wolfed down the food, and talked; he talked as if he had no one to speak to for years. He was, in fact, explained Otto, a sewing machine repairman who had come to fix Dolly’s machine years before, in Wisconsin,  and stayed, and moved cross country,  to be her “sex slave”.  Otto said nothing about Fred’s murder, but Herman was no fool. Being a lawyer, neither was he morally bound to tell the truth.

Without knowledge of Otto, the Police case against Dolly (above, center)  fell apart, and she was released. But Herman Shapiro found he now cottoned to Dolly, and he insisted that before anything romantic happened between them, Otto had to go. 

So, in 1923, Otto moved out of the attic. He went to Canada and established his own life. 

He even married (above). But, eventually, in search of work,  he moved himself and his new wife back to Los Angeles, where he got a job as a porter in a hotel. And Otto might have lived there happily ever after with his devoted wife, if only Herman Shapiro had sewn his own big fat mouth shut.

In 1930, eight years after Fred’s death, Herman finally realized the seductress (above) from Milwaukee was never going to marry him, after he discovered she was secretly seducing her business manager, Mr. Ray Bert Hendrick. Maybe the lady just couldn't help herself. A lawyer scorned, Herman went to the police and spilled the beans. He confessed the details of his encounter with the man in the attic. 

The police checked the long since abandoned Oesterreich homes in Wisconsin and Los Angeles and discovered Otto’s hidden abodes, and the veil was stripped from their eyes. Now Dolly's life quickly unraveled. 

Otto was arrested, and he made a full confession (above) about the night he burst out of his hidden room to confront the violent Fred, and how he shot him dead.. 

And he showed (above) his tiny room where he hid while the police searched the night of the shooting.

And Dolly was arrested again. And charged with murder again. 

Otto was convicted of manslaughter. But, since the statute of limitations for manslaughter was eight years, which had just run out, Otto was released immediately after his conviction. He then faded from history. I wonder if his marriage survived the revelations.  

Dolly’s trial ended in a hung jury, the majority favoring her acquittal. She was never retried, and lived out the rest of her life over a garage, surviving on the meager remains of the fortune that Fred had amassed - which would have infuriated Fred, had he not been dead. In the end I guess Dolly was still needling her poor hardworking and unaware husband.

Dolly did remarry in 1961, at the age of 75 (above, center). Her new husband was her long time business manager, Ray Bert Hendrick (above, left). 

She died just two weeks later.

It brings to mind the way that Leo Tolstoy began his novel Anna Karenina; “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.  But this family was oddly particularly happy, because whatever it was that Otto and Fred and Dolly were doing together, it was tailored to fit their very own odd shaped lives. And it worked. Sort of. For awhile. At least for Dolly.

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THE BELLE OF BEDLAM

I wonder what lawyer M.E. Leliter was thinking on the afternoon 27 April, 1908, when he was told Mrs. Belle Gunness was in the anteroom of his Main Street office in La Porte, Indiana (above). Her very presence made Leliter  uneasy. Still, you never think the worse, do you?  

Belle was a genial and pleasant 48 year old church-going woman, but substantial - and at 6 feet, taller than most men.  Community gossips said that Belle had been seen carrying two 100 pound hogs, one under each arm.. Still, "M.E." thought he could detect the aura of hidden pain behind Belle's sharp blue Nordic eyes.

In Chicago, the stout young Belle (above) had buried two of her children -  not an unusual tragedy in the nineteenth century.  But then,  in 1900,  her husband Anton Sorenson, had died of heart disease. 

With the proceeds from Anton’s two life insurance policies,  Belle and her three daughters had purchased a farm (above) on the northeast outskirts of La Porte Indiana, out on McClung Road past Pine and Fish Trap lakes. 

It was there a year later, on 1 April, 1902 Belle had married widower Peter Gunness.   But tragedy seemed to have followed Belle from Chicago.  That very summer, Peter’s young daughter (above, on Belle's knee)  had died after a short illness. And then in December, Peter himself had been struck on the head by a falling sausage grinder, and killed. Well, life on a farm was hard, and dangerous.  

"M.E". forced a smile as he stepped out to greet the lumbering,  280 pound now middle aged woman.  But this day Belle was not interested in pleasantries. Someone, Belle announced,  wanted to murder her.

Her tale had a tinge of unreality to "M.E,"'s ears.  He was one of the most prominent of the 14,000 citizens of La Porte,  Indiana. Fifteen passenger trains a day passed through La Porte (above) on their way to and from Chicago, 60 miles to the northwest.  Perched atop the prairie, the town was surrounded by farms, including the one owned by "M.E.", and, of course,  Belle's.  

But it was also home to the Meinaid Rumely Factory (above), whose 2,000 employees assembled steam powered thrashers  and were rushing to manufacture one of the world’s first internal combustion farm tractors, the “Kerosene Annie”.

As befitted a prosperous middle class community, just down the street from "M.E."’s office stood the new red sandstone Romanesque Court House (above), with oak paneled court rooms and stained glass windows. But Belle's accusations seemed more fitting to the lurid crime ridden alleys of Chicago than the small, quiet, proper and hard working Victorian style, La Porte, Indiana.

The potential assassin, said Belle, was Ray Lamphere (above), who until recently had been Belle’s hired hand. Six weeks ago, said Belle,  she had fired Ray, and he had threatened her and her two youngest daughters. “I'm afraid he's going to kill me and burn the house,” Belle told "M.E.".   Thank goodness Belle’s eldest daughter, Jennie, was safely away at a finishing school in Los Angeles.  Yes, Belle had spoken with the police. Twice she had charged Ray with trespassing. But, explained the angry Belle,  the police had refused to grant her a protection order, and had dismissed her allegation that Ray was insane.

Now, out of an excess of caution, Belle had come to M.E., to change her will.  She wanted to be certain that her estate would go to her children. And, if for some reason, they were deceased,  then Belle wanted all her property to go to a Norwegian orphanage back in Chicago.  "M.E." took down the information, and made an appointment for Belle to return in a few days to sign the completed document.

Then shocking news came with the morning light. There had been a terrible fire at the Gunness farm in the early morning hours of 28 April, 1908.

Despite the noble efforts of Belle’s new hired hand, and two passing men, no one had made it out of the house alive.  Eventually the ashes of the beams, walls and the furniture had crashed into the basement.

By noon the heat had retreated enough for workers to shift the ashes. There they found the pitiful bodies of Belle’s three children, Myrtle and Lucy Sorensen, and Philip Gunness, aged 5,  as well as the blackened, headless corpse of a woman presumed to be Belle.

And when the cops arrested Ray Lamphere (above), he blurted out, “Did widow Gunness and the kids get out all right?”  It seemed an open and shut case.  Except... when told of the bodies, and of the charges Belle had made against him the day before,  Ray was heard to ruefully say, “After all,  she wanted me killed because I knew too much..”  Was this the foundation for an insanity plea, or even self defense - from a woman?  But it did cause the police to pause for a moment.

And then there was the mystery of the woman’s body. When doctors examined the burned corpse they described it as belonging to a woman weighing no more than 150 pounds.  Neighbors who had sewn clothing for Belle were adamant that the corpse could not be her's.   So back to the ashes went the searchers. And what they found raised even more questions; they found men’s pocket watches, rings and wallets. A lot of watches, rings and wallets.

While the police were still mulling over this perplexing development, a man named Ray Helgelien arrived in town,  looking for his brother.  Andrew Helgelien (above) had responded to a notice in a South Dakota lonely hearts column. “Wanted — a woman who owns a beautifully located and valuable farm in first class condition, wants a good and reliable man as partner in the same”.  The lady needed help paying off the farm's mortgage, and offered matrimony and love in return. After exchanging several letters, Andrew had left home with $300 cash in his pocket.  

Ray had not heard from his brother for several weeks, and finally opened a final letter mailed to him, but arriving after he had left. It was post marked from La Porte (above). It read,  “My heart beats in wild rapture for you, My Andrew. I love you. Come prepared to stay forever.”  Having seen newspaper stories about the grisly finds in the burned out farm house, Ray suspected that Andrew may have done just  that.   Had Belle placed that notice?  The local post office confirmed that Belle had mailed and received 8 to 10 letters a day, for years. The searchers spread out across the farm and started digging.

First they found and disinterred the body of daughter Jennie,  who was supposed to have been away at school in Los Angeles.   Then, under the pig pen the searchers found the bodies of ten to fourteen men and women, many of whom had been last seen visiting Belle’s farm, or working  there as maids or cooks.

Included among these remains was a body identified as being that of Andrew Helgelien (above). In his corpse, as is in many of the others, the medical examiner found cyanide. The police were now more than willing to think the worst. 

How many victims had been fed to Belle’s hogs, or buried in undiscovered graves elsewhere on the farm? When finally added up the list of known and suspected victims reached forty.  Belle Gunness could well have been the most prolific, and one of the most hard working serial murderess in American history.

The jury at Ray Lamphere’s trail found him not guilty of murder, but guilty of arson. The jury also issued a statement asserting that Belle’s body had been found in the ashes. That did not match what the medical examiner had to say about the body. And Ray insisted to the day he died that Belle had escaped.

For the next decade, sightings of Belle (above) were reported from all over America and Scandinavia. But the most intriguing story was that of Esther Carlson, who in 1931 was arrested in Los Angeles,  the location of Jennie's supposed finishing school.  Esther was charged with the murder of a Norwegian immigrant, which matched Belle's preferred victims.  Like Belle, Esther's motive was alleged to be theft of the victim's money.  Also like Belle, Esther's weapon of choice had been cyanide. But nothing was ever proved, and Esther died in jail while awaiting trial.

But two expatriates from La Porte identified photos of Esther Carlson (above) as Belle Gunness. The ages and time lines seemed to match,  Belle would have been 71 years old in 1931, and if Belle had lost weight,... Could they have been the same person?  Did Belle slaughter every human being close to her, pin it on a simpleton fall guy, and escape to California, where she went on making a living by killing?   If that seems a far fetched a tale, remember that it is the nature of most people, that when they hear of a tragedy,  their first thought is sympathy,  and almost never of evil - even though sometimes that is exactly what a tragedy is.

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