A Married Woman Hid Her Young Boyfriend in the Attic For a Decade
Is he the killer in this locked room mystery?
August 22, 1922, Los Angeles: Fred William Oesterreich and his wife Walburga Oesterreich (nicknamed Dolly) didn’t lead a happy life in their Victorian-styled house. Neighbours had grown accustomed to sounds of the altercation between the couple and duly ignored them.
But on August 22, 1922, they heard something startling, truly unignorable:
Gunshots.
The neighbours brought the police in, and the officers found the husband Fred shot to death, lying on the floor. The room was in total disarray as if it was ransacked. Shell casings of a 25 caliber weapon were next to the body.
Just as the officers made sense of the scene, they heard a loud cry from upstairs. Someone was shouting frantically for help.
Is it Mrs. Fred? Is the killer still in the house?
As the officers drew their weapons and moved upstairs in a definite formation, they expected the killer to fire at them any moment. One by one, the rooms were cleared as they made sure strides towards the source of the cry.
Trapped in the closet
The distraught cry for help was coming from a closet. The officers positioned themselves outside the closet.
“Who are you,” they asked, not lowering their guard an inch.
“Hello, it’s Mrs Fred Oesterreich here. I am alright, but I am trapped. Someone locked the closet from the outside,” said the voice.
The officers found the key to the closet in another bedroom, and they freed Mrs. Fred, aka Dolly. She was frightened and sweating profusely.
“Mam, do you have any idea what happened in your house?”
And Dolly’s reply raised more questions than it answered.
Dolly’s explanation
Dolly said she was inside the closet, arranging the clothes when she heard a commotion in the hall. She was about to find what it was, but before she could, the doors of the closet swung shut on her. What followed was the clicky sound of the keys turning, leaving Dolly trapped inside.
“Did you see the face of the man who locked you”? enquired an officer.
“No, sir, I had my back to the door”.
The officers knew that if Dolly’s story was real, there was at least an accomplice to the killer, if not more. It was impossible that one killer shot Fred down and locked Dolly in the closet at the exact moment.
But why was Fred killed?
The shooting, the messed up state of the room, and more than one possible killer were details that gave it the air of a home invasion, but none of the valuables were stolen.
Why invade if not to steal?
Just about then, Dolly discovered something. The diamond-encrusted wristwatch of her husband was missing.
Although this was a definite pointer to this being a crime for theft, it still did not fit the profile of invaders that only a watch was stolen. Besides, the murder weapon- the 25 caliber gun, wasn’t quite the type such gangs used. This was a small gun one could discreetly carry in his pocket or a vanity bag.
Did Dolly carry one such gun and use it to kill her husband?
But if so, how come she was locked inside the closet?
Could she have had a secret accomplice, who helped pull off the murder, lock Dolly inside the closet to avoid suspicion, and then leave the scene?
Dolly, a hot suspect
The investigative officers had to zero in on the motive of the crime. For all they learned from the neighbours, Dolly and Fred were in an unhappy marriage. Fred was a successful businessman but a workaholic and alcoholic and was hardly around his wife.
When they were together, Dolly complained about her unmet needs of love and warmth, and Fred mostly lent a deaf ear before the duo erupted into vociferous altercations.
So, Dolly was likely to vie for a secret lover, and if she had one, the pair might have wanted Fred out of the way. But there were no leads that suggested Dolly was unfaithful. Nobody had ever seen Dolly with another man.
A few months after Fred’s death, Dolly moved into a new house in Los Angeles and soon started living together with a man named Herman Shapiro. He was the guy who handled Fred’s estate and shared Fred’s same workaholic nature, leaving Dolly desiring a lot more.
So Dolly would find another boyfriend named Roy Klumb while not entirely leaving Mr. Shapiro.
Could either Mr. Shapiro or Mr. Klumb have been the secret lover of Dolly, who helped her pull off Fred’s murder?
Or was this an invasion?
The array of clues
Almost a year after Mr. Fred’s death, the investigation had reached an impasse. But the officers had hardly written the case off; Dolly and her boyfriends were still hot favourites.
It was about this time that one of the officers paid a visit to Herman Shapiro’s office. And there, on Mr. Shapiro’s office desk, along with a pile of important papers, the officer saw something:
The diamond-encrusted watch which was supposedly stolen from Fred.
When Mr. Shapiro was asked about the watch, he said Dolly had handed it to him. When Dolly was confronted with the question of how the missing watch turned up, she said although she reported the watch missing, she had later found it under the cushion of the couch.
She added that finding the watch did not strike her as a piece of information worth mentioning to the investigating team.
The confessions
The media loved the new clue that had popped up, and suddenly the news of the Fred-murder woke up from almost a year-long limbo. The newspapers could not stop talking about it.
Now, Dolly’s second boyfriend-Roy Klumb, perhaps sensing that the officers are close to nabbing Dolly, wanted to confess.
He said Dolly had asked him to hide one of her 25 caliber weapons, which he threw in the La Brea Tar pits.
Not long after, one of Dollys neighbours popped on the scene with a similar confession. He, too, was asked to hide a 25 caliber weapon by Dolly. But this guy buried it in his backyard.
The officers recovered both the weapons, which were very rusted and damaged. Dolly’s explanation for disposing of both the guns was as juvenile as her justification for not reporting the wristwatch.
She said she had those guns for a while, but when her husband passed away under mysterious circumstances, she found it best to have them disposed of.
The officers were not willing to buy this story.
The trial
The investigation team worked hard to press charges against Dolly. Her statements were weak, there was plenty of circumstantial evidence to pin her, but she had one trump card up her sleeves:
The fact that Dolly was locked in a closet when the crime happened.
So, even if it was conclusively proven that the shots that killed Fred were fired from Dolly’s gun, the fact that Dolly couldn’t have been there to shoot Fred was going to save her.
Dolly walked scot-free.
The revelation
The year was 1930. The Shapiro-Dolly relationship had reached the inevitable break up. Not long after, Mr. Shapiro dialed up the investigation team and said he wanted them to meet a person who knows everything about Fred’s death.
The officers rushed to Shapiro’s office, and there they saw Mr. Otto Sanhuber- a man whom the officers did not have on their radar for any reason.
Otto Sanhuber was a sewing machine repairman. And to the bewildered officers, he narrated the jaw-dropping truth about Fred’s death. Here is what happened:
It was 1913, nine years before the murder of Fred. One day, Dolly had found that her sewing machine was broken. So she tells Fred, who brings one of his employees at the factory-Otto Sanhuber, to repair it.
Dolly was sexually attracted to the 17-year-old Otto Sanhuber. The day he turned up to repair also marked the beginning of a long relationship. Dolly wanted him to make up for her husband’s absence and feel ‘wanted.’
Soon the inquisitive neighbours started seeing a strange man hanging around Dolly’s house all the time. Dolly managed to shut their curiosity by telling them that it was her half-brother.
Since Mr. Sanhuber was a small built young man and Dolly was bigger and older, everyone believed the half-brother story without a second thought. But the couple knew that this modus operandi could not go on forever.
So, they found a way.
The perfect routine
By this time, Mr. Otto Sanhuber and Dolly were in a passionate affair, and breaking up was not an option they entertained. Instead, Dolly insisted that Otto move into her house and live in the attic!
Young otto did not have a family, so even if he went missing, nobody would come up enquiring about him. He quit his job at the factory, bid farewell to his boss Fred, to live in Fred’s house as the romantic cohort of his wife.
The cramped quiet life in a dingy attic might sound like an eccentric idea for most people, but to Dolly and Otto, hopelessly lost in love, this was plausible. It also helped the couple that Fred wasn’t around his house all the time, and when he did, he was rarely sober.
Once Fred left for his office, Dolly and Otto had an entire house for themselves to engage in intense lovemaking. He would eat with Dolly, read newspapers with Dolly, dance with Dolly and what not.
Before Fred arrived, Otto would make it back to his hideout and then write a few pages of a novel he was working on. The routine went on and on for several months.
The strange noises
Over time, Fred started developing a certain suspicion about the house he was living in. He heard strange noises, found food provisions being used up faster, and complained about this to his wife.
But Dolly managed to convince him that everything he heard was his figment of imagination.
Instead of investigating every nook and corner of his house, Fred decided to find a new home. This trend continued for the next five years, during which Dolly and Fred, along with Otto, would live in four different houses!
Fred found the same anomalies everywhere, and nowhere he spared time to search the house. Finally, when Fred wanted to move to southern California, Dolly zeroed in on the house with an attic for her secret lover.
This was the Victorian styled house where Fred was murdered.
The murder
August 22, 1922. By this time, Mr. Otto Sanhuber had lived with Dolly and Fred for almost ten years, and Fred did not have the faintest clue.
On the fateful night, Fred and Dolly were fighting, and the former, drunk and inebriated, was physically assaulting his wife. Otto wouldn’t have forgiven himself if Fred had killed his love, all the time while he was at a striking distance to come and save her.
Otto wasted no time as he stepped down from his hideout, drew Dolly’s pistol, and made his apparition before a drunk and out-of-control Fred.
Fred couldn’t believe his eyes. The young sewing machine repairman who left the job at his factory has come out from his house! And the worst thing is that his wife is hardly surprised.
He had a thousand questions to ask, but before he could, Mr. Otto Sanhuber fired three times at Fred, ending his misery.
The staging
Dolly had not expected this. She was taken aback by the sudden turn of events, but even in that shocked state, her mind was able to conjure a devious plan that would save her and Otto.
Knowing that there were only a few minutes before the cops showed up at her door, Dolly messed up the room to make it look like a theft. She then asked Otto to lock her in the closet and return to the attic.
Otto obliged. Everything happened exactly as she wanted. Dolly managed to confuse the cops, save Otto, and nobody knew that she had a secret lover/killer.
While the officers swept the entire house for a killer and released Dolly from the closet, the real killer-Otto, was hiding right up above them.
When Dolly moved to the new house, Otto went along with her. A regular open relationship was on the cards at this point, but Dolly saw it fit that Otto continued to hide in the attic.
The Batman
Dolly’s plan had run smoothly until an officer found Fred’s wristwatch in Shapiro’s office, and Dolly was arrested.
During this brief period, Dolly couldn’t watch out for her hiding boyfriend, and she was forced to tell Shapiro to send supplies to her ‘vagabond half brother hiding in the attic.’
Shapiro went upto Otto, who by then was so starved of human contact that he instantly blurted out the entire truth. And thus, there was a third person who understood the mystery behind Fred’s death.
However, Shapiro did not go to the police with his newfound insight; instead, he asked Otto to leave. He obeyed.
Shapiro guarded Dolly’s secret for many years until the couple broke up, and Shapiro felt he was not liable to carry the burden anymore.
Dolly and Otto were soon arrested. The public and the media couldn’t believe the epic level of hush-up that occurred in the case. They called this — the Batman case; because Otto was living in the attic like a bat in the cave!
What happened to Dolly and Otto?
Otto Sanhueber was convicted of manslaughter but was acquitted because the statute of limitations had expired.
Dolly, too escaped punishment, as most of the jury preferred an acquittal, and she was released.
Thus, both Dolly and Otto, after their insane relationship, managed to evade conviction.
The couple did not resume their relationship after they were acquitted. Otto moved to Canada, took up a new name-Walter Klein and married another woman.
Dolly remained in Los Angeles till 1961, when she passed away.
If you are intrigued by this incident, how about a man hiding his girlfriend in a small room for a decade? And no, this wasn’t a huge mansion but a humble abode with spatial constraints. And it happened very recently. Check out the story here:
