by B. W. Wilson - Edited and additional material by Guy Hadleigh
In a darkened room, two women knelt at an open window gazing down and across into a dimly lit house opposite. From their second-story window which, due to the slope of the land, was only a few feet above the ground floor of their neighbor's house, they could plainly see the feet and legs of a man standing in the dining room. As the women crouched there watching, the man seemed to whirl about and rush across the room toward the front of the house. A second later four sharp reports broke the night’s stillness. There followed a woman’s piercing scream: “Fred—oh Fred!”
Minutes passed, but they heard nothing more. Nothing more save the muted call of night birds. They strained their eyes in an effort to catch some further glimpse of what was going on in the luxurious home not twenty-five feet distant.
“I don’t know what roused me," one of the women whispered. “I just woke out of a sound sleep and rushed in here to you."
Said the other woman: "I seemed to hear loud voices, then you came in. Oh, I’m sure something terrible has happened over at the Oesterreich place. I’m sure those were pistol shots!”
“What shall we do?” her companion asked in a hysterical whisper. “It’s almost midnight, but we've got to do something.” Then getting stiffly to her feet. Mrs. Fannie Lawson turned away from the window. “You watch the house, Clara. I’ll see if I can raise someone at the Oesterreich's on the phone.”
For several minutes Mrs. Clara Martin on her knees at the darkened window, heard the phone bell in the house opposite ringing shrilly but its call remained unanswered. Then from somewhere in the neighbor's house came the sound of muffled cries and a faraway pounding. This was followed by grim silence in the dimly lighted house; and as the women watched, the porch light was suddenly extinguished.
“Well, they've put out the light," said Mrs. Martin with a sigh of relief. “Guess they've gone upstairs to bed.”
“Just the same, I think something is wrong over there," insisted her friend. “There! What did I tell you?" and Fannie Lawson turned hurriedly back to the open window through which could again be heard the sounds of muffled pounding. "Now, we've just got to find out."
Hurrying to the telephone, Mrs. Lawson finally roused her neighbor on the other side of her house. John Ashton acted efficiently. Quickly he advised Acting Chief of Police Al Slaten what the two women had seen and heard. Captain Slaten, in charge of the morning flying squad, detailed A. W. Stoll and Walter A. Aubrey of the Hollywood Detective bureau to investigate the trouble.
In this peaceful looking house death struck suddenly and violently
It was a few minutes before twelve of this warm August night when Officers Stoll and Aubrey met Ashton and his two neighbor women in the shadows of the heavy shrubbery before the spacious mansion occupied by Fred Oesterreich, wealthy garment manufacturer, and his wife, at 858 North Andrews Place. Followed by the little group of neighbors, the officers tried the front door and then the side door. Both were locked, but they found the French doors leading from a wide veranda into the living room standing ajar. They entered.
The faint shadows cast by a lighted lamp with a heavy shade served to deepen the black shadows behind the massive furniture.
"Where's the light switch?” Aubrey asked.
"Just to your right there," directed Mrs. Lawson. And then as the light-flooded room made a reality of all fears, she gasped in horror. Sprawled in a far corner in the deep shadows lay the body of her neighbor, Fred Oesterreich.
"Dead!" said officer Stoll as he knelt by the body. "Shot through the heart." He got hastily to his feet.
Murder victim Fred Oesterreich and unfaithful wife Walburga
"Where's the wife?" asked Aubrey, turning to Mrs. Lawson.
Before she could reply, a faint pounding echoed through the house. "There, that's the pounding again!” said Mrs. Lawson. The sound seemed far away and ceased entirely as the little party started up the stairs.
Four doors opened from the stairs landing. The bathroom—empty; a small closet—empty; two bedroom doors—both locked. On these, Aubrey unsuccessfully tried his skeleton keys. Then John Ashton called attention to a key on the floor at the right of the stairway. This key opened the door to the rear bedroom. A hasty survey showed this room to be empty. The closet door was locked and the key was on the outside, so the officers passed quickly on to a small room under the eaves. Lighting match after match, Stoll and Aubrey made a thorough search of this small trunk room. It, too, was empty. No one was hiding there.
Back in the hallway, Aubrey's powerful shoulder forced the door into the front bedroom. This also was empty, as was the sleeping porch and closets opening from it.
The arrival of Detective Lieutenants Thomas N. Murray and Z. J. Gruey from Central Detective Bureau, accompanied by a reporter, again drew the searchers downstairs. Quickly Stoll and Aubrey gave the men from headquarters the meager details. After notifying Captain Slaten that a homicide detail was needed, Lieutenant Murray took charge of the investigation.
Leaving Aubrey to guard the body of the dead man, Murray, Gruey, Stoll and the neighbors again mounted the winding stairs. At the top they paused to listen but only the flute-like call of a mocking bird broke the stillness.
“We'll try this room first," Murray said as he shoved open the door to the rear bedroom.
Soft lights flooded every corner of the luxurious room. It was empty. “That closet is locked from the outside," said Gruey pointing to the door. “See, the key is in place.”
"Let's have a look," Murray crossed the room and turned the key in the lock. A moment later he was gazing down on the huddled form of Walburga Oesterreich, covered by garments and hangers.
Walburga Oesterreich
Together the officers lifted the woman and carried her to the bed. Apparently she was uninjured. Her face was flushed and her breathing was spasmodic but cold water dashed over her face soon revived her. She opened her eyes with a start.
"Fred! Where is Fred?" she cried hysterically. Then recognizing Mrs. Lawson, she gasped. "Oh, why didn’t you come sooner? Oh, why doesn't Fred come to me?” The neighbors quieted her while the officers returned to the living room and made a hasty examination of the body of the dead manufacturer.
The body, with three gaping bullet wounds, lay on its side. The head was almost touching the door. One bullet had pierced Oesterreich's heart, while another had entered his body a few inches above the heart. A third bullet had plowed its way down through the head from a point a few inches above the left ear. The bullets had been fired from a small caliber automatic. There were no powder marks on the clothing or body. A search disclosed three empty shells in the corner of the living room at the right of the body. A fourth empty shell was found near the foot of the stairs. The newspaper reporter, seeing plaster on the floor, located the fourth bullet embedded in the ceiling of the living room. The officers learned from the neighbors that there had been one shot, followed shortly by three others in quick succession.
The room bore evidence of a struggle. The small rug was wrinkled as though someone had slipped on it. A chair was overturned and a man’s hat lay on the floor close to the table. All entrances, except the French doors on the side next to the Lawson home, were locked.
Acting Chief of Detectives Grant Roberds who arrived at 1:15 am with Detective Lieutenant James E. Davis of the homicide squad, found Mrs. Oesterreich sufficiently recovered to tell her story:
The Oesterreichs had returned home about eleven-thirty after spending the evening with friends. As was his custom, Fred Oesterreich left his car in the driveway while he unlocked the house for his wife. She was an unusually timid person. He usually entered the house first and lighted the lower floor. This evening they entered together and Walburga, ’Dolly’, as her friends called her, noticing a fur neckpiece on a chair, picked it up and went upstairs. Oesterreich proceeded toward the rear of the house. She went straight to the bedroom closet, and had just hung the fur in the closet when she heard a commotion downstairs.
“I thought maybe Fred had slipped on the rug," she said. “He was all the time mussing up the rugs. I started to leave the closet when someone shoved me back and slammed the door. I then heard someone run across the room and slam the hall door. I got sort of muddled. Maybe it was Fred playing a joke on me. Then I heard four shots—right fast—and so I took off my shoes and I pounded on the door. I hollered for Fred but he didn't come. Then I must have fainted."
In response to a query, Mrs. Oesterreich told Captain Roberds that her husband always carried a considerable sum of money. Then, as the import of all the questions began to dawn on her, she became hysterical and screamed that she knew something had happened to her husband. She demanded to be taken to him.
One of her neighbors then gently broke the news of her husband’s death.
Two days later Detective Lieutenant Herman Cline, chief of the homicide detail, and his partner Detective Lieutenant Raymond Cato, returning from another case, were placed in charge of the investigation, so ably started by the other officers.
Detective Lieutenant E. Raymond Cato
Fred Oesterreich, prosperous manufacturer of Milwaukee, had moved to California in 1918. He established a Los Angeles branch and business prospered. The home on North Andrews Place was a luxurious one. In addition to carrying considerable money, Oesterreich always wore a valuable watch and an Elks pin. The police found only a few dollars in loose change in his pockets and no money at all in his wallet. The watch and the Elks' pin were missing.
Two robbers—one upstairs and the other down—had evidently been surprised. From the location of the body and the empty shells, Captain Roberds told Lieutenant Cline that he was certain the killer had been hidden in the little den off the hallway. When he heard Oesterreich go toward the rear of the house he probably stole forth intending to make a get-away. But when Oesterreich, perhaps hearing a sound, whirled about and started for the front of the house, the two met, they grappled and Oesterreich thus met his death.
Acting Chief of Detectives Grant Roberds
“The .25 ejects its shells to the right," Roberds said. “So the robber probably stood close to the archway when he fired. The thing that puzzles me though, is the fourth shot in the ceiling and the fourth shell at the foot of the stairs.”
“I’m thinking about that bird upstairs,” observed Lieutenant Cato as he studied the hasty sketch of the rooms of the Oesterreich house. “He was probably hidden behind the closet door. Must have been a fast thinker and, when he heard the commotion downstairs, he knew he didn't have a chance of getting away unseen. So he shoved Mrs. Oesterreich back into the closet and locked her in. But why didn’t he stop to pick up the key when he dropped it?”
“Who locked the door into the front room and why?” asked Roberds.
Cline scratched his head. “And I'd like to know why those guys didn't make a get-away when the Oesterreichs drove up. And why would a guy who has just killed a man take the time to grab an Elks’ pin? Those pins are fastened on tight, and I mean tight.”
Cato offered: “Jim Davis says that the woman’s coat was properly placed on a hanger. Mrs. Oesterreich didn't say anything about hanging up her coat—just told about the fur."
“I'm wondering why those birds waited in the house so long after the shooting,” pondered Roberds. “Mrs. Martin is certain no one left the house through the French doors, and that it was at least fifteen minutes after the shots before the porch light went out.”
“Cool gazabos,” replied Cato. "Took time to get the money and put the wallet back in his pocket—took off the Elks’ pin and the watch—and all the time the woman upstairs yelling and pounding and the folks next door hollering and the telephone bell ringing—it just doesn’t make sense.”
“It could have been a planned murder," suggested Cline. “Perhaps Oesterreich recognized the intruders. Otherwise, why—why was it necessary to kill him?"
“Why?” That was the question that kept cropping up during the weeks that followed the death of the wealthy garment manufacturer. Sinister whispers of a mysterious feud existing over many years were carried in the report of the Milwaukee police—the statement of a friend that while the Oesterreichs were living in the fashionable Shorewood apartments in Milwaukee they had kept several locks on the outer doors.
Mrs. Oesterreich scoffed at these stories of feuds, of fears and such, and told reporters that her husband was so tender-hearted he wouldn’t hurt anyone. “He didn't have an enemy in the whole world. It was robbers. They were after my jewelry."
Bearing out Mrs. Oesterreich’s belief of robbers was her story of what had happened two months earlier. Upon their arrival home late at night, the Oesterreichs found their house in disorder. There was an overturned bottle of ink and a big splotch of ink on the wall near the French doors. This spot she explained, looked as if someone had hurled the ink bottle at the wall. They had made no report as nothing was missing.
Oesterreich's hobby, the wife said, was buying jewelry for her. Her gems had been appraised at fifty thousand dollars.
Walburga and Fred at a house party on the day of the murder
The coroner’s inquest, conducted by Frank A. Nance and his chief assistant, William A. MacDonald, failed to throw any light on the motive aspect of the killing. Dr. Frank R. Webb, Autopsy Surgeon, told the jury that either the bullet through the head or the one through the heart would have been fatal. He said the bullet in the heart had probably been followed closely by the one through the head, which caught Oesterreich as he was falling. This had coursed down from the head, through the neck and into the liver—a shot that could have only have occurred once in a blue moon.
The police believed that Mrs. Martin was mistaken when she testified that the screams she heard immediately after the shooting were distinct and could not have come from the depths of the closet. But Herman Cline and Ray Cato could find no explanation for the fifteen minutes that both Mrs. Marlin and Mrs. Lawson were certain elapsed between the shots and the time the porch light went out. Time after time they called on Walburga Oesterreich and questioned her. Almost frantic, she in vain tried to reconstruct some sort of mental picture of the hand that had thrust her into the closet. In no uncertain terms she told the detectives that there had never been a revolver of any kind in the house.
When Fred Oesterreich’s will was probated it was disclosed that Walburga Oesterreich was heir to the estate valued at approximately half a million dollars.
Ten months later, lurid newspaper headlines told of the arrest of Walburga Oesterreich for the murder of her husband. Sobbing and hysterical, the 45-year-old matron was brought to headquarters accompanied by an attorney friend, Herman S. Shapiro. The long smoldering contention of Detectives Cline and Cato that “Dolly" Oesterreich knew something about the killing of her husband reached a climax two months previous by a weird story related—first to a newspaper man, and later to the police—by Roy H. Klumb, an erstwhile friend of the glamorous widow.
Roy H. Klumb
According to Klumb, a six-foot Beau Brummel, two days after the murder, “Dolly” handed him a package wrapped in a handkerchief and asked him to throw it into the La Brea tar pits. It was a revolver filed into small pieces she told him. She said she was innocent but that it would look bad if the police found it in her possession as it was the same caliber as that with which her husband met his death.
Klumb said he followed instructions. That night he slipped out to the La Brea pits. He threw the package, as he believed, into the sump hole, but his aim was bad because the police found the package eighteen inches from the oil pit. They recovered twenty pieces of a .25 automatic. The widow’s arrest followed.
The day after Walburga Oesterreich's arrest another bizarre angle was added to the case—a second .25 automatic revolver belonging to the widow was located. Acting on information furnished them by Klumb, Detectives Cato and Cline questioned Mr. and Mrs. Tabor, a middle-aged couple who had been friends of the Oesterreichs for many years. Mr. Tabor readily acknowledged receiving a revolver from “Dolly" the day following the inquest. Mrs. Oesterreich had told him the same story she had related to Klumb. Believing he was merely helping an old friend to avoid an embarrassing situation, Tabor took the gun and promised to dispose of it. He gave it to his wife.
When questioned. Mrs. Tabor led the officers to a vacant lot near her home. Here the revolver was recovered from where she had thrown it.
The night Mrs. Oesterreich was arrested, the officers learned that her attorney friend, Shapiro, was wearing the watch that had belonged to Fred Oesterreich. The widow explained that she had found it beneath the cushions of a window seat, several months after the murder.
Mrs. Oesterreich’s attorneys, Jerry Giesler and Frank Domingues, ridiculed Cline's evidence. "It’s the weakest case I ever heard of,” Giesler told the press. "Because she happened to have two revolvers of the same caliber as the gun with which her husband was shot does not prove she murdered him. If she were guilty, do you think she would have given these guns away? Can you imagine anyone guilty of murder not doing away with the evidence herself? She was found locked in a closet. It was impossible for her to have locked herself in,” he maintained.
Mrs. Oesterreich points to the closet she was locked in flanked by (left to right) Det. Lieut. Herman Cline, Capt. of Detectives Geo. K Home, and attorneys Jerry Giesler and Frank Domingues
But at the preliminary hearing, before Justice of the Peace W. S. Baird, Deputy District Attorneys Buron Fitts and J. Thomas Russell disclosed the trump card they held—J. W. Plazek, of the California Furniture company, told of having been called to repair a closet door at the Oesterreich mansion and of finding that the door could be locked from the inside. This door was the one behind which Mrs. Oesterreich said she pounded and screamed while her husband was being murdered. Plazek testified that with a part turn of the lock the door could be slammed shut, locking itself.
Police tests showed that the revolver thrown into the vacant lot by Mrs. Tabor was not the gun used to kill Oesterreich. And the mutilated condition of the automatic found at the edge of the La Brea pits precluded any tests of that weapon.
The testimony of O. E. Chatters, cook for Marshall Neiland, motion picture producer, whose house adjoined that of the Oesterreichs’, told of many heated arguments between the couple.
“A few weeks befoh he was kilt,” testified Chatters, “I heard ’em quarrelin’ sumphin’ scandulous. She was swearin’ sumpin’ terrible. He cussed her and then she cussed him. They was goin’ on jest awful."
Walburga ‘Dolly’ Oesterreich being arraigned in court on charges of murdering her husband. Left to right: Detective Cline, Mrs. Oesterreich, Judge Channing Follette, and a court reporter. (Photo: Bettmann/ Getty Images)
Defense Attorneys Giesler and Domingues brought to light the fact that four months after the murder, Roy Klumb, supposedly an intimate friend of Dolly Oesterreich, had tried to sell the story of the missing gun to a reporter on a morning paper, in return for a newspaper job paying at least fifty dollars a week. The reporter had strung Klumb along while Cline and Cato investigated Klumb, eventually forcing him to disclose the evidence which he had sought to sell. Giesler claimed the whole case had been conceived in the police station and that if Mrs. Oesterreich had been a poor woman she would never have been arrested. But Judge Baird bound Mrs. Oesterreich over to the Superior Court.
Walburga in jail after her arrest
The shock of her arrest and the strain of the hearing broke Walburga Oesterreich’s health and for many months she was too ill to appear for trial. Several postponements were taken by her attorneys. Meanwhile Deputy District Attorney Russell tried to uncover additional evidence implicating the widow or someone close to her.
Finally on January 16th, 1925, eighteen months after her arrest, District Attorney Asa Keyes dismissed the case because of insufficient evidence, and Walburga Oesterreich was freed. The attractive matron, now broken in health and spirits, set about to re-establish her life in a new home on North Beachwood Drive in the heart of Hollywood.
But the widow was not to be allowed to remain out of the white glare of publicity. She had lost faith in Herman Shapiro, who had been handling her legal affairs, and so it developed that he filed suit against her for $26,000 in December, 1928, over a real estate transaction. Her reply contended that as early as 1926 the attorney harassed and threatened her in an effort to force her “to admit him to her personal favor and friendly association.” Charges and counter-charges were hurled. Shapiro was no longer the “star boarder" at the Oesterreich home.
This rift widened until, when in April, 1930, Shapiro appeared at the office of Buron Fitts, now district attorney, and filed an affidavit that was to open up one of the most fantastic stories ever to appear in the country’s press.
Claiming that he had been attacked by two men accompanied by Mrs. Oesterreich and forced into an automobile on a downtown street, the dapper attorney told Fitts he feared for his life and, in self-defense, made this affidavit.
Shapiro's statement was unbelievable. The affidavit declared that when Mrs. Oesterreich was arrested, in June, 1923, he visited her at the jail, where she told him she was worried over a "vagabond half-brother, Otto,” whom she claimed was hidden in the attic of her home at 101 North Beachwood Drive. She begged him to see that the half-brother was fed. Otto, she said, would come forth only if Shapiro would scratch three times on the wall of a cedar closet.
Shapiro had followed directions, but he said that he was totally unprepared for what followed. Through a small opening crawled a slender, undersized man with a young-old face. His lips wreathed in smiles, he greeted Shapiro with: "Hello, Herman! I know you, for I've seen you around here for a long time. My name is Otto Sanhuber."
Otto Sanhuber – ‘just a perfect silent servant’ he said
The attorney’s affidavit stated that the little man from the attic told him he was not related to Mrs. Oesterreich but that he was her sweetheart; that for ten years he had lived in garrets in the Oesterreich homes both in Milwaukee and Los Angeles, without the knowledge of her husband. He related how he had met Dolly Oesterreich in 1908 when calling at her home to repair a sewing machine. She answered the door wearing a bath robe, silk stockings and nothing else! Things moved quickly that day – needless to say, the sewing machine did not receive as much attention as Dolly. Shortly after that Otto fell hopelessly in love with her. She returned his love and for a while thereafter their clandestine meetings took place in hotel rooms. Soon, however, they became more brazen and Otto took up secret residence under the eaves of the Oesterreich homes, in order to be near the woman he adored. He was only about 15 at that time but he welcomed this bat-like existence because of the stolen hours he could spend in her arms. Their love affair continued through the years, he moving from attic to attic as the Oesterreich's moved. On the night Oesterreich met his death Otto claimed he saw the couple struggling and, fearing for the life of his loved one, he grappled with Oesterreich. In the fight that followed, the husband was killed.
Headlines like ‘The Batman of Los Angeles’—‘The Ghost of the Garrett’—‘The Attic Lover’—‘The Attic Love Slave’—and so forth, were adopted by newspapers, and as Otto Sanhuber was called in the lurid news stories spotlighted again one of the city's most baffling murder mysteries.
Acting on information furnished by Shapiro, Detective Lieutenants Ray Cato and Herman Cline staked out and arrested Sanhuber for the murder of Fred Oesterreich, when Sanhuber returned to his apartment that night.
The arrest of Otto Sanhuber, alias Walter Weir, alias Walter Klein, was dramatic. Cheerily whistling, the little man entered the apartment and had closed the door before he saw the detectives. He made a swift dash for the door, but was intercepted by Cline. The detectives lost no time in questioning him on what happened on the night Oesterreich was killed. Otto's somewhat disjointed story furnished the police with many vital facts to establish their case.
Police found a secret room at the luxurious Beachwood Drive home. The entrance to it had been covered with wall board which, when removed, revealed a small but quite comfortable room. In it was a writing board hinged to make a desk, a foot warmer, a small mattress, some books and a large bucket. Cobwebs and a film of dust covered the attic room. At the North Andrews Place house, where Oesterreich met his death, the investigators found the secret room as described by Herman Shapiro. This cubbyhole had been nailed up but the officers were soon inspecting the tiny quarters where the bat-man insisted he had lived for four years, emerging only when his sweetheart let him know that the coast was clear or when, during the night, he heard her signal and knew that the husband was sound asleep in a distant room.
Sanhuber's story, as told to the police and later to the grand jury, was a most astounding one. He was a foundling and was not certain of his age but supposed he was about 14 or 15 when he first met Mrs. Oesterreich. He was a close friend of the Oesterrichs' son Raymond, whose mother was very friendly and often showed Otto motherly affection. When death took her son, the mother was frantic with grief. Otto continued to visit her. Old for his age, his mind seemed to interest the woman, then in her early thirties. She spent hours talking with him. Often she hugged and kissed him and said he took her son’s place. They took long walks into the country. He enjoyed the company of this slender, vigorous woman and his interest soon deepened into a romantic attachment. Her kisses awoke in him a desire that was not to be denied. Dolly Oesterreich was bubbling with life. Hers was a vital personality. Her son’s boyish friend fascinated her.
According to Sanhuber's story, (which differs from the tabloids of the day), it was on a summer’s evening that their romance became an actuality. They walked and talked as usual—a light summer shower sent them hurrying back from the park—they were not far from the place where Otto roomed —he suggested they stop there and get an umbrella—it was a tiny, bleak room but its shadows were friendly and it seemed far removed from prying eyes. Walburga Oesterreich became the first and only woman in Otto Sanhuber’s life for the more than ten years that followed.
After that they met often. One Sunday evening, as they walked in the park, she suddenly clutched his arm and whispered that she was certain they were being followed. Her husband had lately become suspicious of her frequent absences from home. They strolled on and then suddenly changed their course and hurried to the Union Depot. Here they waited and watched, and sure enough, the two men they had seen entered the station. There was no chance of a mistake—they had been followed.
Now thoroughly frightened, Otto decided to run away. But Walburga did not want to lose her young lover. She was afraid to return to her husband and so decided to accompany Sanhuber to St. Louis. There the couple remained for a blissful week. Money gone then—life became a serious reality. Walburga decided to return to Milwaukee, where Sanhuber reluctantly followed her and went into hiding in a shabby room in the poorer section of the city.
The attractive wife had no trouble in getting her husband to forget and forgive, but he made her promise never again to see the young sewing machine mechanic. But the romance and love-interest which the youth had aroused in her fought with her better judgment. So when, after several days, young Sanhuber telephoned her, Walburga urged him to come to her. For hours they talked. The boy’s youthful ardor and the woman's vital attraction were magnets that held them together in spite of the danger. They met often, now.
One afternoon Oesterreich returned home earlier than usual. There was no time for Otto to get away, so Walburga rushed up into a small attic room, where he stayed all night because the husband remained at home. Next morning, the pair decided that they could not live without each other and that there would be less chance of their being found out if Otto lived in the tiny attic room. Thus began the strange association which was to continue for ten years in four different houses in Milwaukee and two in Los Angeles.
Ten years of self-imprisonment so as to be close to the woman he loved. Ten years during which, because of the lack of exercise and the unnatural life he was leading, the young vigorous boy became a pale, slender wraith of a man. Ten years throughout which the man’s sole enjoyment was reading library books, helping with the housework and doing everything in his power to please the woman who held a strange fascination over him. Ten years that made him skillful in moving about his attic room as silently as a mouse slips along the rafters, and to move quietly and yet swiftly when the occasion warranted. Fred had mentioned to Dolly about the occasional inexplicable noises he heard from the attic, and the mysterious disappearance of his cigars from time to time, but he otherwise remained oblivious of Otto’s presence.
Thus Otto Sanhuber became a veritable mouse-man, a ghost in the garret of the wealthy manufacturer. He studied shorthand and went for walks after dark when he knew the Oesterreichs would not return until very late.
He purchased a revolver—“A big gun to make myself feel big when I walked at night—I liked to feel it— it made me feel big—like a cowboy, or something," he told the grand jury. He traded this big gun for a small automatic and later bought a second small revolver which he gave to Mrs. Oesterreich.
A month before Oesterreich was killed, Sanhuber had surprised a prowler in the house and had scared the man away by throwing an ink bottle at him. After this, the little man explained, he used to practice "getting the drop" on imaginary burglars. He would slip downstairs and then with a flourish of his revolver would surprise such an intruder.
Then came the night of Oesterreich's death, Otto slipped to the head of the stairs when he heard a car enter the driveway. The automatic in hand, he waited with bated breath for a possible intruder. He heard the Oesterreichs enter the house and was about to return to his cubbyhole when their voices rose in anger. Then came sounds of scuffling. He was paralyzed with fright. His beloved was being mistreated. He must save her. Without thinking of the consequences, he slipped swiftly down the stairs. Oesterreich was across the room, but Mrs. Oesterreich was lying on the floor. This was enough. Like a tiny knight, the ghost of the attic waved his revolver and shouted "stop" as he leaped into the room.
Too late, he realized his awful mistake as Oesterreich whirled about and started across the room shouting—"You—you—what are you doing in my house?" The two grappled in the living room, and then came the shots that brought Oesterreich’s death.
Sanhuber told the grand jury that Shapiro had insisted that he leave town and had put him on a San Francisco bus. He finally got to Seattle on a freight steamer, but was violently ill when he arrived there. It was while he was sick in a public institution that he met the nurse who in 1924 became his wife. He did not tell her about the years he had spent as the attic love-slave of Walburga Oesterreich, but in 1926 he said he felt the urge to return to Los Angeles to be near his former sweetheart. He had assumed the name of Walter Klein when he left Los Angeles. Both he and his wife secured work in a local sanitarium in Los Angeles and for a time were happy.
Following Otto's confession, the grand jury indicted Sanhuber on a charge of first degree murder. He pled not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. A few days later the grand jury indicted Mrs. Oesterreich, who entered a plea of not guilty.
District Attorney Buron Fitts tried in vain to bring the couple into court together, but the widow's attorneys, Jerry Gieslor, Meyer M. Willner and Le Compte Davis finally won a separate trial for Mrs. Oesterreich because the bat-man's attorney, Earl S. Wakeman, claimed his client was "mentally ill” and had been mentally unbalanced by a local attorney. On June 11, 1930, Otto Sanhuber appeared before Judge Carlos S. Hardy to face a charge of first degree murder. The bat-man was accompanied by his faithful wife Mathilde and his attorneys, Earl Wakeman and his associate Orville Rogers.
Judge Carlos S. Hardy
The same witnesses; giving the same testimony that marked the trial of Walburga Oesterreich in 1923, appeared again. Now, the pieces that had then seemed so distorted fitted into a whole picture. The man who whirled about and raced into the living room where death stalked; the four sharp revolver reports; the woman’s screaming voice; the lapse of time before the lights were put out; the muffled pounding: the locked closet door; the key on the landing; the two revolvers—this was all explained now by the presence of the bat-man at the time of the murder.
Deputy District Attorneys James Costello and J. Thomas Russell built up a strong case against Sanhuber. Earl C. King, investigator for the District Attorney testified to checking the homes in Milwaukee occupied by the Oesterreichs. He told of finding a hidden room in the attic of the house at 363 Thirteenth Avenue; that another house had four locks on the rear door and all the downstairs windows were of frosted glass and that a third house had an attic rom with an entrance from a third floor bedroom similar to the hideout in the Los Angeles house.
Phillip J. Stover of Milwaukee was the surprise witness. He told of the feud between Oesterreich and Otto. He testified to being sent by the husband to investigate the week the wife and Otto had spent in St, Louis. He said Mrs. Oesterreich had begged for a divorce then.
Defense Attorney Wakeman tried in vain to keep Otto’s grand jury confession from being entered into the records, claiming that it had been secured by a promise of immunity by the District Attorney. Buron Fitts denied making such a promise. Judge Hardy ruled that the jury must decide later whether the confession had been made voluntarily or by promise of a lesser penalty. The judge then read to the jury the colorful story as related by the bat-man to the grand jury.
After this ruling, Sanhuber refused to take the witness stand and sulked and pouted. Finally being convinced by his attorneys that his testimony would not hurt “Dolly" he took the stand in his own defense. But now he told a different version of the shooting.
Otto Sanhuber and his attorney Earl Seeley Wakeman
In language that was an odd mixture of childishness and profound phrases culled from books he had read while leading his wraith-like existence under the musty, dark eaves, Otto told his remarkable story to an avidly listening court room. It was the same story he had told the grand jury of his love-life among cobwebbed rafters. But when he came to the night Oesterrich met his death, he changed his story. He now claimed he never left his little cubbyhole and that the killing must have been done by robbers.
Three days of testimony and cross examination failed to change the attic lover’s new version of the killing. He said he lived at the North Andrews Place house for six months after the shooting and then, in an attic of the new house on Beachwood Drive. The court room was convulsed when he explained that Mrs. Oesterreich had trouble finding a house with a decent attic.
Defense Attorney Wakeman didn’t deny the facts as set forth in Sanhuber's confession before the grand jury, but cleverly selected the highlights of the little man's attic ghost story and made a forceful plea to the jury for leniency. Deputy District Attorney Costello denounced Sanhuber's morals and Tom Russell urged the jury to find the bat-man guilty of first degree murder. But the jury, after deliberating four and a half hours, returned a verdict of manslaughter, which carried a sentence of from one to ten years.
Sanhuber, however, was never required to serve the sentence. Under the California laws, the statute of limitations expires on a manslaughter charge after three years. So Sanhuber could not be convicted of the crime. Thus while Attorney Giesler was fighting for a continuance for Walburga Oesterreich, Judge Hardy granted Attorney Wakeman’s request of an arrest of judgment, and the little bat-man was released to his wife.
Otto enjoying his first moments of freedom after being released
On August 4, 1930, Walburga Oesterreich went on trial for conspiracy in the murder of her husband. The years had taken their toll of the widow. No longer young in appearance, she had put on many pounds in weight. Despite bobbed curls which hung about her face, there was little to recall the slender, vital woman accused ten years before of this same crime.
Taking the stand in her own defense, Walburga Oesterreich laid bare her soul. At times covering her face with her hands and sobbing bitterly, she told the story of her shame, but vehemently maintained that throughout the years she had deeply loved her husband.
Costello and Russell forced her to acknowledge the relationship that had existed between herself and Sanhuber, and her story coincided with the one her lover had told the grand jury. The only difference being that she said her husband had not quarreled with her that night. “When we got home,” said the weeping defendant, “Fred said to me, ‘Dolly, you look mighty good to me tonight.' As he grabbed at me, he slipped on the rug and I let out a yell, so that he let me fall onto the floor. Then I saw Otto. He thought Fred was hurting me," the woman continued. “I heard him holler, 'Stop,' and then I saw Fred and him start fighting. I ran to the corner and hid my face on the piano. I heard some shots—I hollered, 'Fred—oh, Fred—‘ ”
Mrs. Oesterreich claimed that Otto made her get in the closet and that he locked the door into the hall with a second key.
The prosecution placed the batman on the stand, but Otto Sanhuber did not make a good witness. He stuck to his second version of the killing and nothing could shake his story. At times he seemed but a child and again he was like a solemn old man. He told of learning to do the housework as “Dolly" wanted it done and of just living to please her. "I was just a perfect, silent servant,’’ he said with an ingratiating smile at the jury. When asked what was the longest time he had been away from Mrs. Oesterreich after taking up his abode under the eaves of her home, he replied, "When I was away from my attic, the time was tremendously long, so I didn't measure it in days or weeks. It was just long. I'll say I was almost beside myself to get back.”
Otto’s utterly frank narrative lent color to Walburga Oesterreich’s story that when he came to her the day after the murder and said, “Listen, Dolly, I got a gun. Will you get rid of it for me?” her only thought was to protect the little man who she believed had gotten into trouble through his affection for her. When a day later he brought her a second gun, she had to ask a second friend to help her dispose of this one. She said she knew how Otto played at scaring away imaginary burglars, and thought this amusing but harmless. She had smiled at his childish pranks that were to lay the foundation for his last terrible mistake—the mistake which brought down the avalanche of shame and dishonor on herself and the man whose passion for her had warped his soul and stunted his body.
Walburga sitting amongst the defense and prosecution teams
Mrs. Oesterreich’s attorney Jerry Giesler had questioned the prospective jurors as to whether each could give an impartial verdict in spite of the defendant's alleged moral offenses, thus the jury was prepared for the salacious story of illicit love and the punch was taken out of Otto's confession.
The jury of six men and six women weighed the evidence for four days and were then dismissed when no verdict could be reached. They stood nine for second degree murder, one for manslaughter and two for not guilty.
A new trial was set for October 14, 1930, but after several continuances the case was ordered dismissed on December 9.
Said Deputy District Attorney Russell after the dismissal:
"We were pretty certain the shooting occurred as Mrs. Oesterreich related it and we were unable to find anything additional to show conspiracy. All the exhibits—the shells, bullets and revolvers had been released to a local attorney several years after the case was dismissed against Mrs. Oesterreich in 1925. A conviction did not seem possible. I prosecuted both cases against Mrs. Oesterreich and I feel certain there was no miscarriage of justice.”
