2

Ordained at Midnight

On 5 September 1913, two children playing along the banks of the Hudson River in the town of Shady Side, New Jersey, noticed a large brown paper package floating in a tangled raft of driftwood offshore. When it was fished out of the water and opened, the headless trunk of a woman, dismembered and severed at the waist, tumbled out.¹

The following day, additional remains were found. The Evening World reported, “A general search of the fleet of houseboats and canal boats [anchored] above Hoboken has been ordered by Chief of Police [Leonard] Marcy of North Bergen, in the hope that he may discover a clue to the identity of the young girl, part of whose body was found half buried in sand on the brink of the Hudson across from Grant’s Tomb yesterday afternoon.”²

On 7 September, more pieces of the torso were found “among abandoned boat hulls and sunken barges in what [was] known as the ‘ships’ graveyard,’ in Baxter’s Wrecking Company’s basin in Weehawken.”³ A chunk was fished out of the North River, near the West Shore ferry in Hoboken, opposite West Forty-Second Street in Manhattan, about three miles south of where the first parts had been found.⁴

Police believed she was approximately 25, and had been killed within the past five days and then dismembered. According to The Sun, “an examination of the remains … by County Physician George W. King, revealed [that she] had not been in the water more than four days; that she had not been drowned … and that the severing of the limbs and head had been done by one expert in surgery. The nature of the cuts showed that a long blade had been used. Three small birthmarks on the right shoulder blade and a plain pillow made from ordinary ticking, on which was a tag and the name of a Newark manufacturer, are the only clues to the identity of the victim.”⁵

King explained, “The murderer tortured his victim. There is strong reason to believe that she remained alive while her limbs were being amputated. The murderer performed six distinct operations in cutting off the head, the arms, and the legs, and severing the trunk. All this was done very rapidly. The woman could not have been dead more than a few seconds before the dismemberment was complete. If there had been a delay of a minute or two, the circulation would have stopped and blood would have remained in the arteries.”⁶

By 8 September, investigators believed they had identified the murder victim as one Ella Sterneman. Her father, Peter Sterneman, who sold cheap millinery (women’s hats), had written a letter to the newspapers, mostly incoherent, saying that he believed that the girl was his daughter. At his residence police found an assortment of items: a box of bird feathers stiffened with copper wire—similar to the wire used to tie up the bundles found in the river—carpentry tools; a blade with dark stains on it; and some brown packing paper. When he saw the stories in the papers about the body in the river, Sterneman reportedly told his landlord, “That is my daughter.”

Police had few clues to work with. The lower part of the torso had been weighted down by a gneiss rock, which geologists said was peculiar to Manhattan and the Bronx in New York, but not to New Jersey, indicating that the body had been taken from New York and dumped into the water near 110th Street. Based on this, the New Jersey police asked New York law enforcement, and New York County District Attorney Charles Whitman, for assistance in solving the crime.⁷

New York City Police Inspector Joseph Faurot, with Assistant District Attorney Deacon Murphy, focused on the pillowcase, described in one newspaper as “gayly colored … of [an] unusual pattern … stained with blood, and soiled with the filth of the river.”⁸ The tag showed that it was from the Robinson-Roders Company of Newark.

The detectives involved in the chase—including Faurot, Detective Frank Cassassa of the New York City Police, and detectives William J. Charlock and Thomas McDonald of the Hudson County’s Prosecutor’s Office—tried to trace the evidence back to the killer. Faurot and Cassassa went to the pillow manufacturer and found that an order of pillowcases with that specific lot number had been sold to George Sachs, a dealer located at 2768 Eighth Avenue in New York City. Sachs kept excellent records, and the police began tracking down every sale of that style of pillowcase.

The finding of the body came just as New York City was reeling from the twin deaths of Mayor William Jay Gaynor and “Big Tim” Sullivan, the leader of Tammany Hall. Gaynor succumbed on 10 September to wounds he received when he was shot three years earlier. James J. Gallagher, a disgruntled former city employee, had exacted revenge on the mayor for his firing. Gaynor suffered a bullet wound to his throat, and though he initially recovered, his health declined until he died of his wounds after a long battle.⁹

At the same time, perhaps one of the most feared and influential politicians in the city had also died. Tim Sullivan, just elected to the U.S. Congress, was struck and killed by a train near the Pelham Parkway in New York on 31 August. Despite his ethical issues—especially with his connection to Tammany Hall—he was widely mourned in New York, especially among his fellow Irish citizens.¹⁰ Both deaths kept the murder off the front pages of the city’s newspapers—at least for a day or two.

Although the victim’s head was still missing, physicians estimated her height at 5 feet 4 inches, her weight between 120 and 130 pounds. The autopsy also showed that she had been pregnant, and that she had given birth prematurely not long before she was murdered. And she had most definitely been murdered, Dr. King said: “The blood flowed freely from each cut, and it is impossible to tell which came first. Any one [of them] would have caused death. The clean-cut character of the work and the speed with which it was done makes it certain that the murderer was trained to use a surgeon’s knife and saw. He may or may not have been a surgeon, but he was not a novice at this kind of work.”

He continued: “Shortly before she met her death the woman gave birth prematurely to a child. The fact, however, appears to be in no way connected with her death. Whether a criminal operation had been performed cannot be ascertained. If so, there were no ill effects from it. The accident, or crime, which prevented her from becoming a mother might have occurred as much as a week before her death…. An examination of the lungs showed that no chloroform or other anesthetic has been administered. The woman may have been stunned by a blow on the head before the knife was used. It might appear, if the head was recovered, that the woman was shot. It is most likely, however, that she was conscious, when the death wound was inflicted.”¹¹

Ultimately, the birthmarks on the victim’s shoulder would lead to her positive identification. But that was days away.

*  *  *

Joseph Faurot was born in Cornwall, New York, in 1872. He became a policeman in 1896, and rose in the ranks, to detective sergeant, then captain, then acting inspector, and, finally, inspector in October 1912.

In 1905, he was sent to London and Paris to study the Bertillion fingerprint system, the first true cataloging of human fingerprints used to identify criminals, and upon his return to the U.S. instituted its use in New York. His work in bringing fingerprinting to criminal investigation was highlighted in a 1920 article in Finger Print Magazine.¹² He even played a “fingerprint expert” in the silent film Our Mutual Girl, No. 31 (Reliance Film Company, 1914).

In 1911, his testimony on fingerprint evidence led to the conviction of burglar Charles Crispi, a.k.a. Cesare J. Cella—the first in American legal history based on such evidence.¹³ Faurot would rise to become a deputy commissioner of the NYPD before retiring in 1926. He died in New York on 20 November 1942.¹⁴

Running down the numerous sales records of pillowcases, Faurot and the other detectives on the case went to every buyer’s home until, on 14 September, they reached 68 Bradhurst Avenue in Manhattan. Faurot would later describe in court what happened next.

The apartment was rented to Father Hans Schmidt, a priest. He also went under the pseudonym “A. Van Dyke.” Schmidt was a curate—an assistant to a vicar, rector or parish priest—at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, located at 405 West 125th Street. Searching the apartment—without a warrant—they found a scene of horror. The walls were covered with bloodstains, as was the floor. It appeared that someone had tried and failed to try to clean up the gore. The bathtub was covered in blood. Next to it was a saw and a knife, both scrubbed clean of blood.

Jimmying open two trunks found in the apartment, they found letters addressed to an Anna Aumüller, as well as women’s clothing and several small handkerchiefs with the letter “A” embroidered on them, which matched the letter found on the pillowcase. The letters revealed that Aumüller was a 21-year-old German immigrant who worked as a servant girl at St. Boniface’s Church, located at Second Avenue and Forty-Seventh Street, until she was fired for apparently having a “lifestyle” that did not fit with the Church’s teachings.

From the landlady, the detectives also discovered that the apartment had been rented for Aumüller by Schmidt, who had once worked at St. Boniface’s, before moving to St. Joseph’s.

Faurot and detectives Cassassa and O’Neill went to St. Joseph’s at 3 a.m., and found Schmidt in the rectory. Taken into the parlor house of the church, he sat down with the officers and answered their questions.¹⁵ Confronted with the bloody scene at his apartment, Schmidt quickly confessed to having murdered and dismembered the victim, whom he identified as Anna Aumüller, his wife.

After telling his story, Schmidt asked permission to change into street clothes. He left to change in a bathroom, but Faurot followed him and found Schmidt about to cut his own throat with a blade he had in his pocket. The confessed murderer was then taken to police headquarters. An Oregon newspaper hailed the news that the mystery of “Hudson’s Headless Girl” had been solved.¹⁶

The Trenton Evening Times—one of the myriad New Jersey newspapers which, like the papers in New York City, had been closely following the case—reported: “…the mystery was brought to an abrupt and dramatic termination yesterday morning. The solution was forged out of a clew that had been in the hands of the police almost from the moment they began their investigation. This single bit of incriminating evidence the now confessed murderer left behind in the dim, bespattered room where, sleeping peacefully in the full confidence that she was the priest’s lawful wife, he stole upon her at midnight and drew the blade of a carving knife across her throat.”¹⁷

The New York Times said Aumüller “was killed and dismembered shortly before midnight on Sept. 2 in an apartment on the third floor of an apartment house…. The priest and the girl had obtained a marriage license in this city on Feb. 26 of this year, and Schmidt told the detectives that he officiated at a ceremony which was intended to unite himself and the young woman. He had given her a wedding ring, which he took from her finger after slaying her. In his confession Schmidt said that he had frequently posed as a physician under various names. Inspector Faurot said that evidence was found in his room to show that he was interested in the sale of preparations familiar in criminal medical practice.”¹⁸

According to Schmidt’s confession, “[H]e killed his companion with a butcher’s knife, and cut up the body with the knife and a saw … while the woman slept shortly after midnight on September 2…. When her heart had ceased beating … Schmidt carried the body from the bed to the bathroom and, placing it in the tub, began immediately his gory task of dismembering it. With the sharpened knife and saw, he cut off the head, arms and legs. Still fearful of detection, he then cut the body in two at its middle. Five bundles, wrapped in bed clothes and papers, were made of the six parts. Five times Schmidt left the apartment house with a bundle to cross the Hudson River to the Jersey shore. Five times he leaned over the stern of the ferry boat in midstream and gently gave the river his burden.”¹⁹

The story shocked the nation. From coast to coast, the tale of the priest who had murdered a woman and dismembered her and tossed her remains into the Hudson was on the front page of every newspaper. The Times-Dispatch of Richmond, Virginia, reported that Schmidt told the police, “I killed her because I loved her so much. She was so beautiful, so good, I could not let her live without me. I had made up my mind that she and I could not live together. I was a priest, and must remain with my church. I could not let her go away from me.” The paper added, “Sobbing out this confession of his crime, the priest was locked in a cell in the Tombs Prison, where, instead of collapsing, as might have been expected, he calmly went to sleep.”²⁰

Questioned in his cell by Father Luke Evers, the chaplain at Tombs, Schmidt said, “It was by the command of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, my patron saint, that I killed Anna Aumüller. St. Elizabeth commanded me to offer up a sacrifice. Like the sacrifice of Abraham, it must be one of blood. So I killed Anna Aumüller, and drank some of her blood to consummate the sacrifice.”²¹

That Schmidt was a priest driven to murder, he claimed, by a personal conflict between his devotion to the church and his love for a woman he had secretly married, only made for more sensational headlines. But Father Hans B. Schmidt was not what he claimed to be—he was the ultimate huckster, whose entire life was built upon falsehood and fabrications.

*  *  *

In 1914, a court clerk asked Schmidt to give a background of his life. The details he gave, reported by a New York newspaper, may or may not be true.

“He said he was born [January] 3, 1881, at Aschaffensburg, Germany, and that his parents were born in that country. When asked his occupation Schmidt in a low but distinct tone answered, ‘Priest.’ Then followed the formal record, as follows: ‘Are you married?’ ‘Yes,’ after considerable hesitation. ‘Can you read and write and speak English?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are your parents living?’ ‘Yes, both.’ ‘Have you ever received any religious instruction?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Schmidt as he laughed audibly. ‘Are you temperate, intemperate or moderate?’ ‘Moderate,’ was his answer after a slight delay, with the same smile about his mouth. He said [that] he had taken out his first naturalization papers two years ago. He also answered that he had never before been convicted of a crime.”²²

In October 1913, a newspaper in Middletown, New York, printed an “early life” of Hans Schmidt, explaining that his attorney, Alphonse Koelble, submitted an affidavit to the court, furnished by Schmidt’s relatives in Germany, that he was definitely insane. “When attending the monastery school he frequently disappeared and would be found playing the violin, which he was passionately fond of, in some barroom. Another time he was found sitting in the bathtub playing the violin. He also made a tour of Frankfort on his bicycle attired only in an undershirt. On another occasion he carried a sewing machine on his back through the streets of the town and made a present of it to a young sewing girl, whose charms had won him [over]. These things go to show his insanity, his lawyer thinks. His brother. Carl, has furnished a list of six suicides in his immediate family.”²³

Was Schmidt a “real” priest? A century later, that question is still unanswered. The Right Rev. Monsignor Michael J. Lavelle told reporters at the time of the arrest that Schmidt was indeed ordained by the Roman Catholic Church, but that he had forged his letters of recommendation from Germany when he came to America six years earlier. He added that Schmidt had worked at a church in Trenton, New Jersey, but had been forced to leave there for unknown reasons.

“We had no intention of allowing Schmidt to remain in this country,” Lavelle said. “We always assume that wanderers such as Schmidt are not wandering because of superior intelligence or ability. We had taken no steps, however, to send him back to Europe…. He left Trenton because of a technical offense, and therefore we did not hold this against him, but gave him a place here, as he had recommendations from other places. No adverse reports of any kind have been made against him to us. If there had been I would have instituted an immediate investigation.”²⁴

The Sun of New York discovered that Schmidt studied English at Louisville, Kentucky, for a year, but those who knew him there also had little to actually say about him, except that he was a good student and was exceedingly quiet. After nine months, he spoke English fluently, but then suddenly picked up and left for Trenton.²⁵

Despite extensive police investigation, little was ever dug up about who Anna Aumüller was. She was born in Germany in 1892 (some sources list 1893). Little else is known about her, including her parents’ names, or her genealogy. She departed from Hamburg on the ship Pretoria on 27 October 1912 for New York City. Her marital status is listed as “ledig” (unmarried), her residence as the city of “Oedenburg” (Ödenburg), now Sopron, a city in Hungary near the Neusiedler See, west of the city of Bratislava.²⁶ She arrived in New York on 11 November 1912, aged 19. She listed her mother’s name, which can barely be made out on the form, but no other information is given.²⁷

The public soon learned that Schmidt was not just a cold-blooded murderer, but also a counterfeiter and a thief. The New-York Tribune reported on 16 September, “Prima facie evidence [that] Father Hans Schmidt … was a counterfeiter and had been actively plying his trade while he was scheming to rid himself of the incubus which his life with the young woman had placed upon him, was obtained by Inspector Faurot at an early hour this morning in the arrest of Dr. Ernest Arthur Muret, of No. 301 St. Nicholas Avenue, a dentist, who was captured in a flat on West 134th Street.”²⁸

It has been alleged, especially at the time, that Schmidt and Muret were homosexual lovers, but this is only speculation. Muret went under so many aliases that it is impossible, a century later, to determine his real name. He had been arrested after Faurot and other detectives raided a four-bedroom flat, rented by Schmidt (in addition to the Bradhurst Avenue apartment). Police had been led to the second apartment after finding receipts with the address in Schmidt’s room at St. Joseph’s. Detective Richard M. McKenna found a complete counterfeiting operation, with color-printing presses, engraving plates, and cameras.²⁹

Papers found in the flat gave some insight into Muret: “[He] had left London for some offense committed while practicing medicine there, and had practiced in Chicago under the name of Dr. Arnold Held, leaving that city and dropping the name of Held some time subsequent to July 1909. Although Muret has claimed [that] he met Schmidt only six months ago, evidence has appeared that they had business relations as long as two years ago, and that the dentist long had knowledge of Schmidt’s counterfeiting experiments.”³⁰

Inspector Faurot examined a series of letters found in Muret’s apartment at 301 St. Nicholas Avenue, which showed the length that the “dentist” had gone to to disguise his own identity, which included a false moustache and a Van Dyke beard, both colored auburn. As evidence against Muret continued to pile up, even his alleged ties to Chicago were now suspect, even though detectives found a certificate in his apartment from the American College of Mechanico-Therapy, which stated that “Arnold Held, a man of good moral character and high professional standing,” had completed a course at the school, and was now certified to practice “mechanico-therapy.”³¹

Detectives who checked with people who might have known him in the Windy City said initially that there was no record of an “Arnold Held” or an “Ernest Muret.”³² Others who did remember a “Dr. Arnold Held,” including the notary public Paul Valy, said that “Held” was wanted for alleged fraudulent banking methods. Dr. William Schulze, president of the American College of Mechanico-Therapy, said that an “Arnold Held” had studied there in 1908 and 1909, claiming that he was already a licensed physician who had graduated from the Gymnasium at Konigsberg, Germany, and had left an unpaid balance on his tuition.³³

Another paper speculated that Muret might be Schmidt’s cousin: “the pseudo-dentist … has been thought by the police almost from the beginning to bear some blood relationship to Schmidt. Thus the advices tonight from Aschaffenburg, Germany, Schmidt’s birthplace, that Muret is now believed to be the murderer’s cousin, Adolph Mueller, caused little surprise among the investigators.”³⁴

The New York Times reported that on 17 September detectives broke into yet another flat at 2562 Eighth Avenue, “where Hans Schmidt … had intended to hide the belongings of Anna Aumüller and other evidence that might lead to his detection as the murderer. The detectives also found in the effects of Ernest Arthur Muret, who called himself a dentist, and is charged with [a] partnership with the priest in a counterfeiting plant at 516 West 134th Street, a number of letters which proved that early in 1911 he had fled to this country from London, where he was wanted by Scotland Yard men and that he had since 1911 assumed at least four different names.”³⁵

On 19 September, police discovered in one of Schmidt’s myriad hiding places the electrostatic image of the death certificate of one Robert Smith, 69, who had died in April 1913. It was discovered that Schmidt had visited him at least twice as a priest, and had officiated over his funeral.³⁶

Was Schmidt involved in Smith’s death as well? It does not appear that police ever followed it up.

Next, authorities unearthed information that tied Schmidt and Muret together in what may have been an even more horrific murder. On 8 December 1909, 8-year old Alma Kellner had left her home for school in Louisville, Kentucky; she never arrived. Months later, on 30 May 1910, her mutilated and dismembered body was found in the basement of St. John’s Church. The church’s janitor, Joseph Wendling, an immigrant from France, had fled. After a nationwide search, he was arrested in San Francisco, brought back to Kentucky, and ultimately convicted of the crime, largely based on circumstantial evidence.³⁷

At the time, one of those questioned in the slaying was a priest at St. John’s, Father Hans Schmidt, who told police that he had never seen the girl, and he was cleared. By the time of Anna Aumüller’s murder, Wendling had sat in prison declaring his innocence for four years.

On 19 September 1913, as police continued to look into his background, Schmidt, through his attorney, Alphonse Koelble, issued a statement, stating that he would confess to the child’s killing and wanted to convince the Louisville authorities that he did it to save Wendling. “They can send me to the electric chair but once,” Schmidt said, “so what difference would it make if they accuse me of one murder or two or half a dozen murders? If I could get this man Wendling out of prison I would confess that I committed the crime for which he is suffering; but it would not be true and I couldn’t show that it was true. I was in Louisville when the little girl was killed, but I had nothing to do with it.” In the end, Schmidt never confessed to the murder of the child, and no proof was ever found connecting him to it.³⁸

*  *  *

Two weeks after the first parts of Anna Aumüller’s corpse began to wash ashore in New Jersey, and a week after Schmidt was arrested for the crime, the investigation—in 1913 terms—was rabidly unfolding. In the few days since Schmidt was uncovered as Aumüller’s alleged killer, stated one newspaper, “[e]vidence … shows that Schmidt has for years lived the dual life of priest and criminal.”³⁹ A Michigan newspaper reported on 17 September that he had “stolen $400 from the Easter collection at St. Joseph’s Church and that he had robbed a visiting priest who spent the night at St. Joseph’s rectory as a guest of the local clergy. An empty purse found in Schmidt’s rooms … proved to be one which the visiting priest had lost not too long ago.”⁴⁰

By 19 September, five days after he had been arrested, the register of Schmidt’s crimes—as well as the list of his potential crimes—was beginning to rival some of America’s worst serial killers. One paper even compared him to Herman Mudgett, also known as H.H. Holmes, who confessed to 27 murders and may have committed as many as 200.⁴¹

As the evidence against him mounted, the question as to just who Hans Schmidt was continued to fascinate the public, and newspapers scrambled for any tidbit of information on his life. Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, a journalist who wrote under the pseudonym Dorothy Dix, explained, “In his fantastic tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, [Robert Louis] Stevenson developed an ingenious theory of a man who possessed a dual personality. In one character he was a man of honor and integrity … while in the other character he was a fiend capable of any iniquity…. Schmidt has discounted the novelist’s fanciful idea … he had not a dual personality, but a quadruple personality, and that under different names, and in different garbs, and in different parts of the city, he lived lives as separate and distinct as if he were, indeed, a different man each time.”⁴²

There was also a mad dash to find out who Ernest Muret was, and what his connection to the Anna Aumüller murder might be. A New York paper related that police suspected he was a white slaver, and hinted that he may have been involved in “illegal” medical practices—a code word for abortion. “One of the names used by Muret when in London was ‘Dr. A. Ernest’ … The evidence from London regarding the illegal practice throws much light on a point in the murder of Anna Aumuller [sic] that so far has puzzled the New York police. An autopsy led to suspicion of an illegal operation. On that point Schmidt is strangely silent. So is Muret.”⁴³

One Ohio newspaper shone a light on Muret in a front page story on 19 September: “Muret, under arrest here as a counterfeiter and an accomplice of Hans Schmidt, slayer of Anna Aumüller, is Adolph Mueller of Mainz, Germany, and a cousin of Hans Schmidt…. Aschaffenburg authorities [say they] occupied themselves a great deal in Germany several years ago with hypnotism and spiritualistic séances.”⁴⁴

On 19 September, with word of the possible Schmidt involvement in the death of Robert Smith, came additional chilling allegations against the priest: first, New York City officials were scanning all 15,000-plus death certificates filed in the city since the first of the year, looking to see if any were forged by “Father” Hans Schmidt, to conceal possible other murders. A New York newspaper reported, “Schmidt has confessed that he prepared those blank certificates for the purpose of accounting for the death of persons hopelessly sick or crippled whom he meant to kill painlessly for their own good.”⁴⁵

Some reporters began to ask: where was Helen Green? A new name was thus introduced to the story.

She was identified as a “girlfriend” of Schmidt’s, having met him the previous winter. She had been frequently seen with the priest by witnesses who later recalled the couple going to shows along the “Gay White Way,” as Broadway was known since 1902. Schmidt was remembered as the “Count” who said that he was a son of nobility. It was noted that Green had disappeared right after she told friends she was going to Chicago, after which nothing was heard from her. Police found several letters from the girl to Schmidt, but all had been penned while she was still seen in New York.⁴⁶

Another paper, following this line of inquiry, noted, “Inspector Faurot is looking for Helen Green of 201 West One Hundred and Ninth Street, who has mysteriously vanished following correspondence with Schmidt. Inspector Faurot will collate mortuary records covering the last months in the belief that they will prove that many women who might throw light on Schmidt’s criminal career were murdered by him.”⁴⁷

The search for “Helen Green,” if that was her name, also involved the search for an unnamed young boy, whom Schmidt paraded around town for some time as his son. Who was this child? No one seemed to know, even though several recounted seeing him with Schmidt. Of the hunt to find both missing people, The Washington Post reported, “[Green] rented a room in an apartment at 201 West 109th Street during the last two weeks in January…. Detectives have established [that] Schmidt rented an apartment not far away about the same time, and that to this apartment he sometimes brought with him a 5-year-old boy.... [He] told the janitress that the boy was his son.”⁴⁸

The Sun of New York picked up on this: “The police discovered yesterday a fourth place which Schmidt used in his crime operations … at 124 West Eighty-Fourth Street. Mrs. Manzer, who rented a room there to Schmidt, was worrying last night because she had forgotten to tell Inspector Faurot that when Schmidt went to this room he sometimes brought with him a five-year-old boy…. She asked the lad his name and he replied: ‘August Van Dyke.’ Van Dyke was the name under which Schmidt rented the room, and it was the same alias he had used at 68 Bradhurst Avenue, where he killed Anna Aumüller, and at 2562 Eighth Avenue, where he took baby clothing made by his victim.” Manzer said the boy bore a striking resemblance to Schmidt.⁴⁹

Reports also came in that when Schmidt came to America, he was accompanied by a woman whom he introduced as “his wife.” No one remembered her name, but witnesses did tell police that she disappeared soon after, about 1911. The Washington Times reported: “Letters found in the trunk of Hans Schmidt … show that on his trip to this country he was accompanied by a woman who either believed that she was his wife, or expected soon to become his wife. She, like Helen Green, is now missing…. One was mailed from Louisville, Ky., the city which Schmidt first visited after his arrival in this country. From the tenor of the letters, the detectives believe that the woman was the victim of a fraudulent marriage … in which he himself acted as the clergyman.”⁵⁰

Schmidt refused to say a word about the woman or the boy, and the leads soon dried up. Near the end of September, however, as the district attorney’s office was announcing that they would seek the death penalty for Schmidt, his demeanor changed. According to one New York paper, he was “[s]uddenly abandoning his air of resignation and martyrdom.” Schmidt declared from his cell in Tombs Prison that he would contest the charges in court. “I will fight for my life,” he said. “If District Attorney Whitman expects to get anything out of me, he will find himself up against a stone wall.”⁵¹

Unfortunately, Anna Aumüller’s head was never found, and no one was able to tell if she gave birth to a living child, to a stillborn child, or if she had had an “illegal operation.” Her remains were unclaimed by any living relatives and she was buried in Potter’s Field on Hart Island.⁵²

*  *  *

One of the last questions for investigators was whether Schmidt was a real priest or not. The Rev. Luke J. Evers, the chaplain of the Tombs Prison, spent 14 September, right after Schmidt’s arrest, questioning Schmidt regarding his standing as a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. Evers told others that he believed that Schmidt’s credentials to Catholic priests in America were forgeries.⁵³

The Church itself, however, wanted to investigate to see if those credentials were truly faked. The Right Rev. Monsignor Michael J. Lavelle, the vicar general of the New York Archdiocese, said, “His crime is too horrible to conceive. We can only hope that he may prove to have been a pseudo-priest.”⁵⁴

Schmidt’s lawyer, Alphonse Koelble, realized that the evidence against his client was damning—and the district attorney was seeking the death penalty for the crime. He knew that the only way to save Schmidt from the electric chair was by somehow convincing a jury that he was insane at the time of the crime. To this end, he began collecting evidence that Schmidt had been insane not just at the time that he murdered Anna Aumüller, but throughout his entire life.

Along these lines, a friend of Schmidt’s, the Rev. Francis Markert of the Society of the Divine Word in Techny, Illinois, wrote a letter to Chicago newspapers on 16 September, intimating that the man he knew was not well. “Even as a boy he showed unbounded zeal to study, and contrary to his parents’ wishes carried it to excess…. Even then he displayed certain eccentricities which puzzled his intimates and caused scruples on the part of those in charge about receiving him into a theological seminary.”⁵⁵

The decision on Schmidt’s possible insanity would be ironed out later, to be decided by a jury. The police, especially Faurot, probably realized that Schmidt could only use an insanity defense to escape being put to death. “I believe [that] Schmidt is an abnormal criminal,” Faurot told The Day Book of Chicago. “From the beginning he has been inspired by a criminal and degenerate mind. His exceptional criminal ability is proved by the way he deceived the church authorities. Not a finger of suspicion was pointed at him. It would be only in keeping with his past actions if he pretended to be insane.’”⁵⁶

On 22 September, Faurot stated that a “prominent physician” had approached him and related that Schmidt had intended to commit a series of murders, in addition to that of Anna Aumüller, “for the purpose of defrauding life insurance companies.” The New York Times stated that “Faurot has been skeptical since the discovery of blank death certificates in Schmidt’s trunk of the statement by the priest that he intended to murder a number of the aged and infirm among his parishioners and to account for them with forged death certificates.”⁵⁷

*  *  *

Despite the ignominy from the crime that he was accused of, Schmidt had his fans: five female nurses, all from Bellevue Hospital, showed up at the Tombs Prison and asked to see the incarcerated accused killer. The warden allowed them in, but they were led past his cell and not allowed to speak with him.⁵⁸

In addition to Faurot, one of the leading investigators in the case was Assistant District Attorney Francis X. Mancuso, head of the homicide department of the New York district attorney’s office. He was deeply involved in many of the most important cases in New York during this period, including the prosecutions of Lt. Charles Becker, the crooked police officer, and Dr. Arthur Warren Waite, who poisoned both of his in-laws to gain their estate.

On 27 September, Schmidt sent a note from his cell at the Tombs Prison: “I am near a nervous breakdown and the people will never understand.” Two men came to see the prisoner: Robert Helm, of West Hoboken, New Jersey, who said he knew Schmidt’s family in Germany. Schmidt refused to see him.

Schmidt did, however, see George Foukes of Paterson, New Jersey, who thought that he might be a relative of Schmidt’s, but after the two spoke both denied any kinship. In the meantime, the district attorney’s office announced that it had hired Dr. A. Ross Diefendorf, of the Middletown, Connecticut, State Hospital for the Insane, to take part in an examination of Schmidt on 1 October with fellow alienists Drs. Carlos F. MacDonald, William Mason, and George H. Kirby.⁵⁹

The three men were leaders in the field of psychiatry in the second decade of the twentieth century. Historian Richard Polenberg explained how this growing field—which took center stage in the trial of Hans Schmidt—operated at the time:

The techniques employed by Mabon and his associates followed the prescriptions for detecting spurious claims of insanity found in the psychiatric literature. According to a leading work, [Edward Charles] Spitzka’s Insanity, Its Classification, Diagnosis and Treatment, published in 1883 but still widely used, defendants who claim to have experienced bogus “symptoms” suggested by the physician gave themselves away. An experienced doctor, by “impressing the imposter with the hopelessness of his attempt to succeed in gaining his object,” might well succeed in putting an end to the shamming. The prosecution’s alienists may also have been influenced by another early treatise which recommended: “In all such investigations the physician must never show the most trifling sign of doubt or hesitation; he must, on the contrary, appear to know everything, in order to discover everything, and must present a firm and imposing front in all his intercourse with the accused.”⁶⁰

On 3 October, the New-York Tribune reported that the four alienists who examined Schmidt found him to be sane. “Those talks of Schmidt that he was inspired to commit the crime by St. Elizabeth were nothing but the cunning conceits of a man determined upon an effort to escape the electric chair for his atrocious crime,” an anonymous official with ties to the district attorney’s office told the paper.⁶¹

*  *  *

During the inquest on Anna Aumüller’s death, with Coroner Israel Lewis Feinberg officiating, the jury heard half a dozen witnesses testify, including Anna Hirt, a close friend of the victim, who identified a photograph of the deceased woman. A doctor who knew her also testified as to her identity. When the coroner said that some public-spirited citizen should see to it that the victim be decently buried, someone in the courtroom laughed out loud, and the spectators in the gallery laughed.

Hearing this, Schmidt flew into a rage, tore a rosary attached to a silver cross from his pocket, and threw it at a group of men sitting directly in front of him. The cross struck a man, leaving a mark on his forehead. Schmidt also threw some coins on the floor before he could be restrained.⁶²

While the case against him for murder was solid, potential charges regarding counterfeiting were still possible. On 7 October, the New-York Tribune reported that Schmidt was in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, approximately 121 miles (195 kilometers) west-northwest of New York City, the previous spring, and while there he passed some 200 “spurious” $10 bills. Patrick J. Ahearn, of the United States Secret Service, and Andrew B. Hourigan, the assistant United States district attorney, announced victims of the counterfeit bills had identified Schmidt as being the man who distributed them, and Ahearn said that they had 200 in their custody.⁶³

On 10 October, Schmidt was indicted by a New York City grand jury charging him with one count of murder in the first degree. District Attorney Whitman told reporters that he wanted to bring the priest to trial that same month, but Schmidt’s attorney, Alphonse Koelble, said that he did not think that he could be ready that soon.⁶⁴

While the wheels of justice were grinding against Hans Schmidt, they were likewise moving against his friend, Ernest Muret. Indicted for his role in the counterfeiting ring, he quickly went to trial. On 23 October, a jury was selected in the United States District Court for the trial of Muret on a charge of counterfeiting. The trial began the next day before Judge William H. Hunt, and it was expected that Hans Schmidt would be called as a witness for the defense.

Muret’s attorney, Augustine Derby, asked potential jurors if having the accused murderer testify on Muret’s behalf would prejudice them against the defendant.⁶⁵ After one day of selection, a jury was seated and the trial began. According to one of the first witnesses for the state, Mrs. Margaret Bowie, she had rented an apartment to Muret and Schmidt the previous June. According to the New York Times, “She spoke of Muret as Miller, and explained that that was the name he gave her. She was followed by Mrs. Margaret Rutledge, the janitress of the apartment house, who said that while the prisoner occupied it no furniture was ever brought to it. A number of dealers in photographic materials then told how they had sold to Muret and Schmidt supplies and electro-plating material.”⁶⁶

Once the defense for Muret began, his attorney tried to push a narrative that his client was involved in honest businesses. The New-York Tribune stated, “The contention of the defence [sic] is that Muret and Schmidt intended to go into the picture postal card business and that the plant was for printing the cards…. Several dealers testified that they had sold Muret and Schmidt photographic supplies, printing and electroplating material and parchment bond paper. Alvin Hanver, a copper worker, testified that he had instructed the defendant and his colleague in making copper printing plate. Shown a $20 bill plate that had been found in Schmidt’s room, Hanver said that Muret had the equipment for making such a plate.”⁶⁷

While the Muret trial was ongoing, Schmidt’s attorney, Alphonse Koelble, appeared before Judge William W. Foster in General Sessions Court on 24 October. Foster approved an application for the attorneys to take evidence by commission of seven witnesses in Frankfurt-am-Main, who they said would prove that Schmidt was indeed insane. With this application, a delay in the trial was ordered, and Foster set the date for 12 November. On 25 October, Assistant District Attorney Deacon Murphy sailed for Germany aboard the RMS Olympic to examine Schmidt’s record.⁶⁸

*  *  *

On Monday, 27 October, the Muret trial headed into its final moments. Inspector Joseph Faurot, so noted for cracking the case that nailed Hans Schmidt, continued his testimony from the previous Friday in Muret’s trial as well, right before the prosecution rested. Under direct questioning, he identified items found in Muret’s flat and office. He read into the record his interview with Muret right after his arrest, in which Muret admitted that Schmidt had led the illegal operation but that Muret had been a willing accomplice.

One important part of Muret’s confession to Faurot was that Schmidt had told Muret that he had a girlfriend, but that Muret had never seen her. On cross, Muret’s attorney, Derby, brought up the Aumüller case, getting Faurot to restate that Muret had never seen Aumüller before or after her death. Derby then made a major mistake:

“Do you know of any other charge against Dr. Muret?” he asked.

“Not yet,” replied Faurot.

Derby objected, and his objection was sustained. Faurot said that he knew of no other charges against Muret, but the damage had been done.

After the prosecution rested, Derby made a motion for a directed verdict of not guilty or a dismissal of all of the charges, but he was overruled.⁶⁹

Muret took the stand in his own defense on 27 October. He gave a full account of his life, the only one that can be found anywhere on this man of so many mysterious trails. He was born Herman Arthur Heibing in Posen, Germany, in 1884. He worked as a secretary for a lawyer, and then worked at the Hamburg office of the Royal German Mail Steamship Company as a clerk. There was little opportunity for advancement, so he took a series of dead-end jobs. In 1907, one of the employees at a company for which he worked forged currency, and Heibing was blamed even though, he claimed, he was wholly innocent. He was charged with a crime, but released.

Contemplating suicide, he realized he had to change his name to escape the black mark on him. He left Germany for the United Kingdom, settling in London. Nothing worked there either, so he came to the United States, studying to be a dentist in Chicago. There, he was arrested for using the title “Doctor” without a license. He attended medical school in Chicago and became a teacher of languages.

Traveling to New York, he met Hans Schmidt in December 1912, when he treated him as a dental patient. In June 1913, while out together, they passed a store which featured postcards made in Germany. Schmidt suggested that the two men go into business together making postcards, with Schmidt paying for the supplies. But this didn’t bring them any money.⁷⁰

On 15 August, while in St. Nicholas Park, Schmidt suggested to Muret, “Let’s make money,” and laid out a plan to print counterfeit currency. Muret told the jury that he became so angered at the proposal that he broke with the priest and told him never to enter his house again, only later getting back with him when Schmidt said that his proposal was not serious. Muret denied any involvement with counterfeit operations.⁷¹

After Muret left the stand, Schmidt was called as a witness. Few newspapers covered Schmidt’s testimony. He took full responsibility for the counterfeit operations, and told the jury that Muret was responsible for none of it. Muret’s lawyer rested.

Closing arguments proceeded on 28 October, and Judge Hunt charged the jury. That same day, after four hours of deliberations, they found Muret guilty of counterfeiting, but he was acquitted of a charge of conspiracy with Schmidt to counterfeit United States gold certificates. The acquittal was probably due to Schmidt shouting on the stand that it was he, not Muret, who was the true counterfeiter.⁷²

The day after his conviction, Judge Hunt sentenced Muret to 7½ years in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. The convicted counterfeiter appealed to the judge to suspend the sentence, stating that he wanted to go back home to Germany to spend the rest of his life with his mother. Hunt could have imposed a sentence of up to 30 years, but he showed clemency because Muret was suffering from insipient tuberculosis.⁷³

According to his prison records, Muret—inmate No. 4666—served his term under an alias, George Miller. His sentence of was eventually commuted—probably because of his tuberculosis—to a total of 720 days. He was released on 10 May 1919 and disappeared without a trace.⁷⁴

*  *  *

On 19 November, Judge Foster postponed the opening of Schmidt’s trial until Tuesday, 25 November. His attorneys said that they would present, on 20 November, affidavits arguing for the appointment of two examiners to report on their client’s mental condition. Alphonse Koelble, one of Schmidt’s attorneys, also said that Dr. Menas S. Gregory and Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe had examined their client without remuneration, and his other attorney, former Judge William M. K. Olcott, said that both doctors had found Schmidt to be insane.⁷⁵

Schmidt may have won a delay in his trial, but the investigation into his growing list of crimes continued. The Evening World newspaper reported on 21 November: “Assistant District-Attorney Deacon Murphy arrived here today on the Majestic with testimony regarding Schmidt taken by him in Frankfort on Main, Germany, before United States Consul Heaton W. Harris. There are fifteen thousand words on the record. The inquiry lasted ten days. Many clergymen and all the available relatives of Schmidt were asked about his life in Germany. Mr. Murphy would not discuss the contents of the record except to say that it contained nothing detrimental to Schmidt.”⁷⁶

Four months after the murder of Anna Aumüller, jury selection in Schmidt’s trial began on 8 December 1913, Justice Warren W. Foster presiding. Born in the village of Riverhead on New York’s Long Island, Foster graduated from Dartmouth University in 1881, and from the Columbia Law School two years later. He practiced law in New York City before he was appointed to the Court of General Sessions in 1899, a post he held until 1914.⁷⁷

During his time on the bench, Foster was widely praised in all quarters for his fairness and abilities. A 1909 article in Pearson’s Magazine stated, “No man in America knows criminals better than Judge Foster or has given more thought to a proper method for the reduction of criminality. The judge, because of his great interest in criminal jurisdiction, has even declined a place on the New York Supreme Court bench. It is probable that no other man has refused such a place.”⁷⁸

In October 1913, Foster was up for reelection as Judge of the Court of General Sessions. Despite his glowing reputation, he lost. As he officiated over the Schmidt trial, his last, he counted down his final days on the bench.⁷⁹ After retirement, he abandoned the law and went into private business, serving in a number of executive positions including president of the River Rouge Corporation.

The lead prosecutor against Schmidt was Assistant District Attorney James Andrew Delehanty. Born in Castleton, Vermont, in August 1878,⁸⁰ he studied at New York Law School. Admitted to the New York bar in 1899, he was appointed a secretary in the Court of General Sessions in 1906, where he served until 1910, when Manhattan District Attorney Charles A. Whitman appointed him as an assistant district attorney. One of his first major cases was the prosecution of Lt. Charles Becker, a crooked police officer who hired a gang of thugs to murder a rival who refused to pay him protection money.⁸¹

Assisting Delehanty was attorney Morris Koenig. Born in Hungary in 1883, he came to America with his parents when he was just six months old. Settling in the lower east side of Manhattan, he attended public schools, then the College of the City of New York before receiving his law degree from New York University Law School. Admitted to the bar in 1905, he ran for a seat in the New York State Assembly as a Republican, but was defeated. In 1910, he too was named an assistant district attorney on the staff of Charles Whitman. Perhaps Koenig’s most important case was the prosecution of the Rev. Hans Schmidt.

Also on the prosecution team was Assistant District Attorney Deacon Murphy. Born in 1888, he attended Columbia University, where he served as a referee for the football team.⁸² He graduated Columbia University Law School in 1912, but before he had completed his legal studies was hired as an assistant district attorney by Whitman in 1911, serving in that post until 1917.

From the start of the Schmidt case, Murphy worked in various aspects of the investigation. On 7 September, when the body parts found floating in the river were autopsied, Murphy was present at the examination.⁸³ He worked closely with detectives and police from various agencies in New Jersey. When police suspected initially that the body parts belonged to a young girl named Ella Sterneman, her father was questioned by Murphy.⁸⁴ And he travelled to Germany to look into Schmidt’s potential insanity claims.

The last “member” of the prosecution was Charles Seymour Whitman, the New York district attorney from 1910 to 1914. A study of news accounts shows that Whitman played no role in the courtroom activities involving the Schmidt case, although he was probably involved in the behind-the-scenes work.

William Morrow Knox Olcott was lead attorney for the defense of Hans Schmidt. Born in New York City in 1862, he was the scion of a family with roots in Connecticut from the 17th century. Olcott graduated from the City College of New York in 1881, and two years later from the Columbia College School of Law (now the Columbia University School of Law).⁸⁵ He ran for the judge’s seat on the New York City Court but was defeated. He later served on the city board of aldermen, but left when he was named as Manhattan district attorney in 1896.

Alphonse G. Koelble was Schmidt’s first attorney, when he was initially arrested, and he remained as his counsel throughout the entire length of the case. Little is known of Koelble, except that when he died he was remembered more for his propaganda for Germany in the First World War and in the years before the Second World War than for his legal career. Born in New York to German immigrant parents, he apparently earned a law degree, but it is unknown where and when.⁸⁶

In 1911, Koelble led a pro–German riot to break up a meeting of the Peace Society being held in Carnegie Hall.⁸⁷ In 1913, when Schmidt was arrested, Koelble stepped forward as his legal representative. In 1915, he made a personal journey to Germany to deliver a secret message to Kaiser Wilhelm II, as the First World War raged. In 1918, with American troops dying in Europe, Koelble was called before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he admitted working for German interests in the U.S. Two decades later, he was named as a representative for the Friends of New Germany, a pro–Nazi group with direct ties to the Hitler regime. When his photograph was taken at a pro–Nazi march, Koelble demanded it back and threatened the photographer.⁸⁸ He died in New York on 17 December 1946.

The third member of the defense team, Terence John McManus, was born in Manhattan in March 1871. He graduated from St. Francis Xavier College (now the College of St. Francis Xavier), and earned a law degree from New York University. Admitted to the bar in 1892, he was named as an assistant district attorney under John R. Fellows. Apart from the Schmidt case, he was most famous for his defense of millionaire Harry K. Thaw for the murder of architect Stanford White at Madison Square Garden in 1906.

*  *  *

Fifty-seven potential jurors were questioned during jury selection—nearly all said that they believed Schmidt to be guilty. Still, by the end of the first day, eight jurors had been selected.⁸⁹

Before jury selection could resume on 9 December, horrific news came into the court: Mary A. Doyle, a servant at the parish house of St. Joseph’s Church and a close friend of Anna Aumüller’s, committed suicide by throwing herself in front of a northbound Third Avenue elevated train, at 183rd Street in upper Manhattan. Many believed that the tragedy of her friend’s horrific murder prayed on Doyle’s mind, and she had told friends in the days before her suicide that she was homesick and that the upcoming trial reminded her too much about her murdered friend.⁹⁰

The trial against Father Hans Schmidt opened on the morning of 10 December. Assistant District Attorney Delehanty stood before the jury and laid out the state’s case: Schmidt’s conduct was that of a sane criminal—at least until he was arrested, when he began to act as if he were insane. He argued that the crime was not extraordinary, and that Schmidt, like any other criminal, used his depravity to try to protect himself from the consequences of his actions.

“Schmidt’s relations with this girl,” Delehanty said, “began in 1912 when she was a servant at St. Boniface’s rectory to which Schmidt was attached as a priest. When the girl was about to become a mother, Schmidt sent her to Austria to have an illegal operation performed. He later sent the money for her return to this country. We will show that there were many quarrels between them. The girl became suspicious of the priest and he became suspicious of her. She refused to continue her life with him any longer unless they were married.”

He continued, “Finally, Schmidt went to the City Clerk’s office and got a marriage license, using his own name but giving a fictitious address in order to prevent exposure. But Anna Aumüller was not satisfied. She did not believe that Schmidt could rightfully be a priest and a husband at the same time. We will show you that she insisted that he should give up his ministry and go to live with her. She protested against the arrangement by which they lived most of the time apart and by which she had to continue to work as a servant. We will show you that Schmidt made up his mind that the only way out of the difficulty was to kill the girl.”⁹¹

The first witness for the state was Mary Band or Bann,⁹² the 16-year-old girl from Shadyside, New Jersey, who, with her brother Albert, had found the body parts washed ashore in a bundle. Albert followed his sister on the stand.

The third witness, Anna Hirt, another friend of Anna Aumüller’s, who also worked as a servant at St. Boniface’s, was the most controversial. Under direct examination, Hirt identified a linen suit Aumüller wore on 30 August, when she left St. Boniface’s to get married. It is believed that she was killed within the next three days. While Delehanty was picking through a trunk containing garments belonging to Aumüller, a baby dress, which Aumüller had been working on in anticipation of the birth, clung to the linen dress as he held it up for the jury to see. Schmidt twitched nervously in his chair, at one point dropping a robe that he was wearing.

On cross, defense attorney Olcott accidently elicited damaging testimony against his client from Hirt. When he asked her if Aumüller complained that the defendant refused to marry her, Hirt said that never once did she speak of Schmidt as her “fiancé”—instead, referring to their clandestine meetings, she would say, “Last night I was out with the Baron.”

Olcott asked Hirt how Aumüller felt about the possiblity of marrying a man of the cloth. “Didn’t Schmidt say to Anna that he would leave the priesthood?” Hirt answered, “Once he said to her, ‘I don’t know how I ever got through the seminary. Some day I’ll hang my cassock on a high hook.’”

While his son’s trial was beginning, Heinrich Schmidt arrived from Germany with his daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Schadler, on board the Kaiser Wilhelm II. Speaking of the elder Schmidt, The Evening World explained, “Schmidt is a little old man with gray hair and a Van Dyck beard sprinkled with gray. Mrs. Schadler is a motherly woman of middle age. Both are serious, weighed down with the care and worry which the tribulations of Hans have brought upon them. But both are hopeful. ‘He was a good boy, a good son,’ his father said. ‘He was deeply religious. He couldn’t do this thing they say he did. There must be some mistake.’”⁹³

On 11 December, witnesses who knew Anna Aumüller testified for the state. The Sun noted, “Olcott of counsel for Schmidt at the trial … got from one witness an admission that the girl had had warning that her life might be ‘sacrificed.’ … Schmidt paid no heed [to the testimony].” Perhaps one witness got Schmidt’s attention, though. August D. Taylor, the janitor at 130 Claremont Avenue, was asked if he could identify Schmidt as the man who rented rooms there the previous August. Unable to identify him from the stand, Taylor got up and walked over to the defendant, looked carefully into his face, then said “yes” and walked away.⁹⁴

One Utah newspaper reported on the day’s session: “[t]hrough all of their testimony, the former priest sat as if he were a disinterested spectator. His attorneys seized in every point that would support their contention that he is insane. On the table before Schmidt lay the saw and the knife with which he had dissected her body. Near by [sic] were the stained pillow slip in which he had wrapped a portion of the body before he dropped it into the river from a ferryboat and stones with which he had weighed [sic] it [down].”⁹⁵

Later that same day, Schmidt was taken to District Attorney Whitman’s office. Sitting there were his father and sister. His sister ran up to him, threw her arms around his neck, and yelled in German, “Oh, Hans, how could you do it?” At this, Schmidt burst out in tears. When his aged father rose to embrace him, Schmidt turned away, and would have nothing to do with the old man.⁹⁶

The testimony of Friday, 12 December wrapped up the short week in court.

Dr. Arnold Leo, of 306 West 135th Street, testified that Schmidt called on him in April 1913 for medical treatment, and that he brought Anna Aumüller along with him. In the physician’s presence, the two argued, accusing each other of being unfaithful in their relationship. Leo testified that Schmidt told him that he was a music teacher; later, when the doctor saw him in clerical clothing and asked him about it, Schmidt admitted that he was a priest. Leo said, “He told me at various times that he was very much in love with her [Anna Aumüller], and was miserable without her and was distracted when she was away from him. He told me that he loved her so much [that] he thought it was his duty to the church and to himself and the girl to leave the church and [to] marry her.”

During Leo’s testimony, anger between Justice Foster and defense counsel Olcott boiled over: Olcott said, “I desire that all of this testimony shall be admitted. I have restrained from making technical objections.” Foster replied with a smile, “Well, I’m not keeping it out.”⁹⁷

Key to this day’s testimony was the appearance of Inspector Joseph Faurot. The Trenton Evening Times of New Jersey: “With the skill of a dramatist, [Faurot] … related his tale of the capture of the most blood-thirsty murderer in recent history…. a pin drop could be heard in the room. All during the recital of the horrifying testimony, Schmidt maintained an air of indifference, but … his frame shook when Detective ‘Jack’ O’Connell recited the exact language used by the priest in his confession made immediately after his capture.”⁹⁸

Faurot went into minute detail on each piece of his story, getting off the witness stand to stand before the jury, gesturing with his hands. He told of the moment when he confronted Schmidt and heard his confession:

“I slapped Schmidt on the back when I first saw him, and said, ‘come now, tell us the whole truth about the thing.’ Schmidt sank into a chair, buried his face in his hands and began to cry. Presently he said, ‘I killed her because I loved her.’ Before we left Schmidt tried to embrace Father Quinn, who was with me, but Father Quinn avoided him. Father Quinn asked, ‘Are you a regularly ordained priest of God?’ and Schmidt replied, ‘I was ordained by Saint Elizabeth.’”⁹⁹

Court resumed on Monday, 15 December. Faurot retook the stand to continue his testimony. He described, point by point, how Schmidt calmly detailed how the murder occurred, and how the priest had dismembered his victim. The confession transcript taken by Detective O’Connell was once again in contention: included in the narrative was the additional confession made by Schmidt to the Rev. Andrew Quinn, of St. Joseph’s Church on 125th Street. Before speaking with Quinn, the priest had been told that Schmidt had confessed to the murder.

According to the transcript, Quinn said to Schmidt, “Tell me: are you a truly ordained priest of God?”

“Yes,” said Schmidt, “I was ordained. But not by a priest. I was ordained by St. Elizabeth at midnight.”

Olcott then asked a series of questions to elicit testimony that Schmidt’s answers were wild and incoherent. Faurot said that Schmidt later admitted that he had actually been ordained by the Bishop of Mainz in Germany. After Faurot left the stand, Detective Frank D. Cassassa was questioned. Under cross-examination, Olcott asked him, “What did Schmidt say when you asked him what he had done with the mattress on which Anna lay when he killed her?”

“He said he had burned it in deepest hell,” replied Cassassa.¹⁰⁰

The state then called Dr. Harold M. Hayes, of 112 West Eighty-Fifth Street. The physician told the court that the previous April, Schmidt had tried to insure the life of Anna Aumüller for $5,000, naming himself as a beneficiary. Instantly, defense attorney Olcott objected the admission of such testimony on the ground that the policy was rejected because Aumüller was unable to pass the physical examination—therefore it could be the motive for the crime.

Assistant District Attorney Delehanty said that the testimony was part of the state’s showing that, combined with Schmidt’s theft of blank death certificates, they constituted proof that he was arranging to commit the murder. Justice Foster admitted the evidence, over the objections of the defense.

After Hayes left the stand, Delehanty put into evidence a shirt, found in a suitcase belonging to Aumüller, made for a newborn baby.¹⁰¹

On 16 December, the prosecution presented one final witness, introduced some letters as evidence, and then rested. The single witness was Assistant District Attorney Deacon Murphy, who finished his previous day’s reading of the lengthy confession given by Schmidt on the morning after he had been arrested. Assistant District Attorney Delehanty then rested the state’s case.

*  *  *

The defense began with William Olcott’s opening statement that the defendant was, is, and always would be insane.¹⁰²

One newspaper noted that while Olcott was speaking, “[Schmidt’s] long-expected interruption of the proceedings came early in the morning session when he arose and protested against the action of his leading counsel, William M.K. Olcott, in characterizing [him] as insane in his opening address to the jury. ‘That is not true,’ mumbled Schmidt, ‘It is a lie. I protest against it.’”¹⁰³

Olcott continued, calling his client a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” He said that for generations Schmidt’s family had insanity woven into it, with numerous cases of instability and suicide. Olcott added that Schmidt could not differentiate between right and wrong—that he had hallucinations that he was of semi-divine parentage, and that St. Elizabeth herself ordained him for the priesthood.¹⁰⁴

The court adjourned late in the morning so that both sides could go over the record of Schmidt’s trial in Munich for forgery, and both sides could agree what portions of the trial transcript could be introduced. Court resumed later in the afternoon.¹⁰⁵

For their first witnesses, the defense put Schmidt’s father, Heinrich, and his sister, Elizabeth Schadler, on the stand. The father went first, telling the details of his son’s life, and explaining that Schmidt’s grandfather on his father’s side had died of insanity brought on by alcohol, and that his grandfather on his mother’s side had committed suicide by hanging himself, while his mother’s brother also hanged himself, and a sister of his mother attempted suicide by jumping twice into a river. He related that other family members had killed themselves, or had wound up in asylums.¹⁰⁶

Under the questioning of defense attorney Terence McManus, Schadler told the court that she and her mother, at various times, had “seen visions.”

The Evening Telegram of New York reported, “The prosecutor obtained the admission from the witness that Schmidt’s religious zeal while a boy had not been regarded as evidence of insanity by his family but rather as an evidence of piety, of which they were very proud.¹⁰⁷

On Wednesday, 17 December, the defense continued in its argument to prove that Hans Schmidt was indeed insane. Schadler told the jury that he tried to make all of the children in his neighborhood happy by giving them clothing, but that he would then go out to the cemetery and sit for hours on a tombstone without saying a word. She also said he had a wild fascination with watching his neighbors kill chickens; he would play with the blood, and put the heads of the dead animals in his pocket and play with them for days.¹⁰⁸

Schmidt told his attorneys on 18 December, “I demand permission to address the jury and the court, so as I may explain why I killed Anna Aumüller.” Alphonse Koelble told reporters, “Schmidt is so determined that we fear if he is not placed on the stand [that] he will attempt to address the jury from his chair at the counsel table.” In the end, Schmidt did not take the stand, either through his own decision or that of his attorneys.¹⁰⁹

Olcott put into evidence Schmidt’s handwritten history of life, penned at the request of Dr. Perry Lichtenstein, the resident physician in the Tombs. The Sun reported: “‘He told me,’ said the doctor, ‘that he heard God’s voice saying that Anna was to be a sacrifice of love and devotion…. He said that had his mother and sister been in this country he would have offered them as a sacrifice. He told me how he had cut Anna’s throat and drank of her blood.”¹¹⁰

The Trenton Evening Times reported that the multitudes of women admirers who attended the Schmidt trial to get a look at the defendant were seen to leave the room in shock when one witness for the defense gave the details of how Anna Aumüller was murdered.¹¹¹

The Monday, 22 December session was set aside for the testimony of the alienists who examined Schmidt for the defense. Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe, an expert in mental and nervous diseases, said he had been observing Schmidt since November, and in his opinion the defendant was insane at the time of the murder. Schmidt, he said, always appeared in an unkempt condition and answered questions only with difficulty. Schmidt said the reason for his unkempt hair and beard was due to the inspiration that he must look like Christ.¹¹²

Dr. Henry Cotton of the New Jersey State Hospital agreed that Schmidt was indeed suffering from dementia præcox (now classified as schizophrenia). He said that Schmidt told him of a plan to help his friend, Dr. Ernest Muret, escape from the federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia, by using a yacht and sailing to the prison and, with several friends, breaking Muret out.

Dr. William A. White, an alienist who had worked at the United States Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C., told the jury that he was convinced that Schmidt was suffering from a paranoiac type of dementia præcox. Asked if Schmidt was responsible for his crime, White responded, “He had a perverted knowledge of the nature and quality of his act, but I think he believed that he did right, and that his act was a glorious sacrifice.”¹¹³

As the trial broke for Christmas, it was reported that an attaché of the district attorney’s office leaked out that a fund of some $15,000 had been raised by unknown sources to aid in Schmidt’s defense. The defense team divided $10,000 amongst themselves, paying $4,000 to the four alienists who testified on his behalf, with the remainder going for additional expenses.¹¹⁴

*  *  *

The entire day of 26 December was taken up by the testimony of four alienists on behalf of the prosecution. Drs. Carlos F. MacDonald, George H. Kirby, A. Ross Diefendorf, and William Mabon all agreed that Schmidt was sane, and that he knew the quality and nature of the acts he had committed. They believed that Schmidt was “shamming” the court by pretending to be insane and found no evidence of dementia præcox.¹¹⁵

However, on cross, Olcott got the doctors to admit that they had previously made mistakes when it came to judging the sanity or insanity of some patients. Dr. Mabon, for instance, had initially concluded that Harry K. Thaw, who murdered the architect Stanford White, was legally sane but medically insane, but now believed that Thaw indeed was insane. MacDonald had declared James J. Gallagher, who had shot Mayor William J. Gaynor of New York, to be sane, even though Gallagher was committed to an asylum and later died there. All four men stated, however, that they were not wrong about Schmidt.¹¹⁶

When this rebuttal testimony was concluded, the state rested, and Justice Foster huddled with the attorneys. He said that there would be three hours for each side in their closing arguments to the jury.¹¹⁷

Defense Attorney Olcott summed his closing arguments, describing Schmidt as a “self-educated, half-ignorant near–German philosopher, tainted with hereditary insanity, of abnormal tendencies, who early became over-religious.”

In his final closing, Assistant District Attorney Delehanty ridiculed the alienists who testified for the defense. Dr. Jelliffe’s conclusions based on heredity, he said, were reached by an “eeny-meeny-miny-moe” process, and Dr. White had concluded that Schmidt was insane merely by glancing at his beard. The defendant was not a priest and had never been one. His whole career, Delehanty said, demonstrated that he used Anna Aumüller’s respect and affection for the priesthood as a “cloak” for shamming her into trusting him so that he could commit this horrific crime. He then shammed insanity, using the knowledge he had gained when his sanity was questioned in Bavaria in 1907, and he acted as though he had received expert coaching in how to deceive the doctors who examined him.¹¹⁸

The strain of the trial had taken a toll on the defendant. The Sun stated, “Schmidt … was reported to be near collapse in his cell in the Tombs yesterday … showing the strain of the ordeal of waiting for the jury’s verdict to-day.”¹¹⁹

While Schmidt sat in his cell, jury deliberations began. There were signs almost from the start they would have problems arriving at a verdict: jurors asked for the exhibits and transcripts of Schmidt’s interviews with the alienists, but otherwise asked for nothing else.¹²⁰ The Evening World predicted, “It is thought extremely unlikely that a hung jury will be the result, as the Court has said [that] he will hold the jurymen at it all night rather than have a mistrial. The indications are, however, that the jury is pretty well tied up.”¹²¹

Then, on the night of Tuesday, 30 December, after 32 hours and 45 minutes of deliberations, the jury told Judge Foster that they were hopelessly deadlocked 10 to 2 for conviction. At 10:10 pm, Foster declared a mistrial. Defense Attorney Koelble had suggested to Foster, before he declared the mistrial, that the jury be allowed to bring in a verdict of guilty of second degree murder, but Delehanty was so against this that he said that he would try the case again.

One of the two jurors who held out, William McAuliffe, told reporters, “The other ten were willing to acquit the defendant on the grounds of insanity, except that they were so afraid that he would go to [the] Matteawan [State Hospital for the Criminally Insane] and get out like [Harry K.] Thaw. So they thought the only thing to do was send him to the electric chair.”

Foster remanded the defendant back to his cell in the Tombs Prison. The trial was over, and court broke for the New Years’ holiday.

*  *  *

Justice Foster lost re-election in November 1913, and had to leave the bench at the end of the calendar year. Officiating over Schmidt’s second trial would be Justice Vernon Mansfield Davis, who made his reputation presiding over some of the most important trials in the early part of the century in New York, including that of Nan Patterson, who had murdered her boyfriend, Frank Young.¹²²

Born in New York City in January 1855, Davis was admitted to the state bar in 1879, and six years later was named as an assistant district attorney for Manhattan. He later served as president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and in 1903 was elevated to the New York Supreme Court.¹²³

Except for Davis and William M.K. Olcott, who did not represent Schmidt in the second trial, the other leading characters were all the same.

Schmidt’s second trial began in the Court of General Sessions on Monday, 19 January. Justice Davis cleared all women from the courtroom. Before jury selection could begin, defense counsel Terence McManus told the Justice that Schmidt’s father and sister had returned to Germany but that the father was now ill, and none of the family could come back to America for the trial. Delehanty agreed that their testimony from the first trial could be read to the present jury.¹²⁴

Reporters took note of the defendant’s appearance: “Schmidt … came into court wearing a long fur-lined coat and a handkerchief about his throat. He has not had his hair or beard trimmed since his arrest and neither had been brushed. He stared straight ahead and seemed to take no interest in his surroundings.”¹²⁵

On 21 January, a new jury was selected and opening arguments by the prosecution were given that same day. No newspapers covered opening remarks and the court transcripts are unavailable, but from the few existing reports it can be ascertained that the prosecution’s arguments were much the same: Schmidt was not insane, and the murder of Anna Aumüller was a brutal crime for which he must be punished.¹²⁶

Nine witnesses were heard on the first day—both sides had agreed to make sure that this trial was much less drawn-out than the first. Eight of the nine had been heard in the first trial; the only new one was Irving Broander, who told the jury of finding a leg at Keansburg, New Jersey.¹²⁷

Eight witnesses were called on Thursday, 22 January, all heard in the first trial.¹²⁸ The Evening World that “[a] new line of defense has been indicated by the cross-examination of Schmidt’s counsel. They intimate that Anna Aumüller died following premature childbirth and was not killed by Schmidt, but admit that he cut up the body and threw the pieces into the North River.”¹²⁹

The New-York Tribune reported on 23 January that “James A. Delehanty and Morris Koenig … have reached an understanding with Terence J. McManus and Alphonse G. Koelble, Schmidt’s counsel, which will probably shorten the trial considerably. They agreed that each side should call but two alienists…. It is said that after the first trial one juror remarked: ‘We pitched the testimony of all eight alienists right out of the window.’”¹³⁰

On 23 January, before court broke for the weekend, the jury heard from nine witnesses, including Inspector Faurot, who again told of the confession that Schmidt made to him. According to one newspaper, “A half dozen women worked their way into the court room in spite of the information they got that the evidence was not fit for women.”¹³¹

That same day, as the prosecution prepared to wrap up its case-in-chief, defense attorney McManus dropped the bombshell on the court that newspapers had previously reported on: he indicated that the defense might seek to show that Schmidt did not actually kill Anna Aumüller. He said that the insanity defense would not be abandoned, but that in the defense case his attorneys would show that the victim did not die as Schmidt had confessed.¹³²

The final prosecution witness for the week was Dr. George W. King, the medical examiner of Hoboken, New Jersey, who had conducted the autopsy on the remains of Anna Aumüller. The Trenton Evening Times reported, “When Dr. King of Hoboken took the stand today McManus questioned him closely as to whether in his opinion an injury sustained by a bed falling on her might not have caused the death of Miss Aumüller, considering that she was just recovered from a serious illegal operation. McManus indicated that he was building up his case with an evident intention of endeavoring to show that the injury inflicted by the falling bed might have resulted in her death, and that Schmidt then dismembered the body, hoping to save the young woman’s good name.”¹³³ With this, the prosecution wrapped up its case.

When court concluded, Delehanty stood and said that the state would complete its case on Monday, 26 January. Justice Davis then disclosed that one of the jurors had received an anonymous letter referring to the Schmidt case. The justice showed the letter to the attorneys from both sides, but he refused to make its contents public. It was rumored to refer to a medical argument regarding Schmidt, but it was not known which side the letter writer took.¹³⁴

On Monday, 26 January, Detective George Thompson took the stand. He told about finding the death certificates in Schmidt’s room in the rectory at St. Joseph’s Church. Thompson said that the certificates had been stolen from the office of Dr. Leo, Schmidt’s physician. Thompson also found the negative of a photographic reproduction of one of the certificate blanks. “Schmidt told me,” Thompson related, “that he was trying to find a poison which would painlessly end the lives of the incurably diseased, not the aged and infirm. Such persons, he said, should be put to death humanely. He desired the death certificates so that there might be no scandal regarding the deaths of those whom he killed.”¹³⁵

With Thompson’s testimony completed, the prosecution rested its case for the second time.¹³⁶

The defense then presented its case. On the stand, Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe, one of the alienists who examined Schmidt and believed him to be insane, testified that Schmidt told him that he had often told Anna Aumüller that he intended to murder her as a sacrifice. Dr. Jelliffe also said that Schmidt admitted that he had had “pervert[ed] relations” with Ernest Muret.¹³⁷

On 29 January, following the publication of a story that Dr. Perry Lichtenstein of Tombs Prison had collected data that had been given to Schmidt’s defense to help in his murder trial, without notifying the prosecution, an investigation was ordered by the Commissioner of Corrections Katherine B. Davis.¹³⁸

There is no record of trial coverage in newspapers from 29 January to 3 February—it is unknown if this was because there were no court sessions, or because there was little interest in the case as it was being wrapped up. On 3 February, nurse Bertha Zech was called by Assistant District Attorney Delehanty as a witness for the state. The New-York Tribune stated,

As soon as the new witness took the stand Mr. Delehanty showed her a paper and asked if she recognized the signature. “Yes,” she answered in a low tone. “It is mine.” The paper was an application for a $5,000 policy on the life of Anna Schmidt. The signature was “Anna Schmidt.” The witness testified that last April [1913] she was employed by Ernest Muret, Schmidt’s dentist friend, and went with Schmidt to the office of Dr. Harold M. Hayes … [an] examiner for the Postal Life Insurance Company…. At the conclusion of the examination she signed the name “Anna Schmidt” to the application for a $5,000 policy. The following August, a few weeks before Anna Aumüller’s body was found, Schmidt sent her to the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank…. Under that name she deposited a small amount of money.

Delehanty then told the jury that the amount put in by Zech brought Aumüller’s bank account to the amount for a ticket to Europe, giving Schmidt the ability to say later that she had left on a voyage and that was why she was missing.¹³⁹

On Wednesday, 4 February, the two sides gave their closing arguments to the jury. Stating the case for the defense, Terence McManus said that the prosecution failed to present a legal motive for Anna Aumüller’s murder, which he himself described as “barbarous.” Centering on the testimony of Bertha Zech, he said that since the insurance had never been purchased it could not be considered. He stressed repeatedly Schmidt’s religious fervor and supposed “divine visitations.”¹⁴⁰

Delehanty then emphasized the evidence that showed that Schmidt had committed the crime, and that the priest was not insane. “There should be no compromise in this case: the guilt of the defendant is all too apparent,” he said. “There can be but one verdict, and that is murder in the first degree.”¹⁴¹

After fifteen days of testimony, Justice Davis charged the jury and sent them back for deliberations on 5 February. After just five hours of deliberations, they returned.

One newspaper reported, “When foreman E. Howard Underhill in a clear voice announced the verdict of guilty Schmidt, who had not been looking at the jurors, uttered a guttural ‘Ugh!’ and started to walk away. Court Captain James Cavanagh grabbed him and faced him about. From then on there was a smile on the face of the condemned man….⁠”¹⁴²

When he heard the judgment, Schmidt laughed out loud and said, “I would rather die tomorrow. It is as it should be and as I wish it.”¹⁴³ Schmidt later told reporters that he would not appeal his conviction or sentence, and that he would like to die that very day.¹⁴⁴

On 11 February, Justice Davis sentenced Schmidt to death in the electric chair, in the week beginning 23 March 1914. The courtroom was packed, and the main floor of the Criminal Courts Building was stacked with spectators who wished to see Schmidt one last time before he was taken away—many of them were women.

Wearing his ragged coat and looking haggard, Schmidt stood for sentencing between two prison guards. It was thought that he might create a scene, or make some sort of outburst, but he stood with his head down, indifferent to his fate. The Daily Mail of London stated that “[b]efore leaving for the Sing-Sing convict prison he sent the following lines on a sheet of writing-paper to the newspaper reporters:

Beyond this vale of tears
There is a life above.
Unmeasured by the flight of years,
And all that life of love.

The lines were from a hymn by 18th century British poet James Montgomery. The Daily Mail also noted that as he was taken to prison to await execution, Schmidt was “followed to the railway station by a noisy crowd of several hundred men and boys.”¹⁴⁵

The Sun published a lengthy editorial on the verdict, conluding with: “[As] Justice Davis charged the jury, an alleged command from God does not excuse the crime. It is worthwhile to consider these flimsy details of the defense because they indicate to what length the insanity twaddle may be carried in times of sentimental regard for fiends.”¹⁴⁶

*  *  *

In the months to come, Schmidt was subjected to three separate psychiatric examinations while he sat on death row. The transcripts of these sessions ran to more than 100 pages. Schmidt was given a respite from his date with the electric chair when his attorneys filed an appeal on 17 March, and it was believed that it would take months for the appeals court to hear his request for a new trial.¹⁴⁷

On 13 April 1914, the state of New York put to death in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison four of the men involved with Lt. Charles Becker in the murder of gambler Herman “Beansie” Rosenthal, for which all five had been convicted and sentenced to die. On the day of the execution of the four, the other death row inmates had a prayer—led by none other than Hans Schmidt.¹⁴⁸

The Sun on 25 April reported that Schmidt had written a long letter to District Attorney Whitman, in which he admitted that his entire defense of insanity had been a sham, and that he had had considerable amusement in fooling the alienists who examined him and testified that he was insane.¹⁴⁹

On 10 December, Justice Davis heard arguments on a defense motion for a new trial for Schmidt. The convicted murderer’s counsel, Alphonse Koelble, submitted affidavits from Dr. Henry T. Cottell, a professor of pathology at the Philadelphia Presbyterian Hospital, and Dr. Justin Herold, professor of medical jurisprudence at Fordham College in the Bronx, New York. Both men stated that they examined segments of Anna Aumüller’s body on 9 November, and concluded that she actually bled to death as a result of an abortion.

Acting District Attorney Delehanty asked the court to contrast the statements from these two witnesses, based on an examination done fourteen months after the murder, to those of the doctors who performed her autopsy immediately after it had been recovered from the river. Davis asked both sides to submit additional memoranda before the following Tuesday, 15 December.¹⁵⁰

One of the arguments used by Delehanty in trying to get the motion for a new trial dismissed was that Schmidt had invented stories to try to save himself from the electric chair. He presented an affidavit from a prisoner in Tombs that Schmidt had discussed four separate plans with him: he would blame the murder on Bertha Zech; he would pay Zech to leave the United States for a country with no extradition treaty, and there she would announce that she murdered Aumüller while performing an abortion on her; he would pay an unknown man to do this; or, finally, he would blame Dr. Arnold Leo, who had said that he once examined Aumüller, for her death as the result of an abortion.

The prisoner said that Schmidt tried to get Zech to do this for him, but she refused. Zech also showed a letter to Delehanty, which he presented to the court, in which Schmidt asked her to take the blame for the murder. The confidant’s admissions ultimately exposed Schmidt not just as a murderer, but as a master manipulator, willing to say anything to save his own hide.¹⁵¹

Davis would eventually rule that Schmidt was not entitled to a new trial, and he denied the defense motion. Schmidt’s appeal before the New York State Court of Appeals continued, however.

Possibly now realizing the enormity of what he had done, or that he really was going to die in the electric chair for it, Schmidt decided to change his tune: he had not killed Anna Aumüller because he “loved her”—now his story was that he was part of a group which killed her accidentally during a botched abortion, and he was forced to clean up the mess. Historian Richard Polenberg, in his biography of Justice Benjamin Cardozo, explained,

A number of law enforcement officials were apparently anxious to believe Schmidt’s second story, for it described actions by a priest which, however disgraceful, were less morally reprehensible than the long list of excesses to which he had originally confessed. One of the detectives—himself a Roman Catholic—who arrested Schmidt suspected from the outset that Aumüller had died as the result of an abortion; according to Schmidt, “after taking off his hat,” he said, “Father, please tell me the truth, because you know [that] you have not told the truth. Remember the church.” Later, after Schmidt changed his story, he was interviewed by Assistant District Attorney Delehanty, whose line of questioning suggested a similar desire to have the priest recant: “Of course what you told the doctors about drinking her blood wasn’t true, was it? … You didn’t have intercourse with her, of course. You wouldn’t do such a thing after death.” And as for having sexual intercourse on a church altar: “That wasn’t true, was it?… She never went out on the altar with you and submitted to intercourse, did she? When you think it over now, she didn’t do it, did she?” He was seemingly relieved when Schmidt replied, “No.”¹⁵²

*  *  *

The war in Europe and the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in May 1915 knocked the Schmidt murder story off the pages of the nation’s newspapers. While he sat on death row, the execution of Lt. Charles Becker, who had ordered the murder of gambler Herman Rosenthal, proceeded. Schmidt and Becker were two of the fifteen men on death row at the time, and in Becker’s final hours all of his mates tried to comfort him. Schmidt allegedly told him, that “[w]hile there’s life, there’s hope.”¹⁵³

On 28 June, Schmidt wrote a letter to the editor of the New-York Tribune, titled “Germans’ Only Blunder,” in which he penned, “When all is said and done, every one, with the exception of a few Anglomaniacs [sic], will agree that the Germans were perfectly right in sinking the Lusitania. The only serious blunder that they have made so far is that they did not put a few ads in the newspapers at the time they violated the neutrality of Belgium.”¹⁵⁴

Following the execution of Becker on 30 July 1915, the other inmates in the Sing Sing death house sent a letter to his widow, asserting that they believed that he was innocent, while protesting the conditions in the prison and the death penalty itself. The letter, written on official Sing Sing stationery, was written by Hans Schmidt as an “open letter” to the now-deceased convict.

Please accept these few lines of farewell from the companions in misery whom you will leave behind, and who will sooner or later follow you. Your manly behavior during the trying days was a source of inspiration and edification to us all. It is in situations like this that a man shows his true mettle. We who have lived with you through these days in the human stockyards of Sing Sing express to you our heartfelt sympathy. Surely some day [sic] your case will be cited, cited by historians of human progress, as one of the best arguments against antiquated legal conceptions—chambers of horrors, death houses, condemned cells, &c., as conducted by the State of New York—as a remnant of ages gone by.¹⁵⁵

On 10 August 1915, two indictments charging Schmidt with counterfeiting were quashed at the request of Acting United States District Attorney Roger B. Wood in the Criminal Branch of the Federal District Court, due to the fact that Schmidt was already facing a death sentence on his murder conviction.¹⁵⁶

Then, on 7 January 1916, the New York State Court of Appeals handed down its decision on Schmidt’s appeal, upholding his conviction and death sentence, and ordering his execution for the following week.¹⁵⁷ Writing for the court, Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo addressed Schmidt’s claim of insanity: “He now says that he did not murder Anna Aumüller, and that his confession of guilt was false. He says that she died from a criminal operation, and that to conceal the abortion, to which he and others were parties, he hacked the dead body to pieces, and cast the fragments into the river…. He asks that he be given another opportunity to put before a jury the true narrative of the crime…. It would be strange if any system of law were thus to invite contempt of its authority.”¹⁵⁸

When he was told that the date of his execution was set for 16 January 1916, Schmidt reportedly broke down and wept bitterly, prison employees told reporters. The 22 other condemned men on death row offered their sympathies to Schmidt, but he cried even more at this sign of affection.¹⁵⁹

With his solitary appeal now completed, Schmidt’s only chance of avoiding the electric chair was if he received a pardon—from Governor Charles Whitman, the man who had prosecuted him as district attorney. On 9 February, Whitman issued a statement denying clemency.¹⁶⁰

In his last hours, as he prepared to face death, Schmidt issued one last statement through his attorney, Koelble. “I will be put to death for lying, and not for murder,” he wrote. “I consider my death a miscarriage of justice.”¹⁶¹

In the early morning hours of 18 February 1916, two and a half years after he had murdered and dismembered Anna Aumüller and tossed her body parts into the Hudson River, Hans Schmidt was executed in the electric chair at the prison at Sing Sing. The papers reported that prison officials, in Schmidt’s final hours, found him in his cell unnerved until Father William Cashin, the prison chaplain, spent several hours with him. There still was doubt that Schmidt could walk by himself into the death chamber.¹⁶²

When he entered the death chamber, Schmidt was directed by the guards towards the electric chair, but he waved them off, instead deciding to address the 17 witnesses. As Father Cashin stood by him in his final moments, Schmidt said, “Gentlemen, I ask forgiveness of all those I have injured or scandalized. I forgive all who have injured me. My last wish is to say good bye to my dear old mother.” He then walked over to the chair and sat down unaided.¹⁶³

After he was strapped into the chair, according to the New-York Tribune, “Three times the current battered its way through his stocky body before the personality of the man was eradicated and the human being that was became a lumpy, waxlike [sic] effigy…. From the limp hands of what had been a moment before a living man, Father Cashin, the prison chaplain, took before the body was hurried away to the dissecting room the two emblems of his faith—the crucifix of silver and rosewood on which a hundred criminals have bestowed their last look in life, and a fragile, white-beaded rosary.”¹⁶⁴

Schmidt’s body was unclaimed by any member of his family, or by anyone else, and his body was buried in the Sing Sing prison cemetery, where it remains to this day. His name and that of his victim have slipped into obscurity.

The final dispositions of Helen Green, the unnamed woman whom Schmidt came to America with, and the young boy whom Schmidt called “his son,” were never relayed to the public. It is possible that they were found alive, but no mention was made of it in any record. We can only speculate, without any real evidence, whether Schmidt was involved in the murder of Alma Kellner.

It is probable that the Rev. Hans Schmidt was actually a serial killer—that he had multiple victims and ultimately paid the price for only one. We will never know the entire story.