Dolly Oesterreich’s House

It is finally that time again, my fellow stalkers – time for my annual Haunted Hollywood postings!  I, for one, could not be more excited!  Though I should mention here that postings this year will be rather light as I have two trips planned this month (as I mentioned last week, I’ve traveled more as of late than I ever have before) and my best friend Robin and his girlfriend Steffi are also coming for a visit in mid-October.  I do have some great locations lined up, though, starting with today’s.  I thought I’d kick things off with a locale from one of L.A.’s oddest murder cases, the killing of Fred Oesterreich at the hands of the “Bat Man of Los Angeles,” which was brought to my attention a couple of months back by my good friend Lavonna.

The lurid tale begins in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and centers around a rather seductive housewife named Dolly Oesterreich (that’s her below).  Born Walburga Korschel in 1880, Dolly, as she was nicknamed, was married to Fred Oesterreich, a well-off apron manufacturer.  Though the two lived an affluent life, Dolly had an insatiable sexual appetite and Fred just wasn’t cutting it for her in the bedroom.  She quickly set her sights on one of Fred’s factory workers, 17-year-old Otto Sanhuber.  One day in 1913, Dolly, feigning a problem with her sewing machine, asked Fred to send Otto over to the Oesterreich’s stately home to make a repair.  According to a 1995 Los Angeles Times article, when the young man arrived, Dolly answered the door wearing only a silk robe and stockings (as you do).  The two quickly began a lurid affair and it wasn’t long before neighbors started taking notice of Otto’s many comings and goings.  So Dolly came up with the only viable resolution – to move her lover into her home’s attic.  Poor Otto remained hidden away there for five years, never venturing outside during that time and only leaving his rooftop confines in the daylight hours for the purposes of satisfying Dolly – and to help her clean the house.  Dolly brought Sanhuber books from the library to help him bide his time, which, oddly, led to a writing career.  Otto began penning articles and stories, several of which Dolly had published for him (under a pen name) in pulp magazines.

When Fred decided to make a cross-country move to Los Angeles in 1918, Dolly insisted that their new digs have an attic (obvs!) and moved her lover right along with them, unbeknownst to her husband.  The threesome settled into a traditional two-story home in Silver Lake at what was then 858 North Andrews Boulevard.  The dwelling still stands today.

Things remained status quo for the next several years – well, as status quo as life can be when one has a secret lover stashed away in an attic.  Then, on August 22nd, 1922, the proverbial sh*t hit the fan.  That evening, Dolly and Fred got into a heated argument.  Otto heard the ruckus and broke from his hideout, armed with two rifles, to put a stop to it.  A struggle ensued and Otto wound up shooting Fred in the chest, killing him.  Dolly and Otto then staged the scene to look like a robbery gone wrong, with Otto locking Dolly into a closet before, once again, hiding himself away in the attic.  Police arrived onsite shortly thereafter thanks to a call from neighbors who heard the gunshots.  Figuring there was no way Dolly could have locked herself into the closet, the detectives bought her story hook, line and sinker.

Dolly inherited Fred’s substantial assets and subsequently moved to a new house (unfortunately, I am unsure of that home’s location).  Yes, this one had an attic, too.  And yes, Otto, once again, came along.  Despite the fact that Fred was now out of the picture and Otto no longer needed to hide, he inexplicably continued to live in Dolly’s attic and the two continued on as before.  The loss of Fred apparently left a hole in Dolly’s life, though, and she started seeing two men, her estate attorney, Herman Shapiro, and a businessman named Roy H. Klumb.  It was at this time that things began to awry.

For reasons unknown, Dolly gifted Herman with Fred’s diamond watch, which was supposedly stolen during the “robbery.”  Herman recognized it immediately, but Dolly explained the situation away, stating she found the watch underneath a seat cushion after the crime had taken place.  Around that same time, she asked Roy to discard of one of her rifles, saying it looked like the weapon that killed Fred and she didn’t want police to come across it and suspect her of the murder.  Roy, who was obviously a few eggs short of a dozen, obliged her request and tossed the gun into the La Brea Tar Pits.  Dolly then asked a neighbor, who was also obviously missing a few eggs, to get rid of the second rifle, and he obliged, as well, burying it in his backyard.

Roy didn’t take it lightly when Dolly later broke up with him (I swear, she must have been quite a woman!) and went straight to the police to tell them about the gun he had disposed of.  Detectives wound up uncovering it on July 12th, 1923, almost a year after the murder, and Dolly was subsequently arrested.  When her neighbor read about the arrest and the other rifle’s recovery in the newspaper, he dug up the gun he had buried and marched it straight down to the station.  Though neither weapon produced much evidence-wise due to deterioration, things only got worse for Dolly.  While she was in jail, she asked Herman, whom she was still seeing, to bring food to Otto, who remained squirreled away in the attic.  Herman was not thrilled upon meeting Otto and learning of his exploits with Dolly and demanded that he leave.  The attic-dweller headed to Canada and, amazingly, the charges against Dolly were soon dropped.  The story does not end there, though.

When Dolly and Herman broke up in 1930, he headed straight to the police to spill the beans, just as Roy had done seven years prior.  Dolly was arrested yet again, this time for conspiracy.  Otto, who had returned to L.A. by then, was also arrested, for Fred’s murder.  The arrests and subsequent trial became a media circus, with the press dubbing Otto the “Bat Man” and the “Bat Man of Los Angeles” due to his many years of attic dwelling.  Though the jury did wind up finding Otto guilty of manslaughter, because the seven-year statute of limitation had run out by the time of the verdict, he faced no jail time and walked away a free man.  After spending the better part of a decade living in an attic, though, something tells me he wouldn’t have minded jail much.  Dolly’s jury was miraculously hung and she, too, walked away with her freedom intact.  So what became of the two?  Otto changed his name to Walter Klein and married a woman named Matilda.  Dolly found love with a man named Ray B. Hedrick, whom she dated for over thirty years before finally marrying him in 1961, less than two weeks before her death.  The bizarre case inspired both the 1995 made-for-TV movie The Man in the Attic starring Anne Archer and Neil Patrick Harris (you can check out the trailer here), and, oddly enough, the 1968 British comedy The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom.

When Lavonna first told me about the case, she asked me to track down the house where the murder took place.  Thankfully, a poster named GaylordWilshire on SkyscraperPage’s Noorish Los Angeles thread had done all of the legwork for me, finding the Oesterreich residence thanks to this image from the trial which showed a blueprint of the dwelling and noted its address as 858 N. Andrews.  As GaylordWilshire explained, Andrews Boulevard was changed to La Fayette Park Place at some point and today the former Oesterreich pad can be found at 858 North La Fayette Park Place in Silver Lake.  You can check out an image of what the house looked like in 1937 here.  Though it has since been transformed into a multi-family dwelling comprised of apartments, miraculously little of the exterior has been altered.  You can see some interior photos of a few of the apartment units here and here.  Sadly, I did not come across any online images of the attic.

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Big THANK YOU to my good friend Lavonna for telling me about the Oesterreich case and to poster GaylordWilshire on SkyscraperPage’s Noorish Los Angeles thread for finding this location! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Dolly Oesterreich’s former house is located at 858 North La Fayette Park Place in Silver Lake.