Followers of the Library of Congress’s Flickr Commons uploads from the Bain Collection know that the news of the 1910s can look very familiar – the same themes turn up in our newspapers today. Crimes, scandals, elections, protests, inventions, sports, performers on tour. But occasionally, a story stands out as unusual, for the 1910s or any other decade. Take the case of Father Hans Schmidt, the only Roman Catholic priest ever executed as a criminal in the US. You can certainly find some awfully sordid tales about clergy misdeeds and the church hierarchy in the news today, but Schmidt’s is still a unique and chilling story, told across the photos in Flickr Commons.
Hans B. Schmidt (TOC)
Hans B. Schmidt was born in Germany in 1881, and trained at a seminary in Mainz, where he was ordained as a priest in 1904. Perhaps in response to the growing demand for Catholic priests in the US, or perhaps because he had been charged with forgery in 1905 and showed other signs of instability, Schmidt was assigned to a parish in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1908. Soon he was transferred again, and finally landed in New York City, where he served at St. Boniface Church. The housekeeper at the rectory there was Anna Aumüller, an Austrian immigrant. Here’s Anna:
Anna Aumueller (LOC)
Schmidt and Aumüller struck up a romantic relationship; it continued even after Schmidt was transferred again, to a parish uptown. Apparently Schmidt even performed a secret marriage ceremony to assure Aumüller that their activities were acceptable. But when 21-year-old Anna became pregnant in 1913, Schmidt killed her in her sleep, and disposed of her body in pieces, in a pillowcase tossed in the Hudson River. It didn’t take long for the evidence to come to light, and for Schmidt to confess to the murder of Anna Aumüller (turns out the priest was a talker, so there are pages and pages of his own ruminations about the crime). The trial was, unsurprisingly, a media event.
Bertha Zech (LOC), a servant, one of the witnesses at Schmidt's trial
Schmidt claimed insanity at his first trial; that resulted in a hung jury. In a second trial, Schmidt was convicted of first degree murder, and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1916, at Sing Sing Prison. But wait, there was even more to the tale: Schmidt was also involved in a counterfeiting scheme, operating out of an apartment he rented. And, in retrospect, he was suspected of at least one other murder (the body of a child was found buried in the basement of his Louisville church). He also impersonated a physician throughout his life, and collected medical equipment.
Want to dig further into this true crime story? Check out Mark Gado’s Killer Priest: The Crimes, Trial, and Execution of Father Hans Schmidt (Praeger 2006), which is based on the trial transcripts and press coverage of the story.
