The strange story of Walburga Osterreich, who kept a secret lover in the attic for years

From time to time, details of a murder come up that sound so strange that they seem to have been made up in the office of one of the Hollywood screenwriters. But in the case of Walburga "Dolly" Osterreich, it was all there: a sinister secret affair, a shocking murder, and the absolute certainty of the facts surrounding her story.

Walburga "Dolly" Osterreich, an immigrant from Germany, grew up on a farm in the Midwest in poverty. However, that changed when she married a wealthy factory owner, Fred Osterreich, in the 1910s. He earned money by producing women's clothing, particularly kitchen aprons. Fred owned a large factory in Milwaukee, and the couple lived there for several years before moving to Los Angeles.

From the outside, it looked as if Fred and Dolly Osterreich were leading quite ordinary lives. But in fact, Fred drank heavily and he and his wife often quarreled. Over time, Dolly Osterreich turned into a typical bored housewife and began actively looking for love adventures. She had her eye on 17-year-old sewing machine repairman Otto Sanuber, who worked at her husband's factory in Milwaukee.

Sanuber was tall, thin, and quickly became involved in Dolly's personal life. The affair began when Dolly called her husband at work to complain about a broken sewing machine, and then Sanuber came to the Osterreichs ' house to fix it. Dolly opened the door for Sanuber in a sexy nightgown and stockings. Since then, Sanuber considered himself her sex slave.

The lovers enjoyed themselves during the day, meeting at hotels and at Dolly's house while her husband was at work. After a while, the neighbors began to suspect something and began to make comments to Fred about the fidelity of his wife. Dolly tried to pass off her relationship with the young master as something more innocent than it really was. She told friends and acquaintances that Sanuber was her lost half-brother.

As a result, Dolly Osterreich realized that she would have to think of a plan to keep her lover to herself and that no one would question her morals. The solution was to put Sanuber in the attic, especially since the young man was all for throwing his life down the drain for the sake of the dusty Osterreich attic. He was obsessed with Dolly and used the opportunity to write tabloid fiction. When the couple decided to move to Los Angeles, Dolly did her best to find a house with an attic. At the time, attics were a rarity in Los Angeles, but the Osterrahams managed to find one, and Sanuber moved in before the family arrived in California.

Sanuber's confinement in the attic was truly depressing: the Los Angeles Times later described it as a nest, furnished only with a mattress, a chamber pot, and a kerosene stove. When the young lover moved there, he took with him only a few scanty writing materials and reading materials, so that he would have something to do while he was not busy fulfilling Dolly's wishes. He was not just a sex slave, but quite a slave in the truest sense of the word. When he wasn't in bed with Dolly, he cooked, cleaned the house, made the beds, washed the dishes, and did household chores.

The young man dreamed of writing tabloid novels, and some of his works were even published in magazines under a pseudonym. But Sanuber had practically no money, and Dolly Osterreich never gave him more than a few quarters or dimes. She probably considered her company sufficient payment for her services, and kept her lover locked up in the attic so that her husband would not come up the stairs and discover his hideous den.

No wonder the romance between Dolly Osterreich and Sanuber couldn't last forever. One evening, the Osterreichs had a terrible argument, and Sanuber ran down the stairs with two .25-caliber pistols in his hands. He got into a fight with Fred and killed him by shooting him three times. Fred was obviously shocked by the sudden appearance of another man. Ever since he and Dolly had moved to Los Angeles, he'd been missing cigars and other things, and he'd heard strange noises at night. His wife put it all down to a ghost.

When Fred Osterreich died, Dolly and Sanuber had to work on making the murder look like a robbery. They took off Fred's diamond watch, then Sanuber locked Dolly in the closet and threw away the key. He then climbed back into the attic to hide, and eventually fled the scene before the police found him. For many years, the crime remained unsolved and the police suspected Dolly, but could not figure out how she killed her husband if she was locked in a closet.

True to her character, Dolly Osterreich seduced her lawyer, Herman Shapiro. In the course of the conversation, she spoke several times, and as a result, he began to suspect Dolly. First, he found out that Dolly still had her late husband's watch, which was supposed to have been stolen by the robbers. The police soon got on the trail and found the watch, as well as two .25-caliber handguns that Dolly had somehow improbably persuaded the neighbors to hide. Osterreich was put behind bars, and suddenly there was no one left to feed her hidden lover.

Dolly convinced Shapiro to return to her home and feed her lover while she was in prison. At one point, Shapiro was so mesmerized by Dolly that he actually went there to do what she told him to do. However, this obsession quickly disappeared when he saw Sanuber and began to learn the details of their strange relationship with Dolly. The lawyer discovered that he was the first person other than Dolly herself that Sanuber had spoken to in 10 years. He kicked the attic resident, the "bat-man" out of the house and broke off the connection with Dolly.

When the story hit the papers, Dolly Osterreich's life went downhill. Sanuber was afraid that he would be accused of murder, and fled the country, changed his name to Walter Klein, and married another woman in Canada. Mrs. Klein must have had a curious reaction when her husband went on the run again and returned to Los Angeles, where he was caught and tried for the murder of Fred Osterreich. Although Sanuber was arrested and convicted of murder, he was released due to the statute of limitations of the crime. Dolly also got off lightly when the jury in her trial did not reach a consensus, and in 1936 she was cleared of the charges.

The very fact that Dolly Osterreich and Sanuber managed to escape justice after the murder is outrageous. They became known as one of the strangest couples in history. Society considered Sanuber an immoral sexual pervert with an abnormal craving for life in the attic, and the term" Bat Man "("Bat Man"), as he was called, was not yet associated with a superhero. After all that happened, Sanuber hid from society, and Dolly lived the rest of her life with another lover and died peacefully in 1961.