Latest / When Killers Get Caught with Brittany Ransom / The Only Priest Sent to the Electric Chair: The True Crimes of Hans Schmidt

Transcript

The Only Priest Sent to the Electric Chair: The True Crimes of Hans Schmidt · When Killers Get Caught with Brittany Ransom

• 0:00
  What happens when the person you're taught to trust with your
• 0:02
  soul is hiding something unspeakable?
• 0:04
  Is it madness, belief twisted into obsession, or a hunger for
• 0:08
  control that hides behind ritual and authority?
• 0:11
  I'm Brittany Ransom and This is When Killers Get Caught, a
• 0:14
  podcast where we dig into the lives, behavior, and psychology
• 0:17
  of people who commit the most extreme crimes and what happens
• 0:20
  after they get caught. In this episode, we're
• 0:23
  unraveling the story of Hans Schmidt, a Catholic priest who
• 0:26
  performed forbidden rituals, lived a double life, and
• 0:29
  committed a murder so brutal it shocked the nation.
• 0:32
  Because even behind the collar and even behind the altar, the
• 0:35
  truth always leaves a trail. For centuries, the Catholic
• 0:39
  priesthood has been associated with moral authority, ritual
• 0:42
  purity, spiritual guidance. Priests are expected to live
• 0:45
  apart from ordinary temptations, stay celibate, stay disciplined,
• 0:49
  and devote themselves entirely to God.
• 0:52
  In many communities, particularly immigrant
• 0:54
  communities in the late 19th and earliest 20th centuries, priests
• 0:57
  were not merely religious leaders.
• 0:59
  They were counseled, moral arbiters, educators, and symbols
• 1:03
  of stability in unfamiliar lands.
• 1:05
  Their authority was rarely questioned, and accusations
• 1:07
  against them were often dismissed outright as simply
• 1:10
  unthinkable. But that image does not always
• 1:13
  reflect reality. Long before modern
• 1:15
  investigations exposed the systemic abuse, institutional
• 1:18
  secrecy, and patterns of protection within the Catholic
• 1:21
  Church, there were isolated cases that shattered public
• 1:25
  trust in the way that felt impossible to reconcile.
• 1:28
  These cases were rare not because wrongdoing didn't exist,
• 1:32
  but because the cultural, legal, and religious structures of the
• 1:34
  time were I'll equipped and often unwilling, to even
• 1:38
  confront these situations. No case did that more completely
• 1:41
  than the story of Hans Schmidt. In the early 1900s, Schmidt
• 1:45
  became the only Catholic priest ever executed in the United
• 1:48
  States. His crimes were not only brutal
• 1:50
  but profoundly symbolic. He illegally married a woman in
• 1:54
  a secret ceremony he performed himself, got her pregnant, and
• 1:57
  when the risk of exposure became unavoidable, he uttered and
• 2:00
  dismembered her with chilling deliberation.
• 2:03
  The violence was extreme, but what unsettled the public even
• 2:06
  more was the way Schmidt framed his actions not as a panic or a
• 2:10
  rage, but as a ritual sacrifice and a distortion of his faith.
• 2:14
  As the journalists, investigators and prosecutors
• 2:17
  began pulling at the threads of Schmidt's life, it became clear
• 2:20
  that the murder of Anna Amiller was not an isolated act.
• 2:24
  It was the visible tip of a very dark history that had followed
• 2:27
  him across multiple continents. Financial fraud, counterfeit
• 2:31
  money, suspected murders, and patterns of disturbing behavior
• 2:35
  had been ignored, minimized, or simply transferred away by an
• 2:39
  institution more concerned with reputation and accountability.
• 2:42
  This is the story of Hans Schmidt, the priest who preached
• 2:45
  sacrifice, practice bloodshed, and left behind one of the
• 2:49
  darkest chapters in American religious and criminal history.
• 2:52
  So the start. Hans Schmidt was born in 1881 in
• 2:55
  the Bavarian town of Auschenfenburg.
• 2:58
  It's in Germany a all communities seeped in a very
• 3:01
  Catholic tradition, the outward measures Schmidt appeared to be
• 3:04
  an intelligent and deeply religious child.
• 3:06
  He showed an early interest in church rituals.
• 3:08
  He memorized his prayers quickly, and he demonstrated A
• 3:11
  seriousness that adults often mistook for devotion.
• 3:15
  But beneath that surface were behaviors that, in hindsight,
• 3:18
  stand out as very troubling. As a child, Schmidt spent long
• 3:22
  hours watching animals be slaughtered at the local obitor,
• 3:26
  which is essentially just a butcher.
• 3:28
  While other children recoiled from the sights and sounds of
• 3:31
  blood, Schmidt would watch with fascination.
• 3:34
  He would watch them cut the draining of the blood, the
• 3:37
  methodical separation of the body parts, not with fear, but
• 3:41
  with calm attention. It wasn't curiosity.
• 3:44
  It was a fixation. At the same time, Schmidt
• 3:46
  immersed himself in Catholic ritual.
• 3:48
  He built homemade altars, reenacted Mass in his home, and
• 3:52
  played priests pretend with an intensity that went behind
• 3:57
  normal childhood imagination. That ritual structure and
• 4:00
  symbolism, it all just seemed to captivate him.
• 4:03
  Even when he was a young child. The language of sacrifice, the
• 4:06
  blood offered, the body broken, redemption through suffering
• 4:10
  very much embedded itself deeply into his worldview.
• 4:14
  These two fixations, vilas and ritual, did not exist
• 4:17
  separately. Over time, they started to
• 4:19
  intertwine. And despite concerns about his
• 4:21
  temperament and social behavior, Schmidt excited when he was old
• 4:25
  enough he was going to enter the seminary.
• 4:27
  In the rigid hierarchy of the church, obedience and conformity
• 4:30
  were especially prized at the time, but Schmidt repeatedly
• 4:34
  clash with the authority. He was very argumentative,
• 4:37
  emotionally volatile, and resisted to correction.
• 4:41
  Nevertheless, though, they ordained him in 19 O four and he
• 4:45
  was 25 years old, a decision that in retrospect, I think we
• 4:48
  can all say had pretty devastating consequences almost
• 4:52
  immediately after he was ordained.
• 4:53
  Schmidt he can cycling through conflicts with his superiors.
• 4:57
  Instead of confronting these issues publicly, church
• 4:59
  officials followed a pattern that will later become infamous.
• 5:02
  We're just going to reassign him to another church.
• 5:05
  By 19 O 8, Schmidt was sent away not to reflect or to receive
• 5:09
  treatment, but they sent him across the Atlantic to the
• 5:11
  United States pretty much going this won't be our problem right
• 5:15
  now. Schmidt's first American
• 5:17
  assignment was St. John's Parish in Louisville, KY,
• 5:20
  or Louisville, as they like to say, a growing community with a
• 5:23
  very strong young immigrant Catholic population.
• 5:26
  And once again, conflict followed him.
• 5:28
  Parishioners started complaining that he had a very short temper,
• 5:32
  he was very erratic, and he honestly had a lot of unsettling
• 5:37
  intensity. People would have meetings with
• 5:39
  him and and they said the way that he would just stare at
• 5:42
  them, creep them out. But instead of investigation or
• 5:45
  discipline, the solution was relocating him again.
• 5:49
  And this time they sent him in New York City.
• 5:51
  He gets assigned to Saint Boniface Church in Manhattan
• 5:54
  where he encountered a woman, Anna Omeler.
• 5:58
  Anna was a young Austrian immigrant.
• 6:00
  She had recently arrived in the US.
• 6:02
  She was employed as a housekeeper and she was kind of
• 6:05
  the perfect victim. She was isolated, financially
• 6:08
  dependent and very far from her family and support system.
• 6:11
  The power and balance between him being her preacher, her
• 6:16
  priest, was severe. It wasn't just priest and
• 6:19
  employee, but also the spiritual authority and subordinate
• 6:24
  laborer. The relationship started very
• 6:26
  quietly, but it couldn't remain hidden for too long.
• 6:29
  When Schmidt got transferred again, this time to Saint
• 6:32
  Joseph's Church in West Harlem, the relationship continued in
• 6:35
  secret. The church's frequent
• 6:37
  relocations and tended to manage internal problems discreetly.
• 6:41
  Instead allowed Schmidt to maintain a double life.
• 6:44
  And on February 2013, he pretty much crossed the line where you
• 6:48
  can't go back. He performed a marriage ceremony
• 6:51
  himself, secretly marrying him to Anna, and under Catholic law,
• 6:56
  the ceremony was invalid. In fact, the ACT is considered
• 7:00
  to be a very serious sacrilege. Priests are forbidden to marry
• 7:04
  and and he had no authority to perform a sacrament that would
• 7:07
  only benefit himself. But to Schmidt, this ritual
• 7:10
  mattered more than law. The structure of the ceremony,
• 7:13
  the symbolism, the act of binding for all things that he
• 7:17
  valued. And for Schmidt, rules existed
• 7:20
  to be manipulated. In the summer of 1913, Anna told
• 7:24
  Schmidt she was pregnant. For Schmidt, this was not simply
• 7:26
  a scandal. It was an existential threat.
• 7:29
  Exposure would mean he'd be defrocked, publicly humiliated,
• 7:32
  and possibly put in prison. He wasn't entirely sure.
• 7:35
  Unlike previous conflicts, this was not something that a
• 7:38
  transfer would fix. Instead of fleeing or
• 7:41
  confessing, he just started planning.
• 7:44
  He rented an apartment for Anna in northern Manhattan, claiming
• 7:47
  it was for one of his relatives coming from abroad.
• 7:49
  He purchased a butcher's knife and a hacksaw, gathered heavy
• 7:54
  pieces of Manhattan schist, a detail that would later actually
• 7:57
  unravel his plan. And these actions were not
• 8:00
  impulsive. They were calculated,
• 8:02
  deliberate, and methodical. For folks who don't know, schist
• 8:06
  is a shiny olated metamorphic rock that's characterized by
• 8:11
  very flaky, minimal grains, kind of like mica powder that people
• 8:15
  put in resin projects. The only reason why I know
• 8:17
  anything about it because I do things with resin.
• 8:20
  He decided that everything was going to go down September 2nd,
• 8:22
  1913, and he goes to Anna's apartment.
• 8:25
  First, he slashes her throat with a knife, severs several
• 8:28
  major blood vessels, and then, with chilling calm, he
• 8:32
  decapitated her, sawed her body in half, wrapped each sex in a
• 8:36
  newspaper dated August 31st, suggesting that he had been
• 8:40
  preparing. This was not just improvised.
• 8:42
  And then the lower half was placed inside of a pillowcase
• 8:46
  that was embroidered with a monogrammed letter A.
• 8:49
  To each piece, Schmidt tied heavy stones.
• 8:52
  He believed that if he just dumped her in the river, it
• 8:55
  would erase everything. After he dumped Anna's remains
• 8:59
  in the Hudson River, trusting that gravity water would conceal
• 9:02
  the crime. Surprised they didn't.
• 9:04
  Three days later, children on the New Jersey shoreline found a
• 9:07
  woman's torso and then further downriven further downriver in
• 9:11
  Weehawken, the lower half of the body surface still wrapped in
• 9:15
  that distinctive pillow case. The case crossed 8 lines with
• 9:18
  the New York Police Department took control due to the nature
• 9:21
  of the evidence. The autopsy revealed the victim
• 9:23
  was under 30, had recently been pregnant, and had likely given
• 9:27
  birth prematurely before her death.
• 9:30
  Then came the pillowcase. Police traced the embroidered A
• 9:33
  to a linen manufacturer that kept meticulous records.
• 9:37
  Those records LED directly to Anna Omeler's apartment and
• 9:42
  inside, the investigators found blood splatter across the walls
• 9:46
  and the floors Scrubbed, but not a race. 6 bars of soap and a
• 9:51
  scrubbing brush sat next to the sink and in a trunk they found
• 9:54
  the butcher's knife and the hacksaw.
• 9:56
  In another, they found letters that had been written to
• 10:00
  Schmidt. The The plan fell apart in just
• 10:03
  a few days. When detectives confronted
• 10:05
  Schmidt at Saint Joseph's Church, he didn't deny what he
• 10:08
  did. He in fact, he confessed almost
• 10:10
  immediately. And he told the police, I loved
• 10:13
  her. Sacrifices should be consummated
• 10:15
  in blood. That statement set the
• 10:18
  investigators off. They were completely shocked
• 10:21
  because Schmidt wasn't framing these murders as fear or
• 10:25
  desperation, but as a ritual. Love, sacrifice and blood
• 10:30
  inseparable. In his mind, this wasn't
• 10:33
  remorse, it was justification. And when that information went
• 10:37
  out to the press, it caused a frenzy.
• 10:39
  It was everywhere, on the cover of every newspaper across the
• 10:43
  country. Not only had a priest killed
• 10:45
  someone, but in quite possibly one of the worst ways.
• 10:49
  Schmidt's first trial began December of 1913.
• 10:52
  His lawyers never contested the facts, only that it was obvious
• 10:56
  that he was insane. They argued that he was driven
• 10:59
  by religious delusions and an uncontrollable bloodlust.
• 11:03
  And for 20-3 days, this trial went on and the newspapers
• 11:06
  published every single detail. Schmidt became a spectacle, a
• 11:10
  symbol of what happens when faith is corrupted.
• 11:13
  But the jury just couldn't decide.
• 11:16
  Deadlocked 1:50 At his second trial, the judge issued a
• 11:21
  warning urging jurors to apply common sense.
• 11:25
  Premeditation, planning and concealment are incompatible
• 11:29
  with legal insanity. And this time, Schmidt was
• 11:31
  convicted of first degree murder on February 18th, 1916.
• 11:37
  He was executed at Sing Sing Prison via electric chair at
• 11:40
  just 35 years old. And to this day, he remains the
• 11:45
  only Catholic priest to ever be executed in the United States.
• 11:49
  Now after Schmidt's conviction, journalist started really
• 11:52
  digging into his life and what they realized was virtually at
• 11:56
  every location where Schmidt had been transferred, something a
• 12:01
  little weird happened. Like they realized that he
• 12:05
  operated A counterfeit printing press and he had planned
• 12:09
  insurance fraud with a dentist named Ernest Arthur Murray.
• 12:14
  Then when he was in Louisville, the body of a missing 9 year old
• 12:17
  girl was found dismembered in the basement of the church where
• 12:21
  he worked, Saint John's Parish. They blamed A janitor, but the
• 12:25
  mutilation after the case in New York came out made those police
• 12:30
  go. Maybe we got this wrong.
• 12:32
  German authorities later linked Schmidt to a murdered girl in
• 12:35
  his hometown, but he had never been questioned.
• 12:39
  We really don't know how many victims Schmidt had and Hans
• 12:44
  execution managed to close only one case, but not really the
• 12:48
  larger question. Was he a single year monster or
• 12:52
  warning sign that was just ignored?
• 12:54
  I think for most of us who are millennials, we remember when we
• 12:58
  were in high school how the Catholic Church got pulled into
• 13:03
  the public eye because of this same kind of mindset.
• 13:09
  And for me, as I was researching this, it was pretty shocking to
• 13:12
  me that they have been hiding the indiscretions of priests for
• 13:16
  over 100 years. For some reason, I just thought
• 13:18
  this was something that happened in the 60s and 70s in the US,
• 13:22
  you know, a sign of our times in our country.
• 13:26
  So it's kind of crazy to realize that there could be a lot more
• 13:30
  men like Hans Schmidt who have lived and killed while hiding
• 13:34
  themselves amongst the Catholic Church.
• 13:37
  I think also his story reveals how authority Shields predators.
• 13:41
  And I think we see that time and time again in modern day
• 13:45
  institutions choose silence over accountability and belief gets
• 13:49
  twisted into justification for violence.
• 13:52
  It's definitely a lot to think about and I would love to know
• 13:54
  know what you guys have to say about it.
• 13:56
  I know this first episode was a little shorter, but I'm just
• 13:58
  getting back into the swing of things.
• 13:59
  Just want to remind you all, thank you for listening.
• 14:02
  I'm Brittany Ransom. The truth always leaves a trail,
• 14:05
  and in Schmidt's case, that trail LED straight to the
• 14:08
  electric chair. Thanks for listening.