Holocaust victim

The Woman Who Kept Her Lover in the Attic for Ten Years

In 1913, Milwaukee housewife Walburga "Dolly" Oesterreich called a repairman to fix her sewing machine. The repairman was 17-year-old Otto Sanhuber. The machine never got fixed.

Dolly's solution to hiding the affair was straightforward: Otto moved into the Oesterreichs' attic, accessible through a panel in the bedroom closet, directly above where her husband slept. He lived up there for nearly a decade. When the couple relocated to Los Angeles in 1918, Dolly made one condition: the new house had to have an attic. Otto came along.

In his garret, Sanhuber read, cleaned the house during the day while Fred was at work, and wrote science fiction stories that Dolly mailed to publishers under a pseudonym. Fred Oesterreich never suspected a thing.

Then in August 1922, Fred came home drunk and turned violent. Otto heard the argument, grabbed two pistols, and came downstairs. He shot Fred three times. They staged it as a burglary: Otto locked Dolly in the closet from the outside, pocketed Fred's diamond watch, and vanished back through the ceiling panel. When police arrived, they were baffled, the closet was locked from outside. Dolly couldn't have done it. The case went cold.

It stayed cold for eight years. The truth finally came out in 1930 when a jilted lawyer-lover told police everything. Otto was convicted of manslaughter but walked free, the statute of limitations had expired. Dolly got a hung jury. She died in Los Angeles in 1961 at age 81, having outlived everyone involved in the crime.

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