How a woman hid a young lover in the attic for 10 years, and How did it end

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The story of this love looks very strange. Exactly 100 years ago, in the 1920s, a middle-aged and not very attractive (judging by the photo) lady managed not only to get a young lover, but also tied him to herself, turning, in fact, either into a slave, or into a home ghost - after all, for about 10 years the novice writer lived in the attic in the house of his patroness and went downstairs only when her husband left for work.

German immigrant Walburga (Dolly) managed to get married in America. Her husband, Fred Osterreich, director of a garment factory and a successful businessman, was probably a perfectly tolerable husband. The wife hosted their large house in Milwaukee, and the husband disappeared at work all day. True, after a few years it turned out that he also did not readily devote his free time to family joys, but preferred to drink on the side. The couple's only child died, and after a while the spouse, who by that time was already a little over thirty, was desperately bored. Judging by the testimony, Fred Osterreich was considered a difficult person in the factory, prone to conflicts, and everyone loved his sweet and friendly wife.

One day in the fall of 1913, Dolly discovered that her sewing machine had broken down. The lady called her husband and he sent the master to their house. 17-year-old Otto Sanhuber not only managed to fix the equipment, but also consoled a housewife suffering from loneliness. This romance developed into a very unusual relationship. At first, the couple met in rented apartments and in hotels, but then the thrifty Walburga decided that there was no point in wasting money and began to take her lover right into the house. The neighbors noticed this very soon. They tried to hint to the hot German woman that she was compromising herself, but the lady lied, calling Otto her stepbrother. However, she became more careful and resolved this issue radically.

The lover soon left the factory and settled in the attic of the Osterreichs' house. I must say that the young man dreamed of becoming a writer and in such an unusual cohabitation he saw an opportunity for himself to surrender to his vocation. It is difficult to say what drove him in the first place - love or the desire to find time for creativity. He lived in a windowless attic room, the entrance to which was hidden behind a wardrobe. At night he wrote novels by the light of a kerosene lamp, and in the morning, as soon as his unsuspecting husband left for work, he went downstairs. In addition to the obvious duties of a permanent lover, Otto also helped Dolly to cope with housework (probably, the manufacturer's wife did not keep a servant). I must say that the career in the literary field of the young writer was indeed somewhat successful. Gradually, they began to print him in magazines, but he never received the great fame he dreamed of.

This strange idyll lasted for five years. Then the husband told Dolly that they were moving from Milwaukee to Los Angeles. The woman had no opportunity to influence this decision, but she was able to find a new house … with a large attic. The strange triangle moved to Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, things went the same and continued for almost five more years. The husband, apparently, sometimes heard incomprehensible noises and noticed the quickly emptying refrigerator, but he could not get to the bottom of these oddities. The idyll ended tragically.

In the summer of 1922, Otto heard from his attic the couple quarreling. When Fred began to beat his wife, his lover was forced to intervene. He jumped out of the shelter and burst into the room, but this only worsened the situation. There were pistols in the house, and, snatching them from the chest of drawers, Otto shot the husband of his mistress. Then the resourceful couple simulated a robbery: Fred's expensive watch was taken away, Dolly was locked in a closet, the keys were thrown in the hallway, and the culprit himself simply hid in his home again. The police arrived, freed the tear-stained Walburga from the closet and conducted an investigation, but did not think to look into the attic. In this strange case, the wife aroused the suspicions of the investigators, but they could not understand how she locked herself, so the charges were dropped. Having received a multimillion-dollar inheritance, Dolly Osterreich moved into a new large house with her lover, however, out of habit, he continued to live secretly in the attic.

The further history of the loving Dolly seems even less believable. She changed lovers, while keeping one under the roof. An unsolved crime gravitated over the couple, but the lady was clearly frivolous about this: one of her new passions - the lawyer Herman Shapiro, who was in charge of her affairs - she, for example, presented the very expensive watch that was allegedly stolen from her murdered husband, and to another recklessly instructed to get rid of the pistols. This was a mistake, since, after parting with Dolly, he went straight to the police. The woman was arrested, she bravely endured the hardships of imprisonment, but she was very worried about Otto, who was still locked in the attic. In the end, at her request, Herman Shapiro went to the house to bring food for his “stepbrother”, and only then the story of many years of “attic self-isolation” was revealed. As a seasoned lawyer, Shapiro advised Otto to go into hiding so as not to worsen Dolly's situation. He did so, then settled in Canada under a different name.

The lawyer managed to hush up the murder case that time. Probably Walburga Osterreich really was an amazing woman. Even knowing the whole truth about her and her "attic lover", Herman Shapiro continued to live with her. Many years later, however, after a quarrel, he tried to turn her and Otto to the police, but over the years they were acquitted. So the pair of murderers remained unanswered, and Dolly then lived for many years quite calmly, having found herself another permanent lover. She died at the age of 80. This criminal case about murder, three of us living under the same roof and about the bat-man (as the press called Otto) became one of the most high-profile in the United States in the 1930s. The story was filmed many times and became the basis of detective novels.

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