The Ghost in the Garret

4/13/2025

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
To all appearances Dolly and Fred Oesterreich were a dull, average couple who owned a factory. Little did anyone expect the scandal that would soon break loose that included allegations of murder and illicit sex.

Otto Weir (aka Otto Sanhuber)

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

In 1913, 33-year-old Walburga "Dolly" Oesterreich had been married to Fred Oesterreich (pronounced “O-strike”) for fifteen years. He was a dour apron manufacturer who drank too much. Among the 60 women who worked in Fred’s textile factory he was known as a skinflint and slave-master who was never satisfied. Dolly as forelady, trailed behind him soothing disgruntled employees. To soothe her own disappointments, the over-sexed matron had several short-term affairs.

Otto Sanhuber (aka Otto Weir; Walter Klein) was born in 1890 in New York City to Walter M. Klein and Mary H. Weir. Possibly due to illegitimacy he had his mother's surname, and at age 3 he was orphaned and sent to the New York Foundling Hospital and Children's Aid Society.

Raymond was Dolly and Fred's only son. The boy unexpectedly died in 1910, when he was 9 years old. This caused Dolly to fall into a depression, and drove her to indulge in her sexual escapades even more.

Dolly and Otto had crossed paths, since he repaired the sewing machines at the factory.

A couple of years after her son's death, Dolly called her husband to complain her sewing machine was broken. As she expected, he sent over Otto who worked for Singer Sewing Machine Company.

Considering that Dolly was wearing only stockings, perfume and a silk robe, it appears she wanted to fix more than the sewing machine. Her intentions from the beginning were to seduce the young man, who himself seemed to be starved for attention and love, perhaps due to his childhood. They started a torrid love affair. For three years they met either at his boarding house room, or he would come to her home. One day when they were making love in her marital bed, Fred arrived unexpectedly possibly notified by a nosy neighbor who tipped him off. Otto fled to the attic.

The proverbial light bulb went off in Dolly’s head, and she moved him into the attic where he built himself a small cubicle. Inside he had a mattress, a lamp, a chamber pot and paper and pencil. To make sure Fred would not discover him, she put a padlock on the door and would unlock it when they were gone from the home.

Brick mansion Mr. and Mrs. Oesterreich moved into in 1914. The house located at 593 Newport Avenue was the 3rd and last Milwaukee home purchased by the Oesterreichs.

During the day when the Oesterriechs worked at the factory, he swept and cleaned the house, as well as gorged himself on food. By night he wrote and read pulp fiction stories of adventure and lust. On certain days, Dolly would feign illness and stay home so they could indulge in hours of lovemaking.

The disadvantage of his hidey-hole was that Otto could hear Dolly having sex with her husband. He could not pressure her with jealousy, because she reminded him it would end his days as a kept man.

More than once Fred thought he heard something after they went to bed. Dolly dismissed them by saying it was mice and that he was drinking too much. They moved five time while living in Milwaukee, and Dolly always made sure to find a house with an attic, which she told her husband she needed to store her beloved furs in.

It was only a matter of time before Dolly's luck ran out. And it happened like this:

One late evening in 1918, a confrontation occurred. The Oesterreichs were out at a German beer party. Fred and Dolly got into an argument and Fred went home in a huff, leaving his wife behind. The aging factory owner strolled into his kitchen only to find a short, slim, very pale, 32-year-old man seated at the table, placidly enjoying a nice leg of lamb.

'What the hell are you doin’ here in my house?!' an outraged Fred exclaimed as he grabbed Otto by the shoulders.

Taken by surprise, Otto weakly replied, 'I’m hungry, sir.'

'So you’re the one’s been eatin’ all my meat!' the homeowner shouted.

Little suspecting that he was dealing with an occupant of his own house, Fred Oesterreich tossed the much smaller man onto the street. When Dolly came home from the party, her husband related the strange story of the man eating in their kitchen. Fred had not been imagining things after all, he said. This rascal had somehow been sneaking into their house to forage through their food!

Otto spent an uncomfortable night sleeping out in the open. After his unceremonious expulsion, Otto met up with Dolly.

'What should they do now?' he wondered.

'Go to Los Angeles,' Dolly said. 'I’ll give you the money from your stories.'

He followed her advice. The two communicated through the post office box that had already been set up for sending and receiving Otto’s literary efforts. Otto got a job as a porter in an apartment complex. He did not particularly care for Los Angeles. After spending so many years of his life in an attic, coming out only at night, the sunshine struck him with an unpleasant harshness.

In the meantime, Dolly was working on her husband, telling him that they ought to move to Los Angeles. He was eventually convinced. The couple stayed in a Los Angeles hotel while they looked for a house to buy. It was not easy to find one acceptable to Dolly because few California homes had attics. While the Oesterreichs looked for a home, Dolly and Otto commenced a more conventional sort of dalliance. They met in various cheap hotels for trysts. Eventually, Dolly found a large, nice home with an attic on North St. Andrews Place in an affluent area. The couple set up housekeeping and Otto moved into the attic. Later, he would say that he was willing to live cooped up in attics 'in order to be near the only person in the entire world who cared whether Otto Sanhuber lived or died.'

He resumed his life of making love to Dolly and doing housework during the day. Since it was Prohibition, the couple also made bathtub gin. At night he continued to read and to write short stories that she would type and send off to publishers. Unlike Otto, Fred Oesterreich adored Los Angeles. The sunny weather had a marvelous effect on him and he felt a renewed vigor. Although he had been contemplating retirement before the move, he decided he wanted to return to the working world. He purchased a new factory and spent his days running the place.

Fred Oesterreich

On August 22, 1922 Dolly and her husband arrived home in a heated argument, which grew louder. Otto heard Dolly cry out and believed Fred had attacked her, however she had only slipped on a rug.

Sanhuber believing in his own exploits in pulp-fiction-land ran downstairs with two .25-caliber guns to defend her. Both men struggled once Fred recognized him as the lamb-eating stranger from many years before. Mr. Oesterreich ended up dead with three bullets in him. Sanhuber guessed that neighbors called police after hearing the shots. He hustled Dolly in a closet upstairs, and locked the door from the outside. He hid out in the attic.

Dolly told police that burglars had shot her husband, taken his expensive watch and locked her in the closet on their way out. They were suspicious, since the victim had been killed by .25-caliber handgun, a rather small weapon for a burglar. However, without any evidence and finding her locked in a closet, they could not explain how she committed the crime.

In January 1923, she moved to a house on North Beachwood Drive, with an attic of course, where Otto relocated to as well. He continued clacking away on a typewriter he had bought with the proceeds of some of his stories, and the pittance Dolly gave him.

Mrs. Oesterreich and Attorney Meyer M. Willner.

Little did Otto Sanhuber suspect that by killing Fred Oesterreich, he also killed his role as the "other man". Now a widow, 43-year-old Dolly eyed her estate attorney, Herman S. Shapiro. She gave him a watch, which he recognized as the one she claimed the burglars had stolen. She allayed his suspicions by explaining she found it later under a window seat cushion.

Enter Roy H. Klumb, businessman, actor and her latest lover. She gambled that under the throes of passion he would help her to get rid of a gun that looked like the one that dispatched her husband, and she worried the police would pin the murder on her. She was right about the passion thing, because he took the firearm and threw into the La Brea Tar Pits.

Dolly Oesterreich missed her calling as a saleswoman, because she sold the same story to her neighbor who buried the second gun under a rose bush in their yard. Fast forward eleven months and Dolly cut off Klumb. What’s that saying about a woman spurned? Well it holds true for men as well. On July 12, 1923, the police fished out the gun from the tar pit after Klumb tipped them off. Another version claims that Detective Cline, always suspicious of Dolly, saw Shapiro wearing Fred’s diamond-encrusted watch and produced enough evidence to have her arrested.

Dolly Oesterreich c.1923

The helpful neighbor read the headlines and marched into the police station with the second gun. Both guns were so rusted that it was impossible to determine if they had shot the bullets that killed Fred Oesterreich. The prosecutors also found it difficult to explain how Dolly while being locked in a closet could shoot her husband. Then Shapiro got one of the strangest request he had ever received from a client. It was to buy groceries, tap on the ceiling of the bedroom closet and feed her lover.

Otto was not only starved for food but conversation as well. Between mouthfuls he told Shapiro lurid stories about his 10 years living in Dolly’s attics. Based on Shapiro’s advice, Dolly hired criminal attorney Frank Dominguez. He in turn instructed Shapiro to get rid of Sanhuber. Shapiro convinced Otto he had to leave because of the threat both he and Dolly faced if it was discovered he had been living in the attic all these years. He reluctantly left. She was released on bail, and the charges were eventually dropped. Shapiro moved in with her, since he had plans for Dolly and him. She agreed not to meet Otto again if he helped him get a job. He found one for him one as a janitor. Otto changed his name to Walter Klein and moved to Vancouver, Canada and married another woman named Mathilde, however he did eventually move back to Los Angeles.

From left to right: Ray B. Hedrick, Mrs. Walburga Oesterreich and Attorney Charles J. Rosin. The two men are shown helping Mrs. Oesterreich out of the marriage license bureau as she is shown almost collapsing. They had to get a wheelchair for her.

Seven years rolled by, and in 1930 Dolly cut Shapiro lose. It was not a friendly parting to a tumultuous relationship, since the attorney ran to the police and provided them with an affidavit telling about the man living in the attic. He told them the breakup had been due to money.

Dolly was arrested again and a warrant was issued for Otto Sanhuber. She was charged with conspiracy and her one-time-lover with murder. By the time he faced the judge and jury Otto was 43 years old, and was working as a porter in an LA apartment house.

In 1924, he married Mathilde H. Schult while he lived in Washington. She stood by Otto when he went on trial.

His defense was that he had been Dolly’s "sex slave". Sanhuber also claimed the gun had gone off during a struggle. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He was convicted of manslaughter, but since the statute of limitation had run out a year before, he left the courthouse a free man.

Dolly hired famed attorney Jerry Giesler and the proceedings ended in a mistrial. She also walked free and was never retried for the charges. By 1958, Dolly lived over a garage in a run-down section of Los Angeles. Born on June 12, 1880, when Dolly died April 8, 1961, she was 80 years old. She was born June 12, 1880. She married her second husband Ray Bert Hedrick two weeks before her death. He was her business manager for thirty years and her entire estate estimated at $1 million went to him. There was no mention of Otto in her will.

Otto Sanhuber, dubbed the "Bat Man" by the press during his murder trial disappeared into obscurity and nothing more is known about him. He died in 1948 at the age of 60.