Under the Basement Floor

11/6/2024

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Over a hundred years ago, a frail nun who lived in a remote Michigan village was murdered and buried in a shallow grave, in the very basement of the holy grounds where she lived and worshipped. What was uncovered during the subsequent trials spoke of lies, sexual trysts by those holding holy office and the attempt to spare the Catholic Church embarrassment, even if it meant covering up a murder.

Sister Mary Janina born as Josephine Mazek

Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Isadore, Michigan was dedicated August of 1883. Next to it stood Holy Rosary School, a three-story brick building that along with the church served generations of the Polish immigrant families of Leelanau County.

Sister Janina was last seen on August 23, 1907 the same date Father Bieniawski left with his sister Susan and Gruba the chore boy, for a fishing trip.

When her two fellow nuns awoke from a nap that same day, they could not locate Sister Janina. What they did find was the schoolhouse's back door partially open. This was strange since it was always kept locked. Sister's Janina's open prayer book was on the windowsill.

Almost twenty-four years to the date of its dedication, Father Andrew Bieniawski, the pastor returned from the trip to Carp Lake (now Lake Leelanau). It was not long before it was brought to his attention that Sister Mary Janina, Sister Superior of the convent had disappeared.

When asked by Father Bieniawski, Stella Lipcznska the housekeeper, and her daughter Mary also denied seeing the nun.

The Father took over a week to notify the authorities, however foul play was not suspected, in fact it was believed Sister Mary had forsaken her vows and run away.

Traverse City police duly searched the area, but with no success. Wyandotte's police were told to look for her, which is where she had lived up to the age of nine, in case she returned to the area.

Search party organized to search for Sister Mary Janina

The church family at Isadore was small when Sister Mary Janina arrived. It included Father Andrew Bieniawski, his teenage sister Susan, and a chore boy named Gruba.

In the 1900 census, Frances Panek, a 26-year-old, single woman kept house for Father Bieniawski, however by 1906 Stanislawa "Stella" Lipczynska was installed as a housekeeper, with her daughter Mary. She had left Poland around 1900 with Mary, after her husband died. It's not clear when Stella joined the household, but more than likely she took over in 1905, when Father Andrew's mother Julia, who had lived with him died.

The sisters lived in small quarters on the schoolhouse's second floor. The other members of the household slept at the rectory, except Gruba who went home.

Father Andrew had his own oddities. He kept a badger, parrots, a fox, and an alligator, which was free to roam where it wanted during the summer months. During the cold winter months, it slept in the rectory. Somebody apparently disliked the alligator enough to brave Father Andrew's displeasure, because it was poisoned.

The three teaching nuns, Mary Janina, Angelina and Josephine were all tubercular, which is why they had been sent to the small Michigan village, hoping the clean, fresh air would help alleviate their symptoms. Dr. Fralick from neaby Maple City was summoned to attend them.

The three sisters taught about 200 children at Holy Rosary School, and during the winter most of them boarded with the nuns.

The summer of 1907, instead of returning to the Felician convent in Detroit as they originally planned, they decided to stay in Isadore. All the students were at their homes.

A week after Sister Janina disappeared, two things happened: over 250 men from the Isadore Catholic Church volunteered to search for the missing nun, and the other two remaining sisters left the convent claiming they did not want to meet the unknown, but feared fate of Sister Mary Janina.

Even when Father Bieniawski pleaded with them not to leave, they left anyway, obviously they did not believe that Sister Mary had forsaken her vows and run off.

The volunteers split up into three groups, and a bloodhound was brought in to help in the search. In a nearby swamp pieces of clothing were found, as well as where someone had eaten some berries, but eventually they were no closer to finding the missing nun. The searchers still didn’t believe anything bad had happened to her, only that she was wily enough to have escaped from the search group.

In the midst of the search for the missing nun a clairvoyant from Kingsley said Sister Janina was being held captive at a house on Glen Lake. The sheriff searched the placed based on her description, and turned up nothing.

Unaccompanied young women were suspected of being the runaway nun, and in October, 1907 a woman named Frances Cox who was from Boston, was held by Frankfort police on suspicion of being Sister Mary Janina. They didn’t release her until Father Bieniawski came forward, and verified that she was not Sister Mary.

The years moved on and the mystery of Sister Mary’s disappearance faded, and many thought she was living under a false name in some other place, possibly having married and had children. There was no pity for a woman who was thought to have forsaken her vows to Christ, but that was to change eleven years after her disappearance.

The events of what happened to Sister Mary on a hot, August day over a decade before was only exposed for two reasons: one the Church wanted to keep her fate and whereabouts a secret, even if her reputation suffered for it, as well as protecting a murderer, and secondly that one of the persons charged with protecting these secrets did not know how to keep his mouth shut.

Father Podlaszewski

In 1913, Father Andrew Bieniawski (1874-1964) was replaced by Father Leo, after he was transferred to a church in Manistee.

Stella Lipczynska had moved to Milwaukee with her daughter who had married. A few years later she returned to serve Father Bieniawski as housekeeper once again in Manistee. During those intervening years between Sister Janina's disappearance and the murder investigation, Sisters Angelina and Josephine died of tuberculosis, and Gruba moved to Canada and disappeared.

In 1917, Father Edward Podlaszewski was assigned to Holy Rosary Catholic Church. In 1918, as pastor of the church he was making plans to tear down the old church, and construct a new one on the site which set a catalyst in motion.

It appeared the whereabouts of Sister Mary was a mystery to the general population, but not to several fellow priests of the area, one of them being Father Leo, who discreetly told Father Podlaszewski that Sister Mary was to be found only a few feet from where she had worshipped, and that the planned construction would bring scandal to the small church.

They told him she was buried in the basement of the church, and that’s exactly where Father Podlaszewski found her remains in a shallow grave.

Podlaszewski later testified that he had been instructed to disinter the body, and rebury it with the utmost discretion, and he asked the local sexton Jacob Fliss (erroneously reported as Jacob Flees) to help dig her up, and bury her in the church cemetery.

It was not long before the secret of Sister Mary’s disappearance came to the attention of Leelanau County Sheriff John Kinnucan, and by February 1919, arrest warrants had been issued for Father Bieniawski, and the woman who had been his housekeeper during his tenure at Holy Rosary.

Bieniawski did some fast talking and was not arrested, however a guard was placed around the parish house he was staying at. Stella Lipczynska was promptly taken to jail.

Some newspaper accounts hinted that the secret witness was the sexton, and another story claimed that there were two other witnesses, Rev. Father Joseph A. Lempke and Sister Antonia, sister superior of the Felician convent in Detroit.

The story of the murdered nun made all the newspapers

Father Lempke testified that he was informed in 1915, by Bishop Edward Kozlowski from Milwaukee, who died shortly afterward that the nun had been killed and buried under the church. He was one of the priests who had informed Podlaszewski of what would be found during the construction of the new church.

Sister Mary Antonia corroborated Father Lempke’s testimony, stating that Mother Mary Veronica, Mother Provincial of Milwaukee, quoted Bishop Kozlowski as saying Sister Mary John "did not forsake her vow at Isadore, but was killed by a woman and buried under Holy Rosary church there."

Father Edward Kozlowski had only been made a bishop the year before in 1914, but he like many other priests, might not have killed Sister Janina, but were complicit in keeping the secret of her murder.

The whereabouts of Sister Mary would have remained undiscovered, had not it been for an indiscretion by Father Podlaszewski. In those months, prior to the secret exhumation of Sister's Janina's remains, he was carrying on an affair with his 19-year-old housekeeper, Martha Miller whose father was a farmer in the area.

In December, 1918 the priest drove the unmarried Martha Miller to Ann Arbor Hospital to give birth to her illegitimate child. She later testified that during the trip he told her the secret of what happened to Sister Mary, and what he had found under the dirt of the basement. He implicated the sexton saying the man had helped him in this bit of skulduggery.

A young Father Andrew Bieniawski who was ordained when he was 23 years old

This information was wrested from Martha by her father after her return to Isadore, who then notified authorities. Another confession that Martha made was that she had been having an amorous relationship with Father Podlaszewski.

What do you think are the odds he was the father of her child?

Eventually Father Podlaszewski made an appearance before the church tribunal where he was stripped of his position, titles, robes and duties. He was shuffled through the years from parish to parish, and eventually disappeared from all records. More than likely this everlasting punishment was inflicted on him for having loose lips, rather than for betraying his vow of chastity.

Police started their investigation which included locating Jacob Fliss, who later signed an affidavit that he had indeed helped Podlaszewski with what was left of the poor nun in a shallow grave, which was a few bones, a rosary, a steel ring and part of a cord used on the nun’s frock. He said that after they had buried her they had covered the secret grave with shrubbery.

Officers dug up the hidden grave in the cemetery, and found what Jacob had described inside a small wooden box. They took the remains into evidence to be used later during the trial.

Initially it was not clear why Mrs. Lipczynska had attacked Sister Mary. It was said that she had several altercations with her before the day of her disappearance, and she was also said to be jealous of the nun. The jealousy supposedly stemmed from an illicit affair Father Bieniawski had not only with Sister Mary Janina, but all three of the nuns at the convent.

During the housekeeper's subsequent trial, numerous Isadore residents testified how she had referred to the Felician Sisters as "priest's wives" and "whores". What many failed to recognize was that Sister Janina and the housekeeper were contemporaries in age. The former being 37, and the later 38.

During the initial investigation the police used the ring found in the wooden box to establish if this was indeed the bones of Sister Mary, and if the dates engraved inside it matched up to the dates of the sister taking holy orders. The bones were laid out on a table in the courtroom, and the cause of death was ruled to be a skull fracture.

Stanislawa “Stella” Lipczynska stood trial for the murder of Sister Janina

Sister Mary's story was tragic indeed. She had been born Josephine Mazek in 1870, and she had immigrated with her parents and siblings from Czechoslovakia and they settled in Chicago.

In the 1880 census, she was counted as part of the household (age 10), but was away attending school. The rest of the members were her father John, 53, her mother Josephine, 48, her brother Joseph, 18, her brother Frank, 13, and her younger brother Emmanuel, age 8.

In January, 1883 Jan Mezek (misidentified by the newspapers as John Mezek) was shot and killed by Peter Soergel (1867-1903), a police officer over a dispute at a dance held by the St. Francis Bohemian Catholic Society. Mezek was listed as the janitor at the church.

Four months later in April, 1883 Josephine Mezek was declared insane by the probate court, as a result of her husband's death, and was committed to the Illinois Eastern State Hospital for the Insane.

Sister Janina was not turned over to the orphanage as sometimes reported, since she was already boarding at the school with the Felician sisters when this happened to her parents. Also her brother Joseph was already an adult, and worked as a carpenter.

Officer Peter Soergel was visited by justice in 1888, when he was shot several times by a "cowboy named Everett" which caused him to quit the force. Then in 1897, when he was sitting in front of the First Regiment Armory he was dragged behind the railway tracks, where he was choked and beaten by two men who tried to rob him. He was rescued by the arrival of an officer.

He died in 1903 as an inmate of an insane asylum. He was 35 years old.

On August 12, 1890 when she was 18 years old, Josephine received holy habit and her name was changed to Mary Janna or Johns. She took her first vows in August, 1892 and the second in August 1901. In 1906, she was sent to Isadore, and she disappeared August 1907, when she was thirty-seven years old.

When the police sought warrants for the murder of Sister Mary in February 1919, both Father Bieniawski and Mrs. Lipczynska denied any knowledge of the secret grave or the murder.

Within a day of her arrest, Mrs. Lipczynska posted the $4,500 bail imposed by the judge. This money was obtained with help from Father Bieniawski.

Rumors circulated that the police believed Mrs. Lipczynska was really the accessory to the crime, and not Father Bieniawski, and they were hoping they could squeeze the 50-year-old woman into providing information as to who was the true murderer.

Father Bieniawski insisted that he had been on a fishing trip with his sister Susan, and the sexton Jacob on the day Sister Mary had gone missing. He told authorities that he had even offered a $500 reward for information, and had notified Sister Mary’s brother Frank Mezek in Chicago, who said he would come, but never did.

Illustration of Stella Lipczynska's attack on Sister Janina

But as the days passed the plot thickened when it turned out that Mrs. Lipczynska's daughter Mary, who had lived with her during the time of the nun’s disappearance, was now Mrs. Joseph Fliss, and a cousin of Jacob Fliss the sexton who was implicated with assisting Father Podlaszewski.

Justice moved quickly in those days and by March 1919, Stella Lipczynska was set to stand trial for first degree murder.

One of the first to give testimony was Jacob Fliss, the sexton who said that Father Podlaszewski had told him it had been Mrs. Lipczynska who had killed the nun, but did not offer how he knew this information. The proceedings came to a grinding halt when Mrs. Lipczynska started acting like she was insane, so it was determined she needed to be assessed. This slowed down the proceedings, however by the end of October she had been found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life with hard labor, to be served at the Detroit House of Correction.

A rumor and a suspicion that circulated amongst those involved, but never introduced into the proceedings, was that Sister Mary had been pregnant.

Mrs. Lipczynska's conviction in part was based on testimony of an undercover, woman detective named Mary Tylicka (Pylicka), who had been placed in the jail cell as another inmate, and later testified that Mrs. Lipczynska had confessed that she had killed Sister Mary with a spade which she used to hit her over the head.

The detailed confession is as follows:

She (Stella Lipczynska) wanted me to go to Father Bienewski and tell him to have Father Podlesweski put out of the state, and that Father Bienewski would pay me well for my trouble. She said she feared him, as he knew all. She said, 'I went to confession, confessed my sins to Father Nowak, at Milwaukee, but he would not give me absolution at once. He said he must first see Bishop Kozlowski. He went away and told me to wait in church. In a few minutes he returned and gave me penance.

'I have done my penance. My sins are forgiven. Why do they bother me? I guess I might as well tell you. Yes, I killed Sister Janina. I first stunned her and then went out into the garden and got a spade. I dug a hole under the church, dragged the body to the hole and put her in it. As I was trying to cover the head it would always rise. up. Then I took the back of the spade and knocked the sister three times on the head with all my might. I have told you just as I told Father Nowak in Milwaukee.

'Pretty soon I won't be here. I'll be in an insane asylum or a hospital. I'm going to pretend I am crazy and they must believe me. The doctors can't tell the difference, because they can't look inside of me.'

Stella Lipczynska (left), Antonia Jankowski in middle, Mary on right. Taken at the wedding of Mary's daughter to Robert Jankowski

Within a year after the conviction, Mrs. Lipczynska's attorney had taken their appeal of the sentence to the supreme court, claiming that said confession was obtained under duress and that the skeletal remains had never been positively identified as belonging to Sister Mary. The courts denied her appeal, however in January, 1927 she was paroled by Gov. Groesbeck, and by 1931 she was considered fully rehabilitated and taken off parole.

She rejoined her family in those intervening years, and never made any public statements concerning the murder or the court proceedings. She went on to be hired as a housekeeper by the Felician Order of Nuns in Milwaukee, and died at the age of 92 in 1961.

If she was the murderer or the conspirator, it was a secret she took to her grave. One thing was certain, though deeply devoted to the Catholic religion, even before the murder allegations she had a reputation of being stern and unlikeable, a view shared by residents of Isadore, her few friends and family members.

Father Andrew Bieniawski as an older man, was he the one who killed Sister Janina?

Father Andrew Bieniawski died in 1964 at the age of 89.

Even after her death, mystery surrounded Sister Mary Janina. During the trial, fellow nuns were allowed to perform a brief ceremony over her bones, since she had never received funeral rites. This was the last time it was known what became of her remains. Some say that she was buried in an anonymous grave in the Felician Motherhouse in Detroit, others that her anonymity continues but in a grave in the cemetery down the road from Holy Rosary Church, possibly at the foot of a large cross spared from a lightning that hit it in 1989, that destroyed other trees and monuments around it.

In truth the unsolved mystery regarding the murder of Sister Mary Janina, may not be who did it, but why; was it jealousy, a secret pregnancy or something else?

A hundred years after the murder of Sister Janina was exposed, the village of Isadore has become a practical ghost town.

The movie The Runner Stumbles (1979) is based on the incident of Sister Janina's murder. Writing the play began in 1965 and debuted in 1971; it finally appeared on Broadway in 1976.