The Effect
It is the 22nd August 1922, when the usual calm of Silver Lake, Los Angeles is shattered. Suddenly, the unmistakable crack of gunfire is heard, echoing ominously from one of the neighbourhood’s respectable family homes. Frightened by the shots, a local resident summons the police. And, when officers arrive, a shocking scene awaits.
Lying sprawled in the living room of the Silver Lake house is the body of Fred Oesterreich, a successful textile manufacturer. He’s been shot multiple times in the torso, his shirt stark against the congealed crimson wounds. And there is a final, brutal shot to the back of Fred’s head. The scene screams of a violent confrontation, possibly a robbery gone wrong. But the strangest discovery is yet to come.
From behind the locked door of a bedroom closet, frantic cries can be heard. Officers force the door open to find Fred’s wife, Dolly Oesterreich, huddled inside the closet, seemingly terrified but physically unharmed. And Dolly has a harrowing story to recount: there had been intruders, she says, robbers. They had broken in and forcibly locked her in the closet before confronting her husband. To Dolly’s horror, while locked away she had heard shots being fired. But, despite knowing her husband was in mortal danger and fearing the worst, she could do nothing to help him.
The scene seems like a tragic but straightforward home invasion ending in murder. The fact that Fred’s valuable diamond watch is missing also supports this theory. So, at first, police have no reason to believe that Dolly is anything other than a traumatised victim, lucky to be alive at all. But as they continue their investigation, various inconsistencies start to emerge, casting doubts over Dolly’s initial account.
Dolly insists, with a feverish intensity, that she and Fred never fought. Not once, in their entire marriage. But detectives find this claim highly suspicious. What kind of married couple never disagrees? Then there’s the issue of the murder weapon – or rather, the bullets police have recovered from Fred’s body. They are found to have come from a .25 caliber pistol, a diminutive handgun, often described as a “lady’s gun.” But why would a violent home invader choose to arm himself with such a small-caliber weapon, when they could opt for something both more intimidating, and more powerful?
But despite a so-called lady’s gun having been used to kill Fred, it seems utterly impossible that Dolly had anything to do with it… how could she have, when, at the time, she was trapped in a closet that had been locked from the outside? The lock mechanism clearly showed zero signs of being tampered with. There was no way Dolly could have shot her husband, disposed of the weapon, stolen the watch, and then locked herself securely inside that closet. It was a physical impossibility.
Continuing their investigation, police interview the Oesterreichs’ Silver Lake neighbours. Curiously, some recall strange noises emanating from the Oesterreich house, specifically from the shadowy recesses of its attic. Noises that would continue when both Fred and Dolly were out. And not just noises, but several neighbours even report seeing dark entities passing across the windows of the house, too, again when the house is empty. Could the Oesterreich home hold a darker secret than anyone had previously suspected?
The police are now stumped. They have a dead husband, a seemingly impossible alibi for the wife, a missing murder weapon, and a robbery motive that, somehow… doesn’t feel right. But how could Dolly have been responsible for her husband’s death when she had been locked in a closet at the exact time it happened?
Or, as some of the Oesterreichs’ neighbours hinted, could some unseen force have bolted that closet door shut? Was something else there that night, lurking within the walls of that respectable family home, crouched in the darkness of the attic… waiting for its moment to strike?
The Method
The baffling mystery of Fred Oesterreich’s murder, and his wife Dolly’s impossible locked-closet alibi, lingered for a further eight years. But the answer wasn’t that there were supernatural forces inhabiting this respectable Silver Lake home. It was a secret far more disreputable, a secret Dolly had cultivated for nearly a decade. For it wasn’t a ghost who had locked that closet door, but a man named Otto Sanhuber.
In fact, this story begins, not in sunny Los Angeles, but in Milwaukee in 1913. This was when Dolly Oesterreich, then in her thirties and trapped in what she perceived as a dull marriage, met 17-year-old Otto Sanhuber, a young sewing machine repair man. One day, Dolly complained her sewing machine was broken, and so young Otto was dispatched to the Oesterreich home. According to Otto’s later accounts, Dolly greeted him at the door that day clad in nothing more than sheer stockings and a silk robe. An intense, illicit affair began almost immediately.
Dolly quickly became the centre of Otto’s world, and he was utterly infatuated with her. So Dolly, desiring constant access to her young lover but also wanting to keep him a secret from her unsuspecting husband Fred, devised an audacious and ultimately life-altering plan. She convinced Otto to quit his job and dedicate himself entirely to her. His new residence? The small, cramped attic space above the Oesterreichs’ Milwaukee bedroom.
And so began one of the strangest domestic arrangements of the early twentieth century. Otto Sanhuber became Dolly’s “attic ghost.” By night, he remained hidden, listening to the sounds of the married couple below. By day, when Fred left for work, Dolly would release Otto from his confinement. He wasn’t just her lover; he performed household chores, maintained the property, and lived entirely at her beck and call. He later described this period starkly, calling himself Dolly’s “sex slave,” confined not by chains, but by his fixation on her and their arrangement. This bizarre routine persisted for not just weeks or months, but years. And all while Fred Oesterreich remained completely oblivious to the man living secretly above his head.
In 1918, Fred decided to relocate to the burgeoning city of Los Angeles, and Dolly agreed to the move under one non-negotiable condition: their new home must have an attic. A suitable house was found in the pleasant neighbourhood of Silver Lake. And when Dolly and Fred moved west, so did Otto, and was promptly installed in the attic of their new California residence, ready to resume his hidden life.
The routine continued in Los Angeles for four more years, and Otto remained Dolly’s secret until that fateful day in August 1922. But what happened? Contrary to what Dolly had told police about them never disagreeing, she and Fred had become embroiled in a furious argument, louder and more violent than usual. Listening from the attic, Otto grew increasingly agitated, fearing Fred was about to seriously harm Dolly.
Driven by a desperate need to protect the woman he loved, Otto grabbed the .25 caliber pistol, bursting from the attic and rushing downstairs into the living room. Fred Oesterreich, stunned to see a strange man emerging from the upper floors of his own home, became instantly enraged. He lunged towards Otto. In the ensuing struggle, Otto fired the pistol repeatedly. Then Fred collapsed, fatally wounded.
Panic seized Dolly and Otto. They had to think fast. Realising the gravity of what had happened, they concocted the robbery story on the spot. Otto took Fred’s valuable diamond watch to make the theft look convincing. Then came the crucial part of the plan: Dolly got into the bedroom closet, Otto locking it securely from the outside. He then scrambled back to his hiding place in the attic, taking the spent casings and the murder weapon with him, melting back into the shadows.
When the police arrived, they found the scene exactly as staged: a murdered husband, a distraught wife locked in a closet, and a missing watch. Although they searched the house, as an attic wasn’t considered a primary search area in a suspected home invasion, Otto remained undiscovered. The locked closet door, the detail that so baffled investigators, was simply the result of Otto locking it before retreating to his hideaway. There was no ghost; there was just Otto.
For years, the secret held. You might say, it grew even stranger. After Fred’s death, Dolly inherited his money and moved to a new house – also one with an attic, where Otto promptly resumed his hidden existence. But poor old Otto wasn’t enough for Dolly, and she began juggling other lovers simultaneously. And it was this lack of discretion that ultimately led to her downfall.
In a moment of recklessness, Dolly gave Fred’s stolen diamond watch – the key piece of evidence supporting the so-called “robbery” – to one of her lovers, a lawyer named Herman Shapiro. Later, she asked another lover, Roy Klumb, to dispose of the pistol. Klumb, following her instructions, tossed the gun into the La Brea Tar Pits. But, perhaps most carelessly of all, Dolly even asked Shapiro to deliver food and supplies to Otto, still living secretly in her attic, inevitably revealing his existence.
Eventually, these men started talking. Shapiro and Klumb, under police questioning prompted by renewed suspicion or perhaps neighbourhood gossip about the strange goings-on at Dolly’s new home, revealed the damning requests Dolly had made. The police finally had the missing pieces of the puzzle. The story of the watch, the missing gun, and the man hidden in the attic – it all pointed towards a conspiracy far odder than they ever anticipated.
In 1930, the law finally caught up with this widow and her attic-dwelling lover. Dolly Oesterreich was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Otto Sanhuber, finally flushed from his hiding place, was charged with manslaughter. Due to the years he’d spent living in an attic, Otto was given a very apt nickname by the press: “the Bat-Man.”
© 2025, Lora Jones. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.
