Her Lover Was in The Attic

Love and lust make us do strange things. A man will go to a fancy restaurant for his partner. A lady may watch a sportsball game with her lover to make them happy. Clyde Barrow is reported to have killed a good number of people to please Bonnie Parker.

Love is a strange thing.

Walburga 'Dolly' Oesterreich was not an ordinary wife. She was feisty and not afraid to speak out against her husband if needed. Some have even said she was very open about her sexuality and desires.

Many called her charming, even beautiful to an extent. Her appeal was a fragility. Or at least a perceived fragility.

That quality led seemingly rational men to commit extreme acts for her. These actions would be done in the name of love. The men would kill, cover up a murder, and live in an attic for her.

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Dolly was married to apron maker Fred Oesterreich in 1912. The marriage was not good. In today's terms, it would be deemed toxic. Many wondered why the two even got married because it was evident that there was no love lost between the two.

Often Fred would work late in his factory to avoid his bride. The only thing they hated more than being alone was each other.

One of the nights that Fred deliberately worked late to avoid his wife, her sewing machine stopped working. When he arrived home, the two of them argued. She accused her husband of intentionally avoiding her.

Dolly only agreed to drop the argument when Fred said he would send an employee over to fix the sewing machine the next day.

That employee was Otto Sanhuber.

Rumors persisted Fred sent the young man in the hopes of an affair blooming between Otto and Dolly. Not one to miss a cue, Dolly answered the door in her stockings.

Fred's plan worked. Dolly and Otto wanted to be together every chance they got. But as people in small towns know, people talk. When she was out running errands, questions abounded about why she was so happy. And how the young man played a part in her happier demeanor.

They also asked questions about Fred's drinking.

To stymie the rumors about her having an affair, Dolly lied. She told people that Otto was her vagabond half-brother. Nobody believed her. It may have helped her story if she wasn't quite so passionate during her time with Otto.

Dolly was furious that nobody believed her. She wanted her beefcake and to sleep with him too.

Her solution was to move Otto into the attic of her house.

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Other than being with his lady love, Otto would read his days away. He spent a lot of his time alone reading or doing some writing.

During the times when Fred was home, Otto began to write pulp stories. His goal was to make enough money to support himself and Dolly.

A source said:

"At night, he read mysteries by candlelight and wrote stories of adventure and lust. By day he made love to Dolly Oesterreich, helped her keep house, and made bathtub gin."

By 1920, prohibition was in full swing and alcohol was nearly impossible to find. While he was not aware that Otto moved into his attic, Fred enjoyed the booze the young man made with his wife.

Dolly enjoyed the other activities that she did with Otto.

Her marriage to Fred continued to deteriorate. Their arguments became more frequent. Each rightly accused the other of having an affair. Multiple times they came close to ending their marriage but societal pressure stopped them.

As the pressure mounted on both of them, a breaking point came.

Fred decided that he wanted to leave Milwaukee. He suggested they move to Los Angeles. Dolly freaked out. She was not prepared to give up her relationship with Otto.

As luck would have it, she found a house with an attic in LA. The space was an even smaller area for her lover. But since he had been sent out to LA early, Otto didn't mind.

If anything, it almost made the secret even more fun for him.

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Los Angeles did nothing to repair the relationship between Fred and Dolly. Their fights became bigger and more violent. Most of them revolved around noises that he heard but couldn't find the problem.

Night after night, the noises would keep Fred awake. He began to wonder if he was losing his mind, especially since Dolly didn't seem to hear anything. She leaned into her husband losing his mind.

This led to more arguing between them. Each fight saw Fred becoming more and more unhinged. Each time the married couple went toe to toe, it became louder and more violent.

During one fight, Otto heard it and rushed in to rescue his lady love. Fred recognized the younger man right away. He called out that Dolly and Otto were still sleeping together, they hadn't stopped despite a relocation.

The two men got into a fight and Otto pulled out a gun. Reports indicated that both men struggled for control of the gun.

Fred Oesterreich was shot and killed.

Otto freaked out, especially since his fingerprints were all over the guns. He locked Dolly in a closet with an outside lock on it. He wanted to create plausible deniability. She could deny knowing anything happened because she had been kidnapped and nobody would suspect she had anything to do with the murder.

For her part, Dolly sold the burglary story with everything she had. The problem was she wasn't a believable liar or a skilled actress. The police didn't believe her but there was a lack of evidence.

The case would go cold with no theories and nothing to prove that Dolly was involved.

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Before Fred's body was cold, Dolly was collecting the insurance money and moving into a new house. One might have expected that Otto would be allowed to act like a human being, like a prized boyfriend rather than a sex slave who was only trotted out for adult time.

But no.

Dolly had no want for that. She liked the arrangement. Did Otto also like living in the attic? Or was there something more sinister happening?

It's also possible that she was his muse. His stories began selling, and soon he bought himself a typewriter. His writing career was taking off in earnest.

Dolly meanwhile began dating Herman S. Shapiro, a lawyer. This is important because he makes a rookie mistake with the black widow. He ignored her in favor of work, which was a cardinal sin to Dolly.

Since Herman ignored her and Otto was busy typing up his new story, she found a new lover, Roy Klumb. He was smitten with Dolly, so much so that he would do anything that she asked of him.

One of the favors that she asked of him was to get rid of the gun that killed Fred. He did as asked, he threw it into the LaBrea Tar Pitts. Dolly believed that everything was taken care of.

Well, almost everything. She began sleeping with yet another man, this time a neighbor. She also asked this man to get rid of a gun. No one is certain where this gun came from but her new lover pretended to get rid of it.

Dolly relaxed and enjoyed the company of all of her men.

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Dolly dumped Roy, much to his chagrin. He tried everything to keep the relationship together. There was a lot of begging and pleading his case but she would hear none of it.

Roy vowed revenge against his ex. He felt used and was unhappy with how she treated him in the aftermath of the breakup. A plan began to form.

He went back to the LaBrea Tarr Pitts and retrieved the gun he had discarded for Dolly. Then he talked to the neighbor that she was sleeping with. The other man turned the gun over to Roy.

Both were taken to the police.

Once they had the guns, police were able to connect the weapons to Dolly. They arrested her and charged her with Fred's murder.

Otto expressed his concern for her. Dolly told him there was nothing to worry about, that there was no way prosecutors could secure a conviction against her. She promised that once this was all over, they would live happily ever after together.

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As she waited to stand trial, Dolly asked Herman to bring groceries to Otto. She once again claimed that the young man was her younger brother and confided that she worried about him. Herman agreed and took some food over to the young man.

During their conversation, Otto confessed that he was sleeping with Dolly too. The men talked about the future with Dolly. Herman convinced Otto to leave LA and return home.

Otto agreed and took the next train home.

But Dolly and Herman would not stay together. They began arguing over many things, including the amount of money being spent on her defense. She wanted the best attorney and expected her boyfriend to pay for it.

He declined.

After the breakdown and breakup, Herman went straight to the police and turned in all of the evidence linked to Fred's murder. He implicated Otto in the murder as well.

Otto was charged with manslaughter. While he was convicted, his lawyers successfully argued that the statute of limitations had run out. The public dubbed him 'Bat-man' since he had been imprisoned in such an insane way.

Dolly was indicted on a conspiracy charge. Her trial ended in a hung jury and a second trial never happened. She was allowed to live out the rest of her days as a free woman.

There was no reconciliation with Otto, despite her best attempts. After his release, he moved to Canada and married another woman.

Dolly died in 1961 at the age of 81. She was single and alone at the time of her death.