Thriller Thursday - Priest Expected Home

Priest Expected Home

Postcard to Parents Said He Would Return Soon.

Aschaffenburg, Germany, Sept. 15 - Hans Schmidt, the priest who has confessed to the murder of Anna Aumuller in New York, intended to return to his home in Bavaria at an early date, according to a postcard which his parents received from him a day or two ago. Schmidt wrote that he rejoiced to think that he would see them and Aschaffenburg soon again.

Schmidt's parents and other relatives living here consider him abnormal and say there were numerous cases of insanity in the family. According to the records, he was born in 1881 and was ordained in 1904. He showed no signs of abnormality, so far as can be learned, before his twentieth year, and then his character appeared to undergo a strange transformation. He became unsociable and was unable to agree with his superiors. He occupied a number of curacies during the three years following 1904, but remained only a few months in each place.

Schmidt, it is stated, took holy orders against his own wishes and only to satisfy the desires of his mother.

Priest Expected Home, The New York Tribune, 16 September 1913, page 2, column 3.