Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the story behind the Oesterreich murder?
You know that old saying, you can't have your cake and eat it too? That exact phrase helped catch the Unabomber. In his anonymous manifesto, he flipped it. You can't eat your cake and have it too. When his brother and sister-in-law read that, they thought, wait a minute, we've heard that somewhere. And everything unraveled.
The original 16th century version of the idiom was closer to the Unabomber's. Would ye both eat your cake and have your cake? The idea being, you can't have what you've already consumed. You can't have it both ways. Well, at least that's what the proverb says. But in today's truly bizarre story, inside one very particular house, one woman does her best to have it both ways.
The husband, the lover, the money, and the alibi. I'm Harvey Guillen, and this is Killer Stories. I'm gonna put you in the shoes of a real person. It's the 1920s, jazz is in the air, motion pictures are new, and the entertainment industry is booming. And you've got yourself a beautiful home in the center of it all, Los Angeles, California.
Lots of people have been moving to the city recently, but you're not lots of people, you have money. You live in the Hollywood Hills, overlooking Sunset Boulevard, where the homes are big and airy and the grass actually grows green. There's no riffraff, no trouble, and every night as the streetlights flicker on, you can actually hear yourself think.
Because there's no TV, or smartphones, or internet. Maybe somewhere a radio plays, but mostly it's just you, the local gossip, and your idle thoughts. And then, one summer night, you hear an argument. It comes from outside. It sounds like your neighbors, Fred and Dolly Ostrich, are just coming home from an evening out.
But you can't hear what they're fighting about, and their voices fade away as they step inside their home. So, you don't think anything more of it. Until, a few minutes later, you hear gunshots. Three of them. You run to the window to check what's happening and see that two lights are on next door, one on the porch and one in the living room.
And through a tiny gap in the living room curtain, you can make out a pair of legs sprawled out on the floor. After five minutes go by, a third light turns on in the upstairs bedroom and a shadow moves across the window and you hear a woman scream. Fred! Oh, Fred!
Fred!
which is quickly followed by a pounding sound, some type of banging, and the porch light going off. So obviously, you call the police. When they arrive, you go with them over to Dolly and Fred's. Why? I don't know. It's 1922. There were gunshots. Someone might be seriously hurt, and the shooter might still be in the house. But yeah, for some reason, the LAPD is like, come with.
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Chapter 2: How did Dolly and Fred's relationship contribute to the murder?
But still, police have to keep an open mind, and not everything about the night adds up. Like that argument, the one you overheard between Dolly and Fred earlier. Even though you're pretty confident in that memory, Dolly tells the police there was no fight, that everything was totally normal between her and Fred, which is a little strange. But Dolly couldn't have shot Fred.
I mean, she didn't put herself in the closet. She was locked inside. The key was outside the door in the keyhole. Someone put her there. Police found a fingerprint on the handle that didn't belong to Dolly or Fred. But that's the other strange part. If someone was there, where did they go?
Sure, the burglar could have snuck out the back or something, but you were staring at the house and you never saw anyone leave. Neither did any of the other neighbors. Plus, police searched the entire place. They didn't find anyone but Dolly home. Poor, shaken, scared Dolly. Unfortunately, the police don't catch whoever murdered Fred. And eventually, Dolly sells the house.
And I mean, can you blame her? Who wants to live with those memories? The good news for Dolly is money isn't an issue. Fred left her an estate worth over $230,000, the equivalent of about $4.5 million in 2026. So, you know, she'll be fine. Months pass and you kind of forget about Dolly. Last year, she moved into an expensive apartment and started seeing other men.
She managed to move on from the worst night of her life. And then one day, you open up the newspaper and there she is again, Dolly. Turns out she's in jail now. Police are holding her under suspicion of murder, all because a new witness came forward with a story about Dolly. The witness says just a few days after Fred's death, she asked him for his help, getting rid of a gun.
Asking someone to get rid of a gun a few days after your husband is shot to death is suspicious behavior. But Dolly Ostrich didn't just ask one person to get rid of a gun. She asked two. And they both agreed. One was a movie producer. The other was a neighbor. She gave them each a different semi-automatic pistol and then asked them to dispose of it.
The movie producer threw his in the La Brea tar pits. The neighbor buried his in the backyard. And the two men didn't know about each other. They both thought they were independently helping out Dolly. Why agree to do something so shady? Well, according to both men, they couldn't imagine Dolly having a hand in Fred's death.
So when she says she was afraid of looking guilty if the police found the guns, they agreed to help her. That's the story they tell police. If it sounds like there could be more context, that's because there is. Dolly was in a relationship with at least one of the men, the movie producer. Their affair either started during her marriage or very shortly after Fred's death.
But either way, disposing of the gun was more than just a favor for a friend. It was a favor for someone he was either already sleeping with or someone he wanted to. Why the sudden change of heart? The guy only came forward after Dolly ended their relationship.
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Chapter 3: What evidence was found at the crime scene?
It's still possible Dolly could be telling the truth, that she really is innocent. She was just so afraid of looking guilty, she acted a little irrationally. And I say all that because police look for evidence to prove Dolly's guilt. They can think of plenty of reasons why Dolly might have wanted Fred dead, his wealth being the most obvious.
But at the end of the day, they can't crack the mystery of the closet. The way detectives see it, the only way Dolly had a hand in Fred's death is if she knew his killer and if whoever it was helped her stage the crime scene. Now, Who could that be?
Well, during their investigation, detectives hear some vague rumors of a possible affair between Dolly and some other man, and they're not talking about the film producer. This man could be a suspect, but they never actually find that person, someone they can place inside the house that night.
So newspapers start calling this hypothetical mystery man Dolly's phantom lover, like she's sleeping with a ghost. But Dolly tells police they can't find her phantom lover because he doesn't exist. They're barking up the wrong tree. It really was just a burglary. That's the plain and simple truth. And without evidence to prove otherwise, Dolly's story eventually wins out.
It becomes the official story. But before police release Dolly from jail, she receives a very important visit. It's from a man named Herman Shapiro. He's not just Dolly's visitor. Oh no, he's her live-in boyfriend and her estate lawyer. Dolly started seeing Herman right around the time she ended things with the movie producer.
You know, the one who got mad and went to the police about the gun she gave him to dump. By then, Herman and Dolly had already moved in together, into the fancy new apartment she bought with Fred's money. As her lawyer, Herman handled everything after Fred's death. As her boyfriend, he believed every word of her grieving widow's story. Which is why he hasn't told police about everything he knows.
Like the diamond watch. At one point, Dolly gifted Herman a very expensive watch, the exact same kind she told police was stolen the night Fred was killed. When he asked about it, she actually admitted it was the stolen watch. She said it had just... turned up later, tucked under a window seat cushion. Isn't that funny? Which is wildly suspicious.
But Herman either doesn't see it or doesn't want to. So he keeps that little detail to himself. Even when things are about to get a whole lot stranger, and when I say a lot stranger, I mean beyond bizarre. Okay, during his visit with Dolly in jail, Dolly confesses something to Herman. And no, it's not a murder confession, but it does feel straight out of a horror film.
She's like, you know the apartment we've been living in? We have a roommate that you don't know about. He's hiding somewhere secret and he's definitely hungry. What did I tell you? So yes, it's weird, right? But trust me, it gets even weirder because then Dolly gives Herman instructions on what he needs to do next.
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Chapter 4: Who was Otto and what was his role in the murder?
He comes out only when Dolly signals it's safe. They have lots of sex, and Otto helps maintain the house. Other than that, he takes up a hobby, making bathtub gin, eats whatever Dolly feeds him, and earns whatever cash she can spare. He spends his nights reading mystery books by candlelight, whatever Dolly picks up for him from the library, and he dreams of becoming a Pulp Fiction writer.
He writes all kinds of stories, mostly about wild adventures. the kind he's not having locked away in an attic. But he apparently sells a few. I don't know how he got an agent, but he does. He sells a few, which he publishes under a pen name. And he's not just living in this attic out in the open. Most of the time, he's in a secret compartment with just a cot and a desk.
So Fred really has no idea. He doesn't understand why things sometimes disappear from the house or what's causing that strange noise and shadows that come out at night. But Fred got his answer on August 22nd, 1922. Otto was 27 years old by that point and still living in the attic. He heard Dolly and Fred come home from their evening out.
They were fighting, and according to Otto, it was bad enough that he thought Dolly was in danger, that Fred was going to seriously hurt her, so he came down from his hiding spot, still in his pajamas, with a gun. Otto claims that when Fred saw him, he attacked him, and that's the only reason he shot Fred. It was self-defense. He then locked Dolly in the closet to make it seem like a burglary.
He crawled back into the attic and waited for the heat to die down. Obviously, he moved with Dolly into the attic of her apartment after she sold the house. Dolly told Herman to bring him food because she was worried about Otto's health. And now, here they are, all these years later, Dolly's sex slave talking to Dolly's new boyfriend about the murder of Dolly's husband.
Like I said, Otto doesn't tell Herman everything right away. That takes time. Time when, presumably, Herman, Dolly, and Otto are all living under the same roof. Because Dolly gets cleared and released from jail in 1923. No charges are ever brought against her. And Otto apparently doesn't leave the apartment until 1925.
So I have to assume they're all roommates at some point, like they're living in a bizarro version of that show, Three's Company, except it's called The Oddthrupple, and one of them lives in the attic. I'd watch that. But what's even more bizarre is that after Herman learns the whole truth about everything, he doesn't go to the police, and he doesn't leave Dolly either.
I don't know what she's doing to these men to make them so cooperative, but when Herman finally finds out about the murder, he just kicks Otto out of the apartment. And he continues dating Dolly. So, for years, the truth of what really happened that night of Fred's murder stays hidden. And things might have stayed that way if it weren't for Dolly's wondering eyes.
After Dolly breaks things off with Herman in 1930, she's faced with the wrath of another scorned lover. Herman goes to the police and spills the beans about everything. And even though Herman uses the name Walter, police are able to track Otto down. For a man who managed to stay hidden for years, he's surprisingly easy to find. He's working as a janitor in an apartment complex in LA.
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