There is a house on St.Christopher Street, a three-story structure which, although a bit larger than its neighbors, blends in well today. An observer nowadays would be unable to notice anything which would indicate that this house was once the site of a very unusual story, one which cause a lot of discussion across the whole city, not just on Jefferson Hill. During the Depression era the house sat empty while neighbors called it the "Death House" or [by those who felt it necessary -- and such are always with us -- to specify ethnicity] the "German Death House." Were it not for the World WarII housing shortage, it likely would have sat empty until sometime during the postwar boom. On a Friday afternoon in August 1926, Herman Bohmeister, a resident of this house was found walking about the neighborhood wearing only shoes and socks, muttering German words likely too incoherent to translate, and carrying a satchel containing a large amount of money, reported in the contemporary press as being in excess of $20,000. In 1926, Herman Bohmeister was 45 years old. He had never been married and had lived in the St. Christopher Street house since 1885, when his Austrian-born parents moved him and his three older sisters there. Herman's sisters all died young, the last in 1895. After that Friederich and Anna seldom left that house, sending Herman out to tend to their business. Although they had been practicing Catholics and had buried their daughters in a Catholic cemetery, they stopped attending mass at St. Gertrude's. Since they spoke German almost entirely, it is unlikely that their non-German neighbors missed their presence. What little maintenance of house and yard was done was done by Herman at twilight. His business seemed to be collecting junk for resale and he left early almost every morning in that pursuit. He also did an occasional odd jobs for neighbors. He would bring whatever his parents seemed to need when he returned in the late afternoon or early evening. On this summer day in 1926, neighbors told police and press that Herman had been seen less frequently in recent months. After Herman was found muttering, three police officers went to the house to contact his parents. When their banging on the door went unanswered, the three officers entered the house through a partially open front door. The stench cause one of them to keel over and retch immediately upon entering. The others somehow maintained their stomachs and equilibrium and proceeded to find two incompletely mummified and largely decomposed bodies inside -- Friederich in a rear first floor room and, a minutes later, Anna in a bedroom upstairs. The Ramsey County coroner was unable to make any definite conclusion about the time or the cause of death for either Friederich or Anna. He was able to determine that Anna had been dead for several years, Friederich for at least several months. Local newspaper investigations revealed that Friederich Bohmeister would have been 88 in September of 1926 and Anna Bohmeister would have been 77th in November; the records at Oakland Cemetery list their ages accordingly, Neighbors had suspected that the Bohmeisters who owned a large house debt-free and never seemed to have to go to work anyplace had means, they were amazed to learn that authorities found cash and securities in excess of $40,000 on the premises. They never learned how the couple attained such wealth, but they seemed to think that Friederich had made some wise investments. Although the authorities could never reveal the cause of the deaths, neighbors had no shortage of theories. Some thought that Herman had killed them; others thought that Friederich had killed Anna and himself died of old age; others yet thought that they had both died of natural causes, likely aided and abetted by denial of medical treatment, and that for some reasons the family could not bring itself to use the services of an undertaker. The latter theses are buttressed by the different locations of the bodies, that Herman by himself would have had trouble taking a body upstairs, but that Friederich and Herman combined could have managed to do it. The last theory was further augmented by the coroner's conclusion that Friederich had likely died from natural causes. Critics would point out that there was no evidence that Anna was not already upstairs when she died. While the coroner's conclusion in Freiderich's case might have also suggested the possibility of natural deaths, public discussion seemed more interested in the more sensational speculations. Herman never did anything to solve things; he never spoke a coherent sentence in any language his hearers would have known until his death at the St. Peter State Hospital in 1929 The forensic science of the era never explained exactly what had happened in the Bohmeister family home. Some of the answer may lie in cemeteries-- in Oakland Cemetery with Friederich and Anna's remains, in the cemetery at the St.Peter hospital where Herman's remains were placed, and maybe in Calvary Cemetery where the bodies of Herman and Anna's three daughters were placed. Neighbors were surprised to find out that more than $40,000 in cash and securities was found in the house. They had assumed that the Bohmeisters, who owned a house and never went out to work, were people of means, but the degree of wealth astounded them. The source of the wealth was never established, although it appears that Friederich Bohmeister had made some wise or lucky investments. Although a lot of people had ideas, nobody seems to be able to definitively state what happened to the Bohmeister fortune. Good evidence is hard to find. If there were any Ramsey County probate records, they seem to have disappeared. There were no surviving relatives in the United States. The house went into tax forfeiture at least twice and, as noted, stayed vacant until World War II. The Bohmeister house sat empty until the mid-1930's when it was bought by an enterprising fellow whose ideas exceeded his capital. It was finally occupied again in the days of World War Two housing shortages when, with minimum repair, it was divided into many units. In the mid-1970's it was purchased by an owner who made extensive repairs and made the building into a duplex. He sold the house to Ronald and Diane Williamson in 1991. The Williamsons still live in the upper unit and rent the lower one. The story was big at the time. Had television news existed the story and its follow-up would have filled major portions of a sweeps month and a made-for-television movie would seem a certainty. Public conversations seemed drawn to the story. But today, it is likely that many people who live on the Jefferson Hill now don't even know of the history of the house on St. Christopher Street. In its early days of reuse, some people moved out of the building after learning its history. They wouldn't live in a "ghost house," they said. But the house still stands and once in a while somebody who has heard the story drives by, looks at the building and maybe takes a picture. The visitors may try to start a conversation with neighbors, but the neighbors usually cannot provide any illumination. And Ronald and Diane Williamson won't speak about it. |
| The Bohmeister Mystery |