November 13, 2024 • 51 mins
In this week's episode, Paul and Kate head to 1914 San Antonio, Texas where a wealthy man's wife has an accident and becomes bedridden. After hiring nurses and caregivers, a murder takes place that has multiple suspects pointing fingers.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes, and I.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights
to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey, Paul, Hi, Kate, you're wearing your glasses today.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I know my eyes were itchy and I just couldn't
do the context today. Don't shame me, listeners, Sometimes I
can't do it. So I was thinking about you and
your white jacket role at Authorm, which I know you
don't wear a white jacket when you're there, but that's
how I picture you. Oh geez, And I wanted to
ask you a little bit about what is the evolution
(01:27):
of forensics? Where are we heading? I always keep thinking, oh,
DNA is going to get better and better DNA analysis
will get more accurate. There has to be something sexier
than that. And I know that evolving DNA and getting
better at the analysis of DNA is important, But is
there anything else that you can talk to that that
is improving with time that we're going to be able
to use to solve crimes.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, you know, a lot of forensics over the years,
you know, there has been somewhat of an evolution, no
matter what type of forensic discipline that you're talking about.
Of course, god, it may have been even over a
year ago. You know, we've talked about how some of
the forensic sciences have you know, sort of taken a
back seat. They in some instance has just been completely discredited.
(02:11):
In others the conclusions that could be drawn from them
have been shown relatively weak. And then we're seeing today,
you know, I think, of course, starting with Golden State Killer,
sort of the huge revolution of the use of genealogy
to solve cases, and that's something that is going to
(02:31):
continue to move forward. The reality is is that the
types of samples that you deal with from cases, whether
they're collected at a crime scene or collected from the
victim's body, are often very poor samples, and so really
a lot of the advancement over the last six years
has been with the technology to be able to detect very,
(02:52):
very minute amounts of DNA, even if it's highly highly degraded.
And so that's where some cases where you think we
just don't have any thing today, we have the tools
to be able to at least generate the DNA profile.
I think, you know, across the board, the computerization that
has occurred over the course of the last three decades
or so, that's also been contributing to the advancement of
(03:16):
these various scientific disciplines. And of course the utilization of
artificial intelligence AI is something that I think is inescapable
to be applied to select aspects of forensics as we
move forward, whether that is helping automate the genealogy process,
or it's helping to put objective assessments of comparative sciences
(03:43):
and remove sort of the human bias you know that
might be present, and I could kind of see where
there may be movement that's not around the corner, but
it may be here sooner than later as time goes on.
Of course, just you can't talk about forensics without including
high tech. You know, I was on the early forefront
(04:04):
of high tech doing kind of a very rudimentary form
of that back in the late nineteen nineties, and then
had a criminalist assigned to the FBI's r CFL, their
Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory, and it just happened to be
the Silicon Valley site there in the Bay Area. And
I had started that back in the mid two thousands,
(04:26):
you know, And it's just recognizing that the pervasive aspect
of technology in our lives is a form of physical evidence.
It's not just the data of it, it's the hardware.
And as time goes on, you know, the public laboratories
and the public, you know, the law enforcement investigators, they're
(04:47):
just going to get better and better tools to be
able to utilize that type of evidence to help solve cases.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I had wondered, will there ever be a movement to
go through and correctly preserve evidence that is X number
of years old in cold case files across the country,
because you know, you and I talk about, oh, there
probably is biological evidence in this case from nineteen thirty
or something, particularly like a sexual assault case, but lord
(05:17):
knows how it's been preserved is there any kind of
an idea that this might be a good idea to
go and like correctly preserve this, not go through and
run DNA on everything, but at least preserve it so
that if money becomes available to these different departments, that
it would be you know, preserved correctly.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Well, in many instances that has happened. Okay, you know departments,
as they've you know, improved their property storage, improved their
property management, they've expanded their freezer storage, and the known
biological evidence is being put into freezers. Now, this is
(05:58):
not universal. In California, we had a case law people
versus Nation like nineteen eighty one eighty three timeframe which
in essence mandated law enforcement to start preserving biological evidence
in a proper way in terms of how it's packaged
as well as being in a refrigerated or frozen state.
(06:21):
So California, that's been going on for some time, and
that mandated departments large and small to start buying freezers
to start putting their evidence in there. Now, there are
departments that have gone you know, they get a cold
case investigator and he or she ends up going through
the evidence and now is saying, oh, this evidence a
sexual assault kit that's been you know, sitting out here
(06:42):
at room temperature you know, four years, needs to go
into a freezer. That type of thing does happen from
time to time. But I can think of even with
my old department. You know, there's old, old cases, commicide
cases in which there's bulky evidence things like clothing, jackets, mattresses, pillows,
(07:07):
sheets that you know, if they were to try to
put that into a freezer, they would rapidly run out
a freezer space. Yet those items could have biological evidence
that could solve the case. So you're you're kind of
stuck because you can't, realistically in the public sector by
a walk in freezer the size of a huge warehouse
to store all your bulky items in a frozen state
(07:29):
to preserve what might be present on there.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Well, I wanted to get you talking about forensics because
we have virtually no forensics in this story.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
That was a bait and switch.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Well, I wanted to get it over with because I
know you missed the forensics part of this and this
is all victimology. And really what I'm going to try
to do is see as we move along, who is
the likely victim and who is the likely killer in
this scenario. In what I feel like is a very
complicated situation between several people, I will tell you this
(08:09):
is a story of three Emmas. Getting your pencil out,
I have.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
To write this down. I'm A one, M A two,
and M A three. Huh.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Hey, that's what Marin did. Yes, and instead, because I
don't want to drive myself crazy with MM one, MMA two,
and m A three. It turns out that two out
of the three Emas actually had nicknames, so we're going
to go with their nicknames. So I just wanted you
to know that these are all three women named Emma,
and they are at the center of a really nasty story.
So let's go take a trip down to the great
(08:39):
state of Texas where I live, and let's set the
scene San Antonio. You know San Antonio, right.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I do. Actually I live there from fifth through the
seventh grade.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Okay, So this is nineteen tens, San Antonio, and this
happens in nineteen fourteen. Santa is the biggest city in
the state in this time period. In the decade of
the nineteen tens, the city is really exploding with its
population and the residents are wonderfully diverse, the US military
(09:13):
has opened flight training centers around this time period, and
there's an influx of pilots in San Antonio and a
lot of them go on to serve in World War One,
which will happen in just a few years. And on
top of that, there is a great community made up
of various cultures. On the heels of the Mexican Revolution.
We have a lot of Mexican immigrants in the city,
(09:34):
and there's a strong European presence, large German population, a
growing number of black residents also. So this is I
hate using the term melting pot because it feels generic,
but this really is a lot of people. It almost
feels like Gilded Age Manhattan to me, where there are
a lot of people living in a big city but
also closely together at the same time, which, as we know,
(09:57):
can be wonderful and it can also be tension filled.
And we've had those stories too.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Sure, you know, when you mentioned German population, all of
a sudden, I just had memories rush back into my
head about it's called the beer fest.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Is that uh huh? Yeah, it's a like worst fest, yes.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
For sure, you know, and going down there and enjoying
the German food and you know as a kid, it
was probably just their their brought worst or whatever it was,
but you know it was good.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
You have just I don't know how you do this
every time. You have just foreshadowed this story just with
the beer in German. You did it.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Well, there you go. Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
The main family that we're talking about is the Kayler
family and it's spelled k O e h l e R.
And the patriarch is Auto. He is a German immigrant.
He and his wife Emma live in San Antonio and
they are multi millionaires. We've talked about millionaires over and
(10:57):
over again. I feel like the last few stories we've
done are on multi millionaires. But I think these are
the first brewers that we've had on the show. Auto
runs a brewery called the San Antonio Brewing Association, which
produces a beer that they've called Pearl Beer. And it's
the largest, you know, brewery in Texas at the time.
(11:19):
And Pearl now is like a multi use section of
San Antonio. There's a great bookstore there. You know, it's
this great like segment of San Antonio and you can
go and there's wonderful restaurants and stuff. So I was
familiar with Pearl. When I read the story, I did
not know the origin of the story. So Atto Kaylor
and his wife live in San Antonio. He runs this brewery.
(11:42):
He is involved in mining and banking in real estate,
and they have just a huge amount of money. Things
take a turn in their family around nineteen ten, and
really the center of the story starts four years later.
But this is important. His wife, Emma, is involved in
a serious accident and it sounds like it was a
(12:04):
car accident, but I don't have any real confirmation of that.
But she needs a caregiver. Auto winds up hiring a
twenty something nurse from Germany to look after Emma. Her
name is Emma. Her full name is Emma Doomkey, but
you know we can call her Emmy. That's also a nickname,
so we're gonna go with Emmy. So Emma, the wife
(12:26):
is in a car accident and needs kind of full
time care. So Auto wants to hire a nurse and
he hires Emmy. Are you clear on this? Now? We've
got two Emmas, but it's really an Emma and an Emmy.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Paul, yep, I've got Emma. Emmy. Emma needs a caregiver.
Is the wife of Auto, and Emmy is a twenty
seven year old female who's the nurse that's going to
care for Emma.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Twenty something but probably twenty seven is a pretty good choice,
pretty estimation. So Emma and Emmy become close friends. But
as I know what happens times, Emmy and Auto have
a romantic relationship behind Emma's back, to a point where
he even buys a small house for her that's not
(13:09):
too far away from his house. The optics are pretty bad,
I think for Auto at this point, he has a
lot of money, his wife is bedridden, and he's having
an affair with the nurse, which is a story that's
very old.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
I mean this happens, yeah, and he has resources in
order to be able to, you know, kind of set
up a love shack.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, bungalow, love shack. I don't know if they had
love shacks back in nineteen ten, but there's like a
love bungalow maybe, I don't know. Little house, a little
house around the corner. So Emmy decides that she needs
a roommate. Another problem here. Her name is also Emma,
(13:49):
but we're going with her nickname, which is Heta, so
Heda Bergemeister, and she is an attractive blonde is how
she's described in her early thirties. She is also so German,
and she is a nurse, and so Auto hires her
as an additional member of his wife's care team. So
now we've got these two attractive women working with Emma,
(14:11):
and Auto is very busy, of course, So I don't
know why. I think in nineteen ten this would have
never happened, but it does. The three of these people
are now in a relationship. Heta, the last nurse, Emmy,
and then Auto all behind Emma's back. They're all in
a relationship that seems sort of more transactional than romantic transactional,
(14:33):
I think, in meaning Auto is paying them and he
gets to have sex with them, and that is that.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And do you know, do Emmy and head to know
that Auto is engaging with both of them?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Oh? Yeah, okay, for sure.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
So this is this is open and understood.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Open and understood. He deeds the small house to both
of these women, so now they're sharing the house and
they own it, and he gives them a generous monthly
stipend and in return. This is the Houston Chronicle newspaper
trying to be polite. In return. The chronicle says that
Auto is able to drop by once a week or
so for two or three hours for whatever he wants
(15:11):
to do. So, he is able to have two girlfriends,
he pays for a house, and he's getting nursing care
for his wife out of this. This does not seem
like a good setup for something. I don't know how
long this kind of a relationship can last. What do
you think about all this? I mean, this is not
a great and you know word true crime show. Somebody's
dead here?
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Well, you know, I think, you know, this is where
we get into this relationship Auto, Emmy and Heta. At
some point, are there feelings that develop between Auto and Emmy,
or feelings that develop between Auto and Heta, or even
Emmy and Heada that can cause a level of jealousy
with the others that are part of this triangle, right,
(15:54):
you know, I think just from you know, a human
nature aspect at some point that potentially could come into play,
you know, And of course with those types of emotions
can often breed a level of isolence. So I'll see
how this develops.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I'm going to show you a photo first of Auto
and Emma his wife. I mean, is this guy on
the right who you're picturing having two girlfriends around the
corner from his wife who is bedridden.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Well, you know that photo makes him look very distinguished
and wealthy, you know, so I could see where, you know,
two younger women could potentially be whether or not they
find him the most physically attractive man, but most certainly
his status, if you want to put it that way,
may increase their draw to him. His wife, Emma, she
(16:52):
looks I mean, she looks close to elderly. She looks
like Grandma in that photo she is. Yeah, But then
I take it this as Emmy and Heda.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
So Heada's an upper left and Emmy's in the center.
And I have not told you yet what's happening with
any of these people, but obviously there's a pretty big
difference between these two young women and his wife. I
feel like I just continue to be surprised by this
sort of scandalous thing happening in nineteen ten, which it
is silly, scandalous things happened so far back, but I
(17:26):
just felt like this was a little surprising to me
for some reason. But let's go through this. So this
arrangement seems to be fine. This happens for at least
a few years. So he is paying them to take
care of his wife. He is paying them to basically
be able to have sex with them a couple of
(17:47):
times a week, it sounds like, and they own a
house that he's given them. I don't know, I mean
a couple of years. That's a long time, yeah, But.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Over the course of years, I mean, you have you know,
just in relationships, the early part of the relationship is
what we often refer to as the honeymoon period, right,
you know, everybody's feeling good, emotions are high, you're in love.
Who knows with with Auto and Emmy and head to
if love is even a factor in this, As you
mentioned earlier, this may be strictly transactional on both sides.
(18:18):
They're benefiting through financial assets. They've gotten a house, he's
giving them a stipend. They're steadily employed. He's benefiting. He's
got these younger women that he's able to come over
and have sex with. And you know, it may be
just that, but also you know, jealousies, the emotions can develop,
(18:39):
you know, and it may not necessarily be somebody falls
in love with somebody else it may be where now
maybe Emmy is thinking that Head is getting more of
Auto's financial attention and now gets upset about that, or
vice versa. You know, different things can happen over the
course as the honeymoon period it fades, and now other
(19:01):
things are being looked at and some things go stale,
and you know, it's just this is all part of
any relationship.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
We're talking about a fifty five year old man who
isn't involved with a woman in her thirties, and then
a woman in her twenties. Now things get a little complicated.
And you could tell me, based on everybody's reactions what
you think this means. Everything seems to go okay as
far as we can tell, for a couple of years
with this arrangement, it doesn't sound like Emma the wife
(19:29):
knows they have a really big house. Still, he's so
safe that he puts these two women in a separate
house to make sure they aren't caught, even though, no joke,
this is a massive house. They probably could have had
privacy anywhere, but I suppose he's being extra careful. A
couple of years after this arrangement starts, Emmy, the very
first nurse tells Otto that she is getting married and
(19:54):
she is dumping him. She has had enough. She gets
married and becomes Emmy Dunkey Dauschel, and she moves to
Saint Louis with her new husband, and we are in
San Antonio, so she clears out, she leaves. In response, now,
I need you to be a man.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
So I'm not a man until you tell me you
need me to be a man.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
No, I need you to think like a man. I
don't want you to think like mister investigator, think like
a guy.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Okay he Auto, in.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Response, decides to propose to heat the second nurse. He
is married to Emma. Still she is alive. They've been
married for two decades. It sounds like Auto might actually
have more emotional stake in these relationships than the women do.
Why would he do that, He's already married, and he
proposed maybe to stop her from leaving.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Maybe, well it seems odd, but you know, I kinda
take a look. He's been a relationship with Emmy, if
you will. And then she obviously was seeing somebody to
a point to where she developed emotions and was proposed
to and agreed to marry this other man. And you know,
Auto may not have been completely clueless that this this
other man existed. So I can see where he felt
(21:12):
some sort of attachment, but it's not necessarily like a
you know, I love you, I want to marry you
type of attachment to Emmy. But in many ways Auto
may be feeling rejected, you know, because he's been coming over,
he's been taking care of her financially, setting her up
in the house, being employed, and then now she's like, nope,
(21:32):
see him. So I can see where he could be
a little bit upset under those circumstances. I just don't
see where. Okay, Emmy's out of the picture, and so
that now frees him up to all of a sudden
develop some deep emotional connection to Heta. I also with
his business savvy, if you will, I wonder if marrying
(21:56):
Heada would somehow, I mean Heada and Emmy share the
deed on this residence, you know, And is there some
sort of financial aspect that he's tried to protect, you know,
by marrying Heada. I don't know, but I'm not even
sure how during this era, how would the courts permit
him to marry Heada if he is still legally married
(22:19):
to Emma.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I don't think they would, and I think that a
divorce is well, certainly a divorce was more difficult in
nineteen fourteen than it would have been, you know now,
it would have been difficult. My mom and I were
just talking about and it's not a great conversation to have,
I guess, but about people who just go from relationship
to relationship. They don't want to be alone and they
don't want to break up their pattern. I wondered if
(22:45):
he was so used to having one of those two
women or both old women available to him, that he
sort of freaked and didn't want to change anything. Probably
somebody who has made that amount of money. And remember
what I told you what he did for a living.
He was in banking and mining estate deals. He had
this brewery. This is someone who was on a very
specific schedule. I mean, he was accomplishing thing after thing.
(23:08):
He had to stay organized. And I wonder if he thought,
with Emmy leaving, that maybe Heda would fall in love
with someone and leave, and then would he ever find
this relationship with sorry to say, two hot young women.
Ever Again, probably not. I mean, maybe he was desperate.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
No, I think that's that's a fair way to look
at it from a man's perspective, an aging man perspective.
So here you go, I'm giving you a guy perspective
if you will. I mean, Auto is in essence my age,
you know, so you look so much.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Younger, though, Paul, I have to say nineteen fourteen was
rough on men. I think he looks like he's in.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
His six in his mid to late sixties to me, yeah,
you know, and that's well, that's an interesting aspect when
you look at photos of individuals from this time and
they look so much older than what their age actually is.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
You know. But I'm just thinking, you know, the insecurities
as a guy when you get older, you know, and
now it's like, oh, I am losing I'm never going
to get the chance again to have this type of
relationship that he Auto is obviously enjoying over the course
of several years. And so maybe he is latching onto
Heda just to preserve that aspect.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
I just in nineteen fourteen, don't see quote unquote proper women,
professional women like a nurse or something being willing to
do this. He gets to see them in the house,
maybe he gets to sneak a little you know, nookie
with him while they're in the house everyone, So it's
very convenient for Auto. And when this is fifty percent
of his resource, here is left. I think he springs
(24:46):
this question on Heda. Now she says, hell no, and
she sounds like very sweet. Actually, she sounds like a
nice woman. She said, missus Kaylor is a sick woman,
and I would never leave her behind, meaning like I
would not go and marry you and let you ditch
her when she's sick and helpless. She is not professing
(25:08):
her love for Auto and saying I really wish I
could marry you. What she's saying is this is not
practical and this is not nice to do to your wife.
So she said no to him. She turned him down.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, you know, but she still does have benefit by
maintaining the financial relationship with Auto. And I'm wondering, even
though she's saying no, I don't want to marry you,
is there still going to be this, for lack of
a better term, conjugal aspect to their relationship or is
she just going nope, I'm cutting you off completely from
any type of physical interaction.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Now, that's the short answer. She is hopeful that he
wants to continue this financial arrangement and he is happy.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
To do it.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Now we come to the time where we are going
to have a killer and a victim and also trying
to figure out, you know, what the motive is here.
It's November twelfth, nineteen fourteen. Emmy is back, so now
their little trio is complete. She wants to go visit Heda.
She's married though, and Auto is slated to stop by
(26:12):
Heada's little house that same evening like he does often.
So this has, you know, continued on. It sounds like
Auto was fine with not being able to marry her,
but that you know, as long as this arrangement continues,
that he was happy. So some of the newspaper reports
said that he owed head To some money. I don't
(26:33):
know if that was just like her monthly allowance. I
know she got an allowance and she got paid. But
he was going to stop by because of that and
probably for sex, we don't know. So Emmy is home
at her old house, Heada is home and Auto comes
between four o'clock and five o'clock. Shortly after he arrives,
there are three gunshots heard from the house, so neighbors
(26:58):
rush over and locate who the victim is at this point,
this could be one of three people. I mean, I
think the only one is who is safe in this
scenario is Emma, the wife who's at home in bed.
But you've got the woman who left who he might
have feelings for, who dumped him. You've got the woman
who turned down his marriage proposal. And then you have Auto,
(27:20):
who clearly is this sleazy man who is you know,
in hopes of controlling these women to a certain extent.
So if you were a betting man, and I have
no idea if you are, who would you think the
victim is in this situation? Three shots?
Speaker 2 (27:33):
When you say who is the victim? I mean, is
there a chance that there's victims?
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Maybe?
Speaker 2 (27:39):
You know? On one hand, like you say the three
gun shots, I mean I could see a murder suicide
Auto and Emmy. I could see murder suicide Auto and Heda.
You know, okay, if I were to bet and part
of this is just being you know, the bias is
Bado's the shooter and he could be taking both these
(28:00):
women out. There could be as I mentioned before, the
feeling of rejection with Emmy, there may be a financial
aspect with her running off with this other man, but
also possessing, you know, fifty percent of the property he has.
Heda just rejected him for marriage, and he may may
be deciding that, you know what, it's time that this
(28:22):
comes to end. And if he feels that he can
somehow get away with taking out both these women, that
may preserve his social status, may preserve his financial assets
as long as he gets away with the crime. I
don't know. I think that's where I would lean, but
I think, you know, in this dynamic, just about any
permutation of a crime in terms of somebody ending up
(28:43):
dead as possible.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Well, I like your guests, that's a good one, and
I think that that makes sense. When the neighbors come
after they hear the shots, they rush in and nobody's
around until they get to Heada's bedroom. Hedda is there
and Auto is is the person who was murdered. He
has been shot three times with a thirty two caliber revolver.
(29:07):
Hetta is discovered kneeling by Auto's body. She has a
self inflicted cut to her wrist, so the suggestion is
is that she was trying to die by suicide. There
is a bloody knife laying on the ground next to her,
and two handguns are nearby. She tells the police, I'm sorry,
but I had to kill him. And this is where
(29:29):
the story gets complicated. If you thought a love affair
between two nurses who you're paying to come over a
couple times a week and your wife is bedridden was
not complicated enough, trying to figure out why she killed
this man is more complicated.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Huh. So, right now, this was a murder suicide where
the suicide attempt failed.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Right, Heda is immediately setting up a self defense defense here.
So first, let me tell you about the bullets. According
to reporting by these so she depressed. One bullet broke
his neck, another penetrated this skull just below the left eye,
and a third had entered his breast. It was a
(30:12):
I told you, thirty two caliber revolver. It was Heada's gun.
She carried a gun, and I did not know this,
but many, many, the majority of women carried guns in
this time period, which I don't know why I was surprised,
but I was. Yet again, I'm surprised by one of
our stories. So there's two guns, one is his and
one is heads.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
And where would he normally carry his gun?
Speaker 1 (30:33):
So it does not say where he got the gun from.
But he had a gun according to the women, on him,
and there's a gun there that doesn't belong to either
of them, and they've identified that belongs to Otto.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Okay, you know, so when you say that Hedda is
setting up a self defense, she's probably making statements that
he came into the room, he drew the gun, and
therefore she had to shoot him because he pointed the
gun at her.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
It's a lot more physical than that. It's not that simple.
There is the discussion of the argument and he, they say,
becomes physical with the two of them, these two women,
and that's why it's self defense. And that's why she
said to police, I'm sorry, but I had to kill him.
So you know, we can talk about what happens next.
She is whisked off to a hospital because of the
(31:20):
wrist wound and put under police supervision. While her wounds
are tended to, she makes a full recovery. Emmy, who
was there, is put under surveillance, but she's never charged
with any crime related to Auto's death, so it's really
all focused on Heda. According to the Houston Chronicle, the
(31:41):
Kayler family told one of the newspapers that there had
been a dispute over a bill that Heada had submitted
for Emma's care. Auto drove to the house to settle
the matter, and this is from his family's point of view.
When he and Heda started arguing, she got fright and
went for her gun. That's kind of what Hetta says
(32:04):
happened too. She says she killed him in self defense.
She said that Auto had been apparently choking Emmy. Emmy
says that she thought that Auto was going to shoot
her because he had a gun. I don't know at
what point we can call it self defense or not
when it's the only two people who survived are saying
(32:24):
that the victim is the one who was the aggressor.
So how do you even sort something like that out?
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Well, this is you know, in terms of trying to
get you have two living individuals in this crime. Right,
Auto can't make statements, but Emmy and head It can
make statements. And of course it is going to be
dependent upon was there any cooperation and agreements made between
(32:51):
these two ahead of time? You know, was this a
planned homicide? However, once investigators arrive on scene or once
law enforcement rise on seeing those two absolutely have to
be separated and interviewed to try to determine, you know,
or lock in their statements early early on. But I know,
you know, we opened up this episode and saying, this
(33:14):
isn't a forensics case. Oh yes, it is, Oh okay,
because now we have to take a look at what
Heada is saying and what Emmy's saying, how you know
things went down, But also take a look at the
trajectories of the bullets. You know, where are they entering,
(33:34):
Is there any indications of distance on these wounds? What
is the the you know, the flight path you know
that these bullets took And do these trajectories and all
the other assorted firearms evidence line up with the statements
that HEADA and Emmy are saying, you know, so there
is a forensics component that could say, hold on, you're
(33:57):
saying you were standing over there and he's strangling Emmy
and so you took out your gun and shot him
or whatever the story is. Does that match up with
the physical evidence?
Speaker 3 (34:09):
You know?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
So that's where you know, if I'm looking at this
case today, that's one of the things I would really
be keying in on.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
One of the issues I think with this story. Also,
I mean, besides that, I don't have some of the
diagrams and everything that we're looking at here. We really
just have people's words and their descriptions what makes sense
and what doesn't. So it sounds like some of the
statements I think this must have been Emmy say that
that afternoon, Auto came in, rushed past Emmy in the
(34:39):
living room, and headed straight to Heada's bedroom. She was
laying on the bed with a cloth covering her eyes.
It sounds like he tried to kiss her and she
got mad. He threatens her and pulls out a gun
and she shoots him with this thirty two revolver. One
of the things the prosecutor is going to talk about
is how many shots she took and did she shoot
(35:02):
him when he was already on the ground. And I've
heard that in other cases too. That makes a difference, right,
Does that make a difference to jurors whether or not
it seems like the person has been incapacitated and you
continue shooting. Then it's like, all of a sudden, it's like,
oh no, that's not self defense. They were already on
the ground. What are you doing? Of course not, this
is malicious.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, it all depends on the circumstances, you know, And
I think you can make arguments in terms of, yes,
you've took it past self defense. You know, you've neutralized
the threat to the person's down on the ground. However,
you are likely dealing with a naive shooter. You don't
know if you've neutralized the threat or not, and so
(35:41):
now you continue to shoot, and it's not indicating that
it's wasn't initially that the shooting itself wasn't initially started
because of a self defense aspect, you know. So that's
it's almost like it's a follow through if you will,
you know. And that's that's really for prosecutors the DA's
(36:02):
when they're assessing a case on how to charge the case,
they are going to be assessing those types of human elements.
But you know, under that scenario where she's laying on
the bed and he comes up to kiss her and
they get mad, does she indicate while she's on the
bed and while he's that close to her, is when
she shoots him.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
No, we're going to have to take a tiny, tiny
detour because she has shut up for now and she
has been charged with murder. The twist is she takes
off before the court date. She leaves and goes back
to Germany and she's gone. I know Heda, so listen
to I mean, these women, this is interesting. She has
(36:40):
gone for it looks like at least two to three years.
And because she's a nurse and it's World War One,
she tends to wounded soldiers during World War One, while
she is on the run from murder charges in Texas.
She decides inexplicably to go back to Texas because she
wants to have a criminal trial and declare that this
(37:04):
was self defense and she wants to come back, and
she says, bring it on, I want to have a
self defense case. Let's do it. That seems like an
awful idea. Why not stay in Germany? I mean, I
don't know, Well, maybe staying in Germany during World War
One is not a great idea.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
That may be part of it, you know, getting to motive,
Heta loses so much by killing Otto, so from a
planned homicide standpoint, there has to be some other mitigating
factor for Heada to go. I need to take him out.
So absent any knowledge of any of that type of
(37:41):
mitigating factor, you know, this is where Okay was this
a self defense issue. I could see that from Heada's standpoint,
if Auto ended up becoming physically aggressive and or pulls
the gun out during this argument, that would make sense.
So it negates Head's reliance upon Auto's finances, you know,
(38:04):
because she loses that when he's dead. Her coming all
the way back, I mean, she's I couldn't imagine extradition
out of Germany from World War One. I don't think
that's happening. She's untouchable over there, so she was free
and clear. So for her to come back and in
essence roll the dice at trial, you know, that tends
(38:26):
to suggest to me that there's a level of truthfulness
to what Heada is saying happened.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Well, let's see what happens. She is rearrested. She is
unwavering in her claim that she acted in self defense
to protect her and Emmy, because Emmy was there too.
He was angry, he was aggressive, he was mad because
had has said don't kiss me for whatever reason. And
she is on the stand. Another reason she probably shouldn't
(38:53):
have done this. She is on the stand, which I
normally would not think is a good idea. But the
DA says to head, exactly what I had mentioned to
you before. Did you shoot him on the floor after
he was dead? I guess, indicating we're you know, this
was passion and you were mad and you were aggressive,
not him, you were aggressive. She says, I don't know.
(39:15):
I only know I shot him as he raised the pistol.
I thought he would get me, and I shot him again.
And then she says this, Paul, then I raised the
pistol to my head and pulled the trigger. And the
DA says how many times? And she says, I don't know.
Obviously it didn't work. I guess she unloaded all the bullets.
(39:35):
But he says then later on, well, it sounds like
you had better aim at mister Kayler than you did
it yourself, to which I guess she couldn't say anything. So,
if we believe Heda, she kills auto and then she
attempts to take her own life twice.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
That's what the gun as well as with this incisive
injury to her wrist from the knife. Right yep, So
again there's a forensic opponent to this. She's I had
a thirty two revolver that she's putting to her head
and pulling the trigger. She says twice. Right. Depending on
the making model a gun. This is where you know,
getting a good firearms expert, sometimes you can see evidence
(40:15):
that there the cartridge, the round that is underneath the
hammer at the time she pulls the trigger, or the
way it rotates. When you pull the trigger on a revolver,
it rotates the live round, and then you'll see the
hammer drop and you potentially could have some evidence to show, yes,
you know that round, you know there was an attempt
(40:37):
to fire that round based on maybe a very subtle
firing pin impression or some other aspect. But this goes
to when that gun is initially collected, it needs to
be thoroughly documented as to you have a cylinder, and
depending on the make and model, let's say six or
six rounds in this cylinder, you have six light do
(41:01):
you have let's say in this her scenario, there's three
shots to auto. Are there three expended rounds out of
our thirty two? And then where are the other three
rounds located at? Is there evidence that they potentially did
have hammer strikes or firing pin strikes on them? You know?
And that's all just part of what we do routinely
(41:22):
in this day and age at a crime scene, or
if I've got the weapon back in the lab, I'm
documenting all of that and unloading the weapon, and then
that goes to a firearms examiner who then is able
to start to ascertain, you know, what exactly are the
dynamics that the physical evidence can answer under the scenario
(41:43):
of Heda not remembering how many shots she fired or
whether or not she remembered firing into him after he's
laying down, that's not an unusual occurrence in this type
of scenario. If this was truly a traumatic event for Heda,
she's doing this in self defense. Human memory is goofy.
(42:04):
We see this all the time with auser and ball shootings.
When you talk to the shooting officer when they're interviewed,
they don't know the number of rounds they shot. Sometimes
they put themselves in a different position out at the
crime scene than what the body cam or other video
footage shows. And this is just the normal aspect of
how human memory captures things during this traumatic and very
(42:28):
dynamic and very quick scenario.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Well, you know, let's talk about nineteen fourteen. I've done
stories in nineteen eighteen about a serial poisoner who no
one believed would have actually murdered people, just they could
not believe it. And I think that the DA is
in for an uphill battle here because the testimony that
(42:52):
she gives on the stand is compelling. The Sociated Press
says that courtroom spectators openly wept during this testimony, So
she sounds like she did a great job on the stand.
There was a recess and she walked back to the
stand and continue testifying. There's reportedly an outburst of clapping
from the men and women packed into the courtroom. The
(43:12):
testimony that she gave seems so compelling. It seemed like
she really framed Auto as this monster, and she was
defending herself. And it sounds like, Paul, everything you're saying
kind of lines up with why would she kill him?
You know, this doesn't make any sense unless it was
self defense.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Sure, you know, but as I mentioned, these are other
mitigating factors that existed or you haven't told me yet.
And then what has Emmy said.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Emmy backs up everything everything that hit us says, Emmy
says happened. So this is a case where you know,
you have these two women who are saying the same
thing that Auto was the aggressive one, and that they
were both scared and she saved both of their lives.
That is the opinion.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Did Auto have a life insurance policy in which they
were beneficiaries of Not that I know, Okay, I'm just
trying to look for some motive if they planned this, well,
let me.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Tell you what ends up happening. And maybe this gives
you any insight here. So I think everybody who's listening
knows where this is probably going to go. The court
in January of nineteen eighteen found that Hetta had acted
in self defense. She has declared not guilty. She turns
around and decides that she's going to sue his family
(44:31):
for twenty thousand dollars because he promised her twenty thousand dollars,
which by the way, is six hundred and thirty thousand
dollars today. I don't know if she received it. I
doubt it. I don't know if that was a true
claim or not. But she definitely had money on the mind.
And she ends up marrying one of the jurors. What
do you think about? I know those are two things
I smacked you in the face with the sorry.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
I'm not overly concerned about her turning around and doing
the civil suit. She was fortunate and that you know,
they acquitted her of the murder charges. If she's truly innocent,
she's been run through the ringer and is now going, hey,
you guys traumatize me. You cost me my reputation, my
financial earnings, whatever it is, you know, And that doesn't
(45:17):
speak one way or another in my mind in terms
of Heada's you know, if there's anything suspicious now marrying
the juror, you know, of course, it comes down to
when did they first interact? Were they doing google eyes
at each other during trial? You know, is there any
observations that maybe there had been some relationship established, because obviously,
(45:41):
you know, that's where that juror should be dismissed and
shouldn't be weighing in on guilt when it comes to Heada.
You know, so you know, what is the story behind that.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
I don't know. I wish I did. I know they
moved back into her bungalow that auto had deeded to
the to both women, and I guess probably she paid
emmy off, you know, and so now she owns his house.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
I still think this sounded like self defense. But you
never know, You've got three people, one of them's dead
and the other two have a very high interest in
protecting each other.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Yeah, you know, and that's I think the hardest thing
to be able to tease out in this case is
you do have Emmy and Heada who they're obviously got
some sort of close relationship. Yeah, they're sharing the same man.
They're getting the same financial resources from this guy. I
(46:37):
kind of go back to, you know, what I said
before is that you know, here we have relationships and
human nature occurring. Then we have a crime and we
have a homicide. And even though you indicated that this
isn't a forensics case, the reality is because of the
(46:57):
circumstances and the potential legiance between the only two witnesses
to this crime, one who's the defendant, this is where
you know, physical evidence needs to at least be assessed
and to determine is somebody lying. But right now I
(47:17):
think I'm with you. I think Heda was likely truthful.
This was self defense, and the most notable thing about
that is the fact that she came all the way
back from Germany to stand trial. They clear her name
in essence, and that's where I go Okay, she didn't
have to do that.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
No, well, let me tell you the ending of the story.
I actually don't know what happens to and to Emmy.
I'm assuming they go on hopefully and have nice lives.
Emma Kaylor, the widow, recovers from this awful accident with
the help of I guess there nurses. I don't know.
She becomes a very sort of strong, ambitious woman. She's
(47:57):
healthy enough to take over the brewery and keep it
afloat prohibition and the Great Depression, which I will tell
you was no easy feat. I'm sure. She puts a
lot of her own money into the brewery and it
becomes very, very successful. Eventually she sells to Paps and
around two thousand the company the Pearl Brewery is shut down.
(48:19):
But not long after the developer buys the property like
I told you before, and transforms it into this wonderful
development that you have to see. I think in San
Antonio known as the Pearl, and there is a well,
I think you're gonna like this. There is a world
class hotel called the Hotel Emma, which opened in twenty fifteen.
Oh wow, okay, and it has many of the original
(48:40):
brewery features you know that make it feel very authentic.
So new listen, you gotta let me get through this.
You'll appreciate this. You can if you go there, get
a cocktail that honors all three Emmas in one glass. Okay,
grapefruit juice, which is Texas fruit, is the base. Then
Emma number one, the wife who owned the brewery, gets
(49:03):
represented with a pearl beer with rose syrup. Emmy, the
first nurse is represented by sherry and Heta. The third
is gin and the saying this is funny. The saying
goes that one is great, but three will kill you.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Yeah. I was going to say that's that's a hangover
and waiting right there.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
I usually don't laugh at the end of murder stories.
But I don't know. We don't know what happened in
that house. We don't know what happened with those women.
I agree with you. I feel like the feeling is
if you're going off instinct, the feeling was self defense.
I don't know what was going through Otto's mind. I
know that he thought money could control two women, and
(49:47):
it did for quite a while. I think probably the
right outcome happened, and I'm glad that the pearl turned
out to be as wonderful as it was, and I'm
certainly glad that Emma, one of the victims in this circumstance,
ended up covering and became just an awesome businesswoman.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Yeah, you know, I think I'm convinced. I'm going to
go check out this Pearl area in San Antonio one
of these times. When I'm out there, maybe I'll visit
you in Austin and we can take a little road
trip down to San anton.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Along with a designated driver. If we're going to have
the three Emas, all right, folks, you heard that all
at once. One is great, but three will kill you. Okay, Well,
next week we will not have three m's. We could
have one. I don't know. Sometimes we probably every ninth episode.
I think there's an Emma throne in there. But we
will definitely have another compelling story. Maybe in Texas we
(50:36):
have so many of those, Maybe in Colorado, but we
will see.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
All right, well again, looking forward to it.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
This has been an exactly right production for our sources
and show notes go to exactly rightmedia dot com slash
Buried Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emiosi.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Bary Bones pod.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decote the
criminal mind, is available now, and
Speaker 1 (51:26):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes, and I.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights
to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey, Paul, Hi, Kate, you're wearing your glasses today.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I know my eyes were itchy and I just couldn't
do the context today. Don't shame me, listeners, Sometimes I
can't do it. So I was thinking about you and
your white jacket role at Authorm, which I know you
don't wear a white jacket when you're there, but that's
how I picture you. Oh geez, And I wanted to
ask you a little bit about what is the evolution
(01:27):
of forensics? Where are we heading? I always keep thinking, oh,
DNA is going to get better and better DNA analysis
will get more accurate. There has to be something sexier
than that. And I know that evolving DNA and getting
better at the analysis of DNA is important, But is
there anything else that you can talk to that that
is improving with time that we're going to be able
to use to solve crimes.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, you know, a lot of forensics over the years,
you know, there has been somewhat of an evolution, no
matter what type of forensic discipline that you're talking about.
Of course, god, it may have been even over a
year ago. You know, we've talked about how some of
the forensic sciences have you know, sort of taken a
back seat. They in some instance has just been completely discredited.
(02:11):
In others the conclusions that could be drawn from them
have been shown relatively weak. And then we're seeing today,
you know, I think, of course, starting with Golden State Killer,
sort of the huge revolution of the use of genealogy
to solve cases, and that's something that is going to
(02:31):
continue to move forward. The reality is is that the
types of samples that you deal with from cases, whether
they're collected at a crime scene or collected from the
victim's body, are often very poor samples, and so really
a lot of the advancement over the last six years
has been with the technology to be able to detect very,
(02:52):
very minute amounts of DNA, even if it's highly highly degraded.
And so that's where some cases where you think we
just don't have any thing today, we have the tools
to be able to at least generate the DNA profile.
I think, you know, across the board, the computerization that
has occurred over the course of the last three decades
or so, that's also been contributing to the advancement of
(03:16):
these various scientific disciplines. And of course the utilization of
artificial intelligence AI is something that I think is inescapable
to be applied to select aspects of forensics as we
move forward, whether that is helping automate the genealogy process,
or it's helping to put objective assessments of comparative sciences
(03:43):
and remove sort of the human bias you know that
might be present, and I could kind of see where
there may be movement that's not around the corner, but
it may be here sooner than later as time goes on.
Of course, just you can't talk about forensics without including
high tech. You know, I was on the early forefront
(04:04):
of high tech doing kind of a very rudimentary form
of that back in the late nineteen nineties, and then
had a criminalist assigned to the FBI's r CFL, their
Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory, and it just happened to be
the Silicon Valley site there in the Bay Area. And
I had started that back in the mid two thousands,
(04:26):
you know, And it's just recognizing that the pervasive aspect
of technology in our lives is a form of physical evidence.
It's not just the data of it, it's the hardware.
And as time goes on, you know, the public laboratories
and the public, you know, the law enforcement investigators, they're
(04:47):
just going to get better and better tools to be
able to utilize that type of evidence to help solve cases.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I had wondered, will there ever be a movement to
go through and correctly preserve evidence that is X number
of years old in cold case files across the country,
because you know, you and I talk about, oh, there
probably is biological evidence in this case from nineteen thirty
or something, particularly like a sexual assault case, but lord
(05:17):
knows how it's been preserved is there any kind of
an idea that this might be a good idea to
go and like correctly preserve this, not go through and
run DNA on everything, but at least preserve it so
that if money becomes available to these different departments, that
it would be you know, preserved correctly.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Well, in many instances that has happened. Okay, you know departments,
as they've you know, improved their property storage, improved their
property management, they've expanded their freezer storage, and the known
biological evidence is being put into freezers. Now, this is
(05:58):
not universal. In California, we had a case law people
versus Nation like nineteen eighty one eighty three timeframe which
in essence mandated law enforcement to start preserving biological evidence
in a proper way in terms of how it's packaged
as well as being in a refrigerated or frozen state.
(06:21):
So California, that's been going on for some time, and
that mandated departments large and small to start buying freezers
to start putting their evidence in there. Now, there are
departments that have gone you know, they get a cold
case investigator and he or she ends up going through
the evidence and now is saying, oh, this evidence a
sexual assault kit that's been you know, sitting out here
(06:42):
at room temperature you know, four years, needs to go
into a freezer. That type of thing does happen from
time to time. But I can think of even with
my old department. You know, there's old, old cases, commicide
cases in which there's bulky evidence things like clothing, jackets, mattresses, pillows,
(07:07):
sheets that you know, if they were to try to
put that into a freezer, they would rapidly run out
a freezer space. Yet those items could have biological evidence
that could solve the case. So you're you're kind of
stuck because you can't, realistically in the public sector by
a walk in freezer the size of a huge warehouse
to store all your bulky items in a frozen state
(07:29):
to preserve what might be present on there.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Well, I wanted to get you talking about forensics because
we have virtually no forensics in this story.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
That was a bait and switch.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Well, I wanted to get it over with because I
know you missed the forensics part of this and this
is all victimology. And really what I'm going to try
to do is see as we move along, who is
the likely victim and who is the likely killer in
this scenario. In what I feel like is a very
complicated situation between several people, I will tell you this
(08:09):
is a story of three Emmas. Getting your pencil out,
I have.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
To write this down. I'm A one, M A two,
and M A three. Huh.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Hey, that's what Marin did. Yes, and instead, because I
don't want to drive myself crazy with MM one, MMA two,
and m A three. It turns out that two out
of the three Emas actually had nicknames, so we're going
to go with their nicknames. So I just wanted you
to know that these are all three women named Emma,
and they are at the center of a really nasty story.
So let's go take a trip down to the great
(08:39):
state of Texas where I live, and let's set the
scene San Antonio. You know San Antonio, right.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I do. Actually I live there from fifth through the
seventh grade.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Okay, So this is nineteen tens, San Antonio, and this
happens in nineteen fourteen. Santa is the biggest city in
the state in this time period. In the decade of
the nineteen tens, the city is really exploding with its
population and the residents are wonderfully diverse, the US military
(09:13):
has opened flight training centers around this time period, and
there's an influx of pilots in San Antonio and a
lot of them go on to serve in World War One,
which will happen in just a few years. And on
top of that, there is a great community made up
of various cultures. On the heels of the Mexican Revolution.
We have a lot of Mexican immigrants in the city,
(09:34):
and there's a strong European presence, large German population, a
growing number of black residents also. So this is I
hate using the term melting pot because it feels generic,
but this really is a lot of people. It almost
feels like Gilded Age Manhattan to me, where there are
a lot of people living in a big city but
also closely together at the same time, which, as we know,
(09:57):
can be wonderful and it can also be tension filled.
And we've had those stories too.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Sure, you know, when you mentioned German population, all of
a sudden, I just had memories rush back into my
head about it's called the beer fest.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Is that uh huh? Yeah, it's a like worst fest, yes.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
For sure, you know, and going down there and enjoying
the German food and you know as a kid, it
was probably just their their brought worst or whatever it was,
but you know it was good.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
You have just I don't know how you do this
every time. You have just foreshadowed this story just with
the beer in German. You did it.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Well, there you go. Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
The main family that we're talking about is the Kayler
family and it's spelled k O e h l e R.
And the patriarch is Auto. He is a German immigrant.
He and his wife Emma live in San Antonio and
they are multi millionaires. We've talked about millionaires over and
(10:57):
over again. I feel like the last few stories we've
done are on multi millionaires. But I think these are
the first brewers that we've had on the show. Auto
runs a brewery called the San Antonio Brewing Association, which
produces a beer that they've called Pearl Beer. And it's
the largest, you know, brewery in Texas at the time.
(11:19):
And Pearl now is like a multi use section of
San Antonio. There's a great bookstore there. You know, it's
this great like segment of San Antonio and you can
go and there's wonderful restaurants and stuff. So I was
familiar with Pearl. When I read the story, I did
not know the origin of the story. So Atto Kaylor
and his wife live in San Antonio. He runs this brewery.
(11:42):
He is involved in mining and banking in real estate,
and they have just a huge amount of money. Things
take a turn in their family around nineteen ten, and
really the center of the story starts four years later.
But this is important. His wife, Emma, is involved in
a serious accident and it sounds like it was a
(12:04):
car accident, but I don't have any real confirmation of that.
But she needs a caregiver. Auto winds up hiring a
twenty something nurse from Germany to look after Emma. Her
name is Emma. Her full name is Emma Doomkey, but
you know we can call her Emmy. That's also a nickname,
so we're gonna go with Emmy. So Emma, the wife
(12:26):
is in a car accident and needs kind of full
time care. So Auto wants to hire a nurse and
he hires Emmy. Are you clear on this? Now? We've
got two Emmas, but it's really an Emma and an Emmy.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Paul, yep, I've got Emma. Emmy. Emma needs a caregiver.
Is the wife of Auto, and Emmy is a twenty
seven year old female who's the nurse that's going to
care for Emma.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Twenty something but probably twenty seven is a pretty good choice,
pretty estimation. So Emma and Emmy become close friends. But
as I know what happens times, Emmy and Auto have
a romantic relationship behind Emma's back, to a point where
he even buys a small house for her that's not
(13:09):
too far away from his house. The optics are pretty bad,
I think for Auto at this point, he has a
lot of money, his wife is bedridden, and he's having
an affair with the nurse, which is a story that's
very old.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
I mean this happens, yeah, and he has resources in
order to be able to, you know, kind of set
up a love shack.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, bungalow, love shack. I don't know if they had
love shacks back in nineteen ten, but there's like a
love bungalow maybe, I don't know. Little house, a little
house around the corner. So Emmy decides that she needs
a roommate. Another problem here. Her name is also Emma,
(13:49):
but we're going with her nickname, which is Heta, so
Heda Bergemeister, and she is an attractive blonde is how
she's described in her early thirties. She is also so German,
and she is a nurse, and so Auto hires her
as an additional member of his wife's care team. So
now we've got these two attractive women working with Emma,
(14:11):
and Auto is very busy, of course, So I don't
know why. I think in nineteen ten this would have
never happened, but it does. The three of these people
are now in a relationship. Heta, the last nurse, Emmy,
and then Auto all behind Emma's back. They're all in
a relationship that seems sort of more transactional than romantic transactional,
(14:33):
I think, in meaning Auto is paying them and he
gets to have sex with them, and that is that.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And do you know, do Emmy and head to know
that Auto is engaging with both of them?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Oh? Yeah, okay, for sure.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
So this is this is open and understood.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Open and understood. He deeds the small house to both
of these women, so now they're sharing the house and
they own it, and he gives them a generous monthly
stipend and in return. This is the Houston Chronicle newspaper
trying to be polite. In return. The chronicle says that
Auto is able to drop by once a week or
so for two or three hours for whatever he wants
(15:11):
to do. So, he is able to have two girlfriends,
he pays for a house, and he's getting nursing care
for his wife out of this. This does not seem
like a good setup for something. I don't know how
long this kind of a relationship can last. What do
you think about all this? I mean, this is not
a great and you know word true crime show. Somebody's
dead here?
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Well, you know, I think, you know, this is where
we get into this relationship Auto, Emmy and Heta. At
some point, are there feelings that develop between Auto and Emmy,
or feelings that develop between Auto and Heta, or even
Emmy and Heada that can cause a level of jealousy
with the others that are part of this triangle, right,
(15:54):
you know, I think just from you know, a human
nature aspect at some point that potentially could come into play,
you know, And of course with those types of emotions
can often breed a level of isolence. So I'll see
how this develops.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I'm going to show you a photo first of Auto
and Emma his wife. I mean, is this guy on
the right who you're picturing having two girlfriends around the
corner from his wife who is bedridden.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Well, you know that photo makes him look very distinguished
and wealthy, you know, so I could see where, you know,
two younger women could potentially be whether or not they
find him the most physically attractive man, but most certainly
his status, if you want to put it that way,
may increase their draw to him. His wife, Emma, she
(16:52):
looks I mean, she looks close to elderly. She looks
like Grandma in that photo she is. Yeah, But then
I take it this as Emmy and Heda.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
So Heada's an upper left and Emmy's in the center.
And I have not told you yet what's happening with
any of these people, but obviously there's a pretty big
difference between these two young women and his wife. I
feel like I just continue to be surprised by this
sort of scandalous thing happening in nineteen ten, which it
is silly, scandalous things happened so far back, but I
(17:26):
just felt like this was a little surprising to me
for some reason. But let's go through this. So this
arrangement seems to be fine. This happens for at least
a few years. So he is paying them to take
care of his wife. He is paying them to basically
be able to have sex with them a couple of
(17:47):
times a week, it sounds like, and they own a
house that he's given them. I don't know, I mean
a couple of years. That's a long time, yeah, But.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Over the course of years, I mean, you have you know,
just in relationships, the early part of the relationship is
what we often refer to as the honeymoon period, right,
you know, everybody's feeling good, emotions are high, you're in love.
Who knows with with Auto and Emmy and head to
if love is even a factor in this, As you
mentioned earlier, this may be strictly transactional on both sides.
(18:18):
They're benefiting through financial assets. They've gotten a house, he's
giving them a stipend. They're steadily employed. He's benefiting. He's
got these younger women that he's able to come over
and have sex with. And you know, it may be
just that, but also you know, jealousies, the emotions can develop,
(18:39):
you know, and it may not necessarily be somebody falls
in love with somebody else it may be where now
maybe Emmy is thinking that Head is getting more of
Auto's financial attention and now gets upset about that, or
vice versa. You know, different things can happen over the
course as the honeymoon period it fades, and now other
(19:01):
things are being looked at and some things go stale,
and you know, it's just this is all part of
any relationship.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
We're talking about a fifty five year old man who
isn't involved with a woman in her thirties, and then
a woman in her twenties. Now things get a little complicated.
And you could tell me, based on everybody's reactions what
you think this means. Everything seems to go okay as
far as we can tell, for a couple of years
with this arrangement, it doesn't sound like Emma the wife
(19:29):
knows they have a really big house. Still, he's so
safe that he puts these two women in a separate
house to make sure they aren't caught, even though, no joke,
this is a massive house. They probably could have had
privacy anywhere, but I suppose he's being extra careful. A
couple of years after this arrangement starts, Emmy, the very
first nurse tells Otto that she is getting married and
(19:54):
she is dumping him. She has had enough. She gets
married and becomes Emmy Dunkey Dauschel, and she moves to
Saint Louis with her new husband, and we are in
San Antonio, so she clears out, she leaves. In response, now,
I need you to be a man.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
So I'm not a man until you tell me you
need me to be a man.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
No, I need you to think like a man. I
don't want you to think like mister investigator, think like
a guy.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Okay he Auto, in.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Response, decides to propose to heat the second nurse. He
is married to Emma. Still she is alive. They've been
married for two decades. It sounds like Auto might actually
have more emotional stake in these relationships than the women do.
Why would he do that, He's already married, and he
proposed maybe to stop her from leaving.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Maybe, well it seems odd, but you know, I kinda
take a look. He's been a relationship with Emmy, if
you will. And then she obviously was seeing somebody to
a point to where she developed emotions and was proposed
to and agreed to marry this other man. And you know,
Auto may not have been completely clueless that this this
other man existed. So I can see where he felt
(21:12):
some sort of attachment, but it's not necessarily like a
you know, I love you, I want to marry you
type of attachment to Emmy. But in many ways Auto
may be feeling rejected, you know, because he's been coming over,
he's been taking care of her financially, setting her up
in the house, being employed, and then now she's like, nope,
(21:32):
see him. So I can see where he could be
a little bit upset under those circumstances. I just don't
see where. Okay, Emmy's out of the picture, and so
that now frees him up to all of a sudden
develop some deep emotional connection to Heta. I also with
his business savvy, if you will, I wonder if marrying
(21:56):
Heada would somehow, I mean Heada and Emmy share the
deed on this residence, you know, And is there some
sort of financial aspect that he's tried to protect, you know,
by marrying Heada. I don't know, but I'm not even
sure how during this era, how would the courts permit
him to marry Heada if he is still legally married
(22:19):
to Emma.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I don't think they would, and I think that a
divorce is well, certainly a divorce was more difficult in
nineteen fourteen than it would have been, you know now,
it would have been difficult. My mom and I were
just talking about and it's not a great conversation to have,
I guess, but about people who just go from relationship
to relationship. They don't want to be alone and they
don't want to break up their pattern. I wondered if
(22:45):
he was so used to having one of those two
women or both old women available to him, that he
sort of freaked and didn't want to change anything. Probably
somebody who has made that amount of money. And remember
what I told you what he did for a living.
He was in banking and mining estate deals. He had
this brewery. This is someone who was on a very
specific schedule. I mean, he was accomplishing thing after thing.
(23:08):
He had to stay organized. And I wonder if he thought,
with Emmy leaving, that maybe Heda would fall in love
with someone and leave, and then would he ever find
this relationship with sorry to say, two hot young women.
Ever Again, probably not. I mean, maybe he was desperate.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
No, I think that's that's a fair way to look
at it from a man's perspective, an aging man perspective.
So here you go, I'm giving you a guy perspective
if you will. I mean, Auto is in essence my age,
you know, so you look so much.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Younger, though, Paul, I have to say nineteen fourteen was
rough on men. I think he looks like he's in.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
His six in his mid to late sixties to me, yeah,
you know, and that's well, that's an interesting aspect when
you look at photos of individuals from this time and
they look so much older than what their age actually is.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
You know. But I'm just thinking, you know, the insecurities
as a guy when you get older, you know, and
now it's like, oh, I am losing I'm never going
to get the chance again to have this type of
relationship that he Auto is obviously enjoying over the course
of several years. And so maybe he is latching onto
Heda just to preserve that aspect.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
I just in nineteen fourteen, don't see quote unquote proper women,
professional women like a nurse or something being willing to
do this. He gets to see them in the house,
maybe he gets to sneak a little you know, nookie
with him while they're in the house everyone, So it's
very convenient for Auto. And when this is fifty percent
of his resource, here is left. I think he springs
(24:46):
this question on Heda. Now she says, hell no, and
she sounds like very sweet. Actually, she sounds like a
nice woman. She said, missus Kaylor is a sick woman,
and I would never leave her behind, meaning like I
would not go and marry you and let you ditch
her when she's sick and helpless. She is not professing
(25:08):
her love for Auto and saying I really wish I
could marry you. What she's saying is this is not
practical and this is not nice to do to your wife.
So she said no to him. She turned him down.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, you know, but she still does have benefit by
maintaining the financial relationship with Auto. And I'm wondering, even
though she's saying no, I don't want to marry you,
is there still going to be this, for lack of
a better term, conjugal aspect to their relationship or is
she just going nope, I'm cutting you off completely from
any type of physical interaction.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Now, that's the short answer. She is hopeful that he
wants to continue this financial arrangement and he is happy.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
To do it.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Now we come to the time where we are going
to have a killer and a victim and also trying
to figure out, you know, what the motive is here.
It's November twelfth, nineteen fourteen. Emmy is back, so now
their little trio is complete. She wants to go visit Heda.
She's married though, and Auto is slated to stop by
(26:12):
Heada's little house that same evening like he does often.
So this has, you know, continued on. It sounds like
Auto was fine with not being able to marry her,
but that you know, as long as this arrangement continues,
that he was happy. So some of the newspaper reports
said that he owed head To some money. I don't
(26:33):
know if that was just like her monthly allowance. I
know she got an allowance and she got paid. But
he was going to stop by because of that and
probably for sex, we don't know. So Emmy is home
at her old house, Heada is home and Auto comes
between four o'clock and five o'clock. Shortly after he arrives,
there are three gunshots heard from the house, so neighbors
(26:58):
rush over and locate who the victim is at this point,
this could be one of three people. I mean, I
think the only one is who is safe in this
scenario is Emma, the wife who's at home in bed.
But you've got the woman who left who he might
have feelings for, who dumped him. You've got the woman
who turned down his marriage proposal. And then you have Auto,
(27:20):
who clearly is this sleazy man who is you know,
in hopes of controlling these women to a certain extent.
So if you were a betting man, and I have
no idea if you are, who would you think the
victim is in this situation? Three shots?
Speaker 2 (27:33):
When you say who is the victim? I mean, is
there a chance that there's victims?
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Maybe?
Speaker 2 (27:39):
You know? On one hand, like you say the three
gun shots, I mean I could see a murder suicide
Auto and Emmy. I could see murder suicide Auto and Heda.
You know, okay, if I were to bet and part
of this is just being you know, the bias is
Bado's the shooter and he could be taking both these
(28:00):
women out. There could be as I mentioned before, the
feeling of rejection with Emmy, there may be a financial
aspect with her running off with this other man, but
also possessing, you know, fifty percent of the property he has.
Heda just rejected him for marriage, and he may may
be deciding that, you know what, it's time that this
(28:22):
comes to end. And if he feels that he can
somehow get away with taking out both these women, that
may preserve his social status, may preserve his financial assets
as long as he gets away with the crime. I
don't know. I think that's where I would lean, but
I think, you know, in this dynamic, just about any
permutation of a crime in terms of somebody ending up
(28:43):
dead as possible.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Well, I like your guests, that's a good one, and
I think that that makes sense. When the neighbors come
after they hear the shots, they rush in and nobody's
around until they get to Heada's bedroom. Hedda is there
and Auto is is the person who was murdered. He
has been shot three times with a thirty two caliber revolver.
(29:07):
Hetta is discovered kneeling by Auto's body. She has a
self inflicted cut to her wrist, so the suggestion is
is that she was trying to die by suicide. There
is a bloody knife laying on the ground next to her,
and two handguns are nearby. She tells the police, I'm sorry,
but I had to kill him. And this is where
(29:29):
the story gets complicated. If you thought a love affair
between two nurses who you're paying to come over a
couple times a week and your wife is bedridden was
not complicated enough, trying to figure out why she killed
this man is more complicated.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Huh. So, right now, this was a murder suicide where
the suicide attempt failed.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Right, Heda is immediately setting up a self defense defense here.
So first, let me tell you about the bullets. According
to reporting by these so she depressed. One bullet broke
his neck, another penetrated this skull just below the left eye,
and a third had entered his breast. It was a
(30:12):
I told you, thirty two caliber revolver. It was Heada's gun.
She carried a gun, and I did not know this,
but many, many, the majority of women carried guns in
this time period, which I don't know why I was surprised,
but I was. Yet again, I'm surprised by one of
our stories. So there's two guns, one is his and
one is heads.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
And where would he normally carry his gun?
Speaker 1 (30:33):
So it does not say where he got the gun from.
But he had a gun according to the women, on him,
and there's a gun there that doesn't belong to either
of them, and they've identified that belongs to Otto.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Okay, you know, so when you say that Hedda is
setting up a self defense, she's probably making statements that
he came into the room, he drew the gun, and
therefore she had to shoot him because he pointed the
gun at her.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
It's a lot more physical than that. It's not that simple.
There is the discussion of the argument and he, they say,
becomes physical with the two of them, these two women,
and that's why it's self defense. And that's why she
said to police, I'm sorry, but I had to kill him.
So you know, we can talk about what happens next.
She is whisked off to a hospital because of the
(31:20):
wrist wound and put under police supervision. While her wounds
are tended to, she makes a full recovery. Emmy, who
was there, is put under surveillance, but she's never charged
with any crime related to Auto's death, so it's really
all focused on Heda. According to the Houston Chronicle, the
(31:41):
Kayler family told one of the newspapers that there had
been a dispute over a bill that Heada had submitted
for Emma's care. Auto drove to the house to settle
the matter, and this is from his family's point of view.
When he and Heda started arguing, she got fright and
went for her gun. That's kind of what Hetta says
(32:04):
happened too. She says she killed him in self defense.
She said that Auto had been apparently choking Emmy. Emmy
says that she thought that Auto was going to shoot
her because he had a gun. I don't know at
what point we can call it self defense or not
when it's the only two people who survived are saying
(32:24):
that the victim is the one who was the aggressor.
So how do you even sort something like that out?
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Well, this is you know, in terms of trying to
get you have two living individuals in this crime. Right,
Auto can't make statements, but Emmy and head It can
make statements. And of course it is going to be
dependent upon was there any cooperation and agreements made between
(32:51):
these two ahead of time? You know, was this a
planned homicide? However, once investigators arrive on scene or once
law enforcement rise on seeing those two absolutely have to
be separated and interviewed to try to determine, you know,
or lock in their statements early early on. But I know,
you know, we opened up this episode and saying, this
(33:14):
isn't a forensics case. Oh yes, it is, Oh okay,
because now we have to take a look at what
Heada is saying and what Emmy's saying, how you know
things went down, But also take a look at the
trajectories of the bullets. You know, where are they entering,
(33:34):
Is there any indications of distance on these wounds? What
is the the you know, the flight path you know
that these bullets took And do these trajectories and all
the other assorted firearms evidence line up with the statements
that HEADA and Emmy are saying, you know, so there
is a forensics component that could say, hold on, you're
(33:57):
saying you were standing over there and he's strangling Emmy
and so you took out your gun and shot him
or whatever the story is. Does that match up with
the physical evidence?
Speaker 3 (34:09):
You know?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
So that's where you know, if I'm looking at this
case today, that's one of the things I would really
be keying in on.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
One of the issues I think with this story. Also,
I mean, besides that, I don't have some of the
diagrams and everything that we're looking at here. We really
just have people's words and their descriptions what makes sense
and what doesn't. So it sounds like some of the
statements I think this must have been Emmy say that
that afternoon, Auto came in, rushed past Emmy in the
(34:39):
living room, and headed straight to Heada's bedroom. She was
laying on the bed with a cloth covering her eyes.
It sounds like he tried to kiss her and she
got mad. He threatens her and pulls out a gun
and she shoots him with this thirty two revolver. One
of the things the prosecutor is going to talk about
is how many shots she took and did she shoot
(35:02):
him when he was already on the ground. And I've
heard that in other cases too. That makes a difference, right,
Does that make a difference to jurors whether or not
it seems like the person has been incapacitated and you
continue shooting. Then it's like, all of a sudden, it's like,
oh no, that's not self defense. They were already on
the ground. What are you doing? Of course not, this
is malicious.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, it all depends on the circumstances, you know, And
I think you can make arguments in terms of, yes,
you've took it past self defense. You know, you've neutralized
the threat to the person's down on the ground. However,
you are likely dealing with a naive shooter. You don't
know if you've neutralized the threat or not, and so
(35:41):
now you continue to shoot, and it's not indicating that
it's wasn't initially that the shooting itself wasn't initially started
because of a self defense aspect, you know. So that's
it's almost like it's a follow through if you will,
you know. And that's that's really for prosecutors the DA's
(36:02):
when they're assessing a case on how to charge the case,
they are going to be assessing those types of human elements.
But you know, under that scenario where she's laying on
the bed and he comes up to kiss her and
they get mad, does she indicate while she's on the
bed and while he's that close to her, is when
she shoots him.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
No, we're going to have to take a tiny, tiny
detour because she has shut up for now and she
has been charged with murder. The twist is she takes
off before the court date. She leaves and goes back
to Germany and she's gone. I know Heda, so listen
to I mean, these women, this is interesting. She has
(36:40):
gone for it looks like at least two to three years.
And because she's a nurse and it's World War One,
she tends to wounded soldiers during World War One, while
she is on the run from murder charges in Texas.
She decides inexplicably to go back to Texas because she
wants to have a criminal trial and declare that this
(37:04):
was self defense and she wants to come back, and
she says, bring it on, I want to have a
self defense case. Let's do it. That seems like an
awful idea. Why not stay in Germany? I mean, I
don't know, Well, maybe staying in Germany during World War
One is not a great idea.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
That may be part of it, you know, getting to motive,
Heta loses so much by killing Otto, so from a
planned homicide standpoint, there has to be some other mitigating
factor for Heada to go. I need to take him out.
So absent any knowledge of any of that type of
(37:41):
mitigating factor, you know, this is where Okay was this
a self defense issue. I could see that from Heada's standpoint,
if Auto ended up becoming physically aggressive and or pulls
the gun out during this argument, that would make sense.
So it negates Head's reliance upon Auto's finances, you know,
(38:04):
because she loses that when he's dead. Her coming all
the way back, I mean, she's I couldn't imagine extradition
out of Germany from World War One. I don't think
that's happening. She's untouchable over there, so she was free
and clear. So for her to come back and in
essence roll the dice at trial, you know, that tends
(38:26):
to suggest to me that there's a level of truthfulness
to what Heada is saying happened.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Well, let's see what happens. She is rearrested. She is
unwavering in her claim that she acted in self defense
to protect her and Emmy, because Emmy was there too.
He was angry, he was aggressive, he was mad because
had has said don't kiss me for whatever reason. And
she is on the stand. Another reason she probably shouldn't
(38:53):
have done this. She is on the stand, which I
normally would not think is a good idea. But the
DA says to head, exactly what I had mentioned to
you before. Did you shoot him on the floor after
he was dead? I guess, indicating we're you know, this
was passion and you were mad and you were aggressive,
not him, you were aggressive. She says, I don't know.
(39:15):
I only know I shot him as he raised the pistol.
I thought he would get me, and I shot him again.
And then she says this, Paul, then I raised the
pistol to my head and pulled the trigger. And the
DA says how many times? And she says, I don't know.
Obviously it didn't work. I guess she unloaded all the bullets.
(39:35):
But he says then later on, well, it sounds like
you had better aim at mister Kayler than you did
it yourself, to which I guess she couldn't say anything. So,
if we believe Heda, she kills auto and then she
attempts to take her own life twice.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
That's what the gun as well as with this incisive
injury to her wrist from the knife. Right yep, So
again there's a forensic opponent to this. She's I had
a thirty two revolver that she's putting to her head
and pulling the trigger. She says twice. Right. Depending on
the making model a gun. This is where you know,
getting a good firearms expert, sometimes you can see evidence
(40:15):
that there the cartridge, the round that is underneath the
hammer at the time she pulls the trigger, or the
way it rotates. When you pull the trigger on a revolver,
it rotates the live round, and then you'll see the
hammer drop and you potentially could have some evidence to show, yes,
you know that round, you know there was an attempt
(40:37):
to fire that round based on maybe a very subtle
firing pin impression or some other aspect. But this goes
to when that gun is initially collected, it needs to
be thoroughly documented as to you have a cylinder, and
depending on the make and model, let's say six or
six rounds in this cylinder, you have six light do
(41:01):
you have let's say in this her scenario, there's three
shots to auto. Are there three expended rounds out of
our thirty two? And then where are the other three
rounds located at? Is there evidence that they potentially did
have hammer strikes or firing pin strikes on them? You know?
And that's all just part of what we do routinely
(41:22):
in this day and age at a crime scene, or
if I've got the weapon back in the lab, I'm
documenting all of that and unloading the weapon, and then
that goes to a firearms examiner who then is able
to start to ascertain, you know, what exactly are the
dynamics that the physical evidence can answer under the scenario
(41:43):
of Heda not remembering how many shots she fired or
whether or not she remembered firing into him after he's
laying down, that's not an unusual occurrence in this type
of scenario. If this was truly a traumatic event for Heda,
she's doing this in self defense. Human memory is goofy.
(42:04):
We see this all the time with auser and ball shootings.
When you talk to the shooting officer when they're interviewed,
they don't know the number of rounds they shot. Sometimes
they put themselves in a different position out at the
crime scene than what the body cam or other video
footage shows. And this is just the normal aspect of
how human memory captures things during this traumatic and very
(42:28):
dynamic and very quick scenario.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Well, you know, let's talk about nineteen fourteen. I've done
stories in nineteen eighteen about a serial poisoner who no
one believed would have actually murdered people, just they could
not believe it. And I think that the DA is
in for an uphill battle here because the testimony that
(42:52):
she gives on the stand is compelling. The Sociated Press
says that courtroom spectators openly wept during this testimony, So
she sounds like she did a great job on the stand.
There was a recess and she walked back to the
stand and continue testifying. There's reportedly an outburst of clapping
from the men and women packed into the courtroom. The
(43:12):
testimony that she gave seems so compelling. It seemed like
she really framed Auto as this monster, and she was
defending herself. And it sounds like, Paul, everything you're saying
kind of lines up with why would she kill him?
You know, this doesn't make any sense unless it was
self defense.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Sure, you know, but as I mentioned, these are other
mitigating factors that existed or you haven't told me yet.
And then what has Emmy said.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Emmy backs up everything everything that hit us says, Emmy
says happened. So this is a case where you know,
you have these two women who are saying the same
thing that Auto was the aggressive one, and that they
were both scared and she saved both of their lives.
That is the opinion.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Did Auto have a life insurance policy in which they
were beneficiaries of Not that I know, Okay, I'm just
trying to look for some motive if they planned this, well,
let me.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Tell you what ends up happening. And maybe this gives
you any insight here. So I think everybody who's listening
knows where this is probably going to go. The court
in January of nineteen eighteen found that Hetta had acted
in self defense. She has declared not guilty. She turns
around and decides that she's going to sue his family
(44:31):
for twenty thousand dollars because he promised her twenty thousand dollars,
which by the way, is six hundred and thirty thousand
dollars today. I don't know if she received it. I
doubt it. I don't know if that was a true
claim or not. But she definitely had money on the mind.
And she ends up marrying one of the jurors. What
do you think about? I know those are two things
I smacked you in the face with the sorry.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
I'm not overly concerned about her turning around and doing
the civil suit. She was fortunate and that you know,
they acquitted her of the murder charges. If she's truly innocent,
she's been run through the ringer and is now going, hey,
you guys traumatize me. You cost me my reputation, my
financial earnings, whatever it is, you know, And that doesn't
(45:17):
speak one way or another in my mind in terms
of Heada's you know, if there's anything suspicious now marrying
the juror, you know, of course, it comes down to
when did they first interact? Were they doing google eyes
at each other during trial? You know, is there any
observations that maybe there had been some relationship established, because obviously,
(45:41):
you know, that's where that juror should be dismissed and
shouldn't be weighing in on guilt when it comes to Heada.
You know, so you know, what is the story behind that.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
I don't know. I wish I did. I know they
moved back into her bungalow that auto had deeded to
the to both women, and I guess probably she paid
emmy off, you know, and so now she owns his house.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
I still think this sounded like self defense. But you
never know, You've got three people, one of them's dead
and the other two have a very high interest in
protecting each other.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Yeah, you know, and that's I think the hardest thing
to be able to tease out in this case is
you do have Emmy and Heada who they're obviously got
some sort of close relationship. Yeah, they're sharing the same man.
They're getting the same financial resources from this guy. I
(46:37):
kind of go back to, you know, what I said
before is that you know, here we have relationships and
human nature occurring. Then we have a crime and we
have a homicide. And even though you indicated that this
isn't a forensics case, the reality is because of the
(46:57):
circumstances and the potential legiance between the only two witnesses
to this crime, one who's the defendant, this is where
you know, physical evidence needs to at least be assessed
and to determine is somebody lying. But right now I
(47:17):
think I'm with you. I think Heda was likely truthful.
This was self defense, and the most notable thing about
that is the fact that she came all the way
back from Germany to stand trial. They clear her name
in essence, and that's where I go Okay, she didn't
have to do that.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
No, well, let me tell you the ending of the story.
I actually don't know what happens to and to Emmy.
I'm assuming they go on hopefully and have nice lives.
Emma Kaylor, the widow, recovers from this awful accident with
the help of I guess there nurses. I don't know.
She becomes a very sort of strong, ambitious woman. She's
(47:57):
healthy enough to take over the brewery and keep it
afloat prohibition and the Great Depression, which I will tell
you was no easy feat. I'm sure. She puts a
lot of her own money into the brewery and it
becomes very, very successful. Eventually she sells to Paps and
around two thousand the company the Pearl Brewery is shut down.
(48:19):
But not long after the developer buys the property like
I told you before, and transforms it into this wonderful
development that you have to see. I think in San
Antonio known as the Pearl, and there is a well,
I think you're gonna like this. There is a world
class hotel called the Hotel Emma, which opened in twenty fifteen.
Oh wow, okay, and it has many of the original
(48:40):
brewery features you know that make it feel very authentic.
So new listen, you gotta let me get through this.
You'll appreciate this. You can if you go there, get
a cocktail that honors all three Emmas in one glass. Okay,
grapefruit juice, which is Texas fruit, is the base. Then
Emma number one, the wife who owned the brewery, gets
(49:03):
represented with a pearl beer with rose syrup. Emmy, the
first nurse is represented by sherry and Heta. The third
is gin and the saying this is funny. The saying
goes that one is great, but three will kill you.
Speaker 2 (49:20):
Yeah. I was going to say that's that's a hangover
and waiting right there.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
I usually don't laugh at the end of murder stories.
But I don't know. We don't know what happened in
that house. We don't know what happened with those women.
I agree with you. I feel like the feeling is
if you're going off instinct, the feeling was self defense.
I don't know what was going through Otto's mind. I
know that he thought money could control two women, and
(49:47):
it did for quite a while. I think probably the
right outcome happened, and I'm glad that the pearl turned
out to be as wonderful as it was, and I'm
certainly glad that Emma, one of the victims in this circumstance,
ended up covering and became just an awesome businesswoman.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Yeah, you know, I think I'm convinced. I'm going to
go check out this Pearl area in San Antonio one
of these times. When I'm out there, maybe I'll visit
you in Austin and we can take a little road
trip down to San anton.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Along with a designated driver. If we're going to have
the three Emas, all right, folks, you heard that all
at once. One is great, but three will kill you. Okay, Well,
next week we will not have three m's. We could
have one. I don't know. Sometimes we probably every ninth episode.
I think there's an Emma throne in there. But we
will definitely have another compelling story. Maybe in Texas we
(50:36):
have so many of those, Maybe in Colorado, but we
will see.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
All right, well again, looking forward to it.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
This has been an exactly right production for our sources
and show notes go to exactly rightmedia dot com slash
Buried Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emiosi.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Bary Bones pod.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decote the
criminal mind, is available now, and
Speaker 1 (51:26):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now
Hosts And Creators
Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
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