When Hans Schmidt was a child in Bavaria, other kids played sports, but he liked going to the slaughterhouse to watch animals being killed. "Ich seh gern blut!" he'd say ("I like to see the blood"). The blood excited him—sexually excited him, noted his doctor. He also took to killing animals himself and carrying their heads in his pocket.
Then he decided to become a priest. This didn't quite turn his life around, and he ended up committing all kinds of offenses, both heretical and sexual, till no parish would accept him. So in 1909, he moved from Germany to America.
There, Hans Schmidt illegally married, impregnated, and then brutally murdered and dismembered his “wife”, Anna Aumüller. For that crime, he was eventually executed via electrocution, and to this day is the only Catholic priest ever executed in the United States. Turns out, the murder he was caught for was only the tip of the iceberg.
Thanks for listening!
Follow us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
