February 18, 1916

Sing Sing Prison
February 18, 1916
On September 5th, 1913, two boys fishing off a dock in Weehawken, New Jersey, hauled up a bundle wrapped in oilcloth and weighted with stone. Inside was the upper torso of a young woman. No head. No identification. What followed was one of the most sensational murder investigations in New York City history — a trail of pillowcase tags, bloodstained walls, and forged documents that led detectives from a bare apartment on Bradhurst Avenue to the rectory door of a Catholic church in Harlem. The man they arrested at half past eleven that night was Father Hans Schmidt, a German-born priest with a secret wife, a counterfeiting operation, and a past that stretched across two continents and an unknown number of graves. On February 18th, 1916, Schmidt was electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison. He remains the only Catholic priest ever executed in the United States. This is his story.

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