The Only Priest Sent to the Electric Chair: The True Crimes of Hans Schmidt

He stood at the altar as a man of God and lived in secret as a killer.

In the early 1900s, Hans Schmidt became the only Catholic priest ever executed in the United States. Sworn to celibacy and spiritual authority, Schmidt instead lived a double life that ended in ritual murder. After illegally marrying a young immigrant woman and impregnating her, he brutally murdered and dismembered her when the truth threatened to surface.

But Anna Aumuller’s death was only the beginning.

As investigators followed the evidence from the Hudson River to Manhattan, and back across the Atlantic to Germany, they uncovered a disturbing pattern of violence, fraud, and institutional silence. Counterfeit money, insurance murder plots, and links to other unsolved deaths suggested that Schmidt’s final crime may not have been his first.

In this episode of When Killers Get Caught, host Brittany Ransom examines the psychology of Hans Schmidt, the warning signs ignored by those in power, and how authority and belief can be weaponized when accountability is avoided.

Because no matter how carefully someone hides behind faith, power, or position, the truth always leaves a trail.

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