The Case of the Missing Maidservant

Annie Hommel was the daughter of poor German immigrants living in Saugerties, New York.  Around 1870, fourteen-year-old Annie went "in service" for the household of Moses Schoenfeld, a wealthy merchant tailor.

Annie grew up into a strikingly pretty young woman who was considered one of the town's leading belles.  Life went on in an unremarkable fashion until 1877, when Mrs. Schoenfeld fell ill, and began spending most of her time in New York City for medical treatment.  During her absence, Schoenfeld's neighbors began noticing that Annie was dressing very stylishly: her wardrobe suddenly seemed far too expensive for any mere servant girl.  They also took note of the fact that Annie and Moses had become very, very friendly--gossip even reported that they had been seen kissing.

At this point in our story, you are probably coming to some suspicions about the relationship between master and maid.  The residents of Saugerties were entertaining the same suspicions.  Suspicions which seemed to have been confirmed when Annie's waistline began expanding.  She insisted--you dirty-minded people, you!--that she was suffering from "dropsy."

On December 15, 1877, Annie told her parents she was going to New York or Philadelphia to see physicians about her mysterious malady, and disappeared.  No one ever saw her in Saugerties again.  She was spotted in Tivoli, where she boarded a train for New York.  Some reports stated that she was in the company of an older woman, who claimed to be the wife of a doctor.  After her departure, Schoenfeld also began acting strangely.  He too departed for places unknown, and after his return to Saugerties, continued to make unexplained and frequent trips to New York.

A few days after Hommel's disappearance, letters were sent to Annie's parents, purportedly from the missing young woman, although they appeared to be written in a man's handwriting.   The letters stated that Annie was under the care of a physician, and was satisfied with her place.  One of the letters contained five dollars.  The postmarks were from various locations in Brooklyn and Philadelphia.  

George Hommel was convinced that Schoenfeld was behind his daughter's strange vanishing.  He believed there was something very sinister about the whole business, and he was not at all shy about saying so.  Schoenfeld tried to counter such unpleasant talk by bringing Mr. Hommel to Brooklyn to search for Annie, and he offered a reward for any information about her whereabouts. Neither effort did anything to uncover Annie--or to still the talk that Schoenfeld knew more than he was willing to say.

On August 19, 1878, Annie's parents received a shocking letter.  It was postmarked from Philadelphia, and it carried the news that their daughter was dead.  The writer claimed to be a physician who had treated Annie for "dropsy," but in spite of all his medical help, she had "gone to the better home."  It was signed merely "M.D."  Soon after the Hommels received this message, it was reported that two strangers called upon Schoenfeld, asking to have a private interview with him.  Schoenfeld emerged from this meeting "deathly pale."  Annie's sister Mary lived in Philadelphia, and she stated that she had not seen any sign of the missing girl, and had no idea who "M.D." might be.  She was, however, convinced Annie had been murdered.

So did a lot of people.  And they all had the same suspect in mind.  Schoenfeld was considered to be a material witness in Annie's disappearance, but his high social position and previously good reputation saved him from being arrested, although such was the public disgust with him, some feared he might be lynched. For his part, the merchant rallied the support of his prominent friends, and made a big show of his continued trips to New York, where he claimed to be conducting his own investigation of the mystery.

"Brooklyn Eagle," September 24, 1878, via Newspapers.com

Several days after the Hommels received the tragic letter from "M.D.," there was more bad news.  Boys herding cattle near Staten Island's Silver Lake Cemetery came across a barrel that had been partially buried.  Inside was the badly decomposed corpse of a heavily pregnant woman.  After a few weeks of fruitlessly trying to determine the woman's identity, local authorities had her buried in a potter's field.  When news of the gruesome find reached Saugerties, residents immediately suspected that Annie Hommel had finally been located.  The corpse was of medium size, with dark brown hair and good teeth, which perfectly matched Annie's description.  The body was exhumed, and George Hommel, on the basis of the hair and teeth, identified it as his daughter.  However, the clothing the woman had been wearing did not match any the missing woman had owned.

Schoenfeld--accompanied by his attorney--also arrived in Staten Island.  Unsurprisingly, he insisted that the corpse was not that of Annie Hommel, explaining that the hair was too short to be that of his former servant.  (It did not seem to occur to him that hair can be cut.)

The body was reburied, but later exhumed again in order to see if the body showed signs of the fractured wrist Hommel had suffered when she was seven years old.  In rather Grand Guignol fashion, doctors cut off the corpse's arms and enlisted "an insane pauper" to boil the bones clean of whatever flesh remained on them.  (The "New York Times" added that when this revolting task was completed, the pauper "served them up to the doctors with a grin of ghastly satisfaction.")  When the arm bones were examined, it was determined that the wrists had never been broken, and that the corpse was probably of a woman over the age of thirty.  (Annie was about twenty when she vanished.)  In short, Annie Hommel's disappearance was suddenly back to being as big a riddle as ever.

After investigating all the missing-persons cases in the area, police eventually determined that the corpse was that of one Mary Ann Degnan.  Her husband, Edward Reinhardt, was eventually convicted of her murder.  

Unlike the Degnan case, the fate of Annie Hommel was never determined.  Faced with an almost total lack of clues to her whereabouts, the missing maid eventually faded from public memory.  By the time Moses Schoenfeld died in 1914, rich, accomplished, and respected, the fact that he had once been at the center of a disturbing mystery was completely forgotten. 

If the merchant had any guilty little secrets, he kept them very well hidden indeed.

[Note:  There is, of course, an obvious possible solution to the mystery:  After Annie became pregnant, Schoenfeld sent her out of town to have an abortion.  She died as a result of the operation, and her body was secretly buried somewhere.  Unfortunately, we'll never know if this scenario is correct.]