Final Episode on Juvenile Serial Killers: Ida Schnell "The Hat-Pin Killer"

This podcast discusses the disturbing case of Ida Schnell, a 13-year old girl who killed infants with a hat pin back in 1907.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/composition-of-a-killer--5602919/support.

Episode Transcript

(00:12):
Hey, composition of a killer fansDoctor Cassidy. Here today we're going to
talk about Ida Schnell. She istwelve or thirteen at the time of the
killings. She was twelve or thirteen. It just different articles have different ages,

(00:33):
but she is. This happened innineteen oh seven, so this is
a pretty old case. As always, when we begin, just remember that
the things that we talk about duringthis podcast are not to be considered any
kind of formal diagnosis, clinical diagnosis. All right, So IDAs Schnell was

(00:57):
a German teenage childcare provider, andshe took care of infants, some you
know, that were literally just born. So she was very well trusted,
evidently, and she had a reputationas being very trustworthy and good with babies,

(01:22):
even at that young age twelve orthirteen. So I think that that
says a lot about why she hadthe opportunity to be with all these children.
Certainly, you wouldn't entrust anybody totheir care if you thought they were
mean or evil, or wouldn't takecare of them properly. So she evidently

(01:47):
had a history of being a goodemployee. But she actually she had been
in service with a number of differentfamilies as a nurse maid. And back
then, remember this is in nineteenoh seven, so back then, wealthier
families would hire nursemaids to help withtheir children. And so this is what

(02:12):
this is what she did. SoI'm sure it was word of mouth her
getting to move from you know,house to house. It doesn't say anything
that anywhere that she was fired andthen moving on to some to another house.
So miss I'm making an assumption thatwhatever happened at that house they they

(02:34):
thought was an accident, and thenshe was able to move on to another
home, probably with some with agood reference from that house. So there
had been no suspicion against her untilthe sixth infant had died a sudden and
mysterious death. And even though itwas only after the baby had been buried

(02:57):
that it appears to have struck anyonethat there was something sinister in the circumstance
that her nursing had been associated withmortality of the child. So it was
finally decided to exhume the body ofthe last child, and he was fourteen
days old, and in this particularcase, it was the son of a

(03:22):
peasant proprietor of Amper Mocking near Munich. And when I say a peasant proprietor,
it we think a peasant as beingpoor, but a proprietor is someone
who owns something or is in chargeof something. So he probably this family

(03:46):
probably was considered a peasant, butthey were They certainly had enough money to
afford a nurse maid. So thecorpse was taken from the coffin, and
the examinations showed that death had beencaused by perforation of the soft infantile skull
with some sharp instrument. And thenafter this, and you keep in mind

(04:12):
that this was in nineteen oh seven, so they didn't have all of the
medical advancements that we have today.But I think that was fairly obvious that
there had been a pin stuck inher in this child's skull. And also
remember that I don't know if youhave ever seen a hat pin or not,
but she was using a hat pin. And it's not a tiny little

(04:38):
needle like pin. Hat pins arebig. My mother actually collects them,
and they're long. I mean youcan get them eight ten inches long.
So she was sticking a pretty largeobject in the head in the soft spot
of an infant to kill them andI'm not sure if it would be,

(05:00):
but I would hope that it wouldbe an instant death. You never know.
I don't know. I've not readanything that says that sticking something in
the soft part of the baby's headwould kill them immediately, but I would
hope it didn't suffer so when theyarrested Schnell. And that's another thing.

(05:20):
Schnell is used in some of thearticles, and shell is used in other
articles. So I don't know ifit's Schnell or Shell because there's just a
lot of there's some confusion about that, just like her age. Some say
thirteen, some say twelve. Atfirst, she strenuously denied having caused the

(05:45):
child's death, and she protested thatshe had much too gentle a nature to
harm the infant in any way,But under cross examination during the trial,
she admitted that she had killed notonly the baby whose body had been exhumed,
but four others for whom she hadbeen engaged as a nurse. She
confessed further that she had taken thelives of these infants by plunging a hairpin

(06:06):
into the lower part of the backof their heads till they ceased to cry.
Asked As to her motive, thegirl said that the crying of the
infants roused in her an uncon unconquerablerevulsion and excited her to such a degree
that she lost all control over herselfand would do anything to make them quiet.

(06:27):
The next morning she confessed to thesix murder. And this news article
is of course from nineteen oh seven, said that Schnell, who will be
fourteen that following month, is physicallywell developed for her age, but rather
dull witted. Her father is dead, but she has a stepfather who is
a day laborer in Schlesheim, tothe north of Munich. Her series of

(06:54):
murders was only rendered possible by thefact that, which will be a revelation
to many, that Bavaria death certificatesare frequently and in the in the country
district. In the country districts alwaysgranted by layman. It's said that a
doctor would at once have noticed thewounds caused by the hairpin. So keep

(07:16):
in mind this is not modern dayand you've got you probably got very very
little access to medical professionals. Sothe person who would do the death certificates,
who would go in and see theperson that was dead and pronounce them
dead. They would have to knowsomething about anatomy, They would have to

(07:39):
know something about you know, mortality, how you kill someone, those type
of things, and it just wasn'tyou know, broad knowledge back then.
So it was a layman who didthose certificates. And so nothing again was
suspected until after the child had beenburied. And then because now another article

(08:03):
from nineteen oh seven said that furtherinquiries are extending the grim record of the
Munich child murderous IDAs Schnell, andit's now believed that she must have taken
the lives of at least eight ornine of the hapless infants confided to her
charge. It has been established thatshe carried the coffins of two of her
victims to the grave and unconcernedly pocketedthe fee usually paid for such a service.

(08:28):
Two of the infants whom she hadconfessed to doing killing were exhumed a
couple of days ago, but decompositionhad gone so far that it was impossible
to discover on the spot whether ornot they had succumbed to stabs of the
Schnell's Schnell girl's hairpin. The headswere accordingly removed and taken to Munich for

(08:50):
laboratory examination. That's gruesome. Imean, I understand that that's what happened,
but what a horrible way to sayit. You know, it's been
ascertain that the girl who is theillegitimate child of a drunken laborer was brought
up in circumstances of the most squalidand sordid character. Her whole record suggests
moral insanity of the most pronounced type. The wonder is that even people of

(09:13):
the humble class who engaged her asnurse cared to entrust their babies to a
girl who was obviously little better thanan imbecile. So what this is saying
is, obviously she had a verybad, very unfortunate childhood. Squalid and
sordid character certainly would alert us thatthis person did not have privileges, and

(09:46):
certainly with a father that was adrunken laborer, that's not obviously a good
environment either. So I mean's shehad a really bad, you know,
upbringing. But I'm interested in thatit says that people care to entrust their

(10:07):
babies to a girl who is obviouslylittle better than an imbecile. I think
this speaks to the lack of understanding, you know, over one hundred years
ago of the development of children andthe needs that they have when they're infants.
I mean, we know today thatfrom birth up to age three or

(10:31):
four, that's the most rapid growthof the brain. So we want a
lot of stimulation, we want alot of activity, we want loads of
language, we want we want thatchild to have attachment to the mother or
the primary caregiver. We want tosee them thrive and be in a very

(11:00):
positive environment because we're not sure eventoday, we're not even sure exactly the
damage that occurs when during those firstfew years. We don't we are not
able to give a child what weknow can help them become successful, productive
adults who are not abusive. Soit's difficult for us to say. I

(11:26):
mean, if we could say that, we wouldn't even be having this,
this podcast wouldn't even exist. Wewould know this this and this is what
happens to the brain. So ifwe prevent all of this from happening,
we might not have serial killers.Right in this particular case, she was
a serial killer because she had thecooling off period and then she you know,

(11:46):
she would take opportunity when she wouldmove to a new home. That
was a new opportunity, and myguess would be that she, you know,
became someone that they trusted exclusively withtheir child. She was obviously alone
with that child during this time thatit happened, and that gave her the

(12:09):
opportunity because I guess people back thendidn't think that it would be possible for
someone that young to do something soheinous. We know today that that's incredibly
it's rare. We can say it'srare because it doesn't happen every day,
but we know it happens. Youknow, we're intelligent, We read the

(12:31):
paper, we read articles where welive in an information society, so it's
easy for us to just google afew words about a teenage serial killer or
a juvenile serial killer, like I'vesaid in other podcasts, and they bring
up list after list after list ofjuvenile serial killers. There's also lists of

(12:56):
juvenile mass murderers. Those are goingto of course, the ones who like
go into a school and do amass shooting. Remember that you're not a
serial killer unless you kill and thenyou have a cooling off period, whether
it be a month, a week, a day, or thirty years,

(13:18):
and then you kill again. Youknow, So there's that cooling off period
that sets apart the serial killer.So that's what you have in this case.
She literally went from house to houseand cared for these infants and then
killed them because they were crying.Another article from nineteen oh seven, This

(13:41):
one is translated from French. Itsays that the preliminary judicial investigation opened in
Munich against IDAs Schnell at this timeshe was fourteen years old, accused of
murdering children in her custody, isnow over and the report of Judge Bally
formally concludes a sixfold murder of thechildren of Oppenheimer, Bickler, Huber,

(14:05):
Shiner, Ritzret and Carmier. Forthe children Gala and Scorch, the autops
are revealed cause of death that arenot that are not at attribute what that's
a weird word attributable to IDAs Schnell. So the other two, there's two
others that were I guess in thattime frame, but they did not find

(14:28):
anything that suggested that she killed thatthe infants with her hair pin. Doesn't
mean she didn't kill them, butagain, back then you wouldn't have the
scientific knowledge to be able to tellif they were strangled or smothered or had

(14:48):
some other you know, untimely death. On the other hand, examination of
the children that Oppenheimer and Hubert ofthe children Oppenheimer and Hubert clearly revealed the
cause of death. I'd had piercedthe skull of little beings with a pen.
These wounds brought a slow infiltration ofblood into the brain and probably manifestations

(15:11):
of meningitis with tetanus. This wouldexplain the convulsions that distracted the suspicions.
So we see in this article thatthe children. To at least two of
these children, they reported having convulsionsprior to death. So this was not
a fast death, right, Idon't think it would be incredibly prolonged.

(15:33):
Like I said earlier, I wouldbe interested to see or to know exactly
what that timeframe was or if itwas relatively quick. But that's just me
being curious about it. I'm justit's just for me to think about an

(15:58):
infant being killed. I would notwant it to be something where they suffered.
I don't want anybody to suffer.But you think about an infant who
can't defend themselves and who in theirmind completely trusts whoever's taking care of them
wholeheartedly. It's just really heartbreaking.It's just really heartbreaking for the children.

(16:26):
Shiner, Ritzer and Carmier. Theaccused made spontaneous confessions which were recorded by
the judge. The small corpses werein such a state of decomposition that the
medical examiners could not pronounce with absolutecertainty on the causes of death. For
a little bickler. One had thoughtof a death caused by lack of care.
It took a counter autopsy to discoverat the base of the skull a

(16:48):
small pustule, under which was atiny steam penetrating to the brain. Ida,
who had admitted without difficulty that fiveother crimes, claimed that the wound
was a fall and it was onlywhen she was brought back to prison that
she told the guard the whole truth. So she lied throughout, you know,
she denied doing it and then confessed, and it's still denied killing someone

(17:17):
else. She was actually put intoa district they called it a lunatic asylum
for mental examination that lasted about amonth. I love reading these older articles
because the wording that they use isso different. It just sounds funny,
you know, reading an article thatuses the English language. We've changed so

(17:38):
much. There's so many different Wewouldn't say, like the small corpses.
Not that you don't use corpses,you know, a corpse, but it's
not something we would use in ajournal article. We would, you know,
probably say the small infants or thesmall babies. It would be a

(17:59):
little more not so eerie. Ithink the use of the word corpse for
me is just eerie. So interestingthe English that they use, how it's
translated. Another article also translated fromthe French language. This was in Munich

(18:26):
in October of nineteen oh seven.This journalist says, I have just made
a detailed inquiry into the series ofmurders that IDAs Schnell is responsible for.
Ida the fourteen year old who haskilled seven babies in her care by sinking
pins into their brain. Here arethe circumstances that led to the discovery of

(18:48):
these incredible atrocities. The Oppenheimer couple, who live in the outskirts of Dashall
in the suburbs of Munich, recentlyhired little Schnell to look after their baby
Burda for a few weeks. Shehad been on duty for a few days
when on the eighteenth of September.Missus Oppenheimer, having heard her child cry,
hurried home. I'm assuming she mighthave been in the yard or something,

(19:11):
maybe the garden, and said,why did you leave Berta? She
said to the young maid that shemet on the doorstep. I left her,
replied, Idishnell, because I thinkshe will die. Miss Oppenheimer did
not listen anymore and rushed towards herlittle girl, whom she took in her
arms, rocked for a few moments, covering her with kisses, and to

(19:32):
whom she gave the breast, whichmeans she tried to breastfeed the child.
The child having calmed down, MissOppenheimer went back to the fields, but
in the evening when she came back, little Berta was in bad shape and
soon succumbed to convulsions. In spiteof the care of doctor Fischel, who
had been summoned in haste. Understandingabsolutely nothing about this almost sudden death,

(19:53):
the doctor carefully examined the little nurse, but discovered on the neck only two
brown spots, insufficient to accuse theyoung maid of murder. Nevertheless, he
was struck by the fact that Idashnellhad already been a servant in two other
families whose children had died in almostidentical conditions. And we see this a
lot, don't we. We seethis, this pattern that a serial killer

(20:18):
sets up. You know, it'stheir mark, it's how they do things,
and it's easy for us to I'mnot going to say it's easy,
but it's part of what gets people, what stops serial killers. You start
seeing a pattern, you start seeingwhat their mo is, and it's easy

(20:42):
to link these deaths to one person. And so that's what you have.
In this case. Somebody, thisdoctor you know, eventually put it in,
put it together in his mind.Okay, this, this nurse maid
has been involved in two other householdswhere the infant died, So I'm a

(21:03):
little suspicious about that. He theninquired about the young servant's existence before arriving
in the area, and learned thattwo other children still in her care had
died almost suddenly in convulsions. Thesefive suspicious deaths decided mister Fischel to summons
prosecutors Ida, who, on thetwenty first of September, after witnessing Berta

(21:26):
Oppenheimer's return home, had gone backto her father's house and was arrested,
and this is the journalist speaking asI telegraphed to you the day before.
Yesterday, sin confessed. As aresult of the findings of the autopsy of
the small victims, three of themwere exhumed yesterday in autopsy today. This
operation was most conclusive. It allowedto establish that their death had indeed been

(21:51):
provoked, as the young servant hadconfessed, by pinpricks practiced at the top
of the skull and which had causedparalysis of the brain. Now, the
other report says it was at thebase of the brain. But we know
the soft spot in a child's head. It's the fonnel, I believe,

(22:12):
is how that's pronounced. The finalis the soft spot, and of course
webs it webs together as they grow, but you have to really protect an
infant's head until it does, youknow, start to come together. And

(22:33):
in this particular case, these childrenwere young enough that they still had a
pretty large soft spot in the topof their head, which would have made
it very easy for her to penetrate, and you know, the pen entered
the brain, causing damage. Thetwo other small corpses were also autopsied in

(22:55):
the evening, but at the timewhen I telegraphed you, I do not
know the results of these exams,likely, however, that they will corroborate
the precedents. Finally, the lasttwo victims of IDAs Shell have been exzoomed
today, but the legal autopsy willbe performed tomorrow or perhaps Monday. It
is believed it is established that theseseven babies were killed by the young maid,

(23:17):
that the list of her crimes willbe closed because we now know that
she served only in seven families.Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether she
did not engage in the same maneuverson children not in her care. Also
very common, right when you finallyfind someone who they confess or you figure
out that they're the culprit, thenyou start pulling in all these other reports.

(23:41):
Was this person in this area?Was this person in this area?
You see that a lot with serialkillers because a lot of them travel,
you know, some stay in thesame area, but some will travel,
like Ted Bundy, who traveled,you know, to four or five different
states, Florida, Washington, justhe went a lot of different places.

(24:06):
And when they finally caught him,all of these precincts came together because they
didn't have the database that we havetoday. So they all came together and
they questioned him, were you inthis area at this time? And they
made a timeline. There's a verydetailed timeline of Ted Bundy's life and where

(24:30):
he was traveling during the times hewas killing, and so they have tried
to match deaths during that time thathe was in that area to him.
And that's how it typically happens.This is on a small scale, of
course, in the same let's sayvillage or same town. We can make

(24:51):
it the assumption that she didn't travelvery far to get to work, because
she wouldn't have had the means todo that, and it would be it
would just make more sense that youwould have a nursemaid who maybe even live
with you, so especially if theywere supposed to care for that child twenty
four to seven. So this istalking this piece here is speaking specifically about

(25:18):
Ida. According to the information I'vebeen able to obtain from the journalist,
IDAs Schnell is the natural daughter ofa sales themed laborer and has a worsome
history of pathological we would say,like pathological illness or pathological tendencies. But

(25:41):
he ended this sentence with a worsomehistory of pathological She is, I'm assured,
a girl very backward physically and morally. She scarcely seems to be twelve
years old, and she is asunintelligent as possible. Her teacher, whom
I interviewed, teld me that whenshe she attended school she was apathetic and

(26:02):
indolent. She never made any progress. Nevertheless, she always seemed to him
a rather gentle character. So whenhe says that she was apathetic and indolent,
that speaks to a lack of empathy. Right. She didn't care about
other people, She didn't have anykind of concern when something happened. It's

(26:26):
really, I think for me whatstood out for me in this particular case.
Yes, it's a atrocious thirteen fourteenyear old maybe twelve year old girl
who sticks a hatpin into the headof an infant is horrible and disturbing,

(26:49):
But when I read this about herbeing apathetic and indolent, it just struck
a chord with me. It justreinforced my strong belief that that lack of
empathy really is the key. Ithink it is the key something that we

(27:14):
have to ensure we teach our children, and you can teach empathy. You
can teach someone to have empathy.Certainly, that doesn't mean that everybody who
has empathy is not going to killsomebody. There's no guarantee of that.
Everybody has free will to some degree. But you know, as over a
hundred years ago, someone made theobservation that she was apathetic. So it

(27:42):
was something that was distinct about her. Right, let's talk to the teacher
about who this person is. Andthese are the words that he chose to
use, even though he thought thatshe had a rather gentle character. Hey,
so did Ted Bundy. He wasvery charming. Women fell all over

(28:03):
and yeah, the people that thepolice officers, the investigators, the detectives,
they all liked him as a person. They liked him. He was
charming and likable, if you will. So, you know, she seems
to have had a gentle nature abouther, probably because they say unintelligent.

(28:30):
I wonder if she didn't have somepretty serious learning delays and then considered apathetic
without any other information to go on, I would make an assumption that she
is very, very delayed, maybeeven to the point of what we would

(28:55):
you know, certainly she would bementally disturbed. But I think that she
might be a person who was incapableof learning at a certain level, and
you wouldn't say this. Today wedon't use the word retarded, but I'm

(29:17):
not even sure that word was evenin existence in nineteen oh seven. But
that's what they probably would have deemedher as Her old comrades, on the
other hand, speak discreetly. Iapologize, I'm losing my voice today.
I don't know why, but itstarted yesterday and so today I'm like,

(29:38):
I feel like it's getting worse.Her old comrades, on the other hand,
speak discreetly and say that she oftenlaughed out loud and without any apparent
motive, which would be a signof cerebral disturbance psychopathy. Right on the
other hand, from the inquiry Imade with her former mass it appears that

(30:00):
in their presence, she was engagedwith genuine solicitude, a definite emotional engagement,
certainly solicited for the children entrusted toher. Yet as soon as the
adults had their back turned, sheescaped to play childish games. So she
would act as if she was takingcare of that child. She was so
concerned about that child, and thenas soon as she got the opportunity she

(30:23):
would go and do her own thing. You could make the assumption that if
she was able to play people likethat, that she had to have some
level of intelligence. Maybe not booksmart, maybe not that type of intelligence,

(30:44):
but she might have been, youknow, a wily character. She
might have been someone who can turnit on and turn it off, which
would suggest that she was intelligent tosome degree. It might also just say
say to us that she was,you know, an evil, conniving person
and that would certainly fall in lovewith what she did. Right, But

(31:12):
we don't have a diagnosis. Wedon't have anyone other than this journalist who
is saying things like she was definitelyemotionally engaged with the children and that you
know, or that she had acerebral disturbance. So it's the writing of

(31:36):
this is very interesting. You know, they don't really know or do you
classify a young child who is capableof killing someone in this manner? So
when she was thirteen and a half, this says, when she was thirteen
and a half, last spring sheleft school to become a nanny. So
she quit school and they allowed thatback then. I guess it wasn't a

(31:57):
I would say that going to schoolwas a privilege still at that time,
and not something that the law mandatedlike today. But this is saying thirteen
and a half, which makes sensebecause when she was arrested, it was
shortly thereafter that she turned fourteen.So I'm going to say that she was

(32:23):
thirteen at the time of the killingsinstead of twelve. The timeline really looks
it reflects that more accurately. Soshe left school to become a nanny.
She never stayed long with her employers, for a fortnight at most, and
only once did she spend six weeksin the same house, which is also

(32:44):
interesting since everywhere she worked a childhooddied. The rumor was not long ago
spread that she had the evil eye, so that a countrywoman who one day
wanted to engage her as a servantwas dissuaded for this reason by a neighbor.
So again, word of mouth.Like I said earlier, word of
mouth is how she got these jobs. They certainly didn't have advertisements and things

(33:09):
like we have today, so wordof mouth would have been the most popular
or most common way for someone toget a job. But when people started
putting together that she had killed orthat she was in the homes of where
these infants had died, and therebecame this pattern. Even they were able
to say, you know that shehad the evil eye. Back in the

(33:34):
day, the evil eye was almostlike a curse. And so if you
if someone said that you had theevil eye, then you were cursed,
you were evil, you were nota good person, and you wouldn't want
to touch anybody like that, right, You don't want to be around them.
You certainly don't want them around yourchildren. And that's what dissuaded this

(33:57):
particular woman. And thank god,you know, she was diswa or there
probably would have been another death.Her last masters, which was mister and
missus Oppenheimer. And keep in mindagain that the English that they use back
then we do not use today.Masters. We would never call them masters.
I would call them her employers orthe child's parents. Mister and Missus

(34:21):
Oppenheimer were quite satisfied with her.It's true that her uncle was a servant
on the same farm, and thatconsequently they were all the more disposed to
his favor. So if they hadeven remotely suspected her of anything, because
they knew her uncle well and heworked on the farm for them, and

(34:45):
I guess they knew his character eventhough he was an alcoholic. Oh no,
that was her dad. Her unclewas a servant on the same farm.
So if they liked him and hewas a good employee, they would
probably you know, ignore him things, sweep it under the rugs, so
that out of respect for him,they would not say anything. But we

(35:13):
know now, of course that wasa big mistake, right, because Oppenheimer
was one of the children that wasthat was murdered by her. Now in
this last article, again translated fromFrench, was this was published in Berlin.
And back then, you know,they didn't have newspapers like we had
today. They didn't have the mailservice where you get newspapers that kind of

(35:36):
thing in these small villages. Butthey would dispatch things kind of like sending
a telegram, right, and thisis this is what was sent from a
correspondent or a journalist who would sendthe stories to different newspapers or different outlets,

(35:57):
and then they would get paid pereach time it was published. They
would get paid. So the littleservant, Idish Snell of Munich, whose
arrest we announced to you yesterday hardlyfourteen years old, has definitely committed seven
murders on the conscience. She hasmade a formal confession. So again with

(36:20):
that wording, we would have juststopped with you know, definitely committed seven
murders, but this is seven murderson the conscience. It was moreover,
not the first time that the youngIdish Snell was the subject of serious suspicion,
and she had appeared before the investigatingjudge a few months ago, shortly
after the strange death of a child. She had custody of the magistrate for

(36:44):
lack of evidence released her, butshe was not long in renewing her crimes,
so she got away with it.There was some suspicion that she got
away with it. They didn't haveany evidence. But when her last crime
was committed, it is accused atUpper Knocking near Munich, in the household
service of Bickler. Little Peter,whose care had been entrusted to her,

(37:07):
died suddenly fourteen days after his birth. The parents, overcome with terrible suspicions,
informed the police. The little corpsewas exhumed and the autopsy revealed details
as precise as they were overwhelming.In order to kill little Peter, Idischnell
had stuck a long hairpin into thechild's neck. When questioned, she confessed

(37:30):
that besides this murder, she committedfive more in Munich loose thyme or these
names over Jeishoff and Mittenheim. Iknow, I just bittered that I apologize.

(37:52):
As a result, the police orderedthe exhiamation of the bodies of all
five victims. Physically, this precociouscriminal appears as a skin any girl,
puny for her fourteen years, seeminglybarely twelve. She's the natural daughter of
a worker and seems to have beenraised at a little at random in the
usual habits of the poor. Andthat tells us that word squalor was used

(38:16):
earlier. Indolent. Her intelligence waswell below average, you know. Was
it because she was born that way? Did she have some genetic disorder,
did she have some major disability orwas she just evil? You know?
Or maybe she didn't go to schooland she didn't have that academic knowledge,

(38:39):
but she had other cunning knowledge.And I've said this before, and I
do believe this, I really do. I think there are some people who
were just born evil. I thinkthat the devil does have control over some

(38:59):
people and how they act and whatthey do, and some people, when
you if when they're interviewed, serialkillers, especially some of them, when
they're interviewed, they say that it'slike an intrinsic desire. They can't get
it out of their head. It'sfrom within. And that suggests that regardless
of their of their upbringing, regardlessof their external experiences and their environment,

(39:27):
they would have probably ended up killingsomeone anyway because that was just intrinsic.
It was inside of them. Sowe can think about it in that.
In that way, you know,maybe she was just maybe she was born
evil. It even even though shedoes hit quite a few of the boxes.

(39:49):
She takes a lot of the boxeson the aces, But we don't
know if she was abused. Weknow that she was poor. We know
that she didn't have a lot ofopportunities. We know that her father would
He was an alcoholic that typically hadsome pretty bad you know, after shocks,
So we can piece together some historyand make some assumptions on that.

(40:15):
I tend to think that people likethis, though, are just evil.
They're just evil. This journalist foundthat she spoke very little with her comrades,
but suddenly, and without cause,she would utter long bursts of laughter.
The reason for which no one couldguess, and for me, of

(40:37):
course, that signals some sort ofpsychopathy. Right. When she was placed
in private homes to watch children,she kept her jerky and childish pace.
However, more carefully, those whoemployed her say that she was very hard
working as long as she felt herselfbeing watched, but that at once,
once free, she left everything torun to play on the neighbors swing.

(40:58):
In spite of these excusable purialities,she was very much appreciated by our bosses
for in their presence she always coveredthe little children with caresses and seemed to
overflow with affection for them. Andyet, once arrested, she explained with
surprising calmness that the babies annoyed her, that she should, that she could
not endure their cries without an intolerableannoyance, and that to silence them she

(41:21):
would kill them. This is onereason I strongly believe she was just evil.
She had the wherewithal to compose herselfand appear loving and caring when she
was being watched, and as soonas she wasn't being watched, she flipped
back to that person who we knowwas empathetic. Not empathetic, she was

(41:42):
apathetic and mean, just flat outmean. So I would put her in
this category of being born evil.I don't think she learned this behavior.
The Munich paper tells at length howthe crime committed by IDAs Snell was discovered

(42:05):
by the Oppenheimer laborers who work inthe hops fields at Ainsea between the cow
and ober Schlessm. These good peoplewere very happy without of it, but
seen the neighbors noticed that once MissusOppenheimer was out, the children cried out.
On September eighteenth, which was aTuesday, Missus Oppenheimer noticed that her

(42:27):
baby was very agitated, but couldnot discover the causes of the discomfort.
On Wednesday, at noon, onher way back from the fields, she
found IDAs Schnell playing with the dogin front of the door. Why are
you not near the child, shesaid, I think he's dying. Perhaps
he is already dead, replied theyoung maid, without showing the slightest trace
of emotion. The child was stillalive and even seemed to recover, so

(42:51):
that the mother returned to the fieldsin the afternoon and the evening. When
she came back, the baby wasdying, this time in atrocious convulsions.
He died. The doctor examined hiscorpse, who could not discover anything abnormal
except two traces of almost imperceptible stingson the neck. The child was buried
on September twenty first. Odishnell attendedthe ceremony and returned the next day to

(43:15):
her father's house. What attracted andfixed the suspicions on the little mate was
that she changed her place very frequently. After fifteen days, three weeks,
six weeks at most, we inquiredin the neighboring villages, and we learned
that all the children entrusted to hercare had died. Suddenly. It was
doctor Fishy of Rohormus who denounced Idishnellto justice. So, as the journalist

(43:44):
said earlier, the exhamation of Vischler'sson was ordered. In the presence of
the corpse, the guilty one madea confession. These crimes scarcely credible,
producing in all Bavaria a sensation ofconsiderable horror, and a sensation all the
greater since for the last few yearsfacts of this kind have become very frequent.

(44:06):
This is why the examining magistrate incharge of the affair receives by the
court a considerable a considerable quantity ofcomplaints from unfortunate parents in mourning, so
they were seeing an uptick in thesetype of things happening. I don't know
that it was significant enough to makea ripple in history, because I've never

(44:29):
read about, you know, theearly nineteen hundreds being a time that was
particularly wrought with this kind of thingin my reading. You know, it's
still very rare, just like today. I mean it's we it's rare.
It's just things like this don't happenevery single day. And that's because well,

(44:52):
number one, we have we havesome safeguards in place, right,
we have cameras in our homes,and certainly if you've got some watching your
baby, you would have a cameraon them. I would think I would.
And uh, you know, we'resmarter. We are much smarter than

(45:12):
they were back then. We haveall this information that we know, and
I think we have a lot moreknowledge about the development of babies and how
you know, their cries can tellus. I mean they use that cry
to communicate, so their christ cantell us if they're hungry, if they're

(45:35):
wet, if they're scared, ifthey're hurt. I mean, a mother
typically can tune in and tell youwhat what cry is that child you know
making at the time, and whatthat child needs. And I'm sure this
specifically Oppenheimer because they don't really talkabout many of the other families, but

(45:57):
Oppenheimer was where, you know,everything kind of exploded. You know,
she knew she was concerned about thatchild. She heard the cries, and
she couldn't figure out why they weren'tbeing you know, relieved by the little
girl. So she rushed, youknow, back to the house and took
care of the baby until the babycalmed down, and then left and went
back to the field. So youknow, certainly Ida had had opportunity.

(46:25):
She was alone with those children quitea bit, and unfortunately, for whatever
reason, you know, she saysit was because they were crying and that
they you know, kind of goton her nerves. But it's really hard
to think that that would be onethe only reason, because you know,
you could argue that that was maybea crime of passion, you just snapped

(46:50):
and killed somebody, happens all thetime, but not in this case.
So Idashnell, of course she's gonnashe is the last one that we're going
to cover in our series of juvenileserial Killers, and our next episode is

(47:10):
going to be we're going to coverthis. I think it's a dissertation.
I'm calling it a dissertation that maybe a capstone, but really good article
that I found published by a graduatestudent. And you know, there's a

(47:32):
lot of information, a lot ofinformation in it, most that we know
certainly, but there's some new thingstoo for me that we're just really eye
opening, very interesting. So we'regoing to cover that the next time you
can look for I usually do aTikTok or a Facebook video just to announce

(47:53):
what the next thing is going tobe. So when you see that,
you know it's going to be inthat either the same day of the day
after. Typically once a week iswhat I try to publish. So I
hope you're looking forward to that.I know I am, And again,
as always, if you have thoughtsor questions, you can reach me at
doctor Kimberly Cassidy eighty nine at gmaildot com. Have a great day.