Hell Hath No Fury: The Strange Fate of Anna Schrader
Theresa Griffith Kennedy (the main author of this piece) and I have been working on this Anna Schrader/Torso Murder case for some time. If you've been following the podcast Murder By Experts you already know some of the story. Here is a little more and there is more coming. Hope you like it.
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The apartment house (3rd from right) where Anna Schrader lived in 1930. When someone fired a shot through the window she called the police, but they decided a "potted cactus" had fallen from the balcony above and came through the window. |
In 1946 Portland, the population had swollen to ten times
its pre-war size, and was on the move. The
shipyards along the Columbia River laid off workers and River City entered the
long, slow economic decline of the post-war period. Portland industries, which
had always depended on transient workers, were contracting. Many of the
transients were moving on, but a large portion of them were staying in place
and looking for other work. The city was
bigger and more crowded than it had ever been. Violent incidents, murders and
disappearances were all rising, and in such a volatile population it was easy
to get lost in the shuffle.
One of the women lost in the shuffle was Anna Schrader,
an aging beauty who had been well-known to readers of the Oregonian in the pre-war period but had faded from public view over
the last decade. By 1946, now a widow in
her early sixties, she had lost the refined Irish beauty that had long been one
of her claims to fame. Her reputation
damaged by scandal and a long, bitter battle with the Portland Police Bureau
and its former chief, Leon Jenkins, Schrader had become socially
invisible. In the spring of 1946, with
Jenkins coming out of retirement to replace ailing chief Harry Niles, Schrader
sensed she was on the verge of a comeback, but fate stepped in and altered her
narrative.
On
April 5, 1946, her sixty-third birthday, a small ad appeared in the classified
section of the Oregonian providing
the only documentation of Anna Schrader’s odd disappearance. The ten-word ad reading “Anyone knowing
whereabouts of Ann Schrader please write Y502, Oregonian” would run three times
over three weeks. The terse request would become the final epitaph for one of
Portland’s most controversial, troublesome and flamboyant characters. There is no record of who placed the ad, nor
any record of any responses it may have received and no record that the police
ever investigated the disappearance. It
is likely that a missing persons report was filed with the Police Bureau, as Anna
Schrader had many wealthy and influential friends. She had even been close to
several police officers, some of whom were still on the force, but corruption
and rivalries diffused the proper focus of the Police Bureau and the new chief,
Leon Jenkins, had far more reason to celebrate the disappearance of his least
favorite Portlander than to get to the bottom of it. As a result, Schrader, who hadn’t received
significant public attention in more than a decade, simply faded away; her
disappearance unnoticed, uninvestigated and forgotten.
Little
is known of Schrader’s early life. She
was married at age eighteen to a man named Farney and came to Portland
before 1910, nine years later. Schrader
arrived in the Rose City during a wave of female immigration that brought more
than 7,000 young women per year to town, looking for careers or for husbands. Some of them, like Louise Bryant, Portland’s
most famous woman journalist, and Lola Baldwin, Portland’s first female police
officer, found career opportunities and settled in, establishing roots. Others, like Madge Wilson, found only tragedy.
Anna
Schrader, whose allure and physical beauty drew the attention of many men, eventually
found a husband. In May of 1915 she
married Edward Schrader, a railroad employee who rose to the position of Yard
Master before his death in 1941. It
appears a hardworking husband was not enough for Anna Schrader; she wanted fame
and social prominence. And like many women
before and after her, she found Portland’s society, with its unspoken class
system and firmly closed ranks, difficult to enter. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t try though.
Naturally competitive, Schrader threw herself into
political and social work, organizing her neighborhood for the Republican Party
during the Presidential election of 1916.
Her candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, lost the election and Anna Schrader
marked the occasion in her typical flamboyant fashion. On December 25, 1916 the Oregonian reported, “Mrs. Anna Schrader will don her swimming suit
and swim in the Willamette River as part of an election bet.” She would be remembered for decades as a
popular swimmer and for her activities with both the Republican Party and the
YWCA.
Anna schrader was born in a small Midwestern town. She came to Portland in 1910 (at the age of 27) to escape a bad marriage. |
The attractive Mrs. Schrader, now in her thirties but
already shaving seven full years off her age, was attracted to and had a
fascination for tall men in uniform.
Soon after coming to Portland she was the Fire Department’s candidate
for Rose Queen. In those days, before
the High Schools took over selection of the Rose Princesses, every community
group had its own candidate. Groups
would raise funds by charging a penny a vote and Rose Princesses got a great
deal of publicity. It was during her
campaign for Rose Queen that Anna Schrader met a strapping young policeman
named Bill Breuning. It would take a few
years for their relationship to develop, but Portland would never be the same
afterwards.
William “Bill” Breuning was a powerfully built man,
standing six feet one and weighing 235 pounds, who worked as an ironworker
before joining the Police Bureau in 1914.
Breuning was recognized as a professional and competent officer, popular
with his fellow officers and sought after for his ability to speak Yiddish; a
necessary skill in the immigrant neighborhood of South Portland. After returning from Army duty during the
Great War, Breuning was promoted to sergeant in 1920 and lieutenant in
1926. The married officer with the
promising career began an affair with the attractive Mrs. Schrader in 1921.
The two lovers met regularly at several downtown hotels,
including the historic Cornelius hotel on SW Alder Street. Breuning then arranged
for Anna to be hired as a “private detective” as a clever cover for their
affair. Sometimes Breuning and Schrader
would meet at her northeast Portland home for dinner and sex, and on more than
one occasion these trysts resulted in a “near miss” when Edward Schrader
returned home early from work and Breuning was forced to make a hasty escape
through the back door. Despite the
danger, the relationship seemed to fill the needs of both partners. Breuning, with two children and a devoted
wife in southeast Portland, had a passionate and beautiful lover, who was
always eager to please him. And Anna
Schrader had a strong fantasy life in which she hoped she might upgrade her
husband from a hardworking railroad man to the prominent police lieutenant
decked out in his spiffy uniform, cap and gun belt. Her dreams of upward social mobility were
fueled by the affair and in time, she started planning to marry her lover, Bill.
At the start the affair may have seemed like the perfect
arrangement for Bill Breuning. With his
lover conveniently married he may have felt that his own home and family
were safe. As the affair progressed,
though, Schrader began to pressure him to leave the wife he said he didn’t love
and marry her. This pressure soon began
to tell on the relationship and after 1925 emotional and even violent scenes
became commonplace between the two. The
prevailing social constructs of the time would have prevented Breuning from
ever considering abandoning his wife and young children for a childless woman
who had been married twice already.
The human issues involved in the Schrader/Breuning affair
appear as timeless and predictable as the melodramatic plots of the silent
films that were so popular at the time; issues regarding what constitutes
decent conduct and who is ultimately punished for attempting to break up a home
with small children involved. As many
women before her, Anna Schrader must have realized she would never get what she
wanted. Lt. Breuning would never leave his wife and children to give her the
social station or romantic and sexual excitement she seemed to crave. Schrader had to have realized, too, that she
had been fooled and used into the bargain.
That bitterness must have been all consuming for her, as her later
behavior seems to suggest. Her intense
love for Bill Breuning soon turned to hatred, as she brazenly informed the
Oregonian reporters.
One of the very few pictures known to exist of Anna Schrader appeared in the Oregonian in 1929 during the sex scandal that accompanied her breakup with lover, Bill Breuning. |
The following day (August 24, 1929) headlines in the Oregonian trumpeted, “Woman’s Bullets
Miss Policeman. W.H. Breuning Victor in Sidewalk Scuffle.” The confrontation had not gone well for Anna
Schrader. Confronting Breuning in front
of his house she had drawn the pistol and threatened him with it. Breuning grabbed the gun and during the
struggle it discharged twice, not striking anyone. Breuning threw Schrader to the ground,
dropping on her with both knees and breaking her ribs in an effort to restrain
her. Breuning then called for the paddy
wagon and Anna Schrader was carted off to jail, charged with “intent to kill
with a dangerous weapon” and one of Portland’s earliest and biggest sex
scandals had begun.
Anna Schrader defended herself from her jail cell,
“sobbing uncontrollably” and exposing her long-term love affair with Lieutenant
Breuning. She claimed that she had not
intended to kill him, but only took the gun for protection because of his
brutality in the past. She said that the
gun went off accidentally when he attacked her.
Breuning counter-attacked by publically repeating rumors he had been
spreading, portraying Schrader as the aggressor, an alluring chippy, who had
forced him into an illicit sexual affair, against his better judgement. He and
his friends on the police force also appear to have tampered with evidence in
an attempt to cover up the affair; visiting several downtown hotels where the
couple had met, bullying desk clerks and unceremoniously ripping pages from the
hotel registers. The Oregonian and its readers loved the
scandal; lurid story after lurid story, all with screaming colorful headlines,
appeared in the paper for nearly two years.
Edward Schrader, despite his humiliation, resolutely stood
by his wife, urging her to bring assault charges against Breuning and suing the
lieutenant himself for “alienation of affections” as a result of the affair.
Schrader, realizing that her reputation had already been damaged beyond repair,
decided to raise the stakes a notch. In
a momentous phone call to the Oregonian
newspaper, she
threatened to “rock Portland” by exposing a system of bureau-wide corruption
within the police force. She had worked
as an informant and “private detective” for the bureau for nearly eight
years. During that time she had made
many contacts and gathered a great deal of specific evidence on corruption and
police involvement in the illegal liquor trade, all conducted of course, during
the years of prohibition.
The Breuning/Schrader scandal created harsh consequences
for both parties. Bill Breuning, who had
enjoyed a promising career, was eventually dismissed from the force for “conduct
unbecoming a police officer” in 1930. The loss was a devastating blow. It was
the first in a series of scandals that shook Mayor George Baker’s
administration, leading to his decision not to run for re-election in
1932. Police Chief Jenkins tried to
protect his boss and the bureau by sweeping the mess under the proverbial rug,
but the public, hungry for salacious details wouldn’t let it rest and the
vindictive Anna Schrader was happy to feed their hunger for scandalous
misbehavior. Jenkins tried to claim that
it was Breuning’s conduct of being involved in an adulterous affair that led to
his discharge, but it was clear Breuing’s most serious crime was in simply getting
caught.
Anna
Schrader never made good on her promise to deliver the evidence and her public
charges were received skeptically by most Portlanders, who considered her
nothing more than a fallen woman. Mayor
Baker was still very popular at that time, having served as mayor for over a
decade, and Leon Jenkins’ reputation was considered spotless. Schrader brought her charges to the public,
with a series of rousing speeches, public appearances and radio talks, but
Breuning’s charges of Schrader’s emotional instability were believed by many
and Schrader’s emotional style of communication with others seemed to confirm
them. Schrader also received several
threats, some she would claim were attempts on her life as well as documented
violent attacks.
On one memorable occasion during the Recall Election of
1930, three women, at least one of whom was employed in a downtown
brothel/speakeasy, heckled Schrader during a speech in St Johns and then the
woman and her two girlfriends viciously kicked Schrader in the shins repeatedly
before all three women were hauled away by the police and later arrested. When a gun was fired through the window of
Schrader’s northeast Portland apartment on Ross Street, the police investigated
and determined that a “cactus plant” had fallen from the upstairs balcony and
come through the downstairs window – an unlikely occurrence, if it was
possible, given the layout of the building and the law of gravity.
Schrader participated actively in Recall Elections
against George Baker and members of his administration in 1930 and 1932. She testified about police corruption to a Multnomah
County Grand Jury, pursued lawsuits against Breuning and the Police Bureau for
false arrest, and acted as her own attorney on her false arrest case against
Breuning. During Breuning’s appeal of
his firing to the civil service board, at which Schrader was present, John
Logan, president of the board told her to “sit down and shut up,” and had her
ejected by a matron when she refused to comply.
Schrader
eventually won the suit against Breuning, receiving only a paltry token-award
of $250. Breuning, unemployed and bankrupt
probably couldn’t pay. George Baker
declined to run for re-election, after barely surviving the recall in spring,
1932 and Schrader briefly became a candidate for mayor. She spoke among a group
of candidates in a crowded election meeting at the United Artists movie theater
on SW Broadway. Then mysteriously, in
1930 Schrader began having a series of unusual car accidents and alleged burglaries
at her home that may have been warnings.
Combined with the heckling and violent attacks Schrader had endured, she
and her husband probably feared for their lives.
By
1936 Schrader had faded from view and entered a prolonged period of social invisibility. Researchers can only speculate why she never
gave her evidence, which she allegedly kept in a diary or a journal. A pay-off seems likely, but many feel that
Schrader was “unbribable” and not willing to be “shut up” for any amount of money.
Yet shut up she did, most likely in fear of continued attacks against her life
and that of her husband. Edward finally
passed away, from unknown causes in 1941 and still Anna Schrader kept her
silence. Bootlegging continued, Oregon’s
restrictive liquor regulations still provided an incentive to avoid taxes and
regulations and the powerful gangs that ran drinking, gambling, drugs and the
sex trade remained unwilling to be regulated.
Those establishments still had full compliance from the city government,
now under the control of Baker’s protégé, corrupt mayor Earl Riley, and in 1949
and 1950 Mayor Dorothy McCoullough Lee would receive some of the “Anna
Schrader” treatment herself.
On
April 12, 1946, right in the middle of Earl Riley’s reign, the first Torso Murder
package was found floating in the foul waters of the Willamette River. That same day saw the second appearance of
the “whereabouts” add in the Oregonian requesting information on Schrader. Some of the open and enduring questions of
the Torso investigation are: how long had the victim been dead when the body
parts started turning up; and what true age was the Torso suspected of being. It seems significant that the first package
appeared at least two weeks after Anna Schrader was last seen alive and well in
Portland.
The
Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department and Oregon State Police, who investigated
the Torso Case, were diligent, professional and thorough in tracking down and
ruling out dozens of missing women, but they have never considered the
possibility that Anna Schrader may have been the Torso victim. Even today, nearly seventy years later,
authorities are skeptical of the idea.
No one knows who the real Anna Schrader was. No one considers that if
she was the Torso victim that fact alone would lead directly to some very
specific suspects. She has become part
of a forgotten past. No one cares about Anna Schrader.
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