IL IL - Elfrieda 'Fritzie' Knaak, 29, Lake Bluff, 30 Oct 1928

[Ausgirl]

VikingBookLady - I think you're right about the billy club.

Great point about the clothes!

 

[flutterby]

Just going off the beaten track a little bit here -- what if they were ALL down there? And this was a sort of culty demonstration of how faith heals, mind of matter in the extreme, etc... I am sure there's a few points that could bring that idea into doubt, but it would sure explain a few things, the behaviour of Hitch & pals, inconsistencies, all sorts.

I've sat and read the whole 19 pages and was beginning to make the same conclusion. She was some kind of 'experiment' or 'sacrifice' for the cult that went horribly wrong? Kind of how Jim Jones used to make his victims pretend they were drinking poison?
It would explain the strange behaviour and why there are so many people who are suspicious?

This link has a photo of the poor 'girl reporter' demonstrating how it was impossible for her to do it to herself https://ww1.fold3.com/page/641406165_elfrieda_grace_knaak/stories/

 

[Coppertop15]

I never heard of this case before! It is absolutely nuts. Only thing I am sure of is she did not do this to herself.

 

[Tap Dancer]

I stumbled upon this thread tonight and spent a few hours reading the entire thing. Wow! I had never heard of Elfrieda Knaak before. There's no way that poor woman tortured herself to that degree. I just wish she could have given some names and details.

Ausgirl hasn't posted in here since 2014. I hope all is well. Thanks for creating this amazing thread!

 

[PepperjackCandy]

I hoped that someone would have come along and said what I want to say, but it looks like no one has, so I guess I'm going to commit a faux pas and necro an old thread. The electric commuter railroads in Chicago have/had (as appropriate) overhead lines, and not third rails. Therefore, it's highly unlikely that the source of the electricity would have been the train. That leaves the transformer.

So, while I'm here, I might as well list what I think happened, after reading all of y'all's detective work (native Chicagoan now living in Texas, so I guess I can use "y'all"):

1. EK was fooling around with/flirting with Hitch in addition to the New Thought religious classes. They generally spoke after the police department closed down for the night, but because of Hitch's broken leg, Barney, who knew about their affair, stayed late to take the call;

2. When Barney told EK about Hitch's leg, she went out to Lake Bluff to see him. She stayed too late and missed the last train back;

3. Either Hitch or Barney took pity on her and gave her a key to the police station so that she could spend the night somewhere warm and safe;

4. In the dark of night, all alone with no distractions, the fact that she was fooling around with a married man started to eat away at her so she decided to burn off her sin on the electrical transformer out back (I have to admit that my image here is influenced by the last five minutes of Godspell, where the disciples climb the electric fence where Jesus is being executed and I'm imagining her somehow climbing it so that both her feet and hands were in contact with it) which would explain the burns and the broken bones (if she fell hard, even the damage to her skull);

5. Since it takes some time for electrical burns to show themselves, she thought that maybe it hadn't worked, so she went down to the furnace room to finish the job, trailing blood behind her as she went down the stairs, where she proceeded to pass out;

6. Someone else came in to the building, saw the door to the boiler room open and, not even thinking that maybe someone was in the room, closed and locked it;

7. The employee comes in the next morning and finds that the furnace went out. He unlocks the door of the boiler room and finds EK.

I admit that there are some holes in this theory (in particular -- how did her clothes get into the furnace?), but so far that seems to be about the closest I can come to an explanation.

 

[Rayemonde]

An alleged reduction of sensitivity to pain in people with schizophrenia has been reported, but the nature of this complex phenomenon has not been elucidated yet. Reports of insensitivity to burns from people with schizophrenia are extremely rare. We report the case of a 24-year-old man who set both of his arms on fire during the first break of paranoid schizophrenia. As a result of severe tissue damage, both of his limbs had to be amputated.

Five to 13% of people with schizophrenia will commit suicide and often do so by unusual methods, including incineration [1, 2], and especially in the early stages of the disease...

While he recited the Lord’s Prayer, he approached the fire with his eyes closed and his clothes ignited. Our patient just remembers having experienced a slight feeling of heat but no pain. His relatives found him praying aloud, with his arms still on the pyre and, surprisingly, the patient looked indifferent...

It should be noted that different experiences and reactions to pain are also seen in other neuropsychiatric disorders such as major depression and bipolar disorder, eating disorders, Alzheimer’s dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and some personality disorders...

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/crips/2015/405713/

 

[Zahreenuh]

Read all 20 pages and wow... what amazing work and finding out so much about this crime scene. Such a tragic one but so mysterious...
Definitely do not think she did this herself..