Criminal - Death in Eden

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

In the early 1930s, eight people settled on an uninhabited island in the Galapagos. Within five years, two were missing and two were dead. Abbott Kahler’s book is Eden Undone: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II. Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and when you're ready to launch, use the offer code Criminal to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. No frills, delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. Before they even left, Frederick decided to yank out all of his teeth and have them replaced by a set of steel dentures.

In the late 1920s, a German doctor named Frederick Ritter, decided to leave the country. He said he wanted to leave modern society altogether. He was a veteran of World War I. He suffered quite a bit of trauma on the battlefield there, came out with severe lung damage, and afterward went into holistic healing and believed in the healing powers of water

and also believed in the powers of the mind and was into philosophy. He was in Aditya and various philosophers and fancied himself to be a philosopher. This is author Abbott Kaler. And so he decided that civilization had nothing more to offer him and he had nothing more to offer it and began dreaming of escaping civilization

and going somewhere to a remote island where he would be able to test his theories and write his philosophy and sort of, I guess, develop a new world order that people might want to follow. Frederick Ritter believed it was possible to live to be 150 years old. Abbott says he didn't trust manufactured clothing, especially, quote, the civilized shoe.

He made his own shoes. He called society a monster forging ever-new chains with which to shackle the free development of its members. Abbott says he was also unpredictable. Frederick was somebody who was quite violent when he came home from the war. There's one anecdote where he sort of lost his mind for a moment and shot his sister's dogs, then turns around and says that he is so against violence that he won't even eat potatoes because they have to be yanked from the earth by force.

He told people he was a strict vegetarian. He worked as a doctor at the Hydrotherapeutic Institute in Berlin, and one of his patients was a young woman named Dory Strouch. So Dory was a few years younger than Frederick Ritter. She was in her 20s when she became a patient at his hospital in Berlin. Dory was suffering from multiple sclerosis, and every other doctor told her, you know, you are incurable. Your condition cannot be cured. Frederick, however, said that she was choosing to be sick, that her mind had told her she wanted to be sick. And if she could just train her mind to give her a different message, she would not suffer from multiple sclerosis at all. Instead of, you know,

telling Frederick this was crazy or she was annoyed or, you know, whatever, stomping out of the room, Dory started to think maybe he was on to something. She was at first terrified of him, but then she became very enamored with Frederick, I think partly because she had been married to an older family friend and was very unsatisfied in this marriage. In her memoir, she actually talks about how bad the sex was in her marriage, which is kind of an orthodox thing for women to have been writing about back at that time, to be so candid. But she learned of his dream of abandoning civilization and decided that it was her role in love. life to accompany him on this journey and be instrumental in spreading his ideas and philosophies

throughout the world, and she begged to go with him. At first, Frederick said no. He said, I cannot have a lovesick woman full of romantic notions trailing after me in the wilderness. But eventually, he gave in, even though they were both married to other people. They decided to go to the Galapagos Islands. How did they pick the Galapagos? Well, it's interesting. You know, when you think about the Galapagos, I think most people who have never been there

or don't know much about it think of, you know, sandy beaches and waving palm trees and a lush tropical vegetation. But the Galapagos, of course, were formed by volcanic eruptions. They're covered in lava rock. Many of the islands don't have any freshwater source. They're barren. They're incapable of growing anything. And I think Frederick liked this challenge.

He wanted to prove that he could go to a difficult place like the Galapagos and not only survive, but thrive. And they picked an island called Floriana, which is in the southern part of the islands. And Floriana's saving grace was that it does have one freshwater spring. So if they were able to tap into that, they would at least be able to have a chance of cultivating a garden and sustaining themselves. How big was Floriana? It's not large at all. It is one of the smaller islands, and at that time it was completely uninhabited. It had been in the past a very popular transient point for pirates and people in the trade routes.

It was more of a place where people came and went rather than stayed there, although people tried and failed. Before they left, Frederick and Dory started preparing for their new life. That's when Frederick decided to have all of his teeth removed and get him. He had a set of steel dentures to replace them. You know, he was anticipating dental problems on the island, and he just, I guess, wanted to, you know, stop that from even happening in the beginning. Of course, he did not account for the fact that his gums would shrink. Which meant the dentures sometimes fell out.

But Frederick had a backup plan. Frederick also wanted to test gums. He thought that gums could become, quote, horny enough to substitute for teeth. He and Dory sailed from Amsterdam on July 3rd, 1999. They brought mosquito netting, gardening tools, and philosophy in Latin books. Frederick wrote to a friend, I feel as if I am dying in one world, in order to be reborn in another. At the end of the month, they arrived in Guaya Keel on the coast of Ecuador.

Frederick didn't like it there. He said he noticed a quote, completely indefinitely. tolerable cult having to do with shoes. He didn't like that there were shooshiners everywhere. From there, they took another boat to Floriana. Once they got there, they found a place to sleep in some caves. They were known as the island's pirate caves. A pirate named Patrick Watkins had lived in them decades earlier. So they stayed in his cave, and this was something that did not sit well with Dory. She later described feeling something sinister and friends. She later described feeling something sinister and frightening in the air on the island.

She began believing that if they did not behave themselves on Floriana, if they did not yield to the will of the island, Floriana would come to hurt them in the long run. Almost immediately after they arrived, it became clear that life on the island was going to be harder than they imagined. The lava rocks are very sharp. They had pretty thin shoes. And Dori, of course, you know, suffering from multiple sclerosis,

had a bad leg that pained her quite a bit. And Frederick, he could be a very cold person and sort of got frustrated with Dory whenever she would express that her leg was bothering her. And there was tension that started to brew with them pretty much right away. You know, Frederick would tell her to, quote, you know, erect a defense psychology around herself,

and that would protect her from the pain. And, you know, of course, Dory would just get, you know, annoyed that he couldn't show a little bit more care and concern. Frederick and Dory also had to deal with all of the wild animals that lived on the island. There were wild cattle, boars, and donkeys, and a lot of insects. Not long after they arrived, Dory's feet became very swollen. She and Frederick discovered that a kind of sand flea had burrowed beneath her skin to lay eggs. Frederick cut Dory's feet open to remove them.

He found 32 in all. Then he told Dory that she should develop a defense psychology around her feet. At one point, Dory's teeth started rotting from eating too much sugar cane, which Frederick scolded her for. But he did agree to share his steel dentures with her. For a while, she'd only talk and smile

when she was wearing them. Frederick and Dory built a small home for themselves. They called it Frito, a combination of their names, and also a reference to the German word for peace. There were bananas, pineapples, oranges and papayas growing on the island, and they were also able to grow their own food, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers. So Frederick, for all of his faults, did build a really ingenious contraption. He was able to sort of rig a shower and a water source and piping from the spring that delivered water to their area. Their garden flourished. They had wonderful fruits. Dory wrote quite loving.

about these fruits, that they were bigger than baby's heads and anything, much better than anything she had ever seen in Europe. And then, a few months after they arrived, they started getting unexpected visitors. In the 1930s, you know, after everybody was suffering from the Great Depression, the stock market had crashed, people were really just desperate. Anybody with money decided to, you know, I'm going to build a yacht and go on oceanic exploration, and it sort of became an escape from, you know, the hell that had been, you know, descending upon the world after the storm market crash.

In January of 1930, a wealthy American arrived on Floriana. He had no idea Frederick and Dory were there. He had gone just to search of treasure and to, you know, gather some exotic animals in flora and fauna to bring back to the United States and was quite shocked, you know, when he came upon Dorian Frederick. He, you know, gave them some tools. He gave them ammunition. He gave them a gun. He gave them dynamite to blast away the wild boars that were eating their fruits and vegetables. And he even gave Frederick some steel polish. And when he went back to America and gave a press conference, you know, he joked that he didn't know what Frederick was going to do with

steel polish unless it was to polish his teeth. But he called them the modern day Adam and Eve. And everybody immediately became fascinated by the idea that these two, you know, had it figured out, these two actually escaped civilization when civilization was falling apart, and it almost became sort of an aspirational thing. You know, wow, wouldn't it be great if I could just get away to our remote island and get away from all of my problems? Newspapers reported on the German Robinson Crusoe. A reporter for the Austin statesman wrote,

their story was, quote, liable to make one wonder when the next boat leaves for the South Seas and how much a ticket costs. Frederick and Dory had no idea they had become famous. But a few months later, a boat delivered a large package of mail, dozens of letters and newspapers. All of the letters were from strangers, many writing that they also wanted to move to Floriana.

Dory was devastated. She later wrote their piece was destroyed, quote, as Shirley and swiftly as a single stroke of lightning, destroys a living tree. She told Frederick, this is the end of everything. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal.

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obviously believe that we are living in idle life like Adam and Eve in paradise, eating delicious fruits, swimming in the ocean, or walking about admiring the beautiful landscape. This is a pleasant delusion. On August 28, 1932, a new family arrived on Floriana.

A man named Heinz Whitmer, a woman named Margaret Waldbrill, and Heinz's 12-year-old son, Harry. And by the time that they arrive on Floriana, Margaret is five months pregnant with Heinz's child, and they directly go to Frederick and Dory to pay their respects to the famous Dr. Ritter, as they called him. And it does not go well. You know, Frederick was kind of put upon and resentful. He's, you know, he's thinking, I left Berlin in a medical practice because I did not want to do this any longer. I didn't want to be responsible for a woman and her child and this deletive.

and they're going to impose upon me. Dory, for her part, was hopeful at first that she might have a woman friend on the island, but she and Margaret didn't hit it off either. You know, she looked at Margaret and thought, what kind of fool would want to give birth on a deserted island? And Margaret looked at Dori and says, what kind of fool quotes Nietzsche on a dessert island? And they really, you know, didn't have anything in common. And so the two couples get off to a very bad start. I mean, you know what? I kind of get it. I kind of get it. I kind of how I would be kind of mad, too, if people showed up on my island. Yeah, and, you know, I think there were, this is where they start having differing accounts.

You know, I should say that I, you know, had several sources I consulted for this story, and Margaret and Dory have very different ideas of how things unfolded at different points. And this was one of them, you know. Dory, in her memoir, acts like she was very accommodating and offered to do anything she could. And Margaret basically read about how standoffish Dory was and, and how it was actually not a very friendly meeting. Margaret Hines and Harry settled several miles away from Dory and Frederick. They built a log cabin and planted a garden.

Margaret spent a lot of time sewing baby clothes. She was due at the end of the year. And then in October, another group arrived on the island. There's a woman in Paris. Her name is Antonia, actually. Antonio Wagner von Wehrborn Baskett is her entire name. She's usually described as a self-proclaimed baroness or a so-called baroness, but she actually was an authentic baroness.

She inherited the title from her grandfather. And she's in Paris with her two lovers. She has quite a reputation in Paris. She's known for throwing wild parties and orgies, seducing men and women alike. There are rumors that men have fought duels over her. There's rumors that she actually murdered somebody her. herself. And she declared that God himself ordered her to go to Floriana and conquer it and claim it for herself. So in 1932, she leaves Paris, brings her two lovers with her, shows up on

Floriana with these two men, Robert and Rudolph, and a gun and a whip on her person, and decides that she is going to turn Floriana into Miami and build a luxury hotel that will cater to American millionaires. She wanted to call it Hacienda, Paradisa. And, of course, this really does not get over well with anybody, including Heinz-Wittmer, Margaret, Frederick, and Dory. And the men she brought with her, Rudolph and Robert, what were they like? Well, Rudolph was blonde and pale and a little bit frail, and sort of, he had been friends

with the Baroness, I think, for a longer period of time than Robert. She and Rudolph had been in business together. In Paris, they owned a trinket shop, a lingerie slash trinket shop, and there were also rumors that she had been cooking the books a bit on that, and that when they left, they were fleeing debtors, and Rudolph was quite, you know, despondent about this because he had claims later that she had cost him all of his money and his reputation as a good businessman. So in a way, I think he felt that he had no, you know, choice but to accompany her because there was really nothing left for him in Paris.

He had no money to start somewhere else, and part of him was still. in love with the baroness. And Robert, he was a sort of very, very good-looking, strapping, dark-haired, very muscular. She sort of was very openly sexual with him and was clearly her favorite. I mean, the things that she chooses to bring with her seem a little wild, a wild decision for a deserted island. Yeah, I mean, she brings, you know, bees with her. I remember one in particular thing that she brought a bunch of bees. I think she was going to try. to be a beekeeper and make honey. She brings various exotic clothing, lingerie, all kinds of skimpy outfits. I guess in her mind, you know, if the idea that she was going to build this luxury hotel and sort of seduce American millionaires, the lingerie was a necessity for her,

I suppose. Margaret was the first to meet the Baroness, who showed up outside her home riding on a donkey. Margaret noted that the Baroness immediately had Rudolph, wash her feet in a freshwater spring that was also Margaret and Hines's drinking water. Then the Baroness went to visit Frederick and Dory. According to Dory, she extended her hand in a way that suggested she wanted them to kiss it. They didn't. They showed around Frito, and Dory noticed that the Baroness kept Rudolph close at all times, constantly ordering him around.

Dory thought he seemed very young, and later Rory noticed. wrote that the baroness, quote, must have caught him early. And then, not long after the baroness arrived, Frederick noticed some of his mail had been tampered with. At one point, the baroness offered to store some rice for Heinz, but when he tried to retrieve it, she told him he had to pay. I mean, it's kind of like this woman gets there, and Friedrich and Heinz says, you can't,

what are you doing? And she said, I'm going to do whatever I want. Yeah. You know, I remember when she was first deciding where to set up her hotel, she had been staying quite near Hines. And once Hines sort of realized that this woman was up to no good and had nefarious motives, he said, I don't want you anywhere near. He may, you know, go live somewhere else. And she taps her revolver in her waistband and says, I'm not going anywhere. I will stay where I like. She's not afraid to threaten anybody. And at the same time, she extends invitations to both Frederick and Hines. to, in Margaret's words, visit her wigwam. So she was trying to seduce these men. At the same time, she was also threatening to kill them. On New Year's Day, 1933, Margaret had her baby. It's quite a harrowing scene, and she is alone. She, Heinz and his teenage son had gone out somewhere.

She doesn't know where anybody is. It's pitch black. She stumbles from her bed, trying to call out their names, and sort of feints in pain. and all the while wild animals are circling around her, the wild hogs, the goats, the pigs. And, you know, it's kind of terrifying. And it's in this, you know, this way she gives birth alone.

It was a boy. They named him Ralph. This seems like kind of a hard place to have an infant. It was. You know, it's very difficult. She, you know, does the best she can and I think manages quite well, you know, when American explorers would go visit. visit the new baby, they would remark about how well he looked and how chubby. And she depended on

them quite often to bring milk. She wasn't able to nurse after a while. It sort of her body stopped producing milk, and she had to depend on milk from them. And of course, there was another problem when the baroness, it was discovered, had been stealing milk from Heinz and Margaret. When visitors came to the island, the baroness would often tell them to leave the milk with her, and she'd pass it along, but she kept it for herself. By this point, one of the men the Baroness was living with, Rudolph, wasn't doing well. He started suffering from tuberculosis, is one of the diagnosis that he received. And at the same time, the Baroness was kind of demoting him.

You know, she always ordered these two men around, but she started giving Rudolph the more menial chores and also the more physical. physically demanding chores. So his body would just wear out. He would collapse. And then every time he collapsed, she would berate him. And she began staging physical fights, actually, between Robert and Rudolph and sort of egging them on to beat each other. And Robert, the stronger man, was always the victor in these fights. And every time Rudolph would lose, she would just demote him further and make things worse for him. So there was a period of time where he just started visiting Margaret and Dory separately and complaining about the baroness and saying, I don't know what I'm going to do.

I'm getting desperate. I want to leave this island. I can't leave this island. I don't know what I'm going to do. And, you know, Margaret and Dory both just started worrying about how bad things were getting with the baroness. And then, a couple of months after the baby was born, Heinz's canoe went missing. He asked the baroness about it. And she lied and said Dory and Frederick had taken it. When Heinz and Frederick begin comparing notes, it becomes quite clear that the baroness is their common enemy. And that's when they really try to band together and decide what are we going to do about her, because the baroness seems to be able to charm whoever she's with.

Frederick and Heinz decided to try writing to the Ecuadorian authorities. And Frederick, you know, says, I think this woman has medical problems. I think she's seriously off. I think she belongs in a syncharium. Please come and investigate, and they both sign the letter. The governor of the Galapagos does visit Floriana, and what happens, but the baroness manages to seduce him too, and he even invites her on a vacation with him, so she sort of trots off with the governor for six weeks, and when she's back, he decides to give her even more

land and clear authorized access to Heinz and Margaret Spring, and she's sort of triumphant and emboldened by this. And, you know, it's kind of, they're at a loss at that point. They realize that there's no institutional help available to them. In a letter to a friend, Dory said that the vague feeling of something being wrong had, quote, crystallized into a feeling of murder. She wrote, dire events were on the way. And then some new visitors arrived on the island.

They stayed with Frederick and Dory. And there is an incident in which the baroness invites them to go on a hunting trip. And they're a bit reluctant because the baroness, I think, is throwing herself all over, this one man, a very handsome man. In Dory's words, he's named Lind. Another one of the visitors noted that Lind didn't seem interested in the baroness. But Abbott says the baroness had a plan. The baroness, you know, she said that if you wound an animal and nurse it back to health, that animal is going to be loyal to you forever. So it seemed that she wanted to test this theory on human beings.

And her idea is that she's going to shoot Lind and nurse him back to health, and he's going to be forever loyal to her. But she accidentally shot the wrong man. He didn't die, but was badly injured. She had first tried to blame it on an Ecuadorian soldier who had been accompanying them as bodyguards. She tried to deflect blame on everybody but herself, and she had, She finally admits it. She fully confesses and starts, you know, crying and saying she didn't mean to and what is she going to do and she's never going to shoot a gun again. And I think it was something that made Frederick really reached the breaking point of, you know, feeling like this woman is really clearly a danger. And I can't really brush off her threats anymore.

Not long after that, the weather on the island changed. It didn't rain for months. And it was a huge, hugely problematic for everybody. I mean, everybody's crops were failing. Their animals couldn't eat or drink. You know, there was nothing. The animals were dying. Everybody writes about the carcasses that were turning up everywhere.

It just looked like a complete wasteland of animal carcasses and wilted vegetation. And people were desperate, really, really, truly desperate. And then, one day, five months into the drought, Dory said she heard a scream. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Support for criminal comes from MintMobile. You can start any Mint Mobile plan for just $15 a month. That's less than a bill from any of their major competitors.

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for just $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash Phoebe. That's mintmobile.com slash Phoebe. Upp front payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer prefers three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on a limited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile for details. On March 19, 34, Dory said she was at home with Frederick when she heard a woman's scream.

She wrote, it was an outcry of such terror that it was hardly human. Frederick said he heard the scream too. Dory said they didn't investigate. They assumed if they were needed, someone would come get them. Two days later, Dory said Rudolph came to visit. She knew things had been bad between him and the Baroness for a while, but now he seemed happy.

Dory asked him if he'd made up with the Baroness, and he said, quote, not this time. About a week after that, Rudolph visited Dory again. This time he brought Margaret. Margaret announced that the Baroness and Robert had left on a friend's yacht to go to Tahiti. Dory and Frederick hadn't seen a yacht. But the Baroness and Robert had disappeared. Abbott Kaler says everyone has different accounts of what happened.

Dory and Frederick stuck to their story about the scream. Frederick was sure it had been the baroness. But Margaret and Hines, who lived much closer to her, said they hadn't heard anything. Margaret later recalled that Frederick seemed to know more than he let on, and that he had told everyone that the baroness, quote, won't come back, take my word for it. In a letter to a newspaper, Frederick wrote that he thought Heinz

had killed the baroness and Robert. Dory believed Rudolph had done. on it. Abbott says Rudolph did seem to be acting strangely. He shows up at Dory's and weeps. He moves in with Margaret because he just doesn't want to, you know, be down where the baroness was, and he's with Margaret. He's crying all the time.

He seems lethargic, even more lethargic than usual. But she says that he is also very helpful and helpful with the baby. And he just seemed to be kind of all. over the place, despondent one minute, calm the next moment, happy one moment. So it really seemed nobody quite knew what to make of his behavior at this time. Rudolph was still very sick and weak. Dory started to think that if he had killed the Baroness, he must have had an accomplice. She just wasn't sure who. Rudolph spent a lot of time walking to the bay and waiting to see if any ships would come. He wanted to get off the island. He brought his things

to the beach, so he'd be ready to leave at a moment's notice. One ship wouldn't take him because he was so sick. Another ship passed by without Rudolph noticing, but the crew stole most of his belongings. In July, several months after the Baroness and Robert disappeared, a passing fisherman finally agreed to take him off the island. After Rudolph left, Frederick wrote a letter to an American explorer who had visited the island several times over the years.

Captain George Hancock. I think Frederick always knew more than what he let on, and he writes a letter to Hancock and says, I need you to come to the island once more. I know something, but I have no proof of it. So that's, you know, Hancock does make another voyage. He's determined to get to the bottom of it. Captain Hancock made plans to set out from Los Angeles.

in November. And then, right before he was scheduled to leave, he heard that two bodies had been found on another Galapagos Island, called Marchena. Captain Hancock headed straight there. It was clear the bodies had been there for several months. They had been mummified by the sun. Captain Hancock was barely able to recognize them, but he could tell that one of them was Rudolph. The other was the sailor who'd taken Rudolph from Floriana. And it seems that the two men died of thirst. Marchana is an island that has no fresh water, and they really had nothing to drink

and just sort of died horrifically of thirst. Captain Hancock left the island and headed right to Floriana to tell Heinz, Margaret Dory and Frederick, what had happened. And I think Frederick, you know, is just sort of worried that everything is imploding at this point. Tensions with him and between him and Dory are escalating. He is becoming more volatile. Margaret reports that Frederick hits Dory at this time. And so he seemed to be losing it as well.

Frederick had started eating meat again. And one night he ate some meat from chickens that had gotten sick and died. Dory was sort of like, is it safe to eat? this and he's like sure and so according to dory they eat it and and she has various versions of what happened she says she took a bite she says in one version that she immediately vomited this bite in other versions she ate the plate and was totally fine another version she didn't really eat at all but frederick does eat some of this chicken and immediately starts exhibiting signs of illness he's sweaty he's feverish at some point he has armed

doesn't move. He seems immobile. You know, he's gasping. And it's quite some time before she actually goes to Margaret and says, can you please help me? You know, Dr. Ritter is in bad shape. Margaret agreed to come help, but it was too late. She saw Frederick was clearly dying. And she has quite a different version of Dory and Frederick's interactions during this time. You know, according to Dory, it was all gentle and they caressed each other's hands. And Frederick was whispering sweet words to her. And according to Margaret, Frederick said to Dory, I curse you with my dying breath and made a jerky movement as if to leap up and hit Dory. And so this very interesting differences in their accounts of how Frederick died.

Was Margaret suspicious of Dory? She does make a comment that she doesn't understand why Dory waited so long to come and seek help. So I think that that's as far as Margaret wanted to go and accusing Dory of maybe, maybe, you know, letting Frederick suffer and linger there a little longer than she might have. What does Dory do after Friedrich dies? You know, she has lots of flowery language for him and her memoir, but she's pretty eager to get off the island at that point. By this time, Captain Hancock had arrived on the island. He agreed to take Dory back to the mainland, where she could book a trip home to Germany. There's all kinds of interesting behavior on Hancock's yacht from Dory.

And what's really fascinating is during the research of this book, I was lucky to come across video of these people. So I actually watched footage of Dory leaving the island and saw exactly what she looked like, what she was doing, what she was wearing, her facial expressions, how she was crying. She was wearing this sort of jaunty little sailor dress, and once she got on the ship, you know, I see, there are the footage stopped, but there's pictures of her on the ship where she actually looks quite serene. I think she spent quite a bit of time in her cabin and then decided to come out and mingle and started, you know, showing a new side of herself and being a little bit more outgoing. And I think Frederick probably stifled her a lot. Were the Baroness and Robert's bodies ever found? No. They were not, no.

Abbott says there are lots of different theories about what happened to them. Some people believe they hadn't died. For a long time, Margaret, I think she never went back on that declaration that they went on a yacht in Tahiti. And she said she, you know, heard the reports of later, years later, that the Baroness was there. There were rumors that the Baroness had gone somewhere else in Ecuador, maybe to another island, where she was starting a new colony. There are rumors that they got swept out to the ocean somehow, which seemed doubtful because it seemed the tide would bring them back in

if they didn't have anything that hold them down. And when I went to Floriana myself in May of 2022, I talked to several Native Ecuadorians, and they said when they were growing up at Floriana, they always heard rumors that the bodies were in a cave somewhere. And when they were children, they would actually go peer around in caves and try to look for bones. What do you think happened?

I really think that Rudolph is behind the disappearance of the Baroness and Robert, and that Frederick Ritter helped him. I don't know if he actually assisted in the murder. I think he certainly assisted in disposing of the bodies or getting rid of them in some way or hiding them in some way. And I think that Dory suspected this, and I think it made her terrified of Frederick. And I also think that Margaret, you know, she might not have been aware of what Frederick was doing, but she certainly Aiden abetted Rudolph after the fact and gave him safe harbor and lied for him, you know, talking about this mysterious yacht that came and picked up the baroness and Robert Philipson and brought them to Tahiti. So everybody seemed guilty of something, but, you know, varying degrees of severity.

Were Dorian Hines and Margaret questioned by authorities of her? They were. Authorities, of course, did question them after all the disappearances. They sort of passed that investigation with flying colors. Jory Hines and Margaret wrote a joint statement about everything that had happened leading up to the Baroness and Robert's disappearance. They wrote about how miserable Rudolph had been and how badly he wanted to leave. They wrote, we know nothing of the Baroness's whereabouts, dead or alive. One story left, it was only Hines, Margaret, and their children left on Floriana. The Wintmers, you know, seemed to be most suited for island life since the beginning, and they proved that correct. You know, one of their guests presently said something to the effect of when the sun sets in the Hacienda Pardis, so as in smoldering ruins, and Dory and Frederick have abandoned the island, you know, the Wittmers will be sitting there rejoicing.

at the sunset, Heinz smoking is pipe and Margaret playing with their children, and they're the ones who are going to live out their days there. And that's exactly what happened. And they had another child who is actually still alive and who I met when I was on the island. She's in her 80s now. And her two daughters run two hotels on Black Beach. One of them is called Hotel Whitmer. And the ground floor of Hotel Whitmer has this sort of museum that's built to honor Heinz in Margaret's life on the island with many of their artifacts, their luggage, a phonograph, several of their tools, guns, things like that. And they have quite an extensive library shelf filled with books about Floriana and memoirs, people who had lived there. I think the only

book that is missing conspicuously is Dory's memoir. Margaret and Dory both published memoirs about their time on the island. Dory called hers. Satan came to Eden. Eight years after leaving Floriana, Dory died in Germany from complications of multiple sclerosis. She was 42. Heinz died on Floriana in 1963. Margaret died on Floriana in 2000. She was 95.

And she really, I think, enjoyed when people would come to visit her on Floriana. You know, there's reports of people sort of making a pilgrimage to see Margaret. She would serve them homemade wine, and for a certain amount of money, she would start talking about the days of all these people on Floriana and what happened. And, you know, she had one saying that she would say, a closed mouth admits no flies. So she would never tell all that she knew, but she really, really enjoyed talking around it and suggesting things and taunting people.

And my favorite line from her, of course, is when she would ask people, do you think I did it? To learn more, check out Abbott Kailer's book, Eden Undone, a true story of sex, murder, and utopia at the dawn of World War II. Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and Me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer, Katie Bishop is our senior. supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Silison, and Megan Canane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at

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