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- [00:02]
Vanessa Richardson
Hi listeners. Exciting news Crime House plus and Murder True Crime Stories are celebrating America's 250th by dropping a four part limited series on the crimes that built America. These are the crimes and cases that gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and a murder that built America's missing children movement. Follow Murder True Crime Stories for a new episode every Monday leading up to July 4th. Or or you can listen to all of them right now with Crime House Plus. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of this show's page.
- [00:49]
Carter Roy
This is Crime House.
- [00:55]
Vanessa Richardson
A few days before Christmas in the mid-1970s, a German preacher named Paul Paul Schaeffer gathered the children of his commune and told them Santa Claus was coming to visit. For over a decade, Schaeffer had been running an isolated compound deep in the Chilean wilderness called Colonia Dignidad. Within its walls, his word was law. His adult followers believed he spoke directly to God and to the kids. The only person more popular than Schaeffer was Santa Claus. So when he loaded them onto a bus and drove them out to a nearby river, they were excited. And they waited on the riverbank until a man in a red suit and a white beard came floating downstream on a raft. Then Schaefer drew a pistol and started firing. Santa was hit several times, fell off the raft and disappeared beneath the water. The children screamed. The gun had been loaded with blanks. The man playing Santa was fine, but Schaefer wasn't done. He turned to the children, still holding his smoking pistol, and told them they would never celebrate Christmas again. From now on, the only holiday at Colonia Dignidad was Schaeffer's birthday. Schaeffer killed Santa Claus to make a point. Inside Colonia Dignidad, the only thing the children were allowed to worship was him. And that was one of his lighter lessons. From UFO cults and mass suicides to secret CIA experiments, presidential assassinations, and murderous doctors, these aren't just theories. They're real stories that blur the line between fact and fiction. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes. A Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I'll explore the real people at the center of the world's most shocking events and nefarious organizations. These cases are wild and I want to hear what you think at the end of each episode. Leave a comment wherever you listen. Be sure to rate, review and follow so we can continue building this community together. And for early ad. Free access to all three episodes. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Please Note Today's episode includes descriptions of child sexual abuse, torture and political violence. Please listen with care. Today I'm investigating Colonia Dignidad, a secretive German commune hidden deep in the Chilean countryside. The name translates to Dignity Colony. But the reality couldn't have been more different. For over three decades, founder Paul Schaeffer used his compound as a private kingdom, one where he controlled what his followers ate, who they talked to, and even when they were allowed to sleep. And thanks to powerful friends in the Chilean government, it took far too long to stop him. So how did a fugitive German preacher build an empire on the other side of the world? Why did hundreds of people stay even as the abuse got worse? And what finally brought him down? All that and more coming up.
- [04:30]
Carter Roy
On this show. We're always digging for the truth, yet modern healthcare remains one of the greatest mysteries of all. Everyone deserves real medical support. And that's why I want to talk about Mochi Health. Mochi is a nationwide platform that's bringing humanity and transparency back to healthcare by treating your unique biology. Not a fad. They've already helped 400,000 members lose over £5 million. And while they lead the way in weight loss, Mochi is now a full scale Marketplace for over 120 treatments ranging from hair and skincare to longevity, mental health and specialized men's and women's health. After you complete an eligibility form, you'll receive a telehealth evaluation with a partnered provider on Mochi's platform to build a plan personalized for your specific body and goals. You'll have 247 access to your provider and specialized medications from a network of licensed pharmacies delivered right to your door. No waiting rooms or hidden fees. You just pay for your membership and your medication. It's personalized care that actually treats you like a human being. Stop leaving your health up to an algorithm. Go to joinmochi.com
- [05:45]
Vanessa Richardson
Paul Schaeffer was born on December 4, 1921 in the town of Treisdorf, Germany. He was raised Lutheran, but nobody expected him to become a faith leader. Honestly, nobody expected much of him at all. Schaefer was a bad student who got picked on constantly, and when he was six years old, things got worse. He was trying to pry a knot out of his shoelaces with a fork. Bent too close and the fork slipped. He gouged out his own right eye. After that, he got a fake replacement and his classmates never let him forget It. They called him Glass Eye. Between the bullying and the bad grades, school was a dead end. He repeated two grades before dropping out at 14 to work in a munitions factory. When World War II broke out a few years later, Schaeffer was desperate to join the ss, Hitler's elite paramilitary corps. But he was rejected for frontline service because of his missing eye. Instead, he spent the war as a medic at a field hospital in occupied France. But once the war ended, Schaefer found a use for that story. When he met new people, he told them he'd lost his eye in battle fighting for Germany. After that, Shaffer was at a crossroads. He was 24 years old. His country had been brutally defeated, and he didn't have many prospects for his future. Not sure what else to do, Schaefer turned to religion, picking up work as a youth group leader at a local evangelical church. It didn't last. Before long, his bosses caught wind that he was getting too close to the boys in his group, and they fired him. These kinds of accusations would follow Schaeffer for the rest of his life. But his time with the church had taught him something important. As a kid, Schaeffer couldn't get anyone to like him. As an adult, though, he'd figured out how to be charming. Very charming. So he struck out on his own as a traveling preacher, wandering through rural Germany in lederhosen with an acoustic guitar. Now, it's hard to say whether Schaefer actually believed any of the things he was preaching, or if he just figured out that religion was a great way to get power. But post war Germany was full of traumatized people looking for answers. Cities were still in rubble. Families had been torn apart. People felt guilty, lost, and desperate for someone to tell them everything was going to be okay. Schaeffer gave them that. By the mid-1950s, he'd attracted a few hundred followers, many of them refugees from Soviet occupied territories in eastern Germany. He told them they were God's chosen people and that the Lord would provide. All they had to do was confess their sins to Schaeffer every day and give him 10% of everything they earned. As his following grew, Shaffer settled down in the West German state of North Rhine Westphalia. He started a Christian newsletter and hosted popular annual camping trips for young people. Local churches were wary of him. He had no ties to any denomination, and there were rumors he couldn't be trusted around kids. But Schaeffer's charisma was almost like a superpower. Even when parents told their children not to go to his camps, A lot of those kids snuck out and went anyway. That charisma and the money rolling in from his followers let Schaeffer think bigger. By 1959, he had enough cash to buy a plot of land outside Troysdorf, where he built a home for war widows and their children. Soon, nearly 200 people lived and worked at the site. It looked like Shaffer had built something real. But that same year, the mothers of two young boys at the home accused Shaffer of sexually abusing their sons. The moment police opened an investigation, Schaefer and a handful of his most loyal followers took off on a trip to the Middle East. His excuse? He told his congregation he'd had a prophetic dream that Russia was about to invade Germany and start World War iii. He said he was scouting safer locations for the group. Around this time, Schaefer met someone who would change the course of his the Chilean ambassador to Germany, Arturo Mashka. Mashka had no idea about the charges against Schaeffer. He just saw a charming man of God and wanted to help. Mashka helped Schaefer buy an abandoned 4,400acre ranch at the foot of the Andes Mountains, a few hundred miles south of Santiago. Even better, he persuaded Chile's President, Jorge Alessandri, to grant Schaefer legal residency and tax exempt status for his church. In January 1961, Shaffer arrived in Chile with 10 of his most loyal followers. They headed to the remote ranch and started turning it into their new home. Meanwhile, Schaeffer sent word for the rest of his congregation, all 300 of them, to pack their bags. Back in Germany, a district court had issued a warrant for Shaffer's arrest, but it was too late. His loyalists had already burned stacks of incriminating paperwork, and they were booking boat tickets to South America. Some of Schaefer's followers had heard about the charges. None of them believed a word of it. Schaeffer had spent years, years, convincing them he was a holy man, above suspicion, above reproach. These people were ready to follow him to the other side of the world. And for the next 30 years, they did.
- [11:31]
Carter Roy
Hi, listeners. It's Carter Roy, host of Murder True Crime Stories. I wanted to let you know that Crime House plus and True Crime Stories are celebrating America's 250th by dropping a four part limited series on the crimes that built America. These are the crimes and cases that gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and a murder that built America's missing children movement. Follow True Crime Stories for a new episode every Monday, leading up to July 4th. Or you can binge all of them right now ad free with Crime House Plus. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of this show's page.
- [12:21]
Vanessa Richardson
Paul Schaefer was a high school dropout from a small German town who'd reinvented himself as a traveling preacher. By the mid-1950s, he had hundreds of devoted followers. When some of those followers accused him of sexual abuse abuse, Schaeffer fled Germany and convinced the rest of his congregation to follow him to a remote ranch in Chile. He called it Colonia Dignidad, which translates to Dignity Colony. But what he built there had nothing to do with dignity. By 1963, most of Schaefer's congregation, that's roughly 230 people, had made the trip from Germany. What they found wasn't exactly paradise. A barely livable stretch of land in the middle of the wilderness, connected to the outside world by a single winding dirt road. But the people living there, called colonos, didn't care. They believed in Schaefer completely. So they rolled up their sleeves and got to work. Over the next few years, they put in 12 hour days, transforming the property into a self sustaining village that could have passed for a small town in Bavaria. They built apartments, two schools, a chapel, and several meeting houses, all with white walls and orange tiled roofs. The men wore wool pants and suspenders. The women wore homemade dresses and headscarves. Beyond the village, they planted wheat, corn and soybeans, and built pastures for livestock. They set up a bakery that turned their harvests into fresh cakes, bread and cheese. And as the colony grew, so did the infrastructure. A hydroelectric power station was factories, mines, a gravel mill, even a small airport. At its peak, the colony covered 137 square kilometers. That's more than 50 square miles of private land, all controlled by one man. All of this made Shaffer very rich. He sold the colony's products, everything from gold and silver to baked goods. And thanks to his friends in the Chilean government, Colonia Dignidad supplied the gravel for virtually every major road building project in the country. These businesses were enormously profitable, especially since Schaeffer didn't pay the people who did the work. Schaeffer's favorite motto was Work is divine service. He preached that working for free was a righteous sacrifice, the best way to serve God. And by framing slave labor as an act of faith, he made sure nobody questioned it. But free labor wasn't the only way. Shaffer used charity to serve Himself. The crown jewel of Colonia Dignidad was a state of the art hospital where Schaefer offered free medical care to anyone who walked in the door. This was a big deal. Rural Chile was poor. Most people in the surrounding villages had almost no access to health care. So when Shaffer started sending buses to near towns to pick up sick people and bring them to his hospital, he became a hero. Thousands of Chilean women gave birth in the colony's maternity ward. Mothers who delivered there received four and a half pounds of free powdered milk every month until their child turned six. The Chilean government loved the work Schaefer was doing. It meant they didn't have to deal with managing rural health care, at least in that part of the country. In return, the National Health Service sent Colonia Dignidad millions of pesos in subsidies. And government officials repaid Shaffer's generosity by looking the other way when it came to the strange things happening behind the colony's walls. Because here's the thing. Colonia Dignidad wasn't just a village. It was a cage. Back in Germany, Schaeffer's followers had been scattered across different communities. He had their loyalty, but not their daily lives. At Colonia Dignidad, that changed. Everybody lived on the same property, cut off from the outside world, speaking a different language from the people around them. Schaeffer was their world, and he built it to give himself total control. The whole system revolved around confession, a process Schaeffer called Zielzorga, German for care of the soul. He preached that the only way to get right with God was to tell him every sinful thought and action you had every single day. And at Colonia Dignidad, almost everything was a sin. Having sex, sinful. Thinking about sex, sinful. Having a private conversation, sinful. Leaving the colony without permission, sinful. Keeping secrets of any kind, sinful. But it wasn't enough to just confess your own sins. You also had to report anyone else you suspected of sinning. At mealtimes, a blackboard was set up in the cafeteria, and colonos were expected to write down the names of people they thought had done something wrong. Schaeffer would read the names out loud and demand a public confession. And here's the trap. If your name was on the board, denying it was also a sin. So people would make up something to confess, or they'd point the finger at someone else, because snitching on others was the best way to save yourself. The result was exactly what Schaeffer wanted. An atmosphere of constant fear and paranoia. Nobody could trust their friends. Nobody could trust their family. Your entire life revolved around staying on Schaeffer's good side. And the punishments for falling off were brutal. Sinners were beaten unconscious, sometimes by Schaeffer personally, sometimes by colonos following his orders. Others were dragged to the hospital and tortured with electroshock therapy. Some were starved or kept awake for days, and they were forced to take tranquilizers and other drugs to keep them compliant. For people who really got on Schaeffer's bad side, the ones he labeled rebels, it was even worse. Rebels had to wear shirts so that the rest of the colony knew who they were. Other colonos were encouraged to mock, insult, and shun them whenever they interacted with this system in place, Nobody ever challenged Schaeffer, not when he took control of their work, their friendships, or their sleep schedules, and not when he started controlling the most private part of their lives. Schaeffer saw himself as the head of one big family, and he wanted to keep it that way. So he broke apart the actual families inside the colony. Babies born at Colonia Dignidad were taken from their parents immediately and raised by nurses at the hospital. As they grew up, children were sorted into groups strictly divided by age and gender. Boys age 6 to 14 were called the wedges. Girls were the dragons. Teenage boys joined the army of salvation, while girls became the field mice. Older men were the elder servants, and eventually the comalos. Women became the grannies. You can probably tell from the group names that Schaeffer didn't think much of women. All of his most trusted lieutenants, known as heraras, were men, and only men got to work in the machine shops and the gravel mill. Women were stuck in the stables and kitchens. And Shaffer was so paranoid about women giving men impure thoughts that he made them wear long, baggy dresses to hide the shape of their bodies. Despite all of this, people at Colonia Dignidad still fell in love with. But even that only happened on Shaffer's terms. If a man wanted to get married, he had to ask Shaffer for permission. Sometimes Schaeffer said yes. More often, he said no. And in some cases, he'd agree to the marriage, but only if the man married a woman Schaeffer picked. That almost always meant an older woman who could no longer have children. The result was that pregnancies at Colonia Dignidad were rare. Between the 1960s and the 1990s, only about 60 babies were born to Shaffer's followers. Nobody knows exactly why Schaefer wanted to keep his colonos from having kids. But he had other ways of growing his population. Because of his charity hospital, Shaffer was beloved in the surrounding villages. So every once in a while, he'd visit nearby towns and offer to adopt children from impoverished families. These kids, known as Chilean colonos, would move to the compound, learn German, and be absorbed into the community. For their parents, it seemed like a gift. The colony had electricity, good schools, and a great hospital. Sending your child to live there looked like a way to give them a better life. In reality, these kids, separated from their families with no one looking out for them, were exactly the kind of targets Schaefer had been preying on his entire life. Schaefer hand picked a group of young boys to serve as his personal attendants. He called them his sprinters. They did everything for him. Delivered messages, helped him put on his shoes, followed him around the colony wherever he went. He showered the sprinters with gifts and special privileges. But there was a horrifying price. At night, Shaffer would invite his favorites to sleep in his room. Sometimes he had two or more sprinters in his bed, where he sedated and sexually assaulted them. It was an open secret. Anyone with eyes could see how close Shaffer kept these boys, but nobody said a word, not even the parents. As one Chilean psychiatrist who later studied the colony explained, Colonia Dignidad wasn't like a prison where people think of themselves as individuals. It was a community. And that's what made the abuse so hard to resist. Schaeffer had absolute power over their bodies and their minds. And as the years went by, he tightened his grip to make sure it stayed that way. Remember, the whole reason Shaffer had moved his congregation to Chile was that supposed prophetic dream about Russia invading Germany. And once they were at Colonia Dignidad, he kept that fear alive. There was no radio or TV at the colony, no newspapers, no phone calls, no letters home. Everything the colonos knew about the outside world came through Schaefer, and he made sure the picture he painted was terrifying. He showed his followers fake news clips, old war footage spliced together with misleading narration to make it look like civilization was collapsing out there. Famine, nuclear war, chaos in the streets. Since the outside world was so dangerous, nobody asked questions. When Shaffer started turning the colony into a fortress, he put up eight foot fences topped with razor wire. He installed security cameras everywhere and built an extensive network of tunnels and survival bunkers underground. He recruited a paramilitary unit of colonos who trained in martial arts and carried weapons at all times. They kept watch from guard towers and Patrolled the perimeter at night with dogs and night vision goggles. Between the brainwashing, the fake news, and the armed guards, escape seemed impossible. But some people still tried. Wolfgang Mueller was one of the original colonos who'd made the trip from Germany in 1961 when he was just 15. As Schaeffer tightened his control, Mueller refused to play along, and Schaeffer branded him a rebel. By the time Mueller was 16, he'd had enough of the abuse, so he ran. He made it to a nearby village, but Shaffer's militia tracked him down, drugged him and dragged him back. In 1964, he ran again with the same result. Mueller was captured, returned, and punished. Finally, in 1966, Mueller tried a third time. He was 20 now, and this time he made it all the way to Santiago, but where he took refuge at the German embassy and told the police everything. Schaefer wasn't about to let that slide. He sent a squad of 15 colonos to the safe house where the embassy was keeping Mueller. They tried to force their way inside to drag him back. It took a fist fight with the police to drive them off. Mueller eventually left Chile and returned to Germany. But he never stopped talking. For years, he told anyone who would listen about what was happening inside Colonia Dignidad. The abuse, the slave labor, the coercion. He went to the press, he went to politicians. He begged the Chilean government to do something about Paul Schaefer. Eventually, the Chilean government did do something, but they didn't shut Shaffer down. They made him untouchable. At Colonia Dignidad, Paul Schaefer had built a sealed off compound where his followers confessed their every thought, informed on each other, and were beaten or electroshocked for stepping out of line. He'd surrounded the place with barbed wire, armed guards and tunnels. And worst of all, he abused the children he was supposed to be protecting. In the late 1960s, a colonist named Wolfgang Mueller managed to escape and go public with what was happening inside. But the government response showed just how far Shaffer's influence reached. After Mueller's accusations hit the press, the Chilean government took its time. It wasn't until 1968, two full years after Mueller's escape, that a delegation of politicians finally traveled to Colonia Dignidad to check things out. Schaefer was ready for them. He gave them the full tour. Tidy homes, clean workplaces, gourmet food, children's choirs. At a glance, the place looked like a cheerful German utopia, full of happy, God fearing workers. It didn't hurt that a lot of these politicians had business ties to Schaeffer. Their companies bought gravel, food, and other products from Colonia Dignidad. So despite Mueller's claims and the fact that Schaefer's people had literally tried to kidnap him, the delegation called the allegations unfounded. But that still wasn't enough for Schaeffer. He turned around and sued Mueller for defamation. A Chilean court sentenced Mueller to five years in prison, though luckily he'd already left the country by then. By the end of the 1960s, Paul Schaeffer had judges, politicians, and business leaders in his corner. But a political earthquake was coming, and it would give him the most dangerous ally of all. In 1970, Chile elected a socialist president named Salvador Allende, who had close ties to Marxist and communist movements. For Schaeffer, a lifelong anti communist, this felt like the end of the world. He ordered the colony's factories to start producing weapons. Rifles, machine guns, hand grenades, all of it illegal. He even smuggled weapons from Germany, using containers meant for his charitable organization. Since he knew customs wouldn't check them. Some of the weapons went into the bunkers beneath the colony. He sold the rest to right wing paramilitary groups. On September 11, 1973, those groups helped General Augusto Pinochet overthrow Allende in a military coup. Within a week, Pinochet had suspended the constitution, shut down the legislature, and muzzled the press. Chile went from a democracy to a dictatorship overnight. Pinochet had help from the CIA and Henry Kissinger, and the crackdown that followed was savage. In just the first four months, the military rounded up tens of thousands of suspected opponents. According to Chile's own Truth Commission, more than 18,000 of them were tortured. Thousands more were killed or just disappeared. But Pinochet wanted something more permanent. So he created a secret police force, the National Intelligence Directorate, known as dina. And he owed a debt to Schaeffer, one he was happy to repay. Many of the people Shaffer had armed landed jobs in dina's ranks. DINA had one job. Eliminate anyone who opposed Pinochet. But running a crackdown that big takes infrastructure. DINA needed places to make people disappear. Discreet, remote places where no one would hear them screaming. And they needed people who knew how to hurt other people effectively. Schaefer could provide both. He had an isolated fortress in the middle of nowhere, staffed by followers who never asked questions. And he'd been torturing his own people for years. He had plenty of expertise to share. In 1974, Pinochet himself visited Colonia Dignidad. After that, the partnership deepened fast. DINA agents started bringing political prisoners to the colony for interrogation. Schaefer's people helped train new agents in torture techniques. In return, Pinochet gave Schaeffer something he'd never had, the full protection of the state. In 1975, a Chilean psychiatrist and anti Pinochet activist named Luis Peebles got a firsthand look at what that partnership meant. Peebles was grabbed by DINA agents blindfolded and driven deep into the countryside. When they pulled him out of the car, he could smell farm animals and hear birds. They dragged him into an underground bunker, stripped him to his underwear, and chained him to a bed. Then they attached wires to his chest, throat and genitals and spent hours shocking him between the shocks. They beat him with a cattle prod, stabbed him with needles, and burned him with lit cigarettes. Peebles couldn't see who was doing this, but he could hear an older man in the room speaking Spanish with a thick German accent, coaching the torturer. Years later, he saw videos from inside the colony and identified the man as Paul Schaefer. The torture went on for a week. Then, without explanation, his captors drove Peebles back to the city and let him go. He eventually fled to Europe, where he told his story to Amnesty International. In 1977, the organization produced a damning 60 page report on the colony. But Schaeffer's lawyers tied it up in court for 20 years, blocking its release until 1997. Meanwhile, Peebles connected with other survivors. That's when he learned he was just one of hundreds of political prisoners who'd been tortured at Colonia Dignidad. But Schaeffer didn't stop at torture. Over the course of Pinochet's 17 years in power, thousands of people disappeared. In recent years, Chilean investigators have found evidence that as many as 100 political prisoners were murdered at the colony. Many of the bodies were burned, buried in mass graves, or dumped into a nearby river. At the time, both Pinochet and Schaeffer seemed untouchable. But no regime lasts forever. Throughout the 1980s, more colonos managed to escape and tell their stories. International pressure to investigate Colonia Dignidad kept building, but Pinochet's government held firm even as the dictator's own popularity crumbled. In 1985, Pinochet's wife actually visited the colony for a ribbon cutting ceremony at a new school on the property. But by 1988, Pinochet was desperate enough to hold a national referendum, a simple yes or no vote on whether he should stay in power. Nearly 55% of Chileans said no. In 1990, he stepped down. Chile became A democracy again. The new president, Patricio Aylwin, was committed to investigating the human rights abuses of the Pinochet years. And for the first time in decades, Schaeffer didn't have powerful friends to protect him. Over the next few years, Aylwin's government revoked Colonia Dignidad's tax exempt status, cut off funding for the hospital, and launched a financial audit of the colony. But the real breakthrough came in 1996, and it started with a note from a 12 year old boy. A Chilean student at the Colony school somehow managed to smuggle a note to his mother. It read, take me out of here. He raped me. His mother pulled her son out of the colony and went straight to the Federal Police in Santiago this time. But they listened. A veteran detective named Luis Enriquez took charge of the investigation, spent months building the case, and secured a warrant for Shaffer's arrest. On November 30, 1996, Enriquez showed up at Colonia Dignidad with 30 heavily armed officers. The convoy smashed through the compound's front gates. Enriquez had told his team to expect a fight, but there was no fight. As police went house to house, the colonos just shuffled through their daily chores like zombies. By the end of the day, the officers had searched the entire colony. Schaefer was gone. The colonos said he was dead. Enriquez didn't buy it. He suspected Schaefer was hiding somewhere in the miles of tunnels beneath the compound. Over the next few years, Enriquez came back more than 30 times, hoping to catch Schaefer when he surfaced. He never did. And on May 20, 1997, Schaefer vanished for good, slipping through the tunnels and out of the country. For six years, there was no news. Shaffer became a mythical figure in Chile, the monster who got away. People joked that he'd never be found. Then, in late 2003, a journalist named Carola Fuentes got a call. A lawyer representing Schaeffer's victims had a lead. Several of Schaefer's top lieutenants were making regular trips to Argentina. Fuentes worked for a respected investigative program on Chile's Channel 13. Her editors told her to go. The key insight was simple. Schaeffer was old and sick. He couldn't survive on his own. Wherever he was, he'd be surrounded by caretakers, nurses and bodyguards. Find them and you'd find him. Over the next 15 months, Fuentes and her team tracked Shaffer's inner circle through Argentina. They sent a reporter undercover to a small town where he posed as a sociologist and gained the trust of locals living near a ranch occupied by Germans. Over the next 15 months, Fuentes and her team tracked Shaffer's inner circle through Argentina. They sent a reporter undercover to a small town where he posed as a sociologist and gained the trust of locals living near a ranch occupied by Germans. On March 10, 2005, the investigation led police to a townhouse in a gated community called Tortuguitas outside Buenos Aires. When a SWAT team kicked down the door, they found Shaffer's longtime bodyguards and nurses. The officers were directed to a back bedroom where they found a frail 83 year old, Paul Schaefer, lying in bed. They put him in handcuffs and led him outside. As they loaded him into the back of a police car, he mumbled one word over and over. Why? Why? Why? Schaefer was extradited to Chile, where he stood trial on charges of child sexual abuse, forced labor, kidnapping, torture, tax evasion, and weapons violations. And the evidence against him kept piling up. In July 2005, police unearthed massive weapons caches buried around the colony, including machine guns, automatic rifles, rocket launchers, hand grenades, and surface to air missiles. It was the largest illegal arsenal ever found in private hands in Chile. In May 2006, Schaefer was convicted of sexually abusing 25 children and sentenced to 20 years in prison. More convictions followed for torture, illegal weapons possession, and finally, murder. But if you're doing the math and thinking the punishment didn't fit the crime, you're not wrong. For murder, Schaefer got seven years for torturing children with electroshock. 3. All told, his sentences added up to just over 30 years, even though investigators believe as many as 100 people were killed on his property. The problem was evidence. During the dictatorship, remains at the colony were dug up and destroyed, chemically burned, or dumped in the river to cover Pinochet's tracks. Without bodies, prosecutors couldn't bring charges for most of the killings. And when Schaefer died, investigations into dozens of disappearances were still open. Still, after all the pain he caused, it would be satisfying to imagine him serving every one of those years. But that's not what happened. Schaefer died of heart failure on April 24, 2010, at the age of 88, just four years into his sentence. And he never showed one ounce of remorse. In the final days of the trial, one of Schaefer's victims showed up to testify against him. Luis Peebles, the psychiatrist who'd been tortured at Colonia dignidad back in 1975. When the judge asked Schaefer if He recognized Peebles. The old man thought about it and then said he did. He asked if Peebles had been one of the colony's lawyers. Peebles set the record straight. He said, I was once a guest in your home. You were very unkind. I never did anything to you or the colonia. So why were you so cruel to me? Schaefer, who'd been speaking fluently with everyone around him just moments earlier, suddenly claimed he didn't speak Spanish. Paul Schaefer spent his life forcing people to confess their sins. But in the end, he couldn't bring himself to face his own. In Cult Watch this week, I'm looking at Villa Bavaria, the community that survived Paul Schaeffer. After Schaeffer fled the colony in the late 1990s, something unusual happened. Most cults don't outlast their leaders. But the colonos at Colonia Dignidad just kept going. They harvested vegetables. They made gravel. They lived the only lives they'd ever known without Schaeffer. The younger members tried to elect a leadership council, but the older colonos, the ones who still had fond memories of Shaffer, shut that down. Instead, the community is now run by a handful of senior members who manage the businesses. Some things have changed. Residents can come and go freely. Men and women live and work together. The fences and armed guards are gone. Younger colonos have even sold some of the Columns Colony's land to pay reparations to Shaffer's victims. They've also talked about building a memorial for the people who were killed and tortured there. But many of the older residents still can't or won't acknowledge what they were part of. Some want to pin everything on Shaffer. Others believe the blame belongs to everyone who stood by and did nothing. Years after Shaffer's death, these arguments still divide the community. But life goes on. And now that workers are actually being paid, the colony has had to find new ways to make money. So the leadership rebranded. Today, Villa Bavaria, AKA Colonia Dignidad is a tourist destination. Visitors can book hotel rooms with hot tubs, enjoy Oktoberfest celebrations, and go fishing on the same river where Paul Schaeffer once once pretended to kill Santa Claus. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes. Come back next time. We'll hear another story about the real people at the center of the world's most notorious notorious cults, conspiracies and criminal acts. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is a crime house original powered by Pave Studios Here at Crime House. We want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at crime house on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes wherever you get your podcasts your feedback Feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode early and ad free. Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson and is a Crime House original. Powered by Pave Studios, this episode was brought to life by the Conspiracy Theory's Cults and Crimes team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertzovsky, Lori Marinelli, Alyssa Fox, Truman Capps, Kaylee Pine and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening. What is that?
- [43:57]
Carvana Sponsor Representative
Oh yeah, it's a World cup holder.
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Vanessa Richardson
Like the soccer tournament.
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Carvana Sponsor Representative
World cup holder for the world. Fits every car, holds every cup.
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Vanessa Richardson
It has a Carvana logo.
- [44:06]
Carvana Sponsor Representative
Carvana made it. They buy and sell cars, so they made a car cup holder. So got any good cups lately? Used to.
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Vanessa Richardson
Just couldn't figure out where in the world to put them.
- [44:16]
Carvana Sponsor Representative
The World Cup Holder brought to you by Carvana. Proud sponsors of the World Cup Holder, sign up today to win yours@cup-holder2026.com not authorized or endorsed by FIFA. Not a real product for parody and fair use purposes only.