UNSOLVED: The Galapagos Affair 1

Summary

Murder: True Crime Stories – "UNSOLVED: The Galapagos Affair, Part 1"

Host: Carter Roy
Guest: Daisy Egan (Host of "Strange and Unexplained")
Release Date: August 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode marks the first of a two-part deep dive into the unsolved Galapagos Affair—a chain of mysterious deaths and disappearances among European settlers on the remote island of Floriana, Galapagos, in the early 1930s. Host Carter Roy and special guest Daisy Egan begin by exploring the unique history and personalities that led several strangers to seek paradise on this isolated island. By episode’s end, tensions run high, and the stage is set for the unsolved mystery to unfold in part two.

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Key Topics and Discussion Points

1. The Allure and Menace of Floriana Island

• Background: Long known as “Las Encantadas” or “the Enchanted Islands,” the Galapagos archipelago had a reputation for swallowing those who tried to call it home ([00:54]).
• Historical Precedent: The first known resident, Patrick Watkins, was marooned in 1807 and survived only by trading with passing whalers. When he finally left, all his companions mysteriously vanished ([09:11]).
  • Quote – Carter Roy:
    “Now, I’ll be honest with you. This is exactly the kind of detail that makes a place like Floriana feel cursed. But there’s nothing supernatural about a barren island being hard to survive on. People ran out of water, people turned on each other. That’s not a ghost story. That’s just what isolation does to human beings.” ([12:16])

2. The Idealists: Dr. Friedrich Ritter and Dora Strauch

• Escape from Society: Disillusioned by post-WWI Germany and its “corrupting” domestic culture, Dr. Ritter and his patient-turned-lover Dora Strauch became obsessed with escaping civilization entirely ([13:22]).
• Relationship Dynamics:
  • Friedrich’s rigid philosophy and self-reliance (“the power of thought” over illness, refusal to compromise) contrasted with Dora’s total devotion and struggle with MS.
• Extreme Preparation: Friedrich, anticipating a lack of dental care, removed all his teeth preemptively and had stainless steel dentures made. Later, Dora would share this set after her own teeth failed—a grim but telling detail ([21:41]).
  • Quote – Carter Roy:
    “It’s a grim image, but it’s the perfect snapshot of Friedrich Ritter, a man so certain he could outthink nature that he’d reach for a pair of pliers to prove it.” ([22:41])

3. The Arrival: Struggles and Solitude

• Building a Life:
  • Diet of guava, pigeon peas, and a few crops; strict vegetarians despite plentiful wild cattle and fish.
• Loneliness and Frustration: Dora’s health faltered, Friedrich proved cold and demanding, and rumors spread back in Germany after their families leaked letters home ([27:02]).
• Fame Arrives Uninvited: An expedition visits, finding not wild hermits but intellectuals. This intrusion is unwelcome, especially for Friedrich ([29:41]).

4. The Island Fills Up: The Wittmers Arrive ([32:21])

• Unexpected Neighbors:
  • The German Wittmer family, seeking a cure for their son’s ailments, arrive unannounced after reading Friedrich’s articles. They expect camaraderie but are met with suspicion and distant “hospitality.”
• Tension and Survival:
  • The Wittmers settle in a pirate cave (Asilo de la Paz), forced by Friedrich to keep their distance. Despite initial frostiness, mutual respect grows after Friedrich saves Margaret Wittmer’s life during a dangerous childbirth ([38:25]).
  • Notable Moment: Margaret endures a grueling, anesthetic-free operation without a sound, earning Friedrich’s respect:
    “He was simply impressed by how brave she’d been.” ([41:22])

5. The Baroness Enters: Chaos Ensues ([35:52])

• Arrival: Eloise “the Baroness” Wagner de Bousquet arrives with two young lovers, setting up a supposed luxury resort (“Hacienda Paradiso”) and claiming the entire island as hers.
  • “She informed the others, more or less on arrival, that the entire island of Floriana now belonged to her.” ([36:25])
• Escalating Conflicts:
  • The Baroness begins antagonizing and threatening neighbors (once confronting visiting hunters at gunpoint), and imposes an erratic, authoritarian presence.
  • Friedrich, referring to the contradiction of seeking isolation but then appealing to government:
    • “Now here he was appealing to a government official to settle a dispute because one woman had turned his paradise into something else entirely.” ([37:45])

6. Community Breakdown and Tensions ([42:11])

• Feuds: Arguments over resources—like the Baroness stealing the Wittmers’ paid-for rice—exacerbate suspicion and infighting.
  • Quote – Carter Roy:
    “She just carried on like nothing had happened. And then things got even worse. The weather turned on all of them...”
• Environmental Stress: Drought hits, making survival even harder. Fights, violence, and broken alliances now mark daily life.
• Prelude to Disaster: The Baroness and her entourage become disruptive and increasingly violent—neighbors hear screaming and see evidence of violence.
  • “One settler would walk off and never be seen again. Another would turn up dead in a place that made no sense. And the survivors would spend the rest of their lives telling stories that never quite fit together.” ([47:27])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Daisy Egan (on predicting cult-like drama): “I’m sure it ends the same way most cults do, but I cannot wait to hear the ins and outs.” ([04:47])
• Carter Roy (on isolation and violence):
  "...But there’s nothing supernatural about a barren island being hard to survive on... That’s not a ghost story. That’s just what isolation does to human beings." ([12:16])
• Carter Roy (on the Baroness):
  “She’s the easiest person in this story to turn into a cartoon. The truth is, we know surprisingly little about who she really was before Floriana, and a lot of what she said about herself turned out to be invented. So it’s hard to know where the real woman ended and the character began.” ([36:07])

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:54: Daisy Egan introduces Floriana and its dark allure
• 09:11–15:01: Carter Roy narrates Floriana's early history, Patrick Watkins’ disappearance, Ritter’s disillusionment, and escape plans
• 21:41–27:02: Ritter and Dora’s extreme preparations, exile, and relationship dynamics
• 32:21: The arrival of the Wittmers; new colonial tensions
• 35:52: Entrance of the Baroness and escalating power struggles
• 41:22: Margaret Wittmer’s childbirth and Friedrich’s surprising compassion
• 42:11–47:27: Mounting feuds, environmental crises, and ominous breakdown foreshadowing violence

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Episode Tone & Style

• Carter Roy: Calm, meticulous, focused on psychological depth and narrative richness.
• Daisy Egan: Witty, curious, skeptical—injected moments of humor and outsider perspective.
• The episode favors empathy for its flawed subjects, but does not romanticize isolation or idealism gone awry.

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Looking Ahead

• The episode closes on the eve of disaster. Alliances are shattered, violence simmers, and within weeks, people will start vanishing. The second part promises to unravel the disappearances, deaths, and the contradictory accounts that have left the Galapagos Affair unsolved after nearly a century ([47:27–48:21]).

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For listeners new to the Galapagos Affair or true crime, this episode offers a fascinating portrait of human idealism—and its unraveling—in one of the world’s most isolated places. Part Two will explore the chilling mysteries and multiple conflicting accounts left in the wake of paradise lost.

Transcript

[Carter Roy]

Hi, listeners, it's Carter. Before today's episode of Murder True Crime Stories, I want to tell you about another podcast I am hosting I know you'll love. Crime House and AE are teaming up on the podcast version of the famous true crime series, the First 48. Each week, I'll take you inside a landmark homicide case. The interrogations, the dead ends, and the breakthroughs in the critical first 40, 48 hours. Listen to and follow the first 48 every Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. This is crime house.

[Daisy Egan]

Every so often, somebody decides the world is too much, too loud, too cruel, too crowded. And they go looking for a place to disappear. Most of us take a long weekend, but in 1929, a German doctor and the woman he loved went looking for a place where the rest of the human race could never reach them. They found it on a speck of volcanic rock in the Pacific, an island called Floriana in the Galapagos. Now, the Galapagos have a nickname that goes back centuries. Sailors called them Las Encantadas, the Enchanted Islands, not because they were charming, but because they seemed to move. Ships would sail straight for them and watch them vanish into the mist, like the islands didn't want to be found. And yet people kept finding them. In fact, a place that seemed to swallow ships whole. It turned out to be exactly what a certain kind of person was looking for. Somewhere the rest of the world couldn't follow. But there's a pattern to Floriana that's hard to ignore. People kept coming here to start over. And one by one, the island found ways to make sure they never left. That German doctor and the woman he loved were only the beginning. Others read about their escape and came chasing the same dream, until a handful of strangers were all sharing one tiny island. And it didn't take long for paradise to turn on them. By 1934, the little colony on Floriana was falling apart. People were vanishing. Bodies were turning up in the strangest places, or not turning up at all. And almost 100 years later, nobody can tell you for sure what happened.

[Carter Roy]

People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon. And we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is True Crime Stories, the Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the Cases that deserve a deeper look. Thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow the show. And for early ad free access to every episode. Subscribe to Crime House plus you'll get part one and part two at the same time, plus exclusive bonus content. To join go to crimehouseplus.com or tap try free on the Murder True Crime Stories show page on Apple Podcasts. And I have some exciting news. For the next two episodes, I'll be joined by a very special guest, Daisy Egan, host of Strange and Unexplained.

[Daisy Egan]

Thanks for having me, Carter. I'm really excited to be here. I don't know anything about this story

[Carter Roy]

and I can't wait to hear all about is incredible. I can't wait to hear what you have to say about it now. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. In fact, for these episodes, for everyone listening, if you're not already following Strange and Unexplained, go do that right now. Every week, Daisy digs into the stories that sit just past the edge of what we can explain. Hauntings, vanishings, the cases that don't add up. She brings real curiosity and a healthy dose of skepticism to these stories, which is exactly the right way to come at this one.

[Daisy Egan]

Yeah, like I told you before, when we were chatting, I came into this knowing pretty much nothing at all. I'm sure it ends the same way most cults do, but I cannot wait to hear the ins and outs.

[Carter Roy]

Oh, my. It is astonishing. This case has receipts and, unfortunately, almost no answers. Here's how this is going to work. Daisy's going to introduce these next two episodes. I'll take you through the story, and then she's coming back at the end of part two for a longer conversation. Once you've heard the whole thing, you are not going to want to miss that.

[Daisy Egan]

Now, let's get into it. This is the first of two episodes on the Galapagos Affair, a chain of disappearances and deaths among a tiny group of European settlers who moved to a remote island in the Pacific in the early 1930s. They came looking for paradise. What they found was something else entirely. Today, Carter's going to introduce you to these settlers, starting with the idealistic doctor and his partner who started it all. He'll walk you through what happened when more people followed them to the island, and how a place that was supposed to be an escape from human nature ended up bringing out the worst of it. Next time, Carter gets into the heart of the story. What actually happened to these people and the wildly different accounts the survivors gave once it was all over, each one had a version that made them look innocent and someone else looked guilty. None of them ever lined up, and almost 100 years later, this case is still unsolved. All that and more coming up.

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[Carter Roy]

Before anyone in our story ever set foot on Floriana, the island already had a reputation, and it wasn't a good one. The Galapagos are a chain of islands off the coast of Ecuador, sitting right on the equator. They're famous now for two things. One is Charles Darwin, who studied the wildlife there in the 1830s and used what he saw to develop his theory of natural selection. The other is the animals themselves. The marine iguanas, the blue footed boobies, and and the giant tortoises, the biggest in the world that sometimes live past 100. The animals thrived because no one bothered them. And that's because for most of human history, almost nobody wanted to live there. The islands are beautiful, with a warm, tropical climate. They're also volcanic, dry and short on fresh water. To early sailors, they didn't feel like paradise at all. In fact, the sailors had a name for them. Las Encanadas, the enchanted islands. The currents and the thick sea mist here were so treacherous that ships could lose sight of land for hours, as if the place kept slipping out from under them. To an exhausted crew running low on water, the Galapagos didn't feel enchanting, they felt bewitched. And the few who did try to live there, it usually didn't end well for them. The first known resident of Floriana was an Irish sailor named Patrick Watkins, who got marooned on the island around 1807. He survived for two years growing vegetables and trading them to passing whalers, mostly for rum. By the time another ship's captain wrote about him, Watkins had basically gone feral. He was wild haired, sunburned, half naked and, according to the captain, terrifying to look at. When Watkins finally left, he talked five sailors into boarding a stolen boat with him and rowing for the mainland. The boat reached Ecuador, but only Watkins was still on it. The other five men had simply vanished somewhere out on the open and water. No one ever learned what happened to them. Now, I'll be honest with you. This is exactly the kind of detail that makes a place like Floriana feel cursed. But there's nothing supernatural about a barren island being hard to survive on. People ran out of water, people turned on each other. That's not a ghost story. That's just what isolation does to human beings. But it does set the stage. And long before our settlers arrived, Floriana was already a place where people came to escape the world and then quietly disappeared from it. Things started to change around 1920. Ecuador wanted to strengthen its claim to the Galapagos and the government now needed money, so it made an offer to come settle the islands, and we'll give you free land and tax exemptions. The people who took that deal were not your average families. They tended to be political outcasts, members of religious fringe groups, and dreamers chasing a simpler life. Most of them headed for the two largest islands, San Cristobal and Santa Cruz, where supply ships came through every few months. And small farming communities could just about survive. But not everyone wanted to build a community. One couple wanted the opposite. They didn't want neighbors or supply ships or a village. They wanted to cut themselves off completely from what they saw as the evils of humanness society. Their names were Dr. Friedrich Ritter and Dora Strauch. Of the two of them, Friedrich was the clear leader. He was born in Germany in 1886, and from a young age, he felt like an outsider. He was smaller than the other boys and got sick more often, which left him feeling weak and insecure. School made it worse. The teachers in his town were harsh, and for whatever reason, Friedrich was a favorite target. He later said that one day when he was 8 years old, a teacher hit him so hard it scarred him for life. Somehow, he pushed through all of it. He finished school and started studying medicine. He came out of his shell, and in 1906, at 20 years old, while he was still in school, he married a singer named Milla. With his help, Milla's career took off, and for a while, they were happy. Then, in 1914, World War I broke out. Friedrich, who was 28, volunteered for the front lines. The war changed him forever. He never said much about what he saw in the trenches, but whatever it was, it was worse than anything his rough childhood had prepared him for. He came home convinced that human nature was fundamentally broken, that whenever different groups of people tried to live side by side, violence was inevitable. To him, society itself was the disease. But for a while after the war.

[Jimmy Uso]

War.

[Carter Roy]

He tried to go back to normal. He became a doctor, like he'd planned. And that's when things started to come apart. His wife, Mila, wanted to stop singing. She wanted to settle down, have children and run a household. To most people in the 1920s, that would have sounded completely ordinary. To Friedrich, it was a betrayal. He believed traditional family life corrupted the soul, and he refused to allow it. He also still wanted her income from singing. So he pushed her to keep performing and give up the idea of kids. Milla gave in, but the marriage was hollow. Now there was never any room to compromise with Friedrich. He took the hardest possible line on everything he believed. Among other Things that people could cure their own illnesses through sheer willpower. It's a strange belief for a doctor, but Friedrich dressed it up in the psychological language of the day. He didn't reject medicine outright. He preached something he called the power of thought, the idea that the mind could overcome the body. And that message landed hard with one of his patients, a woman in her mid-20s named Dora Strauch. Dora had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a disease that can cause muscle weakness, fatigue, and problems with coordination. She was also unhappily married to a man twice her age, and she dreaded the idea of spending her life as a housewife. When she told Friedrich all this, he didn't brush her off. He listened. He told her she didn't have to accept the life she'd been handed, not her marriage and not even her illness. And he understood her restlessness because he felt it too. The two of them started spending long afternoons together on the roof of his medical practice, looking up at the sky and talking about running away from the city city to live somewhere wild and free. It didn't take long for the relationship to turn romantic. When Dora's husband found out and tried to put a stop to it, she flatly refused to end the affair. Eventually, he gave up trying. By then, Dora only had eyes for her doctor and only had eyes for. Might be underselling it. By every account, Dora was completely devoted to Friedrich. To her, he was a genius and a philosopher and her soulmate all in one. She put him on a pedestal so high, it's hard to imagine anyone living up to it. For his part, Friedrich saw Dora as his one true student, the only person who really understood him, the one person who gave him the validation he craved. They needed each other in a way that wasn't entirely healthy, but it was real. And soon they started talking about leaving. Not just the marriages they were both unhappy in, but everything. The city, Germany, civilization itself. To go live alone on some remote patch of wilderness and start over with nothing but each other and Friedrich's ideas. It was a beautiful dream, but the reality was a lot more complicated. Have you noticed your sheets slipping off the corners lately? Or maybe your pillows just feel flat and unsupportive? We tend to keep our bedding way longer than we should, and it slowly wears down until it starts messing with our sleep. You might think you need a whole new mattress, but the biggest difference actually comes from upgrading what touches your skin every night. That's why I finally switched our bed to bowl and branch before our sheets felt scratchy and trapped heat. But the moment I crawled into these organic cotton sheets, I could feel the quality. They are incredibly soft, perfectly breathable, and actually get softer with every single wash. We even added their waffle blanket and now the whole bed feels like a luxury hotel. If you're ready to stop compromising on your rest, you need to experience this difference. Upgrade your sleep with bowl and Branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping at bowlandbranch.com/crimehouse with code crime house that's bole and branch B O L L A N- dash.com crime house code crime house to unlock 15% off exclusions apply. The moment a body is found, the clock starts ticking. 48 hours. That's how long detectives have before the trail begins to go cold. From A E and Crime House this is the official podcast from the famous true crime series the first 48 step inside the critical window. The interrogations, the dead ends, and the breakthroughs that crack a case wide open. I'm Carter Roy. Each week I revisit a landmark homicide investigation with the depth you know and immersive long form storytelling built for your ears. Real detectives, real cases, real stakes. This is the first 48 new episodes every Thursday. Listen to and follow the first 48 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word.

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[Carter Roy]

By the late 1920s, Dr. Friedrich Ritter and Doris Strauch had spent two years in Berlin imagining the same impossible future, leaving behind their marriages, their country, and the modern world itself to start over alone, somewhere wild. Plenty of people would have left it at that, a fantasy they talked about and never acted on. Friedrich and Doro were not those people. By 1929, they'd even picked the spot. Floriana island, an uninhabited stretch of the Galapagos about 30 miles from the nearest settlement. The only thing left to figure out was their spouses. Neither of them actually disliked the people they were married to. They just felt trapped. So they came up with a solution that's honestly hard to believe. They'd swap. Friedrich's wife, Mila could go live the traditional settled life she wanted with Dora's husband. Getting Dora's husband to agree turned out to be the easy part. Mila was the holdout. At first, she wanted nothing to do with moving in with an older man she'd never even met. But the only other option was clinging to a marriage to a man who didn't want her. In the end, she gave in. Back home, the whole arrangement was a scandal. Friedrich didn't care. He was leaving it all behind. There's one more detail from those final weeks that tells you everything about him. Before they left, Friedrich pulled out all of his teeth on purpose. He figured there'd be no dentist on Floriana, so rather than risk a toothache a thousand miles from help, he had a set of stainless steel dentures made instead. When Dora's own teeth started to go bad on the island later, the two of them ended up sharing that single metal set. It's a grim image, but it's the perfect snapshot of Friedrich Ritter, a man so certain he could outthink nature that he'd reach for a pair of pliers to prove it. On July 4, 1929, Friedrich and Dora boarded a boat bound for Ecuador. They arrived that August, only to learn the next ship to the Galapagos wouldn't leave for another month. They'd sold off everything they owned to pay for the trip. So they spent those weeks barely scraping by, stretching the last of their money. Finally, on September 19, 1929, they set foot on Floriana. From the water, it wasn't much to look at. A thorny beach, a small patch of forest, a few herds of wild cattle wandering amongst the giant tortoises. But to Friedrich and Dora, it was heaven. They found a spot downstream from one of the island's few freshwater springs, and they built a home. They named it Frito, a blend of their two names, with Friedrichs, of course, going first. After years of dreaming, they'd finally done it. They had the solitude they'd been chasing. Dora later wrote that their first night on the island was the happiest of her life. It wouldn't stay that way for long. Living off the land turned out to be a lot harder than they'd imagined. They were alone with no doctor but Friedrich, no supplies but what they'd carried, and nothing but their own two hands. Friedrich wanted to get to work immediately, and Dora was happy to follow his lead. They found their water source, built a rough hut, and turned to the hardest problem of food. Both of them were strict vegetarians by principle. That ruled out the wild cattle and the fish, so they lived on guava, pigeon peas, and whatever else they could grow or Forage, plus a stash of seeds they'd brought from Germany to start a small farm. A lot of people would have quits. Plenty of settlers before them had. But Friedrich and Dora were true believers, convinced that grit alone could carry them through. And slowly, it sort of did. After 18 months of relentless work, they had something close to a real home. They washed their clothes and they cooked over an open fire with homemade tools. A cargo ship came by every six to eight months to collect their mail and trade for basic goods. Now and then, colonists from other islands would stop by. But here's the thing. Nobody back in Germany. Dora was miserable. No matter how much they built, Friedrich's mind was always on the next task. He rarely talked except to give orders or lecture her on his philosophy. She still worshipped him, but after a year and a half with no other company, she was starving for an actual conversation. And there was a deeper problem. Friedrich was her teacher and her partner, but he was a cold one. He didn't show much warmth, and allegedly, he even beat her. Mostly he complained about her health. Remember, Dora had multiple sclerosis. Some days, her symptoms made it impossible to do the heavy labor the island demanded. That frustrated Friedrich to no end. He promised her she could beat the disease with her mind and pushed her to work, even on days she could barely stand. So Dora blamed herself. She decided her body was failing because she wasn't sure strong enough. And Friedrich's coldness drove the point home. You can imagine how lonely that was. Which is why, on January 3, 1932, she was overjoyed when a ship full of visitors anchored off the island. It turned out Friedrich and Dora were famous, and they had no idea. Back in Germany, one of their relatives had leaked their letters home to the newspapers. For a couple of years now, sensational stories had been spreading about the doctor and his mistress living naked in the wilderness, building some kind of unholy little Eden, far from civilization. And naturally, people were curious. This particular group was a scientific expedition, and they expected to find a pair of one wild eccentrics. Instead, they met two well spoken intellectuals and they spent a perfectly pleasant afternoon together. For Dora, it was a lifeline. For Friedrich, it was an intrusion. He was especially upset to learn he was a laughingstock back home. Still, the visitors won him over a little. They left the couple some gifts, a stove, oil for a lamp and soap. And Friedrich waved them off warmly enough. Then he told Dora he hoped those would be the last guests for a while. But he didn't get his wish. And in a way, it was his Own fault. After that first visit, Friedrich stewed. He'd given up the world, but it aided him that the world was gossiping about him. So he started writing articles about his life on the island. Partly to set the record straight, partly to spread his philosophy. The mail ship carried them off and they ran in German newspapers months later. Unsurprisingly, that only fed the fire. The articles pulled in more attention, not less. Over the next couple of years, a steady stream of wealthy travelers and scientific parties rerouted their voyages just to gawk at the famous hermits. One regular was an American millionaire named Alan Hancock who came down on his own research yacht more than once. And that was only the beginning. By the summer of 1932, Friedrich and Dora had been on the island for nearly three years. Their garden was thriving, the weather was good. It should have been another perfect day in Paradise. But on August 28th of that year, Friedrich looked out at the ocean and saw the thing he dreaded most. A small boat crossing the horizon, dropping anchor right off his beach. There wasn't supposed to be a ship for months, so Friedrich and Dora knew right away something was off. They hurried down to the shore and watched a family climb out of a dinghy. They were Heinz and Margaret Wittmer and Heinz's 12 year old son from an earlier marriage, a boy named Harry. Friedrich took one look and scowled. His newspaper articles had done their job a little too well. Heinz Witmer had read Friedrich's writing and been inspired by it. Harry's health had been failing back in Germany and Heinz couldn't afford a long hospital stay. He decided what the boy really needed was a change of climate, fresh air and hard work. Exactly like the famous doctor Ritter prescribed. Of course, you can't call ahead to an island with no phones. So the Wittmers did what Friedrich and Dora had done. They sold everything and took a leap of faith. The Witmers clearly expected a warm welcome. They didn't get one. Friedrich was especially rattled to learn that Margaret was pregnant. They'd assumed that having a doctor on the island was a stroke of luck. Surely he'd help deliver the baby and share what he knew. It was the opposite. Friedrich and Dora were deeply unimpressed with their new neighbors. Heinz and Margaret weren't intellectuals. Margret in particular was exactly the kind of down to earth traditional wife and mother that Friedrich had spent his whole life railing against. And the family had no grand philosophy. They'd mostly come on a hope and a prayer. But it was too late for second thoughts. The next ship was months away. And the Wittmers had no money for a trip home. Anyway, they were staying. Friedrich decided to draw a line early on. Rather than let the Wittmers settle near Friedo, he marched them inland to an old cave near another freshwater spring. A century earlier, that same cave had sheltered pirates. The area is known today as Asilo de la Paz, which translates, a little too optimistically, to haven of peace. It wasn't a terrible spot, aside from a long walk to the beach. And the Wittmers got the message fast. This was not the dream the newspapers had sold them, and their only neighbors couldn't stand them. So they did the only thing they could. They dug in, scratching out a life with almost no help from Friedrich and Dora. And here's the thing. They were good at it. Really good. Where Friedrich preached survival, the Wittmers actually survived. They were practical, tireless, and they learned fast. Over the next few weeks, the chill between the two households thawed just a little. Friedrich still kept his distance, and he still flatly refused to be Margaret's doctor. But the two families reached a kind of truce. There was even a moment where it seemed like they might all coexist. Then, on October 15, 1932, another boat that shouldn't have been there drifted toward the beach. And when three new arrivals stepped onto the sand, nobody could hide their dismay.

[Jimmy Uso]

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[Carter Roy]

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On October 15, 1932, three new settlers landed on Floriana, bringing the Island's population to 8. Three years earlier, Friedrich Ritter and Doris Strauch had come here to get away from human society. Now there was a whole little neighborhood, whether they liked it or not. And the woman in charge of this latest group was something else entirely. Her full name was Heloise Verborn Wagner Bousquet, but she called herself the Baroness. She was 39 years old and she'd arrived with two much younger men, both in their 20s. Robert Philipson and Rudolph Lorentz. And almost right away, she'd gotten on everyone's nerves. Without asking anyone, she set up camp right across the stream from the Vitmers Cave. She announced that she intended to build a luxury hotel on the island and a resort for wealthy American friends, which she planned to call Hacienda Paradiso Paradise Ranch. I want to be careful with the Baroness, because she's the easiest person in this story to turn into a cartoon. The truth is, we know surprisingly little about who she really was before Floriana, and a lot of what she said about herself turned out to be invented. So it's hard to know where the real woman ended and the character began. But what the other settlers saw was a woman who treated her two young companions like servants and told stories so wild that people assumed she was joking. She wasn't. She informed the others, more or less on arrival, that the entire island of Floriana now belonged to to her. Friedrich was appalled. Coming to the Galapagos to build a resort and make money was the exact opposite of everything he believed. And from the moment the Baroness landed, he was convinced she was going to wreck his whole experiment. He turned out to be right. He just had no idea how. Exactly. A month after the Baroness arrived, two settlers from a larger island stopped by Floriana to hunt. People did this from time to time. The wild cattle were free for the taking and nobody minded, least of all Friedrich and Dora, who didn't eat meat anyway. But when the Baroness heard a gunshot, she came charging out to confront the hunters with Robert at her side. Both of them were armed. She had a revolver, he had a rifle. She screamed at the bewildered men that the whole island was hers and that they'd just killed one of her animals. Then she allegedly ordered Robert to beat them. He managed to rip the shirt off one of them before the two hunters bolted into the woods and ran straight for Friedo. When the hunters told Friedrich what had happened, he was furious. But Friedrich was no fighter. So instead of confronting the Baroness, he wrote a strongly worded letter about her and asked the hunters to deliver it to the governor of the Galapagos. And then he sat there and hated himself for it. How the entire point of Floriana was to live beyond society and its rules. Now here he was appealing to a government official to settle a dispute because one woman had turned his paradise into something else entirely. His grand mission was unraveling, and it had taken just a handful of neighbors to do it. The worst part was that the letter didn't change anything. The Baroness carried on exactly as before. And the family that lived closest to her, the Vitmers, was about to go through something far more frightening than a property dispute. The baby was due at the end of the year, and Margaret would be giving birth in a cave with no real medical supplies beyond bandages and soap. The family hadn't spoken to Friedrich about the pregnancy since the day they'd met. But when Margaret went into labor on December 30, 1932, her husband, Heinz, insisted on calling the doctor. Margaret refused. For two full days, she labored in the back of the cave, trying to deliver the baby herself. By New Year's, she was in serious trouble. At one point, while Hinds was out hunting, the pain got to be too much. Margaret staggered out of the cave to scream for him and fainted in the woods. When she came to a few minutes later, she could hear a baby crying in the grass beside her. It was a boy. Hines raced back, cut the umbilical cord, scooped up the baby and got his wife back to bed. The newborn was somehow perfectly healthy. Margaret was not. After a couple more hours of agony, she finally begged Heinz to go get Friedrich. The run to Friedo took Heinz nearly an hour, then another hour to convince Friedrich to come and gather his supplies. By the time the two men reached Margaret, three hours had passed since she'd asked for help. She was barely hanging on. It's not entirely clear what was wrong, but Friedrich decided he had to operate immediately. And for once, the Wittmer saw a different side of him. The cranky philosopher was gone. He was a careful, competent doctor. That didn't make it any easier. He had no anesthetic. He had to operate on Margaret while she was fully awake. The pain was unimaginable. But Margaret refused to give Friedrich the satisfaction of hearing her cry out. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was spite, maybe both. Either way, she got through the whole thing without making a sound. When it was over, the two families had a new respect for each other. Friedrich had saved Margaret's life, and he Wouldn't take a cent for it, he said. He was simply impressed by how brave she'd been. The Wittmers named the baby Rolf. He was born on January 1, 1933, and was the first child born on Floriana. And is often described as the first documented birth in the Galapagos. For a little while, that baby actually softened things on Floriana. Even the Baroness came by with some clothes for him. And Dora was thrilled that the island finally had a native born citizen. Those good feelings lasted about a month. On January 26, 1933, a scientific expedition came by on its annual visit. A year earlier, there had only been two settlers to meet. Now the visitors were stunned to find eight people on the island. And even more stunned to learn that none of them got along. The scientists, against Friedrich's wishes, invited all eight residents aboard their ship. Almost immediately, the Baroness and Dora got into it. The argument got so heated that the crew had to physically pull the two women apart. And that was just the warm up. Right before the ship left, a second fight broke out. The visitors had brought gifts that were originally meant for Friedrich and Dora. Since they hadn't even known the other settlers existed. But the Baroness demanded the goods be split evenly. Friedrich refused. In the end, he and Dora kept everything for themselves. It was a petty move, and it broke his own rules. In his writing, Friedrich condemned greed and the hunger for possessions. But the second arrival wanted to share. He took it all just to spite her. With attitudes like that on a tiny island, the tension wasn't going anywhere. As to 1933 wore on, the feuds just kept getting worse. The Baroness stayed public enemy number one. Grading on Friedrich and Dora, and especially the Vitmers next door. Here's one example of why. The Vitmers once bought a bag of rice from the supply ship. Using a tiny bit of the cash. They had left a nest egg that was nearly gone. On the day the ship came in. The Baroness offered to go down to the beach and pick up their goods for them. Levitmer said yes, figuring it was just a neighborly favor. But Margaret said that when they went to collect their rice, the Baroness tried to charge them a storage fee for holding it at her place. When they refused to pay, she simply kept the rice. For the Vitmers. That was was the last straw. They had almost no money, and losing that rice meant losing food they badly needed. The Baroness never even apologized. She just carried on like nothing had happened. And then things got even worse. The weather turned on all of them. The rainy season was supposed to come at the end of 1933, it didn't. Month after month went by with no rain, and Floriana's fresh water started to run dry. By the spring of 1934, the conflict was reaching a boiling point. In March, the crops began to wither. The Baroness and her two men were hit hardest of anyone because they had the worst land. From their cave, the Vitmers could hear the three of them screaming at each other through the night. And in the mornings they noticed Rudolf walking around with a black eye and bruises. Things at the Baroness camp were clearly going very wrong. Finally, Hinds walked down to Frito to talk to Friedrich and Dora. He argued that the settlers should band together and and do something about the Baroness. He said she was out of control and somebody had to rein her in. Friedrich and Dora shook their heads. This was exactly the kind of mess they'd come to Floriana to avoid. They wanted no part of it. Hinds left in a huff, but Heinz was right. Things had gone too far to ignore. Within weeks, people on that island would start to vanish. One settler would walk off and never be seen again. Another would turn up dead in a place that made no sense. And the survivors would spend the rest of their lives telling stories that never quite fit together. Friedrich Ritter had come to Floriana certain that human beings packed together would always turn to violence. He'd built his whole life around escaping that fate. In the end, on his own remote little island, with only seven other people for company, he was about to be proven right.

[Jimmy Uso]

Foreign

[Carter Roy]

thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy and this is Murder True Crime Stories. Come back next time for part two on the Galapagos Affair and all the people it affected. And Daisy Egan from Strange and Unexplained will be right here with me to help untangle it. True Crime Stories 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, rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get both parts of every story dropped on Tuesday completely ad free. No waiting for part two plus ad free and early access to every show across Crime House and bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts tap try free at the top of the Murder True Crime Stories page. We'll be back on Thursday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy, and is a Crime House original. Powered by Pave Studios, this episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertofsky, Lori Marinelli, Alyssa Fox, Roman Diangelo, and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening. Hi listeners, it's Carter. Before today's episode of Murder True Crime Stories, I want to tell you about another podcast I am hosting I know you'll love. Crime House and A E are teaming up on the podcast version of the famous true crime series the First 48. Each week I'll take you inside a landmark homicide case, the interrogations, the dead ends, and the breakthroughs in the critical first 48 hours. Listen to and follow the first 48 every Thursday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.