FUNK IN DA TRUNK A ‘DEAD’ GIVEAWAY
Key clues uncovered in grisly N.J. slay lead to shocking suspect & confession
It had been just another quiet Saturday night in Keyport, N.J., a charming small town across the bay from Staten Island, when a near-hysterical elderly man burst through the doors of the state police station and set the sleepy burg abuzz.
Wide-eyed and breathless, J.S. Van Mater needed to sit a spell and gulp a glass of water before telling troopers of his grisly find mere minutes ago.
At a little past 9 p.m., the elderly farmer was driving home when he spotted a large steamer trunk by the side of the dark, lonely road. Curiosity got the better of him, and Van Mater pulled over to see what was inside.
He now wished he hadn’t, he quietly told the troopers.
The trunk was unlocked. Van Mater took a breath and slowly lifted the lid — then slammed it down before taking a horrified step back and nearly losing his supper.
Jammed inside was the body of a woman — middleaged, heavy set and completely nude except for some kind of thin strap wrapped around her neck.
Van Mater didn’t bother to take a second look. He jumped into his car and sped straight to the police station, knowing he’d never forget what he had just seen.
By the next day, Sunday, April 20, 1947, the local Jersey papers and the Daily News prominently featured stories on the mystery of the lady in the trunk — a sensational crime that took months to solve even after some dogged detective work.
Investigators were certain they’d have an ID on the body in no time. The woman had been strangled— the strap around her neck was a leather dog leash — but there were no bruises or signs of sexual assault. She had been killed two days before she was found.
The victim was attractive, around 50 years old, 5-feet-2 and about 150 pounds, and took care of herself. Her dark hair, speckled with gray, was recently shampooed, and her nails were manicured.
She also had distinguishing characteristics. The middle finger on her right hand was deformed, and she recently had six teeth pulled from her upper jaw and likely wore a bridge.
The trunk was a dead end. An old, cheap model, it was empty save for the victim’s body. It had been repainted blue at some point, but there was no manufacturer label to help investigators trace its origin.
Detectives contacted dentists throughout the tristate area hoping one of them had a patient who’d had similar work done, but no one had reached out so far.
It took nearly three months before there was a true breakthrough — and it was thanks to the trunk.
Police put the steamer under ultraviolet lights and discovered there were letters etched under the blue paint job that had been mostly erased over the years: an SC together, then an E and an L. There were also words that looked like they could be “north” and “dune.”
Detectives realized the SC, E and L were likely part of a name. The rest was an address. “North” was likely North Ave. — in nearby Dunellen, N.J.
They canvassed every home on North Ave. in the town and were told a family named Schreil had lived there — 20 years ago. But they had moved close by, less than 10 miles away in Plainfield.
It all came together when police learned a local man named Philip Schreil, 57, and his adult son and daughter had filed a missing persons report on his wife Anna about a week after the body in the trunk was found.
Investigators called on Schreil, who gave them the number of the family dentist. The missing teeth matched Anna Schreil’s records.
Eighty days after a motorist had stumbled onto her corpse, investigators finally had an ID.
A day later they had her killer.
Philip Schreil, 57, a scrawny, mild-mannered photo-engraving foreman who worked in Manhattan, readily confessed to his wife’s
murder the moment he was brought in for questioning.
The reason he twisted a dog leash around his wife’s fleshy neck until the life was squeezed out of her was simple, Schreil told cops. “Because she nagged me.” Details of their rocky marriage shocked the jury — and rapt newspaper readers — when the henpecked husband testified in his own defense at the murder trial a year later.
In a soft voice, Schreil related how Anna was an illtempered, money-hungry shrew who tore through a $30,000 inheritance he’d received — about $350,000 today.
Anna, he said, blew it mostly on fancy clothes and nights out drinking and dancing at Manhattan clubs, often without her stick-in-the-mud husband.
She also kept — and readily spent — his $200-a-week salary, about $2,300 in 2020.
On the night of the murder the couple had been clubbing in New York and bickering mightily over her spending.
Back home in Plainfield, as Schreil was about to take their dog for a walk, an angry, alcohol-sodden Anna punched him in the mouth, he said, drawing blood.
Through tears, Schreil said he lost control and in a “lightning flash” wrapped the leash around her neck and pulled until his wife of nearly 30 years gasped her last breaths.
What came next was a blur. He took off her nightclothes, stuffed her in an old trunk and kept the body in a closet for two days while he went to work as if nothing had happened, then left the steamer by the side of a dirt road about 20 miles away from home.
Despite her treatment of him, Schreil was heartbroken at what he had done to the woman he always called “Mamma.”
“I miss her so,” he sobbed on the stand. “I worshiped the ground she walked on.”
His tale of wedded woe was backed up by testimony from his children, friends and neighbors who said Mamma was as mean as they come — and the jury bought it.
Schreil, who was facing the death penalty, was instead convicted of manslaughter. He was sentenced to six to 10 years at Trenton State Prison. He was paroled after serving four.
He died in 1964 at age 74, presumably still missing his beloved Mamma.
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