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in: Wisconsin, 1910, Disappearances,
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Conradina Olson

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Carl and conradina olsen

Carl and Conradina Olson

Real Name: Conradina Wilhelmina Olson
Nicknames: Conradina Heidtmann (maiden name)
Location: Brookfield, Wisconsin
Date: 1910

Geneva fuchser

Geneva Fuchser

Bio[]

Occupation: Unrevealed
Date of Birth: September 12, 1871
Height: Unrevealed
Weight: Unrevealed
Marital Status: Married
Characteristics: White female

Case[]

Details: Thirty-eight-year-old Conradina Olson has been missing since 1910. Her granddaughter, fifty-nine-year-old Geneva Fuchser, hopes to find out what happened to her. Geneva’s relentless search has brought her face to face with a mysterious legend of murder in a small town, and dark family secrets kept hushed for nearly 100 years.
One day in 1910, Conradina boarded a train in Brookfield, Wisconsin, and said goodbye to her four children. She told them she was going to Milwaukee for a doctor’s appointment and would return the following day. She promised her youngest daughter a new doll when she returned. She also asked her oldest son, fourteen-year-old Edwin, if he wanted to come with her, but he declined. Her family never saw her again.
Sadly, Edwin died in 1966. For the rest of his life, he regretted not getting on the train. Geneva, who is also his daughter, says that he felt that if he had gone with Conradina, she would have come back. Geneva says he was lonesome and suffered for this all his life. He could not accept why and how she had disappeared. He never knew why she went away and did not come back.
In 1983, Geneva began investigating Conradina’s disappearance, hoping to find answers to the questions that had haunted Edwin his entire life. She learned that in 1891, twenty-year-old Conradina Heitman married thirty-year-old Carl Olson, a railroad coachman. By all accounts, their marriage was not a happy one. Geneva says that from her research, she has found out that Carl was “not good” to Conradina. He may have been physically abusive towards her, but Geneva is not sure.
Geneva says that back in those days when there was a bad marriage, people did not get a divorce. One of the people would just walk away from the marriage. For many years, she thought that this was what happened to Conradina. But now she does not believe that. She thinks that Conradina was taken and that something bad happened to her.
Geneva and her husband own a gift shop, “Gifts From Mexico,” in South Sioux City, Nebraska. In September 1985, while working at the shop, she had a bizarre encounter with one of her customers. From this chance meeting, a startling possibility began to emerge. Geneva says that it was a quiet day. At around noon, a woman entered the gift shop. Geneva says that she knew there was something different about the woman, but she could not grasp what it was.
The woman walked around the shop for a bit. Geneva says she usually lets people walk around the shop and tries not to bug them. After a few minutes, the woman approached the counter and started talking with Geneva. The woman said her name was Suzanna Stickney, and she was looking for a Pegasus. She also said that she was a psychic. Out of nowhere, she said to Geneva, “You want to ask me about your grandmother, don’t you?”
Geneva was amazed and said yes. Suzanna asked her if she had anything of Conradina’s. She gave Suzanna the couple’s marriage license and wedding picture. Suzanna flipped over the license and the picture, closed her eyes, and said, “Now, don’t talk. Be very quiet.” Suzanna told Geneva that she could see Conradina boarding a train. She saw children crying. She saw Conradina being beaten. She then said that she felt that Carl knew what happened to Conradina.
Geneva says that Suzanna’s psychic reading sent shivers down her spine. She was flabbergasted and could not believe that Suzanna knew these things about Conradina. Later, in Suzanna’s office, Geneva was given more possible clues about Conradina’s disappearance. Suzanna told her that she would soon receive a packet of old letters. The letters would pinpoint the year that Conradina disappeared.
Suzanna told Geneva that the name “Ellis” was somehow connected to the disappearance and that Conradina was buried in an unmarked grave. Suzanna also told her that within a year, she would be getting a letter from an unknown source – somebody she does not even know of – that will tell her where the grave is.
Incredibly, several weeks later, Suzanna’s first predictions seemed to come true. Geneva received a packet of old letters and pictures from Conradina’s nieces and nephews. The majority of the contents of the packet were from the 1800s. The old letters stated that there was some dissension in Conradina’s marriage and that the last time anyone heard from her was around 1910.
Encouraged by this new information, Geneva sent a letter detailing her search to a midwestern newspaper. The editors found the story interesting and printed it. In the summer of 1987, Bill Carpenter of Fort Scott, Kansas, contacted Geneva after reading about her search in “Cappers,” a monthly magazine. He told her about an unmarked grave near the small town of Ellis, Missouri. He also sent her a newspaper article about it.
Bill told Geneva that there was “quite a story” about the grave. Legend has it that it is the resting place of an unknown woman found murdered near the railroad tracks years ago. For as long as anyone can remember, the grave has been maintained by railroad workers, adorned with flowers every Memorial Day. When Bill mentioned that the grave was close to the railroad tracks, Geneva was shocked. She realized that another prediction of Suzanna's had come true.
At the turn of the century, Ellis was a small farming town. According to local legend, a fashionably dressed woman got off the train at Ellis, near Highway 43. She was seen crying and arguing with a man. Witnesses reported that it appeared to be a lover’s quarrel and that the couple stormed east down the tracks. The man was later seen returning to the station alone. He boarded another train and left town.
The woman’s body was discovered alongside the train tracks three days later. She had been beaten and then shot through the heart. There was nothing to identify the woman or reveal where she had come from. According to the legend, railroad workers buried her in a field a few yards from where she was found.
Geneva and her husband visited the grave. He took a picture of her standing next to it. In the picture, there is an area of light next to her, which she believes is the unknown woman’s apparition. She has heard that when a person dies violently, their spirit stays with their body until it is claimed. Suzanna looked at the picture and said the apparition was Conradina. Geneva says that she visited the grave twice and was photographed next to it both times. Once again, the “apparition” appeared next to her in the pictures.
Geneva says that she wants to believe that the grave is Conradina’s. And in her heart, she believes it is. She says she does not know what else could have happened to Conradina. She thinks that if something else happened to Conradina, she would have discovered it during her research. Instead, she believes that her research and Suzanna's predictions have led her to the conclusion that Conradina is in the grave.
Historian Pat Brophey, however, remains skeptical about Geneva’s claims. He says there are newspaper articles about the unknown grave dating from before 1910, when Conradina disappeared. One newspaper article, in particular, seemed to discount Geneva’s conclusion. It was published in 1888, twenty-two years before Conradina disappeared. It stated that the woman’s body was discovered on April 21, 1877. It also described the dead woman as being less than twenty years old. Conradina was thirty-eight when she vanished.
Bill Carpenter, however, says that around 1950, he talked to an eighty-five-year-old man who had worked for the railroad his entire life. The man said that the woman they had found along the tracks was approximately in her thirties. Bill believes that the woman was Conradina.
If the woman found murdered alongside the railroad tracks was Conradina, then who was the man seen arguing with her at the Ellis train station? Geneva heard that at the time of Conradina’s disappearance, Carl also went away for some time. She does not want to believe that he did anything to Conradina. But with all the information coming out, she does not know what to think about it.
Geneva says that until she knows whether or not the unknown woman is Conradina, she will have that doubt of not knowing. She wants to know, not only for herself, but also for her father. She is confident that she is going to find Conradina. She feels that there is someone out there who knows what happened to Conradina.
Suspects: Carl Olson is considered a possible suspect in Conradina’s disappearance. It was known that he did not treat her well and that there was “dissension” in the marriage. Around the time of her disappearance, he had also disappeared for a short period of time. If the woman found murdered in Ellis was Conradina, it is possible that the man seen arguing with her was Carl. Geneva, however, is not sure if Carl was responsible or not. He died in 1929.
Extra Notes:

  • This case first aired on the December 19, 1990 episode.
  • It was submitted to the show by Geneva.
  • The exact date of Conradina’s disappearance is not known.
  • Some sources state that Conradina was on her way to the dentist when she disappeared.

Results: Unsolved - An 1888 article states that the woman found in Ellis was named “Lula King”; however, other sources refute this claim. Based on newspaper articles from that time period, it seems impossible that the woman found in Ellis was Conradina unless there was another unidentified woman killed there around the time of her disappearance.
Conradina's great-grandchildren and other relatives later uploaded their DNA to Ancestry.com and other websites. However, they have been unable to find any further trace of her.
Sadly, on October 4, 2021, Geneva passed away at the age of ninety.
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