In 1928, police at the Lake Bluff Police Station would discover a severely burnt woman by the name of Elfrieda Knaak in the station furnace room. Evidently she had either been put in the furnace by someone or climbed in there herself. She was still alive but terribly injured and what she was saying made little sense to the officers who discovered her. One cold morning on October 30. 1928, a municipal worker by the name of Chris Louis ventured down to the furnace room which provided heating for the Police Station which was housed in the Village Hall. Upon unlocking the door and entering Chris noticed a dark figure in the corner and went back up to fetch Police Chief, Barney Rosenhagen. When they returned they realized that the figure was in fact a severely burned naked woman. Knaak, a 29-year-old college graduate, had suffered burns all over her body but she was still conscious as she told the men, “I’m cold.” She was quickly wrapped in a blanket while an ambulance was called. She claimed she did it to herself When questioned by detectives Knaak claimed that she had inflicted the burns upon herself and that she had done it out of love for a policeman named Charles W. Hitchcock as per an article from The New York Times in 1928. Knaak had apparently desired to “purify” herself by putting her head, feet, and arms into the fire. However, due to her injuries she was frequently sedated and was semi-conscious at best when detectives spoke to her. She would also say things that suggested Hitchcock had “pushed” her, although the police man was ruled out on account of his leg being in a plaster cast meaning he wouldn’t have been able to leave his home on the night of the incident. The final words of Elfrieda Knaak It quickly became apparent that Knaak would not be surviving her injuries and on the third day, with her brothers and a nurse present she uttered her final words. Unfortunately those words would only serve to add more confusion to the mystery. “I wonder why they did it,” she pondered aloud to the room, when asked who did it she replied, “I can’t remember.” She was then asked why she went to the furnace room and how she got in, she replied that she was cold and that she had a key to the room which she claimed they would find in her coat pocket, (the coat was never found). Moments later she opened her eyes again and cried out “I didn’t do it,” adding that “they did it.” When asked again who she was talking about, she once again answered, “I can’t remember.” She then closed her eyes and passed away. Her final words are frustrating to hear as it sounds like she was trying to tell those around her that someone else was responsible for her demise but her condition made it impossible to make sense of what she was saying. In the end it would remain a mystery. Did Elfrieda Knaak climb into the furnace of her own accord? Or was somebody else to blame for her death? We may never know, but then again, older mysteries have been solved.