The Hoarder of Carmel
by Dagny McKinley
Based on a True Story
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Art with Altitude.
The caretaker pulled her shirt over her nose and mouth, the stench strong even from outside. She used the key she’d never returned to unlock the door. Moving quickly, she ignored the body in the bed and the piles of garbage that came up to her shoulder, and deftly worked her way along the only open path in the room. The jewelry was in the top drawer of the dresser that had been pushed close to the bed. An emerald and diamond ring, diamond brooch and gold necklace were stuffed in her pockets. She took a quick glance back at Ingrid, her hair in her signature pigtails, and her face—her face, one might say, was at peace for perhaps the first time. As the caretaker left, the treasures she carried with her were the first things in Ingrid’s care to leave the house in more than 10 years.
The first time I met Ingrid in person was for an interview regarding a book I was writing on Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School & Camp. When I arrived in blue jeans and a lace blouse, she commented, “I see we don’t get dressed for these kinds of occasions anymore.” Ingrid, on the other hand, was fully made up from head to toe, her face so drawn in with makeup that it more resembled a mask than a face, with her hair in two pigtails that made her appear childlike. She wore a ruffled blouse and pleated skirt and high heeled shoes. She was trained as an actress by one of the best, Charlotte Perry, and she was capable of putting on a show. Her body was stiff until she talked about other people—then she seamlessly took on their characteristics and movements as if she had studied them for a part she was playing. She commanded the conversation and let me know very quickly that she was the heir to Charlotte Perry’s estate, which contained a lot of the history and personal effects of Charlotte Perry and camp co-founder Portia Mansfield. Charlotte would have adopted her, she said, but was worried what her family would think as Charlotte was unmarried. There was a hint that she and Charlotte were related somehow but she never divulged how. Throughout the interview, she dropped little pieces of information about herself, tidbits such as, “I come from Russian aristocracy and was taken on five transatlantic crossings as a child.” Before I left, she gave me a picture of her and Charlotte Perry, where a resemblance could be seen in the high cheekbones and the smile.
The conversation sparked my interest, so I spent some time researching her past trying to find the connection to Charlotte. Through a quick internet search, I discovered Ingrid was born to Hedwig Emma Wetter and Jakob Joseph Wekerle on October 13, 1934. On December 3, 1939 she traveled with her mother to Middleton, New York, where her nationality was listed as “USA.” Ingrid was vague in subsequent interviews about details of her early life, never mentioning her birth family but speaking instead of the Ogden family who had taken her in. Peter Ogden, the son of Lucile and George Ogden, posted a blog on the Ogden Farm’s history that included a bit of unexpected information about Ingrid Wekerle.
According to Peter’s version,
Ingrid had mysterious origins. She was born in Germany of “high German” stock. Some said that she was the daughter of a very prominent anti-Nazi German political family and was allegedly smuggled out of the country by the Wekerles with the promise of returning her to her family after the war. Apparently, her family of origin was permanently lost in the war. She escaped Hitler’s Reich when she left aboard the S.S. Bremen to New York on October 17, 1936, escorted by Hedwig Wekerle and adopting Hedwig’s surname while posing as Hedwig’s daughter. It is uncertain as to whether Ingrid had been kidnapped by the Wekerles or entrusted to them temporarily by her mysterious parents. It is unknown what became of Ingrid’s birth parents. There were rumors in the 1940s that Ingrid was, in fact, Adolf Hitler’s illegitimate daughter—a rumor that both Ingrid and Lucile would never acknowledge or discuss.
Wait. What? Hitler’s illegitimate daughter?
This rumor was something Ingrid would allude to in conversation with comments such as, “I know you have researched me, and I’m sure you have found some interesting information.” Yet she never wanted to talk about herself or her childhood. She deflected to other topics.
I kept tabs on Ingrid through the years, worried about what might happen to the Perry-Mansfield archives upon her death as she refused to tell anyone what her plans were for them. When I heard she was in ill health, I searched for news about her in Carmel, California. Instead of finding information about her health, I found a piece in the Carmel Pine Cone about her adoption as an adult by a woman named Devi Davies. A few years later there was news that Ingrid had passed.
No one was prepared for what they would find. The house where Charlotte, Portia and close friend Helen Smith had welcomed anyone with a spark of creativity was now so full of furniture and garbage and records and clothes and dolls and cards and dishes that Ingrid had closed the front door and left only a path through the back door leading to the bathroom. The room where she spent her last months was similarly filled with garbage and junk. The water and electricity had been turned off due to unpaid bills. Ingrid had filed a complaint a few months earlier about elder abuse enacted against her. And here was this woman, possible heir to Hitler, heir to Charlotte Perry’s estate and all that history, heir to Devi Davies’ belongings, completely alone at her death.
The people who were hired to conduct the estate sale removed 900 pounds of garbage just to get down to the furniture piled on itself, closets and racks of clothing and dolls and art and knickknacks. “She never wore the same things twice,” said a friend, a statement corroborated by discovery of an entire 10-by-30-foot warehouse filled with clothes. If she had one of something, she had 10 of it. Some expensive, some cheap. She separated her clothes with grease splatter guards—a single closet held roughly 30 cream-colored sweaters, all folded and separated. She labeled things obsessively, as if stamping her mark on them. Every book or document that had value or belonged to Charlotte Perry or Portia Mansfield was stickered “Ex Libris. Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding. Prov. 3:13. Ingrid Matson Wekerle. Devi Davies.”
There was a letter from a brother that no one who knew Ingrid had ever heard mentioned. She did not acknowledge her birth family. According to rumors, when Jakob Wekerle had to take a job in Florida during the Great Depression, Ingrid refused to go. She insisted upon staying in New York, which is likely when she was taken in by the Ogdens. This insistence led to tensions within the Wekerle family. At some point she renounced the Wekerle family and instead aligned herself with Charlotte Perry, who took
Ingrid in as a daughter. The two first met at the Hunter College Department of Children’s Theater, where Charlotte taught for many years. Charlotte invited her to Perry-Mansfield Camp, where the relationship between the two grew closer. Both Charlotte and Portia had students who needed family as much as the ladies did, and a number of students considered the women to be second mothers. Ingrid’s relationship with Charlotte, however, went much deeper. She lived in the Carmel home with them, wrote weekly letters to Charlotte when she traveled, calling her “my dearest mama” and bemoaning how much she missed her. It appears Charlotte funded her to some extent even though when she was old enough for her own career, she worked as a teacher at the Hunter College Department of Children’s Theater, following in Charlotte’s footsteps.
According to court documents from a lawsuit regarding Charlotte’s estate, Charlotte’s lawyer stated that Charlotte had offered to adopt Ingrid but at that time Ingrid did not want Charlotte to have any more control over her. Ingrid later changed her mind when it was explained to her that she would not have to pay as much in taxes on the inheritance of Charlotte’s estate if she was an official heir, but by then Charlotte no longer wanted the hassle of the adoption. Regardless, Charlotte’s estate was left to Ingrid with a portion going to a friend of Charlotte’s, Devi Davies, who had formed a very close bond with Ingrid. Devi and Ingrid referred to one another as mother and daughter in public and likewise in the obituary Ingrid wrote when Devi passed.
There were other obituaries Ingrid wrote about people she had been close to, people she had developed close relationships with and whose ashes were found on the mantel of the Carmel house. Five different people’s remains were on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, which in part explained the amount of furniture and belongings in the home. It appears Ingrid became heir to numerous people’s estates. By the time of her death, she had reverse mortgaged the house to pay the $2,000 monthly fees for four 10-by-30-foot storage units that were filled with furniture, boxes of documents and clothes that weren’t in good enough condition for an estate sale but were instead donated to a local thrift store. Precious films from Perry-Mansfield were recovered but no one knows how many items of value were thrown away.
Ingrid was a member of the Carmel Woman’s Club, founded in 1925 with the goals of “mutual help, intellectual advancement, social enjoyment, and united effort for the welfare of the community.” Her work in philanthropy with the club would have gained her access to wealthy women, some of whom were likely lonely and in need of a friend, or as in the case of Charlotte, wanted to have someone who saw them as a mother figure. The relationships Ingrid developed likely helped fund her lifestyle of travel, hosting dinners and her obsession with clothing. Yet there must also have been love or the perception of being loved and cared for. Ingrid knew the details of these people’s lives, which I imagine came through long conversations over tea or coffee. Their belongings were important enough to her that she kept every item given from people’s estates including journals discussing World War II, the atom bomb and the McCarthy hearings. Of her own accomplishments, she kept records of everything. But because of the overwhelming amount of information to sort though, any items not of importance to the estate are now decomposing in a dump.
As for ties to Hitler or other high-ranking members of the German SS, hair samples may be able to unravel that secret. But in any case, Ingrid was a young woman who wanted to belong, to be seen as important. Without her own financial means, she developed relationships that helped fund a lifestyle designed to give the appearance of success. She lived her life apart, an actress in a world she so desperately wanted to belong to, yet died alone, her mind unraveling from dementia and no one at that point left to care for her. She was a woman who, like Charlotte and Portia, never married or had children and who in her own way, wanted to leave—or at least manufacture—a legacy worth leaving.
Elevate the Arts: Make sure you have a will. Consider creating a document for important historical or sentimental items that
includes a photograph and documents their importance and where you would like them to go.
