A New Clue in the Fabian Streiff Mystery
While researching an entirely different story, New Glarus 360 recently stumbled across an old Illinois newspaper article that adds a remarkable new layer to one of the strangest mysteries in New Glarus history.
On May 31, we told the story of Fabian Streiff, a young New Glarus man who disappeared in 1881 and was not found until more than three decades later. Contemporary newspaper accounts said Streiff left carrying a gun, reportedly intending to hunt wolves, and then vanished without a trace.
Search parties combed the countryside around New Glarus, but found no body, clothing, firearm or other evidence. With wolves active in the area, some residents eventually concluded Streiff had been attacked and killed. When he resurfaced in Illinois 34 years later, he was elderly, in poor health and said to have only fragments of memory about his former life.
That was where the mystery appeared to begin and end.
Then we found a story published June 8, 1939, in the Chatsworth Plaindealer of Illinois. Written nearly 60 years after Streiff disappeared, the article preserved two very different explanations for what happened to him.
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