Part One – New Jersey Archives (continued)
Albrecht Stucker immigrated to the United States from his native Hamburg in 1979. His father, Heinz, was an electrical engineer for Siemens, GMBH and had been transferred to their New Jersey MRI Research facility a year earlier.
“Herr Doktor” Heinz Stucker was a jovial and well-liked engineer at the Berkeley Heights Siemens Laboratories and, in preparation for his son, Albrecht, and wife Elsa, coming to America to join him, purchased a 1940’s “Craftsman” Cape Cod in Warren. It had been rehabilitated by a local builder and was only about ten miles from his Berkeley Heights job location. It sat on about two acres of rocky soil just off Mountain Avenue. To the Stucker family, it was heaven.
Because Warren resembled certain geographic parts of Germany, many Germans seemed to flock there. There was even a 100-acre German “Bier Garten” called Schwäbische Alb on Washington Valley Road where locals could quaff authentic German beer and eat Schnitzel and Wurst while they listened to music from back home. On some nights, Polka Bands played, and dancing was encouraged. It was a pleasant slice of the old country that eased “Herr Doktor” Heinz Stucker’s transition into mainstream American culture.
When his son Albrecht arrived at the new home in Warren, he immediately searched for work. Being young and ambitious – and wanting to impress his Engineering genius of a father – he appealed to whatever local German contacts his father had made and landed a job doing general maintenance at the Schwäbische Alb. Occasionally he’d wait tables, wrangle beer kegs, park cars – even “Bar Back” on busy evenings. He was a jack-of-all-trades, helpful and eager to please. He’d tackle any job with a smile.
One night the Manager gave him an urgent assignment.
“Dish washer machines are backing up – get the Roto Rooter machine and clean out the grease trap”.
Albrecht found the commercial-grade “Rigid Auto Feed” electric Roto-Rooter machine and got Billy Jankhara – another maintenance guy – to help him drag it to the grease trap access. The grease trap wasn’t easy to get to.
Jankhara held onto Albrecht’s legs as the young man wiggled himself under a grimy kitchen floor panel to get his eyes and hands on the grease trap opening. He found that the cement securing the old six-inch grease pipe had completely crumbled and caved in – revealing a deep, noxious-smelling opening and drafty man-sized void.
The smell was so putrescent, Albrecht felt like he was going to gag.
He quickly unlatched the steel grease trap cover – it resembled a porthole on a battleship with wing nuts securing its perimeter. Albrecht shoved the heavy Roto-Rooter cutter head into the pipe opening about two feet – only to realize it was busting through the rusted pipe wall and protruding into the open dark void next to it. The cast-iron pipe was at least 100 years old and cracking into pieces. The cutter head quickly lodged itself in the shattered old metallurgy, probably locking into a broken seam. It was solidly jammed inside.
Albrecht grabbed the thick cable that connected the cutter to its electric drive motor and tried to use it as a rope to pull himself back up to where Jankhara was positioned. Albrecht had to tell his boss the bad news: this job is going to require a professional plumbing crew and backhoe.
“I’m coming up – DON’T turn the machine on!” He yelled to Jankhara.
Albrecht knew that if the Roto-Rooter switch was turned on, the centrifugal force of the cutter-head’s spinning blades would cause them to splay outward and out of control, destroying what was left of the brittle pipe and whatever else was around it. Uncompacted by the interior diameter of a pipe, it would flail out of control and become an unleashed ball of expanded razor blades. That was the last thing Albrecht needed cowering down the cramped space he was contorted in.
Albrecht leveraged his body against a filthy side wall and pulled up on the Rotto-Rooter drive cable. Suddenly his left hand slipped off the cable – and straight into the gaping maw of the void near the grease pipe. A disgusting, fetid stench flooded his lungs as his hand sunk into untold years of accumulated putrefied and rancid slime.
“SHIT!” He yelled.
Then it happened. His left arm was grabbed by something with a vise-like grip. For a moment he thought he’d caught his arm in some underground root-system…. but then then the pain started. Horrific, searing and electrifying pain such as he’d never felt before. Knives were cutting into his flesh and pulling his forearm away from him. He felt his bones crack and his muscles being shredded.
Albrecht Stucker wailed and writhed inside the small crawlspace he was wedged inside. He was pinned in place by whatever had a death grip on his limb. The blinding agony, tearing and ripping of his arm immediately caused him to soil himself. He pleaded with Jankhara as he felt himself passing out from pain.
“HELP ME! HELP ME!”
Jankhara was petrified and didn’t know what to do. He frantically pulled on the Roto-Rotor drive cable to try and drag Albrecht up but it was frozen. He turned to call for help from another worker and – in his confusion – hit the Roto-Rooter machine power switch.
The machine rumbled to life. From somewhere deep in the recess where his co-worker was hopelessly wedged there erupted another – distinct and ungodly – sound. An ugly, nightmarish howl and screech. Jankhara later told Warren police (who struggled to understand his Pashto accent) that it was a sound he’d heard when he was a child back in Kandahar, Pakistan. Their deep village well went dry and sounds from Hell came up through it. Elders said that it was the screams of the Undead from inside the Earth. The cops wrote in their notes his verbatim parting words:
“They were blood-curdling… not human. Sure – Albrecht was screaming…but there was another furious and deafening noise going on – an uproar not human…not issuing from any animal. It came from the bowels of Hell”.
When Albrecht was extracted from the crawlspace by Warren EMS workers, his left arm was gone – torn and shredded off just below his shoulder socket. Warren Police concluded that the Roto-Rooter blades had mangled him when Jankhara accidentally turned on the machine. When they examined what remained of the machine’s ruined cutting head, however, they discovered that it’s bent, and twisted blades contained a surprise wrapped inside. Three sickeningly repulsive nine-inch long, scale-covered talons that looked prehistoric and oozed stinky black viscous sap. Talons that had recently been attached to something alive. The claws on the ends of these mangled animal parts were as hard as steel, curved and razor sharp. Under the claws was human flesh, presumably Albrecht’s.
Warren PD “bagged and tagged” the Talons and sent them to the New Jersey State Police Crime Lab. The Crime Lab report remains classified to this day.
The Schwäbische Alb “Bier Garten” closed in 1992. A luxury housing development was built on its scenic and (by then) fabulously expensive real estate.
In 1992 Warren amended their building codes. They ceased issuing permits for new water wells and septic systems in the town. Legacy installations had to be upgraded with pre-approved cast concrete sections and basins – and undergo an annual Certification process. Site maps and architectural renderings of all installations were required to be submitted and updated, duly signed by a NJ Licensed Civil Engineer. Any infractions by property owners of these new rules resulted in substantial fines and/or legal proceedings. Many owners of old homes simply moved rather than incur the (substantial) costs.
“Herr Doktor” Heinz Stucker, his wife Elsa and his one-armed son, Albrecht, returned to Germany in 1990. Albrecht is currently a Minster of a Lutheran Church in Regensberg. He never speaks of his time in America.
Copyright, Jon Croft and his assignees
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