For more than a decade, Milwaukee lived with a mystery that haunted an entire community: what happened to Anna Weber, the bright 18-year-old daughter of a prominent brewery owner who vanished during Oktoberfest in 1994?

To the public, it looked like Anna had simply run away. Police records at the time painted her as troubled, weighed down by family tensions and perhaps desperate to escape. Witnesses—though never officially identified—claimed to have seen her near the bus station that night. Even her disappearance was framed through money: $2,400 in festival receipts vanished along with her. The runaway theory stuck, and the case went cold.

But on October 15, 2007, everything changed.

While demolishing the long-abandoned Weber Brewery warehouse, a construction worker’s backhoe struck something unusual in the crumbling foundation wall: a rusted metal toolbox. Inside lay a driver’s license belonging to Anna Weber, a torn Polaroid photograph, and a bloodstained Oktoberfest T-shirt from 1994. The initials “AW” were scratched into the lid.

Detective Patricia Cruz, who had worked missing persons for years, was called to the site. From the moment she examined the evidence, she knew this wasn’t the case of a runaway teen. It was something darker—and far more sinister.

Anna’s father, Hinrich Weber, had never stopped grieving. The proud German brewer never remarried after losing his wife in 1991 and spent the rest of his life broken by Anna’s disappearance. When Cruz showed him the items, he whispered, “They told me she ran away.” It was clear: someone had lied.

Cruz quickly reopened the case. Her focus narrowed on three men who had both access and opportunity back in 1994:

Klaus Hoffman, Weber’s longtime business partner and head brewer.

Thomas Brennan, then festival manager, who went on to become a powerful figure in Milwaukee’s German-American community.

Hinrich Weber himself, though his grief and lack of motive made him less likely.

The deeper Cruz dug, the more troubling the 1994 investigation appeared. Witness statements were inconsistent. “Bus station witnesses” were never identified or interviewed by police. The man who discovered both Anna’s disappearance and the missing money? Thomas Brennan. The same man who later supplied unverified witness accounts that steered the investigation toward the runaway narrative.

DNA testing brought the first breakthrough: the blood on Anna’s shirt was hers, and a partial fingerprint inside the toolbox did not belong to her. Investigators compared it against suspects. The match came back—Thomas Brennan.

Confronted with the evidence, Brennan denied everything. But inconsistencies mounted. Witnesses from 1994 recalled how unusually fixated he was on Anna that night, hovering around her as she counted money, asking her questions she found intrusive. A security guard remembered seeing Brennan near the warehouse at 10 p.m.—hours after he had claimed to be home.

When pressed further, Brennan finally broke. Against his lawyer’s advice, he confessed.

On the night of September 24, 1994, Brennan cornered Anna in the beer tent, telling her he had feelings for her. Anna, just 18, rejected him angrily, threatening to tell her father. Brennan panicked. He grabbed her as she tried to leave. She fell, hit her head on a metal post, and lost consciousness. Instead of calling for help, Brennan struck her again with a bottle—this time fatally.

To cover his crime, Brennan staged a theft. He took the festival money, planted the idea that Anna had been troubled, and told police anonymous witnesses saw her leave town. He then hid her body in the foundation of her father’s warehouse, where new concrete was poured the next morning. For 13 years, her remains lay entombed beneath the building her family had built.

Perhaps most shocking, Brennan hadn’t acted alone in burying the truth. Klaus Hoffman admitted he lied to police, suggesting Anna wanted to leave Milwaukee. He claimed Brennan had come to him, scratched and panicked, begging for help. Hoffman didn’t move the body, but his testimony supported the runaway narrative that kept police from investigating further.

The discovery of the toolbox had undone years of deception. Alongside Brennan’s confession, investigators unearthed incriminating photos of him with Anna at past festivals, records of suspicious cash deposits in 1994, and testimony from Hoffman that revealed a calculated cover-up.

On October 25, 2007, Milwaukee headlines announced what no one thought they’d see: Thomas Brennan arrested for the murder of Anna Weber. Excavation crews began digging through the rubble of the demolished warehouse to recover her remains and give her family the closure they had been denied for so long.

For Hinrich Weber, it was devastating. His daughter hadn’t run away at all—she had been murdered and hidden in the very building where he worked for years, unaware that she was buried beneath his feet. “Every day I was in that place,” he said, his voice breaking, “Anna was right there.”

Justice had been delayed for 13 years, but at last, Anna’s story was no longer one of a runaway, but of a victim whose truth had finally been brought to light.