Nun, 78, Found Crushed to Death in Elevator Shaft

A 78-year-old nun at St. Catherine’s Military School was found crushed to death Friday morning in an elevator shaft near the school’s basement.

Sister Eugenia Gangkofner, a house mother at the Catholic boys’ boarding school since 1959, apparently became trapped inside the elevator when it stopped midway between the first floor and the basement of the 101-year-old school, said Anaheim Police Lt. John Cross.

Police said Gangkofner was crushed about 10:30 a.m. when she tried to escape from the elevator car into the shaft.

“When the elevator stopped, she began to climb out of it, but then the elevator activated again for unknown reasons,” Cross said.

A school employee found Gangkofner’s body wedged between the wall and the elevator car. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Gangkofner, a member of the Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose since 1937, worked as a house mother overseeing the dormitories at St. Catherine’s from 1959 until her retirement in 1988, said Sister Mary Catherine Antczak, vicar general of the Fremont-based order of nuns, which owns and operates the Anaheim facility.

Gangkofner continued to live at St. Boniface convent on the school grounds after her retirement, said Sister Celine Leydon, superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. The convent has 29 residents.

“She would go around to the boys and talk to them,” Leydon said. “She was really more of a mother figure.”

St. Catherine’s is a private boarding school that now houses about 200 boys from second through eighth grades. No students were on the premises Friday because of summer vacation.

Founded in 1889 by the Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose, St. Catherine’s was built on the site of the former vineyard in the German settlement of Anaheim. It started as an orphanage and became a boys’ military school in 1925.

One of 11 children, Gangkofner was born in Bavaria in 1912. She entered a convent there in 1933 and took her vows in the Dominican order in 1935. Two years later, she and three other nuns from the St. Peter and Paul Priory in Germany boarded a ship for America.

Gangkofner was first assigned to Mission San Jose, specializing in child care, until she was sent to St. Catherine’s.

“Her life was a tremendous example of giving and caring for children sent to our boarding houses,” said Antczak. “She was a treasure to us and the community.”

Coroner officials said Gangkofner has no known relatives in the area, but Antczak said she has a brother and sister in Germany.

Cal/OSHA officials have been called in to investigate the accident and the safety of the elevator, police said.

Times staff writer James M. Gomez and correspondent Shannon Sands contributed to this report.