Let us consider first the case of Andrew Bichel, a Bavarian who lived at Regendorf at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He was to all outward seeming well-behaved and reputable, a married man with several children and generally esteemed for his piety. But secretly he was a petty thief who robbed his neighbours’ gardens and stole hay from his master’s loft. His nature was inordinately covetous and he was an abject coward, whose crimes were aimed always at the helpless who could make no defence. No suspicion was aroused against Bichel for years. Girls went to Regendorf and were never heard of again. One, Barbara Reisinger, disappeared in 1807 and another, Catherine Seidel, the year after. In both cases no report was made to the police until a long time had elapsed, and a first clue to the disappearance of the Seidel girl was obtained by her sister, who found a tailor making up a waistcoat from a piece of dimity which she recognised as having formed part of a petticoat worn by Catherine when she was last seen. The waistcoat was for a certain Andrew Bichel, who lived in the town and who at that time followed the profession of fortune-teller.
Catherine Seidel had been attracted by his promises to show her her fortune in a glass. She was to come to him in her best clothes, the best she had, and with three changes, for this was part of the performance. She went as directed and was never heard of again. Bichel, when asked, declared she had eloped with a man whom she met at his house. Now that suspicion was aroused against him, his house in Regendorf was searched and a chest full of women’s clothes was found in his room. Among them were many garments identified as belonging to the missing Catherine Seidel. One of her handkerchiefs, moreover, was taken out of his pocket when he was apprehended. Still there was no direct proof of murder. The disappearance of Seidel was undoubted, so also was that of Reisinger, and the presumption of foul play was strong. Some crime had been committed, but whether abduction, manslaughter, or murder was still a hidden mystery. Repeated searchings of Bichel’s house were fruitless; no dead bodies were found, no stains of blood, no traces of violence.
The dog belonging to a police sergeant first ran the crime to ground. He pointed so constantly to a wood shed in the yard and when called off so persistently returned to the same spot, that the officer determined to explore the shed thoroughly. In one corner lay a great heap of straw and litter, and on digging deep below this they turned up a quantity of human bones. A foot deeper more remains were found and near at hand, underneath a pile of logs by a chalk pit, a human head was unearthed. Not far off was a second body, which, like the first, had been cut into two pieces. One was believed to be the corpse of Barbara Reisinger; the other was actually identified, through a pair of pinchbeck earrings, as that of Catherine Seidel.
Bichel made full confession of these two particular crimes. The Reisinger girl he had killed when she came seeking a situation as maid-servant. He was tempted by her clothes. To murder her he had recourse to his trade of fortune-telling, saying he would show her in a magic mirror her future fate, and producing a board and a small magnifying glass, he placed them on a table in front of her. She must not touch these sacred objects; her eyes must be bandaged and her hands tied behind her back. No sooner had she consented than he stabbed her in the neck, and after completing the hideous crime, appropriated her paltry possessions.
A complicated and for a time mysterious murder committed at Nürnberg in 1820 may be inserted here, as it throws some light upon the prison system of those days. A rich corn-chandler named Baumler was violently put to death in his own house in the Königstrasse late one evening, and with him his maid-servant, Anna Schütz, who lived with him alone. It was noticed that his shop remained closed one morning in September much later than five o’clock, his usual hour for beginning business. With the sanction of the police, some of his neighbours entered the house through the first floor windows by means of a ladder. They came upon a scene of wild disorder; drawers and chests had been broken open and ransacked with all the appearances of a robbery. Descending to the ground floor, the corpse of the maid-servant was discovered in a corner close to the street door, and soon the body of Baumler was found lying dead in the parlour by the stove.
There was little doubt that the master had been killed before the maid. She had been last seen alive the night before by the baker near-by, whose shop she had visited to purchase a couple of halfpenny rolls, and in answer to a question she had said there were still some customers drinking in Baumler’s shop. Corn-chandlers had the right of retailing brandy and the place was used as a tavern. The murderer was almost certainly one of those drinking in the shop, and the last to leave. The maid must have been attacked as soon as she returned, for the newly purchased rolls were picked up on the floor where she had evidently dropped them in her fright. She had apparently been driven into the corner of the shop and struck down. Baumler must have been killed first, for he would certainly have come to the maid’s rescue when she gave a first cry of alarm. His body was found near the overturned stool on which he sat of an evening smoking his pipe, which lay under him with several small coins fallen out of his pocket when rifled by the murderer. The drawers and receptacles of the shop had been thoroughly ransacked and a large amount of specie had been removed, although a repeater watch and other valuables were overlooked.
The murderer had evidently acted with much circumspection. The entrance to the shop during working hours was by a glass door which was unhinged at night and a solid street door substituted, usually about eleven o’clock. The change had been made three-quarters of an hour earlier than usual, and the place had been closed, no doubt to prevent premature discovery of the bloody drama. All was dark and quiet by half past ten, although the miscreant was still inside, seeking his plunder, washing off the bloodstains and changing his clothes. He had taken possession of several of Baumler’s garments, and this imprudence, so frequently shown by murderers, contributed to his detection.
Suspicion soon fell upon a stranger who had visited the shop at an early hour in the evening and had remained there alone after nine o’clock, when the other guests had left. All agreed in their description of him as a man of about thirty, dark, black haired and with a black beard, who wore a dark great-coat and a high beaver hat; he described himself as a hop merchant and sat with a glass of red clove brandy before him, his eyes fixed on the ground, saying that he was waiting for a friend. He was easily identified as a certain Paul Forster lately discharged from prison, whose father was a needy day labourer with vicious daughters. The son Paul lived with a woman named Preiss, in whose house he was arrested, together with the woman, and a substantial sum in cash was found on the premises. Next day Forster was recognised by the waiter at an inn as the man who had entrusted an overcoat of dark gray cloth to his keeping. The coat when produced was seen to be soaked in blood. Forster himself was wearing another, a blue overcoat, which soon proved to have belonged to Baumler.
On reaching Nürnberg, both prisoners were confronted with the bodies of the two murdered persons. Forster viewed them with great unconcern, but the woman Preiss was visibly shocked. Forster’s movements on the night of the crime were traced, and he was shown to have visited his father’s house just after the murder, also it was proved that his sister had given him an axe some time before to take into the town to be ground, and this was found in his house lying behind the stove wrapped in a wet rag, and visibly stained with blood.
The circumstantial evidence against Forster was conclusive. The blood-stained great-coat, the possession of Baumler’s property and clothes, and his presence at the scene of the crime were significant facts. The accused felt that all this surely tended to convict him, but he thought out a line of defence in the quiet of his prison cell. He sought to throw the blame upon others. He invented two persons, relatives of the murdered Baumler, who, he said, invited him, Forster, to go with them to Nürnberg where they promised him work, and from them he got, as a gift, the incriminating clothes. This fictitious story could not be sustained. The two relations did not exist and they had had no dealing, as pretended, with Forster. The whole defence was a failure, but not the less did the accused persist in his denials of guilt and fight strenuously with the examining judge. He was questioned on thirteen separate occasions and replied to thirteen hundred questions, after being confronted with innumerable victims. No confession could be wrung from him, and without it no sentence of capital punishment was admissible in the Bavarian courts. He held out obstinately to the last, under a well assumed cloak of calmness, gentleness and piety, as if submitting passively to a fate he did not deserve. He must have seen toward the end of his trial that the truth could not be overcome by his fables and cunning evasions, but he remained unmoved and, as his reward, escaped with his life.