Catherine was bright and clever and she was not satisfied to let the matter rest there, but laid the whole story before the tribunal of Landshut. She was then seventeen years old, but as the Bavarian law would not allow her to be sworn until she was eighteen, it was not until the following year, 1814, that her deposition was taken. She testified that several years before a woman had called at their house to see Riembauer, who was then absent. A few months later the woman returned, and at that time the priest took her up to his room. She had not been there long when the sound of crying reached the family below. They hastened up-stairs and heard Riembauer say, “My girl; repent your sins, for you must die.” And on looking through the keyhole, they were horrified to behold the man bending over the woman in the act of choking her.
When Riembauer came out, he told them that this woman had borne him a child and had asked him for money, threatening to denounce him to his ecclesiastical superiors if he refused, and that he had killed her. Catherine’s mother and sister threatened to reveal his secret but were prevailed upon to keep silence out of respect for his office, and soon after both died very suddenly and under suspicious circumstances.
Riembauer was arrested as a result of Catherine’s accusation, and gave his own version of the murder, acknowledging that he knew the woman whom he said he had promised a position as cook, but stating that Mrs. Frauenknecht and her daughter Magdalena had committed the crime. He knew nothing, of course, at that time of the deposition against him.
During a period of three years, examination followed examination. He was confronted with the skull of his victim, and every possible method was tried to shake his testimony, but it was not until October, 1817, that Riembauer, broken physically and mentally, confessed to having murdered Anna Eichstaedter. His confession contained the statement of a remarkable “code of honour” which he professed to follow. “My honour, my position,” he said, “my powers of being useful, all that I valued in the world, was at stake. I often reflected on the principle laid down by my old tutor, Father Benedict Sattler, in his ‘Ethica Christiana’ ... ‘that it is lawful to deprive another of life, if that be the only means of preserving one’s own honour and reputation. For honour is more valuable than life; and if it is lawful to protect one’s life by destroying an assailant, it must obviously be lawful to use similar means to protect one’s honour.’”
On the 1st of August, 1818, he was declared guilty of murder and sentenced to indefinite imprisonment in a fortress. The regular punishment for murder was death, but in this case the learned jurist Feuerbach admitted that had the court not accepted Riembauer’s confession, he could not have been convicted, because the evidence, though strong, was purely circumstantial. It was proved that the woman had visited him; that an umbrella marked with her initials was in his possession; that she had been buried under a shed on his farm, and that the floor of his room was stained with blood and showed the result of efforts to remove the stains with a plane; yet the court held that evidence was lacking as to marks on the body for sufficient proof of the actual manner of death.
The use of physical torture was abandoned in 1806, and then only with a strong protest from judges of the old school, who parted with great reluctance with so simple and expeditious a method of obtaining evidence.
Curiously enough, the accused persons in the Bavarian courts were generally moved to confess. Many reasons for this are given. Some few confessed from remorse, others could not beat off the pertinacious interrogatories of the judge, not a few were anxious to end the long period of acute anxiety and suspense, and many were exasperated beyond measure by the strict discipline and compulsory silence enforced in Bavarian prisons. Rather than be condemned to perpetual silence, the accused would speak out even to his own undoing.
Capital punishment was legal in Bavaria and was inflicted by decapitation with a sword, or breaking on the wheel from the feet upwards. But where conviction rested on circumstantial evidence only, or assumed guilt was not borne out by actual confession, imprisonment for life in chains was substituted, and it was a terrible penalty. The sentence annihilated civil existence; it was moral if not physical death. The culprit lost all rights as a husband, father or citizen; he was deprived of property, freedom and honour; nothing remained but bare life passed in slavery and chains. There was no recovery even if error were proved. He did not get back what he had lost, and if his wife married again he could not recover his property. It was not capital punishment, but it was death in life.
In the progressive national development of Prussia, as wars were waged and fresh territory acquired, prison reform obtained attention. In Hesse-Cassel, prisons were in a very backward state and many were condemned as unfit for habitation. In Hanover alone conditions were more satisfactory. The journalist Hans Leuss served a term of three years’ imprisonment in 1894 in one of the chief prisons, that of Celle-on-the-Aller, which he graphically describes in his autobiography.
“It lies on the river bank. The front looks toward the avenue which in Celle forms the approach to the station. The external aspect of the terrible house is not unpleasing; neither does the appearance of the inside give the most distant conception of the conditions under which the prisoners live, nor of their situation, so that visitors are rather favourably impressed than otherwise. On arrival we were led into the vestibule of the building and drawn up in line, while an official cross-examined us. Until noon, one formality after another had to be gone through. We were first taken to the bathroom where, after being plunged into hot water, we had to sit on the edge of the bath while the barber shaved us. I shook so with cold that he had to let me return to the water while he finished his operations, and we dressed standing on a cold floor in our prison gaol. We next went before the governor and other officials, and then partially stripped again and had to cross a cold passage to the doctor’s room, who in my case found both lungs affected. I have always ascribed to the hardships endured on that first day in Celle the severe chest complaint from which I suffered during my imprisonment, and the effects of which I still feel.