Anselm Wütschert
Anselm Wütschert (born February 11, 1881 in Ruswil ; † January 20, 1915 in Lucerne , entitled to live in Mauensee ) was a Swiss criminal and the last person to be sentenced to death and executed in the canton of Lucerne after a civil criminal trial .
Life
Wütschert was the youngest of three children of the day laborer Franz Joseph Wütschert (1845-1909) and the maid Maria Anna Emula Wütschert-Fischer (* 1856, † unknown). The oldest brother Niklaus was mentally handicapped , the second oldest brother Franz-Josef was considered intelligent and made a career as a businessman in France . In 1885 the husband, described in a certificate of repute as “hard-hearted, stingy and callous towards his children”, left the family after his wife had revealed to him that he was not the father of Franz-Josef. The mother then managed to get by as a prostitute and the children had to go begging. According to Wütschert, the last time he saw his mother was at the age of eleven.
Contracting boy
At the age of nine, Wütschert was given to a farmer in Twerenegg near Willisau as a contracting boy , where he was caught stealing several times. His teacher described him as a "lazy boy who did all sorts of mischief and learned nothing". Two years later he was given to the farmer Vinzenz Tschopp in Mauensee - still as a contracting boy. Tschopp later testified that Wütschert had "stolen and lied" from him too, and that he apparently did not care about corporal punishment . His teacher in Mauensee also stated that Wütschert “was devoid of any sense of honor or duty. Punishments didn't bother him at all ”.
Servant
Wütschert left school at the age of 13 and found a job as an assistant for a farmer in Knutwil ; here his employer now described him as “impeccable, hardworking and hardworking”. Wütschert left the position after three years. The now sixteen-year-old changed job and place of residence five times until 1900. In 1900 he was chased from the farm because he had been surprised during sexual acts with a young cattle . He went to Erstein in Alsace and worked there for two years as a house servant in an inn .
In Alsace
In Erstein, Wütschert began to be interested in magic , bought appropriate books and then went to Strasbourg , where he tried his hand at various fairs as a showman and fortune teller . He spent the money he earned on visiting brothels and dancing.
At the age of 22, Wütschert fell in love with a young woman in Montbéliard , who, however, left him after a few months because she had seen him dancing with someone else. His friend's mother referred him to her other daughter, who turned out to be a prostitute. After this experience, Wütschert only had sex with prostitutes.
Return to Switzerland
At the beginning of 1910 Wütschert returned to Switzerland. At the age of 29 he was called up for the recruitment test , where he was certified as having a "significant degree of intellectual limitation". Wütschert was drafted as fit for auxiliary service .
After his return, Wütschert was employed by 14 different farmers as a farmhand for a short time. He usually left the job after a short time and without warning, although his employers later described him almost consistently as good-natured and hardworking in the police interviews. However, his frequent anecdotes about his experiences in French brothels were consistently unpleasant. A farming family in Egolzwil , where Wütschert was briefly employed in March 1912, later reported to the police that he liked to drink milk from unwashed cups that their two daughters had used. They had also caught him in the daughters' room masturbating on their underwear, and he had also put urine from their night port into a bottle.
In addition to his work as a farmhand, Wütschert made flowers and wreaths from colored paper, which he sold at fairs. He spent his money on weekend visits to Lucerne, where he had fun roller-skating and tried to get to know women, but was unsuccessful. What was left of his money afterwards he spent on drinking parties on the way home .
His persistent failures with the opposite sex made Wütschert increasingly troublesome. He toyed with the idea of getting drunk and then hanging up , but refrained from doing so because the agony seemed too long. During this time the plan matured in him to murder a woman in order to be able to die by beheading , because that would be faster.
“I once bought (...) schnapps to kill myself while drunk, but I couldn't find the courage to hang myself up. I thought dying would take a long time with it. However, if I killed a woman, my head would be cut off and that would be smoother. "
Life in the forest
In August 1913, Wütschert left his last job with farmer Josef Hodel in Zell . He had his fellow servant Jacob Hiltbrunner cash worth 86 Swiss francs (according to the current value of about 800 francs) stolen from a locked case, whereupon the latter to the police display reimbursed. When Wütschert found out about this ad, he fled the farm and then camped in different places in the forest. He committed during this time burglaries on different farms and stole it food, animals, clothes and blankets.
After that, traces of Wütschert's camps were often found in the forest; but he was only seen three times by other people: On September 2, 1913, he tried to rape an old woman in a forest near Hildisrieden , but fled when she threatened to call the bann warden. On October 11, 1913, he stopped two girls in a forest near Neudorf , but after a brief exchange of words, he let them go on. On the morning of February 6, 1914, Wütschert was finally surprised by the farmer in Eich during a break-in in the Oberhundgellen farm, whereupon he stabbed him down with a pitchfork and fled. All four people who met Wütschert during this time later described him to the police as a "depraved figure with long hair, dirty clothes and a wild full beard".
Murder of Emilie Furrer
On May 16, 1914, Wütschert met 20-year-old Emilie Furrer in the Hölzliwald near Krumbach . Due to a lung disease, she was taking a cure at the nearby farm of her uncle Xaver Furrer and, on the advice of her doctor, spent a lot of time in the forest, where she made embroidery to pass the time. Wütschert wanted to force her to have sexual intercourse . When she refused, he knocked her down, cut her throat with the scissors from her sewing kit, then cut off her right breast , mutilated her genitals and had sexual intercourse on the corpse. During his interrogation, he later described the sequence of events as follows:
“I said to the girl: If you let me screw, I won't hurt you. It replied that it would not do this wickedness, that it would rather die and go to heaven. When I told them that otherwise I would kill them, they folded their hands and prayed, 'O mercy of God'. Then I knocked it out of my mind and cut its throat open with the scissors from her knitting. Because I wanted to know if there was milk in her breast, I cut her off. Then I wanted to have sexual intercourse, but it didn't work because it was too tight below. I just cut everything off with scissors, then it worked. I killed her so that my head would be cut off and I would not go to prison. Life has long since spoiled me. "
When his niece did not return from the forest as agreed, Xaver Furrer alerted the police at around 9 p.m., and they immediately started a search. On the morning of the next day, Furrer's servant Johann Köchli finally found Emilie Furrer's mutilated corpse covered with moss and fir branches in a pool of blood.
One of Wütschert's camps was found not far from the crime scene. The Lucerne canton police offered a reward of 1,000 francs for catching the perpetrator and hired a hundred police officers themselves . Various private individuals also took part in the search. After ten days in a forest near Wetzwil, Wütschert was tracked down and arrested by the country hunter Robert Häfliger. He wore part of his victim's underpants around his neck; In addition, one found Emilie Furrer's stockings and her cut off external genitals in his pockets. Wütschert was transferred to the prison in Sursee , where he confessed to the murder without further ado.
Trial and Execution
Wütschert was brought before the Lucerne criminal court. In August, the medical officers Schütz and Beck from Sursee questioned him on behalf of the court to determine his sanity . In their report they came to the conclusion that Wütschert was mentally retarded, but fully guilty:
“[Wütschert's] body and the abnormal skull formation correspond to the weak mental development. (...) However, the murder of Emilie Furrer is psychologically not due to the madness, but to the unspeakable depravity of the perpetrator. His urge to be executed is an expression of exhaustion and reaction to sexual excitement and excesses. (...) [He] did not inherit any mental illness from his parents, but he did inherit the disposition to bad character traits, which undoubtedly experienced a critical development through maternal upbringing, begging and deep poverty. (...) His act is the final link in a long chain of sexual masturbatory excesses. (...) The brothel life in France did its part to further increase its sexual need.
(...) His mental activity sticks to what is sensually perceived and he shows a certain degree of nonsense, which is evident from his intense preoccupation with superstitious things and his childish naivete. That the nonsense that emerges is not extreme, however, emerges from Wütschert's lively fantasy activity, which found its expression in roller-skating and the production of complicated paper flowers.
(...) There can be no talk of an act in the affect. The mutilation of the victim is the result of Wütschert's unspeakable brutality; if it were a result of idiocy he could not give the reasons in such a terrifyingly cynical way. Out of curiosity, he cut off Emilie Furrer's breast and her genitals for the purpose of evoking feelings of sexual pleasure by looking at them and touching them, as in the past with women's clothes and used cups. His behavior is not an expression of illness, but of depravity. It must therefore be declared with certainty that Wütschert did not commit the crime against Miss Furrer in a state of abolition or significantly impaired or reduced reasoning. "
The court rejected the request of Wütschert's defense lawyer to have his mandate examined by the renowned Zurich psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler .
On November 7, 1914 Wütschert was from Lucerne criminal court for the murder of Emilie Furrer to death by the guillotine convicted. Despite his previous statements that this was his intention, he handed the Grand Council one of Lucerne clemency one. This was debated on January 19, 1915, with the question of Wütschert's culpability in particular being discussed controversially.
“Either there is moral insanity in a murderer, or there is not. If it does not exist, the law requires the death penalty to be pronounced; if it does, the death penalty must be imposed to protect civil society. "
In the end the councilors rejected the request in a secret ballot with 32 to 103 votes. Wütschert was executed on the guillotine of Lucerne by executioner Theodor Mengis the next day at nine in the morning in the shed of the Lucerne prison. It was the last execution in the canton of Lucerne and the fourth-last civil execution in Switzerland.
swell
- Peter Holenstein : The madman from Krumbach . In: Die Weltwoche , edition 3/2005.
- Peter Holenstein (2013): Der Waldmensch von Mauensee - Report on a historical criminal case . In: Kriminalistik 67 (7): 482-90.
- Last “Dead Man Walking” in Lucerne In: Lucerne Week . March 10, 2003
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wütschert, Anselm |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss criminals, last execution in the canton of Lucerne |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 11, 1881 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ruswil |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 20, 1915 |
| Place of death | Lucerne |