Johann Evangelist Lettenbauer

Johann Evangelist Lettenbauer (* December 16, 1883 ; † 1969 ) was the victim of a miscarriage of justice in Germany.

In 1947 Lettenbauer was convicted of the murder of his daughter Maria and his grandson Arthur in Oberreitnau . Since then he has been in prison for ten years , three and a half years in a sanatorium and nursing home and three and a half years in an old people's home due to legal requirements. In March 1965, after a renewed testimony - the original one had largely been ignored in 1949/50 - the case was reopened and investigated against the partly confessed main suspect, the 18-year-old migrant worker Manfred Jung. On August 10, 1965 Lettenbauer was in a retrial before a jury court in Kempten / Allgäu because of proven innocence acquitted . He received in 1965 by the State of Bavaria one Haftentschädigung of 50,000 German marks and in 1967 by the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg , an additional compensation payment of 60,000 DM due to a wrongful act or omission of Baden-Wuerttemberg criminal investigation that had led to his conviction.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 60,000 marks and four percent: two years after the acquittal, compensation for pain and suffering. Die Zeit , No. 31, August 4, 1967.

Web links

• Gerhard Mauz : So, here comes our killer: SPIEGEL reporter Gerhard Mauz on the acquittal of Johann Lettenbauer. Der Spiegel 34/1965, August 18, 1965.
• Mr. Innocent gets big compensation. The Straits Times, April 14, 1966, p. 3.
• Gerhard Mauz: Lawsuits: Out of Kempten , Der Tagesspiegel , September 2, 2001

literature

• Gerhard Mauz : "So, here comes our murderer." The injustice to Johann Evangelist Lettenhauer , in: ders .: The just and the judged , Frankfurt a. M./Berlin (Ullstein) 1968, pp. 53-67. (Much more detailed than the above Spiegel article, Mauz also goes into the progress of events in the years 1965–1967 - further processes in the Lettenbauer case, compensation proceedings, reactions in the population.)