Martha Marek

Martha Marek (born October 10, 1897 in Vienna as Karolina Löwenstein ; † December 6, 1938 ibid) was an Austrian serial killer who caused a stir in the media in the interwar period .

Insurance fraud

After Martha Marek inherited a villa in Mödling and financial resources from her 50-year-old patron as sole heir in August 1923 , she married the student Emil Marek just months later. Within two years, the young couple's inheritance was used up.

In 1925, Martha Marek and her husband, Emil Marek, who was five years her junior, first got into mass media coverage: Emil Marek had pretended that he had lost his leg while chopping wood on June 25, 1925, after Martha had taken out high life and accident insurance the day before would have. Since the insurance company found the circumstances very strange, they refused to pay the amount insured and a lawsuit ensued. In the course of this, the forensic doctors were able to clearly demonstrate, based on the multiple marks on the leg, that it was self-mutilation . Emil Marek, who was almost a slave to his wife , had deliberately inflicted the injuries on himself in order to get the sum insured.

The public, however, was largely on the side of the beautiful Marek and suspected that the insurance company only wanted to avoid payment with the help of legal maneuvers. Marek and her husband were acquitted of fraud in 1927 and only given a small prison sentence because Martha Marek had tried to bribe or defame the medical examiner. The insurance company agreed to a settlement and paid out a large part of the sum.

jail

Martha Marek spent the short time in prison in a cell with the poisoner Leopoldine Lichtenstein , who was convicted in 1927 and who poisoned her husband in 1925 with the thallium-containing rat poison paste "Zelio". This is likely to have inspired Marek to continue her actions. After the media popularity subsided, the sum insured had been used up and Emil Marek's entrepreneurial plans as an inventor had failed, the Mareks suffered economic hardship.

Murders

After Emil Marek, who was always ailing after two lower leg amputations, died unexpectedly on July 31, 1932, public attention was directed back to the widow. When her two children developed the same symptoms and her daughter died shortly afterwards, Martha Marek knew how to play the role of the sorely stricken widow and mother, and she received a broad wave of compassion, including in the form of financial donations . One of her aunt, Susanne Löwenstein, widow of a general staff officer, even went so far as to appoint her as a universal heir and promptly died shortly afterwards in 1934.

After Marek had used up the inheritance, she found another victim in the master tailor Felicitas Kittenberger. Kittenberger was accepted by Marek as a subtenant and persuaded to take out life insurance in her favor. Kittenberger also died shortly afterwards, in 1936, which, however, aroused the suspicion of her son, reported the complaint. The subsequent examination and exhumation of the bodies revealed that Marek had murdered all four victims with poisonous Zelio paste , which was freely available at the time.

Condemnation

Back in court, Martha Marek faked seizures and blindness and had to be carried into the courtroom in a specially constructed chair. She was sentenced to death by a jury on May 19, 1938 . Adolf Hitler as head of state for the submitted Marek rejected clemency . Marek was executed on December 6, 1938 as the first delinquent on the guillotine, which had been brought from Berlin to Vienna shortly before , in the Vienna Regional Court by the executioner Johann Reichhart .

reception

The first work Engelsgift , published in 2004, by the writer Susanne Ayoub is based on Martha Marek's life.

literature

Harald Seyrl: crime scene Vienna. Volume 2: The period from 1925–1944. Scharnstein, Vienna 2007, ISBN 3-911697-10-1 , correct ISBN 3-911697-10-4 .
Hans-Dieter Otto: Lexicon of the unpunished murders. Unsolved cases, undiscovered crimes, controversial acquittals p. 129 ff, FA Herbig, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-7766-2533-2 .
Helga Schimmer: Murder in Vienna. True criminal cases. Haymon-Verlag, Innsbruck 2012, ISBN 978-3-85218-876-8 . Pp. 61-69.
Christoph Nettersheim: Terribly nice women , Bucher, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7658-1883-7 , pp. 10-16

Web links

Martha Marek, the beautiful widow. In: An almost perfect murder. Article in Public Safety 5-6 / 07 on poisoning (pdf; 340 kB)
Marek on serienkillers.de

Individual evidence

^ Baptismal register Alservorstadtkrankenhaus, year 1897, vol. 2, fol. 359. Matricula, accessed August 5, 2019 . ; the year of birth 1904 is occasionally mentioned in the literature.
↑ Christoph Nettersheim: Terribly nice women . Bucher, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7658-1883-7 , p. 10ff.
^ W. Heinichen: Thallium poisoning. (Attempted suicide with zeliopaste). In: Collection of Poisoning Cases . 2, 1931, pp. 27-28, doi : 10.1007 / BF02460485 .

personal data
SURNAME	Marek, Martha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Löwenstein, Karolina (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Austrian serial killer
DATE OF BIRTH	October 10, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH	Vienna
DATE OF DEATH	December 6, 1938
Place of death	Vienna

[1] Baptismal register Alservorstadtkrankenhaus, year 1897, vol. 2, fol. 359. Matricula, accessed August 5, 2019 . ; the year of birth 1904 is occasionally mentioned in the literature.

[2] Christoph Nettersheim: Terribly nice women . Bucher, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7658-1883-7 , p. 10ff.

[3] W. Heinichen: Thallium poisoning. (Attempted suicide with zeliopaste). In: Collection of Poisoning Cases . 2, 1931, pp. 27-28, doi : 10.1007 / BF02460485 .