Murder case Lucie Berlin

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The Lucie Berlin murder case , which occurred in Berlin in June 1904 , is considered to be the first documented application of blood type verification in criminal proceedings. In 1901 the bacteriologist Paul Uhlenhuth developed the test named after him to differentiate between human and animal blood. Until the Lucie Berlin murder case, traces of blood on any crime scenes, clothing or possible weapons were often passed off as animal blood by suspects and perpetrators, but it was not possible to prove the opposite. In the Lucie Berlin case, the Uhlenhuth test was used for the first time in an investigation and admitted as evidence in court.

The suspect Theodor Berger (born May 26, 1869 in Quedlinburg , † before 1914 or after 1919 ) was sentenced to 15 years in prison in December 1904 for raping and killing the child Lucie Berlin. Forensic medicine had found traces of human blood on a wicker basket found in the Spree , which Berger's partner, the prostitute Johanna Liebetruth (*  1872 ), identified as her property.

The body find

The Marschall Bridge in 1896

On the morning of June 11, 1904, two fishermen on the Spree near the Marschall Bridge at the level of the Schiffbauerdamm 26 property (today: Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus ) came across a blood-stained bundle of wrapping paper that was floating on the water. The torso of an approximately eight-year-old girl floated under the wrapping paper. The fishermen pulled the hull into the boat and drove to the next pier, from where they informed the police. Arthur Schulz, who was summoned, examined the hull while it was still on the riverbank and discovered clear signs of a sexual crime . Thanks to the newly introduced registries , it took less than an hour for a police officer to report that eight-year-old Lucie Berlin (* July 8, 1895 - † June 9, 1904 ) from northern Berlin had been missing since June 9th . The description of the girl's most recently worn clothes matched the remains of clothing on the torso found . Lucie Berlin was the youngest daughter of the cigar maker Friedrich Berlin, living at Ackerstrasse 130 in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen . Police chief Georg von Borries had Friedrich Berlin fetched to identify the child, which the father was able to do with a small scar below the chest.

Forensic doctor Fritz Straßmann carried out the autopsy of the torso and determined the time of death based on the contents of the stomach to be around one hour after the child's last meal, lunch on June 9, 1904. Straßmann found that Lucie Berlin had been raped and then "with a high degree of probability strangled". The severing of the limbs was done by "clumsy hands".

The investigations

The police started their investigation and reconstructed the last hours before Lucie Berlin's death. The mother testified that Lucie came home from school around eleven o'clock in the morning, played in the courtyard of the tenement , and then had lunch with the family around noon. Shortly before 1 p.m. Lucie asked for the key to the toilet, which was half a flight of stairs higher. Around 1:30 p.m. they started looking for Lucie and found the toilet locked. The family asked neighbors and acquaintances about Lucie's whereabouts and received very contradicting information. In the evening, Friedrich Berlin went to the police and reported his daughter as missing. The police questioned the neighbors, Lucie's playmates and other residents of Ackerstrasse; Statements accumulated about a limping man between 30 and 40 years with a beard, a straw hat and badly fitting trousers, who had passed the archway to Ackerstraße 130 with a child by the hand and walked towards Humboldthain .

When questioning the neighbors, the officers came across the prostitute Johanna Liebetruth, who was only released from prison on the morning of June 11 after three days of imprisonment for insulting a customer. Liebetruth, who lived in the same corridor as the Berlin family, was visited by a man named Theodor Berger, who introduced himself as a junk dealer and an old friend of Liebetruth's. Liebetruth explained that the man's description matched Otto Lenz, a pimp she knew. After further questioning, Lenz was arrested as the prime suspect on June 13th. However, Lenz received an alibi from an insurance agent who stated that he had been with Lenz until 2 p.m. on the day in question. The investigators then checked Theodor Berger and found out that he had lived with Liebetruth for 18 years and was her pimp. He seldom pursued the specified junk shop, it only served as a camouflage. Berger had a criminal record for , among other things, damage to property, causing public nuisance, pimping , dangerous bodily harm and theft. After a few more testimonies, which put Berger at the center of the investigation, the police arrested Berger and Liebetruth.

At the same time, boatmen south of Plötzensee pulled Lucie's head and arms out of the water. Liebetruth and Berger were interrogated for several hours. Berger stuck to his statement that he had not seen Lucie Berlin that day and that he spent most of the day in question asleep in Liebetruth's apartment. Liebetruth said that after she was released from prison she noticed that a small travel basket was missing. Berger explained the disappearance to her by saying that he had taken a drunk woman into Liebetruth's apartment and that she had paid for her services with the travel basket for lack of cash. When asked, Berger could neither give the prostitute's name nor give any details about their appearance.

The travel basket

On June 17th, the Berlin population was informed that in connection with Lucie Berlin's death, a “white travel basket, 60 centimeters long and 50 centimeters high, with a handle” was being sought. In the afternoon, Lucie's legs were recovered from the Spree; there was no trace of the basket. The police hired the chemist Paul Jeserich to look for traces of blood in Liebetruth's apartment. Jeserich had a number of items, including Berger's clothes and shoes, the drainpipe of the sink in the kitchen, all knives and parts of the wooden floorboards from the bedroom brought to his laboratory. There he examined all the collected items for blood, but could not find anything on most of them. Only in Berger's clothing was there a weak reaction in some places, but the blood there had been washed out so thoroughly that it could not be tested any further.

On the afternoon of June 26th, a boatswain reported to the police. The man said he hadn't read a newspaper for weeks and had only just found out about the Lucie Berlin case. On June 11, he fished a basket that matched the description from the Spree above the Kronprinzenbrücke . On June 27, the investigators had the travel basket in front of them. Remains of wrapping paper stuck to the sides, which was very similar to the wrapping paper that had wrapped the body parts. Liebetruth identified the basket as her property. The basket was taken to forensic medicine by Straßmann and Schulz; The examinations revealed traces of blood and wool fibers on the wickerwork. The wool fibers matched the fibers of Lucie Berlin's clothes. The traces of blood on the basket were examined using the test developed by Paul Uhlenhuth in 1901. The test showed that the blood clearly came from a human. The chain of circumstantial evidence against Theodor Berger was therefore considered closed.

funeral

Lucie Berlin was buried on July 31, 1904. The funeral procession was scheduled to begin at 3:30 p.m. Around 2 p.m., almost 1,000 people were waiting in front of the morgue. The funeral procession with an open hearse and a marching band moved from the Forensic Medicine Institute through Ackerstrasse to the St. Elisabeth Cemetery . In the end, more than 1,000 people attended the funeral itself. The Berlin newspapers, which had reported in great detail from the time the body was found, also commented on Lucie's funeral in detail. The Berliner Morgenpost reported that the volunteer medical team was deployed five times during the ceremony.

The process

On December 12, 1904, the trial against the still denying Berger was opened. Almost 100 witnesses were heard on ten days of the trial. An on-site meeting of the court at Ackerstraße 130 caused a crowd. Again the Berlin press reported in full detail and printed entire testimonies word for word. The interest of the population was unbroken, the audience demanded the death penalty for Berger. In the context of the indictment, the forensic doctor Schulz explained the similarity of the wool fibers and the blood type certificate. The counterparty disputed the conformity of the wool fibers, questioned the origin of the travel basket and declared the blood type certificate to be inconclusive. August Wassermann was appointed as an expert and declared, in accordance with the indictment, that the examinations had been carried out in accordance with the regulations and that the test result “human blood” was correct. Wassermann also commented on the circumstances of Lucie Berlin's death. This is either bleeding to death or suffocated. This was supported by the typical suffocating bleeding found in the heart and lungs. The child's body showed no strangulation or strangulation marks. Wassermann therefore assumed suffocation from a pillow pressed on the face or from keeping his mouth and nose closed. Berger's defense lawyers ultimately unsuccessfully pointed out the fact that no traces of blood were found in Liebetruth's apartment. The coroners then said that Berger could have collected the blood in bowls and cut the body naked. The defense lawyers also drew attention to the widespread use of the popular travel basket model and invoked the principle of “ In dubio pro reo ” (“In case of doubt for the accused”). The jury found Berger guilty in this circumstantial trial. On December 23, Theodor Berger was sentenced to 15 years in prison for rape and manslaughter .

literature

  • Margitta-Sybille Fahr: Pitaval Scheunenviertel , Berlin, 1995, ISBN 3-355-01453-2
  • Jürgen Thorwald : The hour of the detectives . Volume 1: Bloody Secret . Droemer Knaur, Munich a. a. 1969 ( Knaur-Taschenbücher 210) (also: ibid 1978, ISBN 3-426-00210-8 ).
  • Peter Fritzsche : Talk of the Town. The murder of Lucie Berlin and the production of the local knowledge . In: Peter Becker, Richard F. Wetzell, David Lazar (Eds.): Criminals and their scientists. The History of Criminology in International Perspective. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge u. a. 2005, ISBN 0-521-81012-4 , pp. 377-398 (Publications of the German Historical Institute) .
  • Gunther Geserick , Klaus Vendura, Ingo Wirth: contemporary witness death. Spectacular cases of Berlin forensic medicine ; Militzke Verlag, Leipzig; 6th updated new edition 2011; ISBN 978-3-86189-628-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernd Brinkmann , Burkhard Madea: Handbook of judicial medicine ; Springer Verlag, 2004; ISBN 3-540-00259-6 ; here online at books.google, accessed on January 13, 2010.
  2. ↑ a b c Hugo Friedländer : Interesting criminal cases / The murder of eight-year-old Lucie Berlin , here online at zeno.org , accessed on January 13, 2010.
  3. ^ Benjamin Carter Hett : Death in the Tiergarten , Cambridge 2004, p. 229 u. 274, note 13. ISBN 0-674-01317-4
  4. ↑ Gunther Geserick, Klaus Vendura, Ingo Wirth: contemporary witness death. Spectacular cases of Berlin forensic medicine ; Militzke Verlag, Leipzig; 6th updated new edition 2011; Pp. 35/36. ISBN 978-3-86189-628-9 .
  5. ↑ Gunther Geserick , Klaus Vendura, Ingo Wirth: contemporary witness death. Spectacular cases of Berlin forensic medicine ; Militzke Verlag, Leipzig; 6th updated new edition 2011; P. 25. ISBN 978-3-86189-628-9 .
  6. ↑ A partial view of the house in Johann Friedrich Geist / Klaus Kürvers : The Berlin tenement house. Vol. 2, 1862-1945 , Prestel, Munich 1984, p. 532 ISBN 3-7913-0696-0 . It is the right of the two bright houses in the center of the picture.
  7. ↑ a b Jürgen Thorwald : The hour of the detectives . Volume 1: Bloody Secret . Droemer Knaur, Munich et al. 1969, p. 20.
  8. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The hour of the detectives . Volume 1: Bloody Secret . Droemer Knaur, Munich et al. 1969, p. 34.
  9. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The hour of the detectives . Volume 1: Bloody Secret . Droemer Knaur, Munich et al. 1969, p. 43.
  10. ↑ Gunther Geserick, Klaus Vendura, Ingo Wirth: contemporary witness death. Spectacular cases of Berlin forensic medicine ; Militzke Verlag, Leipzig; 6th updated new edition 2011; P. 31. ISBN 978-3-86189-628-9 .
  11. ↑ Gunther Geserick, Klaus Vendura, Ingo Wirth: contemporary witness death. Spectacular cases of Berlin forensic medicine ; Militzke Verlag, Leipzig; 6th updated new edition 2011; P. 32/33. ISBN 978-3-86189-628-9 .