The Killing Of Emma Gross

by Damien Seaman

  I drew deeply on my cigar and took my time exhaling. 'What was the feature?'

  'That I don't remember. I don't have a good memory for these new talkies. They pass me by, most of them. And, to be honest, I was still rather excited by the murder.'

  Not too excited to spend two or three hours in a dark movie theatre. 'Which theatre was it?'

  'That new one on Graf-Adolf-Strasse.'

  'What time?'

  'It was the seven thirty show. I headed home at ten thirty.'

  Okay, something to check on later. It would turn up in the stenographer's notes, but I jotted it down in my notebook anyway.

  'What did you do then?' I said.

  'When I got home I filled a beer bottle with kerosene. We have a kerosene lamp, you see.'

  'Which brand?'

  'Kerosene?'

  'Beer.'

  'Oh...it was an altbier. Schumacher.'

  Another tick against the crime scene evidence. 'Okay, what then?'

  Kürten chuckled. 'You know what then, detective.'

  'I want you to tell me, Peter.' I pointed at him with my burning cigar.

  'I went to the murder site with the aim of pouring the kerosene over the body and setting light to it.'

  'But?'

  'But what?'

  'Something stopped you?'

  He shrugged. 'Too many people about. I left the bottle propped against a fence and went back home. My wife was due back from work at that time, anyway.'

  'So this would have been when?'

  'Between eleven and midnight. I got back home by twelve thirty and my wife got home at her usual time, ten past one.'

  'So you didn't burn the body?'

  'Of course I did. I went back the next morning.'

  'This is now Saturday 9th February, correct?' I dropped cigar ash onto the floor.

  'Correct.'

  'What time?'

  'I got up at six am and told my wife I had to go to the WC. I ran quickly to the scene of the crime, found my bottle, poured the kerosene over the body and set it on fire. There and back didn't take more than five or six minutes.' Kürten tapped his finger on the table. 'I felt no sexual excitement and I did not touch the girl. I did not masturbate on the corpse, nor did I even touch the child sexually.'

  'Uh-huh. So how come the lab found traces of your seminal fluid on the inside of her panties?'

  'How do you know that was mine?'

  We didn't, of course. Beyond an approximate time of ejaculation, and confirming the fluid was human in origin, the lab couldn't tell us anything. I leaned in and blew smoke in his eyes. 'Peter, who walks past a young girl's corpse in the middle of a snow-bound night and smears cum on her private parts?'

  'No,' Kürten said, shaking his head, 'I did it only to cause excitement and indignation. I set light to her to increase the general indignation.'

  'So you did masturbate?'

  'No, I mean I did the murder to cause indignation.'

  'Indignation?' I said. 'You make it sound so polite. What would you do to get people shitting their pants?'

  'You tell me, Thomas,' he said. 'You seemed to find my little stunt yesterday quite effective in that regard.'

  I rubbed my hands over my face. Coffee. It was time for coffee. I waved to get the stenographer's attention.

  'Time for a break, okay?' I looked at my watch. 'Interview suspended at ten thirty-five am.' I brandished the two letters. 'When I return, we're going back over the Albermann case and you can tell me more about these.'

  Kürten nodded and smiled and tugged at his dirty collar. He scratched his shirt where it covered his stomach and I had no idea whether he was making fun of me or whether the scratch was genuine. I got up and headed for the door.

  11

  The stenographer finished typing up the transcript. He tore it from the typewriter and handed it to me. Last one, thank God.

  Q: Okay, we now move to the events of the 28th February 1929.

  A: You're being very demanding this afternoon, Thomas.

  Q: We're almost done. Tell me when you met Emma Gross. And where.

  A: All right, all right. She was there on the street corner, waiting for business.

  Q: Was this the corner of Ellerstrasse and Vulkanstrasse?

  A: Hey, that's right. Were you there too?

  Q: What time was this?

  A: I left my apartment at just after seven pm and headed for the central station.

  Q: Why the station?

  A: Where else do beinls hang out?

  Q: You went looking for sex?

  A: I went looking for a victim.

  Q: Could you look at this photograph please.

  A: Yes, that's her.

  Q: What time did you meet her?

  A: I don't remember exactly.

  Q: Try.

  A: Well it takes ten minutes to walk to the station from my street. Say quarter past seven. It was half past when we got to the hotel, I know that. There was a clock behind the checking-in desk, beside the pigeon holes.

  Q: This is the Hotel Adler?

  A: (nods)

  Q: Please answer the question.

  A: Yes, it was the Hotel Adler.

  Q: Whose idea was it to go there?

  A: I don't remember. It's the nearest hotel with rooms you can pay for by the hour, as far as I know.

  Q: How many hours did you pay for?

  A: I don't know. She paid. I suppose all that was included in the price.

  Q: And how much had you agreed to pay for her services?

  A: We hadn't got that far, yet. I think the idea was that we negotiate once we were in the room.

  Q: What happened next?

  A: She paid at the desk and took a key. She led me up to the top floor, the third. I don't remember which room, though, before you ask. She opened the door. I grasped her throat from behind before she got the chance to turn on the room light. I kicked the door closed. She didn't have time to cry out. I dragged her to the divan by the throat. She went limp and I drew my scissors and stabbed her in the side of the head and in the chest.

  Q: Which hand did you hold the scissors in?

  A: The right.

  Q: You were holding her by the throat at this point?

  A: Yes. I kept hold of her with my left.

  Q: Was there a lot of blood?

  A: I stabbed her, Thomas. What do you think?

  Q: I'm asking you.

  A: Are you upset with me?

  Q: Just answer the question, please.

  A: Look, I told you I was sorry about yesterday.

  Q: The question.

  A: I've forgotten. What was the question?

  Q: When you stabbed Emma Gross, was there a lot of blood?

  A: I'll say. It got on my hands. I had to wash them afterwards.

  Q: Where did you wash your hands?

  A: There was a bowl and water.

  Q: Where was this?

  A: On a dresser, or a night stand. I don't remember exactly.

  Q: Did the blood get anywhere else?

  A: I checked my clothes but I hadn't got any there.

  Q: Any blood elsewhere in the room?

  A: My dear Thomas, I had no idea you were so ghoulish.

  Q: The question, please.

  A: I don't remember. She bled over my hands when I stabbed her, so there must have been some. I don't know where.

  Q: What happened next?

  A: I left.

  Q: Did you try to violate the body in any way?

  A: No.

  Q: You didn't try to remove her clothing?

  A: I didn't touch her clothing.

  Q: You didn't remove her overcoat?

  A: Well, I might have done. Yes, as a matter of fact I believe I did. I don't really remember.

  Q: So you left the hotel soon after?

  A: As soon as I'd washed.

  Q: And what time was this?

  A: I don't know. I'm not sure how long I was in the room before I left.

  Q: You di
dn't see the clock at the desk on your way out?

  A: No. I didn't go back to the desk. I left as quickly as I could.

  Q: These scissors that you used. Are they the same ones you used in the murders of Rosa Ohliger on Friday the 8th February 1929, Rudolph Scheer on Tuesday the 12th February 1929, and of Gertrude Albermann on Friday the 23rd May 1930?

  A: Yes.

  Q: You're sure they're the same pair exactly? Not another pair of the same style or manufacture?

  A: Yes, I'm sure. They were the same scissors.

  Q: Okay, let's go back to when you entered the hotel.

  A: What do you want to know?

  Q: You say you hadn't negotiated a price yet?

  A: That's true.

  Q: Then how did she know how much to pay at the desk?

  I'd pinned him on his lie with that last question. It was textbook stuff when you saw a gap in the story they gave you to let them run on and come back to it later when they were more likely to've forgotten the lies they'd told. Then you could nail them on the inconsistencies. He hadn't negotiated a price with a streetwalker and yet she parted with cash at the desk? Not in this town. How much more of this confession was bullshit?

  I stretched the tension out of my aching shoulders and drained cold coffee from a chipped cup. We were alone in Records, me leaning on the administrators' desk with my back to the door, the stenographer perched between his typewriter at the end of the desk and a bank of filing cabinets that towered over us and blocked the room's two tiny windows. The only light in there was electric and inadequate and I'd lost track of time. My vision was blurring from having to read in the semi-darkness.

  I got up and crossed to a stack of files on a nearby trolley, rooting through for the Emma Gross material. I couldn't find it. I gazed at the nearest shelves heaving with boxes of files and random-looking stacks of paper. Some of them were covered in dust. How many of these files had been touched in the last six months – the last year even? And how many cases, how many nameless victims, had been lost and forgotten about in this room, just because there hadn't been enough media pressure to save them from obscurity, from the endless pressure of the next crime to solve, the next victim to avenge, the next mystery to unravel?

  'Hey,' I asked the stenographer, 'do you have the Emma Gross crime scene report there?' I realised I was clicking my fingers at him, realised too that was something I'd picked up from Gennat. He found the file and I stopped clicking my fingers. 'Can you read what it says about the body?'

  The stenographer scanned the page. 'Here it is. Corpse of white female found lying naked, face up on divan. Bruising around neck suggestive of ligature strangulation – '

  'Okay, stop there. Naked?'

  'Yep.'

  'Thought so. And ligature marks?'

  'Yep. Look at the photos.'

  I took the crime scene photographs from him and looked at them. Emma Gross, slack-faced and swollen-tongued, surely unrecognisable in death as the young woman she'd been while alive, reclining on the divan, back twisted too sharply for a living person. And naked as the day she was born, if less innocent. Her breasts sagged like empty purses above a chest whose ribs were visible through the skin.

  I re-read the transcript in my hand. Two inaccuracies from Kürten. Three if you added the lie about Gross paying at the desk with her own money. That said, these were the only inaccuracies in four and a half hours of cross-examination detailing five murders and Maria Butlies' rape. I gestured at the folder by the stenographer's shiny suit elbow.

  'Is that Berg's autopsy report on Gross?'

  'Yep.'

  I snagged the folder and opened it. Random phrases leapt out at me.

  ...Cause of death asphyxiation from forcible strangulation with a ligature of at least 5mm in diameter – increased vaginal secretions, facial discolouration and bruising to neck being characteristic symptoms...

  ...Stab wounds inflicted between thirty minutes and two hours post-mortem. Absence of spatter in crime scene description in relevant incident report supports this conclusion...

  'Hey,' I said to the stenographer, 'what does it say in the report there about blood spatter?'

  The stenographer looked at his watch.

  'Yes, okay, I'm tired too,' I said, 'but come on, this is important. Kürten's confession doesn't fit the facts.'

  'What, you think he's making it up?'

  'That's exactly what I think. I need to tell Gennat.'

  'How can you be sure?'

  I flicked back through the photos. Pictures of the chest wounds showed them as clotted but neat. Pictures of the room showed no spatter, a pile of feminine clothes on the double bed. No sign of any night stand. There was a dresser but the photos didn't show a bowl or a water jug. Possible inaccuracy number three/four. My pulse beat loudly in my ears.

  There was no telephone down in the basement, so I grabbed the Stausberg file and hightailed it up the stairs to the second floor where Gennat and Ritter were supposed to be briefing the night shift.

  When I got there Gennat's corner office was empty, and so was the squad room next to it where they'd moved the map and photographs. I called out, 'Hello,' anyway, feeling a little foolish.

  The telephone on Gennat's desk started ringing. I lifted the earpiece from the cradle and leaned down so my lips brushed the mouthpiece. Up close it smelled of stale sweat, or stale saliva maybe, though I didn't want to dwell on that.

  'Gennat?' I said.

  'Hello? Michael?' said the voice at the other end of the line.

  'No, it's Thomas Klein here.' For some reason, I'd put on a posh accent.

  'Where's Ritter?' The voice crackled, but I thought I recognised it as Berg's.

  'I'm fine, thanks Berg. How are you?'

  'Is he there or isn't he?'

  'If he was here I'd have passed him to you by now. What do you want?'

  'I need to talk to him.'

  'Well how's about I take a message?'

  There came a sound like Berg was clearing his throat. 'Messages get lost.'

  'Do you want to leave a message or not?'

  'Okay, okay. Tell him we need to talk about Johann Stausberg.'

  'What? Why?'

  'Hello?' he said.

  'Hello?'

  'Hello? Can you hear me?'

  'Yes I can hear you. Can you hear me?' I said.

  'Of course I can hear you,' Berg said.

  'Sounded like a bad connection just then. What's all this about Stausberg?'

  'Well I really can't say. That's why I need to talk to Michael. I've a message from the director at the asylum that might have some bearing on the case with Kürten.'

  'Where are you now?'

  'At the morgue. I'm half way through our mystery woman.'

  'Stay there. I'm on my way.'

  12

  Reading and making notes on the move was a great way of finding out just how bumpy the city's tramlines were. Ten jittery minutes with the Stausberg file gave me enough to think Du Pont had been right to blame Ritter but it didn't give me enough to knock the good inspector off his perch.

  2.4.29: Stausberg attacks 16-year-old Erna Penning. Throws rope around neck. She fights him off. Later IDs him from photo as her attacker.

  3.4.29: Stausberg attacks 30-year-old Frau Flake on her way home from work. Throws rope around neck and drags into the bushes. Couple of witnesses disturb Stausberg, who runs off. Flake lives to testify.

  5.4.29: Stausberg brought in: 20 years old, blond, broad shouldered, one metre ninety centimetres tall, hare lip, speech impediment, and a history of epilepsy leading to angry outbursts and memory loss. Confesses. Flake witnesses ID him from line-up. Charges of assault filed with public prosecutor.

  So far, so competent. But then along came Ritter:

  7.4.29: Stausberg transferred to Mühlenstrasse. Ritter takes over and interrogates suspect re: open murders of Ohliger, Scheer and Gross. Stausberg confesses and Ritter files murder charges with PP.

  No wonder Ritter'd been
so hostile that morning: solid case until he'd got hold of it. All the mistakes had been his. This was getting good.

  I read Stausberg's statement on Emma Gross:

  I had gone to the station to look for work. A woman was walking in front of me. She was a whore, I could tell by her clothes. That made me angry and I wanted to hurt her. I snatched at her. She said we should go to a hotel she knew nearby. I agreed because then I could attack her in private. We went into the room and I strangled her. It was dark. We hadn't put the light on. She was naked. I gripped her breast and stabbed her first in the head. Then I went on stabbing. I stabbed into the heart.

  When the woman was lying on the divan I didn't stab any more. That is quite certain. That is not a lie. Then I listened a bit, to see if she was still breathing. And then I left her lying there. I went home. At home I washed the blood from my coat. My mother asked me where the blood came from. I said from my nose.

  The next day my mother read about the murder in the papers. That evening she asked me whether I had done it. I answered, “Yes, I certainly did it”. My mother told me to keep my mouth shut.

  I checked the date and time on the statement: taken by Michael Ritter at ten thirty am, 7th April 1929. I flicked to the statement of Stausberg's mother, again taken by Ritter at headquarters, this time on the 9th April. Every false move bearing Ritter's signature. Better and better. I skipped to the relevant bit:

  He came home around midnight that night. He woke me up when he entered the apartment. I went to the kitchen. He was washing his coat in the sink. I saw the water in the sink was red with blood. I asked him where the blood had come from. He said he had had a nose bleed. I thought nothing of it until the next day when I saw the reports of the murder in the press. Johann can be such a violent boy. I have seen his terrible temper before. When I came back from work I asked him if he had done the things in the newspapers and he looked at me and said, 'Yes, I did it'. I will never forget the moment he told me that. I panicked. I told him to keep it to himself, not to tell anyone, and to try and forget all about it. But he couldn't do that. He couldn't fight his restless spirit inside and he attacked again. That's when I knew I had to reveal what he'd said.

  Shit. Stausberg's confession was vague: no mention of strangling, and more blood than the crime scene photos allowed for. But it was plausible because of his epilepsy and his bad memory. And his own mother's testimony was pretty damning support for Ritter's case. I checked my notes again. The file also confirmed what Du Pont had said about the boy's epilepsy and quick temper. Maybe Ritter hadn't forced a confession at all; maybe Stausberg really had killed Emma Gross and then decided to lay claim to a couple more murders for good measure.