He understood that his wife wanted the grave to herself, but it hurt him terribly that he didn’t find out until after her death. ‘No one told me anything about it. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have moved home. I thought Gitti wanted me to come back. The way I wanted to come back. I lived my life in Berlin, but at the weekends I always had a real yen to go home.’
When you’ve been listening to Heinrich Scholl for a while, you have the impression that the whole world—and not least his dead wife—conspired against him. After her death he had tidied her cupboard and found a sex toy. He lowers his voice: ‘Why would I put a condom and a Viagra pill in my wife’s pocket?’
Then who did?
He shrugs and says he doesn’t want to accuse anyone when he’s not sure. ‘I know what it’s like to be wrongly convicted.’
What does he say to his friend Dieter’s suicide theory?
Heinrich Scholl sits up and breaks open the bar of chocolate. ‘I have my doubts,’ he says, in professional tones, as if he were back in his office in the town hall. ‘Someone would have had to do it for her. You can’t strangle yourself, and she was punched twice in the face as well. Mind you, I’d like to have read whether she had anything in her system, any drugs, or poison of some kind, before she was strangled—or whether she was maybe even dead before her body was hidden in the forest. There must have been a struggle, but it didn’t necessarily take place where she was found. Because the report says there were signs of dragging—or, at least, that they looked for them. Who on earth goes so deep into the woods?’
It’s a strange moment; it is hard to know what to say. Is this an ice-cold murderer and a liar speaking? Or is it a madman? Or a victim of the justice system? Heinrich Scholl makes for a very convincing innocent.
‘I never hurt her—that is to say, never consciously,’ he says. He refers to his flat in Berlin and his affairs as ‘my lone wolf thing’. Such compromises are just a part of life, he says, and they go on all the time. ‘If I’d wanted to hurt her, I could have shouted and sworn and carried on. But I didn’t. I respected that woman all my life. We were a functioning family. We didn’t fight.’
You can suppress a murder, psychologists say, just as you can suppress other terrible things that happen in your life. On the other hand, you always have to remember precisely what you have done if you are to avoid making a mistake, saying the wrong thing, giving yourself away.
The psychiatric expert Alexander Böhle had reported at the trial on how Heinrich Scholl managed to play down problems when he saw no other way out: his mother’s coldness in his childhood, his powerlessness to react to his wife. Denial and suppression were always part of his survival strategy. Whatever you talk to him about—his relationship with his son, his time at the circus, his career as mayor—you end up with the impression that he’s always made a success of everything. Scholl paints a rose-tinted picture of his life. It is deeply unsettling when he boasts about his marriage—or praises Ursus, the spaniel. He says he misses Ursus, although witnesses testified that Heinrich Scholl never liked his wife’s dog. He sings Nantana Piamsuk’s praises too, as if he’s forgotten his anger, bitterness and misery at the course their relationship took, and what she revealed about him in court.
Scholl spends his time reading books and watching television programs about innocent people wrongfully convicted, living behind bars. He is fascinated by the methods judges use to make their decisions in circumstantial trials, and obsessed by Franz Kafka’s famous novel The Trial—the grotesque tale of a bank employee who is arrested out of the blue one morning and eventually executed without having found out what he is accused of. Scholl says it reminds him of his own fate. He ought to stop reading these books, he says, or his hopes of a positive ruling at the appeal hearing will dwindle yet further.
He affirms his innocence to everyone he writes to: his childhood friends, his former deputy in the town hall, his colleague from Paderborn. ‘I had nothing to do with Gitti’s murder,’ he writes. Or: ‘Rest assured that I didn’t kill Gitti and our dog.’ Most of them believe him. They consider Heinrich Scholl far too clever for such an amateurish murder. Or they simply can’t imagine him capable of killing anyone. Dieter Fahle is still convinced that Gitti somehow pulled the strings herself, and dreams of taking the case to the European Court.
Three months have passed since the trial ended, and Heinrich Scholl grows more belligerent with each visit. The documents supporting his appeal are complete now, and the bound file is as fat as a book. The first hundred pages deal with the errors made by the expert who evaluated the DNA samples, and with all the petitions filed by the defence that were subsequently rejected. Next, the witness statements that the court had cobbled together into a chain of circumstantial evidence are taken to pieces. The defence argues that the chain holds together only if it is accepted—as the court asserted—that at least eleven of the witnesses had made errors in their testimony.
In the final third, the pace picks up. At issue is a letter that wasn’t mentioned in court, although it could have put a completely new slant on the case. The letter—sent to Heide Sandkuhl in May 2012—is anonymous, like those that had informed Brigitte Scholl her husband was cheating on her. But Heinrich Scholl is not the one accused of an affair this time. According to the anonymous writer, Brigitte Scholl had a relationship of many years with the husband of one of her friends. No one knew about it, not even the friend, the letter says. ‘Gitti wanted to come clean and make the affair public in 2011, and it proved to be her undoing.’
In other words: her lover is alleged to be the murderer.
Heinrich Scholl was informed about the letter and its contents, and said he was not surprised to hear his wife might have had a lover. In June, Heide Sandkuhl put the letter in the court files—because it was anonymous, it was of little value to the defence. There it was found by Scholl’s son and his lawyers, who checked the handwriting against the letters of condolence and soon identified the letter writer. Frank had known her since childhood; her mother had been one of Brigitte Scholl’s customers. It wasn’t clear how this woman came to be so well informed about Brigitte Scholl’s love life, but Frank and his lawyer wanted to leave that to the court to find out. They added the handwriting sample to the files, and there it remained. No one paid it any attention, and no one considered it necessary to inform the defence. It was only after the verdict that Scholl’s lawyers discovered that the letter’s author had been identified.
Heinrich Scholl knows the woman who wrote the letter. She and her mother sometimes came to the naturist bathing spot in the eighties, and to fireside evenings at the Scholls’. He hasn’t seen her for a long time.
So how did she know that Brigitte Scholl, who never revealed anything to anyone, was having an affair?
Heinrich Scholl shrugs.
He knows his wife’s alleged lover. The man visited him in custody after the arrest, and so did his wife. They now know about the accusations. If you ask the man about it, he says there’s nothing in it. His wife doesn’t know what to say. First her friend was murdered, then her friend’s husband was arrested and now her own husband is supposedly involved too. The two of them suspect that someone commissioned the letter, trying to shift the blame. They feel used by Heinrich Scholl. It’s a very long time since they last went to see him in prison.
The mysterious correspondent no longer lives in Ludwigsfelde. None of Brigitte Scholl’s friends knows who she is; no one can remember her or her mother. There is only her anonymous letter and the note of condolence to Frank. She did enclose a telephone number, but when you dial it, the phone just rings. No one answers. Perhaps she knows that she’s been identified and that her letter could have an important role to play in an appeal. If it comes to an appeal. It is not very likely. As a rule it is not the facts of a case that are assessed in an appeal, but only whether formal errors were made in the course of the trial. The chances that the trial will be reopened are not particularly high in any case. In recent years the number of succ
essful appeals has hovered just under ten per cent.
It will be several months yet before Heinrich Scholl learns the outcome of his appeal. One day in February 2014, he will hear on the midday news that it has been dismissed, but no reasons provided. The verdict will be final then, but for now there is still hope. In the meantime, he has no choice but to resign himself to prison life.
The first person he got to know in the remand prison was Axel Hilpert, a man around his age—Scholl was then seventy, Hilpert five years younger. Like Scholl, Hilpert was something of a legend in Brandenburg. In the old days, he had been an unofficial Stasi informant and an antiques buyer; after the collapse of the Wall, he switched to property. Together with Jochen Wolf—the minister who later hired a hit man to kill his wife—he was involved in a dodgy construction business. He was sentenced to five years and eight months’ imprisonment for serious fraud, breach of trust and tax evasion in connection with the development of a luxury hotel complex. Hilpert’s lawyers were filing an appeal against the sentence.
Hilpert’s cell was diagonally opposite Scholl’s in a newly renovated part of the prison. The corridors there are wide; the kitchen is tiled; there are no bars at the doors. Hilpert showed Scholl where the kitchen was and where you could get clean laundry. He knew the ropes; he took him under his wing. Scholl could talk to him and ask his advice. Hilpert introduced him to the editor-in-chief of the inmates’ newspaper and supported Scholl when he first thought of placing an ad in the weekly paper looking for witnesses who could provide him with an alibi.
Their cell neighbours were considerably younger—and tougher. They were all members of the Hells Angels—musclemen with thick necks, shorn skulls and tattoos all over their bodies. They cracked jokes about large Hilpert and little Scholl and had their fun with them.
Heinrich Scholl loves to tell the story of how they poured salt in his coffee and he drank the whole cup without batting an eyelid. When Bullet (whose real name is Steffen) said, ‘Hey, Scholl, wash my floor,’ he told him he needed to sweep it first. Scholl laughs as he relates this tale. He can assert himself, even today. That’s what he’s trying to prove with these stories. He’s a leader, even here in jail.
Recently he asked Kay, another of the Hells Angels, for a cigarette in the yard, triggering a fight about the dangers of smoking. The upshot was that Kay pointed at the rainwater in the ashtray and said other people drank that kind of thing. Bullet asked Kay whether he’d give Scholl a cigarette if he drank the brew.
‘Not just one, a whole carton,’ Kay replied. He didn’t know that his fellow inmate had once bitten the head off a mouse—or that he had climbed the world’s highest peaks.
Heinrich Scholl put the ashtray to his lips.
When Axel Hilpert was released on bail due to concerns about his health, Heinrich Scholl was left with the bikers. The bikers had been sentenced to several years’ imprisonment by the same judge as Scholl and, like him, were going to appeal. That bonds them. They call him ‘Scholli’. He calls them ‘my boys’.
They cook together, play skat, and go to church every other week. Heinrich Scholl likes the peace and quiet there, and the talks with the vicar. The bikers mainly go along for the free coffee and biscuits after the service. Scholl lifts weights with them, and until recently they also played football together. Heinrich Scholl plays well, but the guys from Brandenburg knock him flying without even realising. Now he prefers to jog round the yard—alone.
After a few months they’d had to move out of the new block into the old one. ‘Appalling conditions,’ Heinrich Scholl says, ‘like in Sing Sing.’ He cleaned the toilet with his toothbrush, it was so filthy. In summer it was forty to fifty degrees Celsius in his cell. Sometimes he thought he couldn’t hack it any more: the long corridors so narrow you can’t even pass someone coming the other way, the jangle of the keys at the guard’s waist, the scrape of the lock every morning at half past five when they check on him in his cell to make sure he’s still alive. When Heinrich Scholl had to have an operation in the prison hospital, he hoped he wouldn’t wake from the anaesthetic—that he’d simply go to sleep and be free of all his worries. He’s thought seriously about suicide. ‘Twice I almost ended it,’ he says. ‘Twice I came close to seeing the bright light.’ But he’s stopped ‘any of that’. His lawyers have told him that suicide would be tantamount to confession. That’s given him the courage to carry on living. There’ll be no confession of guilt from Heinrich Scholl—never.
In late October 2013, a year after his trial first started, Heinrich Scholl makes his way to the visitors’ room. He is wearing an old pair of jeans and a faded jumper—his work clothes. First shift and lunch are already over. In the summer he took care of the flowers round the prison yard; now that autumn has come round again he’s got a new job as an editor at the prison newspaper, where he writes pugnacious articles railing against the bad food and the expensive goods on sale in prison, and speaking up for inmates’ rights. He also contributes short stories and articles on the German judicial system. In some editions he has three articles. His editor-in-chief—a graphic designer doing time for the murder of a Thai woman—is pleased with his new, motivated colleague. Heinrich Scholl’s friends joke that he’ll soon be running the prison.
He gets on better than ever now with the Hells Angels, especially Bullet, the one with the most tattoos, the thickest muscles and a voice as rough as sandpaper. When Heinrich Scholl mentions him, his voice becomes fond, almost tender. He talks about Bullet’s difficult childhood: his mother didn’t want him; he was sent to a home and later to adoptive parents; the father beat him. Bullet was sentenced for brutally beating another biker, but Heinrich Scholl believes him when he says he didn’t do it. He’s amazed that Bullet’s turned out such a good lad. With that childhood! Heinrich Scholl knows what he’s talking about.
Bullet is like a son to him, now that he’s lost Frank. Scholl’s lawyers have found a letter in the files in which Frank congratulates the court on its excellent work and thanks all involved. Heinrich Scholl lays his son’s letter on the small table in the visitors’ room and presses his lips together.
His mistress fled from him, his wife is dead, his son has turned his back on him. Heinrich Scholl is as alone at the end of his life as he was at the beginning.
Without Bullet and his friends in prison, he would hardly have survived. They have become a new family to him. They protect him from the other inmates; he helps them with their official documents. When Bullet puts his heavy arm around his shoulders and says, ‘Hey, Scholli, can you have a look at this letter for me?’ it makes his day. He likes helping, he says; he always did. His eyes grow moist; he turns his head away. When he has collected himself, he says: ‘Since being here, it’s become clear to me that I haven’t actually made any fundamental errors in my life—that I’ve only done good. Even the love I bought myself—that’s much better than starting a relationship with a woman and getting her hopes up. I have nothing to reproach myself with. I don’t want to talk myself into thinking there’s anything I could have done better. I’ve fathered offspring, planted trees, written a book, been up the highest mountains in the world. I’ve already done the fundamental things in my life. I just don’t want to end it here.’
Scholl has taken up painting again. He’s brought one of his pictures along to the visitors’ room: a lake in front of a setting sun, a backdrop of mountains and, in the foreground, a couple sitting on a bench under a tree. The motif isn’t his; he copied it from a postcard, the way he used to when he was a boy and had to earn money after school for his mother.
It looks as if Heinrich Scholl is starting over from the beginning.
When Brigitte Scholl began to organise her class reunion in the summer of 2011, she was adamant that it should be the last. Soon after the Wall came down, she had met up with her schoolmates from Ludwigsfelde High School for the first time. That was when she had just turned fifty. Now, twenty years on, she was approaching seventy and that alone was reason enough for
Brigitte Scholl to decide there wouldn’t be another reunion. She thought of seventy-year-olds as elderly people who talked only of their ailments—a nightmare for the woman who had once been the class beauty. She wanted her schoolmates to have good memories of her.
Siegfried Schmidt, who helped with the preparations, saw things differently. He would have liked to carry on a few years longer with the class reunion. But there was no persuading Brigitte Scholl. She was the self-appointed organiser-in-chief; the one who set the agenda, made the appointments, invited their former teachers and drew up the program. Dinner in a restaurant was not enough; there had to be something special as well: a visit to their old school, a tour of the town, a tour of the Mercedes works. Her husband usually came along too.
Heinrich Scholl would be standing at his wife’s side at the arranged meeting place, even though he wasn’t one of her class. He was guest of honour and tour guide in one. The time before last, in 2009, a tour of the new naturist spa was on the schedule. Heinrich Scholl distributed white plastic slippers to Brigitte Scholl’s classmates to put on over their shoes. They walked along the galleries, pretending not to see the stark naked spa guests at the edge of the pool.
At the last reunion, in October 2011, Heinrich Scholl was not there. He was originally supposed to have taken Gitti’s class around the local heritage museum, but she had discarded that plan without explanation and asked a colleague of his from the town hall archives to give the tour instead. Heinrich Scholl was instructed by his wife to show her friend Inge’s husband around Ludwigsfelde, but instead he had driven him to Berlin to show off his flat—and the lingerie in the bathroom.
The Scholl Case Page 16