Helga remained skeptical. “I’m still convinced that Merten was murdered ‘only’, in a sense, because Elisabeth Kusian had to have that typewriter for her lover. Her whole life depended on having the typewriter, in a sense. These people now are imagining all that extra stuff.”
“But what about Maus and Beigang – would they invent things? Plus, if Kusian was meeting her husband and Merten in Kantstrasse that would explain the thing with the three glasses.”
“But Walter Kusian as someone who buys typewriters for an administration – that’s absurd. Mrs. Merten would have seen that immediately.”
“You underestimate Kusian’s power of suggestion. And Walter Kusian is not so dumb himself. When he was a nurse he learned how to deal with people and he also worked as a bartender. You learn how to make people feel good. I can imagine him buying and selling things.”
Helga wasn’t convinced. “If Merten had really known about the murder she would have avoided being with Kusian at any cost – let alone going to her apartment. She would have been scared she might be next…”
“Who knows what stories Kusian told her? You know she is past master at lying.”
They weren’t in any case going anywhere so they stopped whispering and went back to listening to the proceedings. Dr. Korsch was going through the list of witnesses brought by the defense. No one had heard of their existence before and they had to be reached by telephone first as in Olga Maus’s case, or a messenger had to be sent to their homes in order to bring them to court.
The next witness was a dark-haired singer, Mrs. Krämer-Bergau. She had intended to visit a woman friend who lived at 154a Kantstrasse on the same floor as the Stöhr ladies.
“But she wasn’t home and all I did was write a note and slip it down the letter box chute. It took me about a minute. And while I was there that man came by.” She pointed at Walter Kusian.
“Was he alone or with his wife?” Dr. Korsch asked.
“I’m convinced he was with two women.”
“Two women?”
“Yes.” She was sure of it and it created some confusion in the room. Who could the second woman have been: could she be the mysterious dark woman? Bacheran thought so himself, at first.
All of a sudden, in the middle of the courtroom, a woman got up. She was large and rubbery and marched over to the judges’ desk waiving a letter in her hand.
“I’ve written it all down in here, it will clear the mystery. I was an artist, now I’m an astrologist. My name is Anita Rose. Close all the doors! Don’t let anyone out of the room! Now watch Elisabeth Kusian’s face when I come forward. Mine will be the decisive statement.”
“Go ahead, Mrs. Rose.” Dr. Korsch and the entire room waited expectantly.
“The big dark lady’s name is Wilhelmina Ludwig and she lives on Droysenstrasse.”
The president immediately instructed the court to send for the Unknown Person. When she appeared, it turned out she was a ‘blond’. Not only that but she also pretended not to have any idea why the police had taken her from her home all of a sudden.
“Do you know the defendant?” Dr. Korsch asked.
“I’ve never seen her before.”
Since there was no reason not to believe her, she turned out not to be the proverbial ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.
Dr. Korsch seemed to be at wit’s end by now. He refused to hear any more dubious witnesses and he instructed that the court play the tape recordings of Kusian’s statements during the second day of the trial. Everyone in the room hadn’t been able to understand Kusian’s words when she had retracted her confession. She whispered at times, at other times her speech was garbled. The volume was now turned up high and it was as if Kusian was being pummeled by her own words as she described the two murders in a growing staccato, as if she was being struck by a whip. Her head sank lower and lower and Bacheran had the impression she could barely control herself and she would have liked to cover her ears with her hands. The door of the district courtroom was opened so as to allow the people without passes to follow the recording.
Bacheran and many people in the room hoped that Kusian, confronted with this, would lose her resolve and make a renewed confession admitting her own guilt. ‘I killed alone, neither my husband nor Kurt Muchan knew anything about it!’ But she didn’t. She remained silent and nothing changed. What next? Should the proceedings be halted and should they return to the previous investigation? They deliberated a long time and then decided to adjourn and meet again four days later, on Tuesday, January 23.
40.
On Sunday afternoon, when Bernhard and Helga met under the big clock at Zoo station they intended to go for a walk and sit at a café before the curtain rose at the Theater on Kurfürstendamm. They were going to see Gerhart Hauptmann’s Henschel the Carter. After a very passionate embrace, he asked if she felt like it.
“Like what?”
“Not that…” he pointed to the hotel across the street. “I’m not a State Attorney General yet and I can’t afford it…” He stopped, hesitated, “But, well, why not after all?”
“You’re crazy!”
“Yes.”
An hour later, when they left the hotel, he had a second surprise for her. “Now we’re going to the astrologer and she’ll tell us if we are finally going to marry.”
Again, she was indignant. “As if renting a room by the hour wasn’t decadent enough, now you want to consult an astrologer – over my dead body!”
“Her name is Anita Rose, the one from court. I found out her address. I’m convinced that she knows more about Kusian than she let on to Dr. Korsch.”
“And what makes you so sure?”
“The fact that I called Robert-Koch Hospital and had a long conversation with Head Nurse Anita. Yes, another Anita. So, as to Mrs. Rose: she herself was a patient at the hospital for a long time, as a matter of fact. She used to be a circus performer and she fell from a trapeze. During her stay she met a great number of nurses who, later when she had become an astrologer, consulted her again and again. That much is absolutely certain”
“All right, you convinced me for the second time.”
Mrs. Rose lived at 9 Mommsenstrasse, it wasn’t far. They walked down streets that had, for the most part, been spared the hail of bombs.
“A beautiful place to live,” Bacheran remarked. “Maybe I could get us a place to live here, through ‘vitamin B’ connections…?”
Helga stopped and stamped her foot on the ground. “I will not move to the Western sector!”
“But that’s…” he had been on the point of saying ‘asinine’ but he softened it to “….absurd!”
“No, it’s not. And to make myself clear I will tell you a Russian fairy tale: In a village in the Taiga a young boy had lost his mother and he cried bitterly. The people ask him what his mother looked like. “She’s as beautiful as a princess, she’s the most beautiful woman in the country.’ And so the people look for a very beautiful woman who could be his mother but don’t find any. They couldn’t have found her in any case since, when by chance mother and son find each other, it turns out that the mother is terribly ugly and barely has any teeth left and is a hunchback.”
There was nothing to say to that, so Bernhard was silent.
They didn’t speak again before they reached the third floor of the building at the end of the courtyard, and were standing at Anita Rose’s door. Mrs. Rose is at home. Please give a loud knock. Bacheran read out the calling card tacked on the wall above the doorbell. They heard the sound of the peephole being pushed opened.
“No men.”
Bacheran stepped aside and pulled Helga in front of the peephole. “I’m not alone, I’ve brought a colleague.”
“I will not say anything more. Please go. You’re from the press, I can tell.”
“No…” Bacheran gave their names and Helga held up her badge.
They were allowed in and she led them into a small kitchen. A small fire was burning in the fire place but
it was miserably cold. There was an old sofa, a small kitchen table and two chairs. The astrologer had just been doing the dishes. Her hands were blue with cold. She was wearing a black dress and a bright red woolen cardigan over it: she seemed to be trying hard to look like a gipsy. “Where did you get my address? What do you want? I don’t read cards, I’ll tell you up front. You must understand. I had a bad experience in the courtroom. People made fun of me even though I had important things to say. If they don’t let me speak, well then, I can’t make my statement.” As she spoke a cat jumped on to the sofa. She stroked the animal more in an effort to warm her hands than to caress it. “Ah children, what a bitterly cold winter this is… I have had a few accidents, I have stomach problems. What can I do for you? If you give me your date of birth I can predict everything that will happen to you this year.” Bacheran did and she pulled her books and charts from under the sofa cushions and started counting. “Yes, it’s very clear: before the end of the year you will enter the blessed state of marriage.”
“Wonderful.” Bacheran kissed Helga and gave Rose five marks. “Now, about Kusian…”
They sat down and Anita started speaking. “Well… after I left Moabit hospital, one of the nurses came to me, I predicted that one of the other nurses would commit suicide and when this in fact happened, other nurses came to me. Kusian too with two other women. One was the blond woman, Mrs. Ludwig, you already know her.”
Bacheran was surprised. “But she stated under oath that she had never seen Mrs. Kusian in her life…”
Anita Rose dismissed it: “Come now, these two were fast friends. Mrs. Ludwig invited me to her house so she could unburden herself. After the crimes were discovered and Kusian was in prison. She told me that Kusian had slept at her place the night after the first murder.”
“And why did Wilhelmina Ludwig not tell the court?”
“She’s afraid that Kusian will involve her in the crime. Like Mr. Muschan and Mr. Kusian. Some of it always sticks to you, she said.”
“Now, that’s something…” Bacheran grumbled. “And the Great Unknown, the tall dark lady?”
“She’s also a nurse form Robert-Koch. I don’t know her name but she’s tall, dark-haired and very well groomed. She wanted to travel to Switzerland. She was often seen together with Kusian, she told me when she was here about a year ago, and she didn’t want any unpleasantness. Her husband must be an important person. In politics I believe. Kusian still owed her 500 Marks but she let it go in order to avoid looking like she knew about the murders. I gave her a brooch to bring to a friend of mine in St Gallen, but I haven’t seen or heard from her since. Instead, a woman I did not know came to see me to bring me a book on behalf of Mrs. Kusian that supposedly was in her luggage.” Mrs. Rose walked over to the kitchen cabinet, opened it and pulled out a copy of Theodore Fontane’s Gone forever. “I didn’t read it. There’s nothing there for me.”
Bacheran wrote it all down and sent his notes to Homicide West. They thanked him but made it clear that they “had no time for these fantastical tales” and “diversionary tactics.” “Kusian was guilty. That was that.”
And so on January 23rd, the fifth day of the proceedings, Anita Rose’s statements were no longer part of the debate. At the beginning of the day, Dr. Waldemar Weimann, the Chief Medical Examiner, got his turn in the limelight. For the first time since the beginning of the trial, the New German Weekly Show was allowed to bring in its projectors and film the proceedings. The district courtroom was bathed in bright light and felt like a stage. The cameras whirred softly. The atmosphere in the room went up still another notch. Outside on the landing stood several hundred curious people, especially men who were hoping to get a look at the ‘Charming Killer’. Today, since she had been given insulin injections, she looked far better than the previous days when she had barely eaten any food.
What Waldemar Weimann said was not new to Bacheran. First he characterized his personal contact with Mrs. Kusian. “We had an exceptionally good rapport.” Then he described the interrogations he had attended and the one on one meetings in which he had managed to get Elisabeth Kusian to confide in him. “I wish to stress that the defendant described the events again and again during the first months as they are consigned in the transcript of her confession of guilt.” It was only later, he said, after Kurt Muschan had visited her, that she had tried to involve her husband in a “back-handed, mysterious manner” most probably in order to clear herself in the eyes of her lover. He added that what struck him repeatedly were her fascinating powers of persuasion. They were such that one day another inmate of the preventive detention center had come to him to tell him she was outraged that ‘this innocent woman, this marvelous human being’ could be suspected of a double murder. A few days later though, the same person said the opposite: ‘I’m really stupid! How could I ever believe that woman? She’s the meanest bitch I have ever met!’ Finally, Dr. Weimann explained how, as he continued his observation of Kusian he became convinced, as was also Dr. Niedenthal, the court doctor, that Kusian would not repeat her confession to the court. “A change started to take hold of her. Little by little she began to dispute the fact that she had committed the murders, alleging her wounded hand as proof. Finally, a short time before the end of the investigation, she declared: ‘If I tell the truth my husband will go to jail for life. And I will be freed after two years and I can start a new life.’” When the prosecutor asked him whether the defendant had also described details of the killing of Mr. Seidelmann, Weimann said yes she had: “Yes and I am convinced that she took part in that killing. She described the sequence of events as only someone who has experienced it could.”
Bacheran thought that this definitively tipped the scales against Kusian and he found that he almost regretted it. Why? Was he also under her influence, her charisma, did he also unconsciously wish to be loved by her, to become intimate with her? Or was it simply his tendency to support the losing team and secretly hope for some miracle that would ultimately give them the victory? Yes and no. Or was he projecting his own desires onto her – was she a proxy – doing what he would not allow himself to do, were Seidelmann and Merten stand-ins for the kind of people he himself would have wished to kill? Teachers, friends and relatives who had at one time or another made him suffer? Who knew… it was a fact that he felt a dark, ghastly kind of sympathy for Kusian and he would have liked to see her manage somehow to pull her neck out of the hangman’s noose.
It was inspector Menzel’s turn. The Homicide Division had questioned 206 people during its investigation and compiled two thick volumes of over six hundred pages each. Menzel, referring to them, sounded very sure: “This gave me the impression that there could be no doubt as to the perpetrator in this case.” Plus nothing incriminating had been found at Walter Kusian’s home. “Every crack in the floor boards was systematically examined. There were no traces of blood either there or on Mr. Kusian’s clothing.” All the other traces of blood clearly pointed to Elisabeth Kusian as the perpetrator.
Still, during the final cross examination, the defendant maintained that her husband had committed both crimes.
Prosecutor Kuntze looked her in the eyes. “Why did you, on January 4, 1950 write a card to the long dead Doris Merten wishing her a happy New Year and asking her to visit you soon?”
Kusian pretended not to be phased. “I sent her not one but four cards. My husband told me to do so in order to hide what had happened.”
“You maintained that on December 26 you had enough money for the typewriter. Why then did you pawn a silver chest?”
“What questions you ask, Prosecutor…!”
There were still half a dozen witnesses to be heard. Dr. Korsch seemed to have forgotten them. But now he had a few called to the bar. Friends of Mrs. Merten, who had spoken to her on the day of the murder, said unanimously that she had never told them she knew Mr. Kusian or Kurt Muschan, let alone had she voiced any vague fears.
Bacheran leaned over to Helga. “These people are c
ertainly trustworthy but what about the others who were in close contact with Merten: her friend Olga, her boss – are we to think they were victims of mass delusion or that they felt the need to be important?”
The mysterious Unknown Woman again became the focus of the court. The presiding judge and the prosecutor were trying hard to limit the damage, in a manner of speaking, while the defense attempted to give her more importance and keep her in play. A nurse who had been suspected of being that woman was able convincingly to prove that she had last seen Kusian in 1948. There was still Gisela Göltzsch, the furniture dealer’s wife from Charlottenburg who had been seen at 154a Kantstrasse on the second day of Christmas.
“Yes, this is how it came about… My husband had admitted, under the Christmas tree, that when I was in the hospital, he had tried to begin an affair with Mrs. Kusian. It had gone no further than that. Still I couldn’t find any peace and so I went to see her to talk.”
“And, did you?”
“No. When I reached the apartment I saw her standing in the door with a man – and I lost my nerve. But somebody must have seen me and the police came.”
Bacheran was pretty sure that ended the case, especially since the ominous taxi driver who was supposed to have driven Walter Kusian when he carried the body parts had not come forward.
“The fantasy witnesses are having a hard time,” Bacheran whispered when Dr. Korsch brought this fact up. Had Kusian and her attorneys thrown all the smoke bombs in vain? It seemed so. But the trial wasn’t over yet…
The president looked up to the ceiling almost as though he were asking: What now, how do I bring this to an honorable end? He realized that he could have the record of the confession read aloud. That would take hours and have the appearance of absolute seriousness. The statements had been recorded very carefully: no vague summaries, only questions and answers that had been precisely noted.
Cold Angel: Murder in Berlin 1949 Page 31