Killer Women (20 page)

The only person – apart from the judge and the lawyers – remotely interested in the sad proceedings was Marianne Bachmeier. She sat at a table just ten feet from the defendant watching his every response.

There was no dock for this monster. Under German law a defendant is allowed to sit at a table like everyone else – until he is found guilty. Even though Grabowski had already confessed to his atrocities.

By Marianne stood a four inch high, framed photograph of the daughter he had butchered. Every few seconds she would look at his face and then down at the face of her pretty little Anna. She had behaved in exactly the same way throughout the trial – which was now into its third day.

Marianne had looked glazed much of the time but it was clear she was listening intently to every awful detail of her daughter’s horrible death and the
background
of the man who had murdered her.

Klaus Grabowski had lived in and around the Lubeck area for most of his rather sad, pathetic life. In the early 1970s he had been twice convicted for the sexual abuse of children. On both occasions he had lured innocent little girls into his home and brutally assaulted them leaving them psychologically and physically scarred for life.

While serving his sentence, Grabowski had himself been sexually abused and beaten up by fellow prisoners.

Traditionally, child sex offenders are the most hated inhabitants inside prison. Wardens would turn their heads the other way, whenever Grabowski found himself facing an angry mob.

By 1976, he was desperate to get out of jail. The beatings were proving unbearable and he knew that no one would help him. After all, he was a pervert and a threat society.

Then Grabowski volunteered to be castrated to secure an early release from prison. It was his only chance. In a short operation, he permitted his sexual urges to be destroyed for ever – or so all the experts had believed.

To lose his manhood seemed a small price to pay for the escape from the daily abuse of his fellow prisoners. But life on the outside proved tough for Grabowski. He never got his old job back as a butcher and his world seemed hopeless. He wanted to find someone to love but there was no love. Within, the old, sick urges seemed to have subsided. But he wanted more out of life.

Grabowski had no sexual feelings whatsoever, but he was fully aware what they felt like because he had once had them. Now his life would be empty forever – unless he could plan a way to get those responses back.

The answer lay in hormone treatment. The very thought of those sexual feelings returning motivated him to seek help.

In 1979, just a few months before he made helpless Anna his victim, Grabowski tricked his way into getting help from a urologist. He persuaded the medic to give him the necessary hormone treatment to help him get those deadly urges back.

He did not admit that he had been castrated because of the sex offences he had committed. Instead he persuaded the doctor to help on the grounds that he was simply an exhibitionist.

But now, he assured the physician, he was cured and he wanted his sex life back. The doctor didn’t bother to check his record.

On the day he murdered Anna, Grabowski’s hormone-levels were as high as that of a normal man.

Marianne listened to all this evidence impassively. She was stunned by revelation after revelation but she had no right in a court of law to stand up and air her opinions. She had to bottle up her feelings of anger, disgust and sadness. Being repressed had long since become a way of life for Marianne.

And then there was the guilt. How could she have left her daughter alone? Why didn’t she just take her with her into town? If only she could turn the clock back. But it was too late.

All this was a dreadful repetition of her own tragic life. She had so desperately hoped things would turn out differently for Anna.

Her best friend, pretty blonde lawyer Brigitte Muller-Horn recalled how: ‘Anna’s death was more important to her than her own death. In a way, she died with Anna. Anna was a very bright and clever child. More like a small adult than a little girl. She was her mother’s confidante and friend. Marianne talked to Anna about problems like she could talk to no one else. She was closer to her than she had ever been to anyone else in her entire life.’

All these thoughts and much more were rushed through Marianne’s mind as she continued her court-room vigil.

Just one hour earlier, Marianne had visited her daughter’s grave in the vast, impersonal cemetry in the centre of Lubeck. She had kneeled at the tiny white cross and begged forgiveness. She felt the weight of guilt about Anna’s death. There were so many ifs. If only she had not gone out to that appointment. If only they had never sold the bar in Kiel. If only she had woken up on time to send Anna to school. The list was endless.

Back in the court Grabowski was centre stage.

Marianne looked into straight into his cold, almost dead eyes but he turned away. Now her mind returned to the murder scene.

‘He had his hands around her throat. I heard her scream …’

At that moment Marianne fumbled under the green coat on her lap. She pulled out a small Beretta pistol, aimed at Grabowski’s back and squeezed the trigger six times.

She watched coldly as his body jerked from the hail of bullets that hit him. No one could do anything to help the former butcher as he slumped to the floor. He died instantly.

She then calmly threw the gun aside, sending it skidding across the floor of the stunned court room. Marianne stood up to allow police to escort her from the building.

When she visited Lubeck Cemetry to select Anna’s last resting place, the undertaker asked her: ‘Would you like to select a single or a double grave?’

Without hesitation, Marianne replied: ‘A double. It is for Anna and me. Soon I will be with her anyway.’

Marianne had chosen the Courts of Justice, to exact an ancient retribution: an eye for an eye.

She had avenged her daughter’s death in a fashion that no one in the entire world could fail to sympathise with.

In March, 1983, Marianne Bachmeier was sentenced to six years imprisonment after being found guilty of the murder of Klaus Grabowski.
Immediately after her sentence was pronounced she was allowed free, pending an appeal, after which her sentence was reduced to two years suspended. She is now happily re-married and living in a cottage on the Baltic coast.