On March 13, 1884, the courtroom of the Vienna provincial court, popularly known as the “Grey House,” was packed to the last seat. The proceedings drew women above all: for months, the gazettes had recounted the disappearances of young domestic servants promised in marriage, only to be found dead—when they were found at all. Hugo Schenk entered with studied civility, almost greeting the assembly with his gaze, before taking his place before six magistrates. Trial by jury having been suspended in the wake of anarchist outrages, it was not a panel of citizens, but a bench of professional jurists that sat in judgment upon the three prisoners.
The bill of indictment set forth the names of the accused, their trades, their ages, and their prior convictions. Schenk, formerly a cadet in a military academy, had previously been convicted of fraud; Karl Schloßarek, a locksmith by trade, of larceny; Karl Schenk, Hugo’s younger brother and a railway clerk, had hitherto remained unconvicted. The catalog that followed was more terrible than any narrative: an attempted murder against Franz Podpera, a robbery committed upon Franz Bauer, and the deaths of Josephine Timal, Katharina Timal, Therese Ketterl, and Rosa Ferenczy. For several of these women, their money, jewelry, or savings-bank passbooks had vanished in the wake of their disappearance.
The method revealed itself with sinister regularity. Schenk answered the matrimonial and employment advertisements of young women seeking a post or a husband. Presenting himself as an engineer, a public servant, or a factory owner, he made promises of wedlock, ingratiating himself sufficiently to isolate the woman he pursued. In league with Schloßarek, he had also devised fictitious offers of employment requiring a cash security: the applicant was directed to an isolated place, where the confederates intended to plunder him. At trial, the prosecution traced this mechanism back to the penitentiary at Stein, where the pair had met and plotted to resume their operations upon their discharge.
Franz Podpera, an unemployed miller, escaped their first snare. Schloßarek had lured him into Moravia with the promise of a position; in the Wratzow forest, he drew a revolver. Podpera defended himself. Both men were wounded in the ensuing struggle, but the applicant made his way back to town. Before the court, Schenk asserted he had lost sight of the pair; he admitted, however, that he had furnished the weapon, accompanied the journey, and waited nearby to render assistance. The survivor’s testimony recounted the chilling instant when the cold iron pressed against his neck revealed the trap.
On April 21, Franz Bauer was plundered, though he preserved his life. Summoned to meet a fictitious master in a wood near Weidlingau, the coachman accepted a dram of spirits laced with chloral hydrate. He collapsed, losing a portion of his funds. In the witness-box, Bauer related how Schloßarek had urged him to drink; Schenk conceded the assignation, but the two accomplices wrangled over the amount taken and the portion handed over to Hugo’s brother. As the exhibits were tendered one by one, the pretext of employment ceased to appear as an isolated stratagem: it had served systematically to lure victims from the city and lead them onto roads devoid of witnesses.
In May, Josephine Timal quitted her domestic service. Schenk spoke to her of marriage; Schloßarek accompanied her to a pool known as the Gevatterloch. She was recovered a month later, on June 17, her remains altered by the water, her linen bearing her initials. Here, the prisoners’ narratives parted company. Schenk swore he had stood by while Schloßarek bound a heavy stone to the young woman and pushed her into the water; Schloßarek insisted she was already senseless and that Schenk had taken an active part in the deed. The court received these depositions as the statements of interested parties, weighing them against the post-mortem findings and the recovered effects.
Katharina Timal, Josephine’s aunt, was drawn into the web in her turn by a posthumous letter announcing a marriage and an estate requiring management. The men lay in wait for her near Pöchlarn on the night of July 13. Schenk initially denied laying a hand upon her; Schloßarek described a struggle, while Karl Schenk admitted to holding the victim down. The body was dredged from the Danube, weighted with a stone. Their statements did not agree upon every detail, yet the brothers and their accomplice traded recriminations while conceding their presence at the scene and the subsequent division of the spoils.
The disappearance of Therese Ketterl, a cook aged thirty-seven, brought to light another set of contradictory accounts. She had quitted Vienna in the company of a man met through an advertisement, carrying with her clothing, jewels, savings passbooks, and her master’s small dog. The passbooks were cashed two days after her departure; the dog’s basket was subsequently discovered in a railway compartment. Schenk admitted to conducting the young woman into the mountains, upon the Reisalpe. His account of her death shifted repeatedly: at first, he claimed he had persuaded her a revolver was unloaded before discharging it; next, he laid the blame upon an unknown individual named Wagner; ultimately, he withdrew that story. Her remains were never found. The tribunal was obliged to weigh these admissions without the corroboration of an exhumed body.
Rosa Ferenczy, likewise, believed she was departing for her nuptials. Schenk had rented her a lodging under an assumed name, written to her almost daily, and gifted her trinkets. On December 29, he conducted her toward Wolfsthal with Schloßarek. On the morrow, the two men returned alone. Bloodstains, buttons, and a black garment were subsequently discovered along the banks of the Danube. There again, Schenk asserted that his confederate had struck the blows; Schloßarek insisted Schenk had finished off the victim. Both accounts placed them together upon the riverbank, and Rosa’s possessions were identified by witnesses.
Josephine Eder figured in the indictment upon another count. Schenk had persuaded her to leave her employment and purloin jewelry from her mistress, professing that the funds were needed to finance a manufactory. She was convicted for this larceny. At the hearing, the presiding judge recalled that Schenk had received the stolen goods, employing them as an instrument of leverage and subjugation. This episode illustrated the non-homicidal operation of the selfsame system: promises of wealth and marriage, theatrical posturing with spurious titles, and a woman left to answer for a crime she maintained was committed at his behest. The record did not confound her with the murdered victims, but it laid bare Schenk’s method of manufacturing dependency.
The chronicle dwelt extensively upon the material evidence, modest and often fragmentary: cashed passbooks, an abandoned basket in a railway carriage, a garment found near the water’s edge, jewelry pledged at pawnbrokers. Beside these traces, the witnesses mapped out the itineraries and the final departures. Yet the contradictions remained unresolved. The bodies of Ketterl and Ferenczy were never found; in the case of Timal, the prisoners varied as to who struck the fatal blow. It was this very disparity between what they confessed, what they imputed to one another, and what the constabulary verified on the ground that gave the judicial inquiry its full gravity.
Throughout the sessions, Schenk maintained a calm demeanor, amending minor details and protesting against questions that discomfited him. He sought to depict Schloßarek as the brutal instrument and himself as a detached organizer; Schloßarek retorted by accusing him of masterminding every snare. Karl Schenk minimized his role, though he confessed to transmitting letters, retaining personal effects, and receiving stolen funds. Counsel argued over the degrees of complicity; the prosecution rested its case upon the confessions, the depositions, the police findings, and the seized effects. The chronicle of 1884 recorded the spoken word of the courtroom, though its moralizing commentary and character sketches must not be taken for sworn testimony.
On March 15, the tribunal found all three prisoners guilty and passed sentence of death by hanging. Hugo Schenk declined to seek clemency; Schloßarek held his peace, and Karl Schenk lodged no appeal. The Emperor subsequently commuted the younger brother’s sentence to penal servitude for life. As for Hugo and Schloßarek, the judgment was executed on April 22 in the prison courtyard. The case concluded with two men sent to the scaffold and one survivor condemned for life; the victims, several of whom were never recovered from the earth or the waters, remained the center of a trial in which the accused had sought to the very end to parcel out the guilt among themselves.