On Whit Monday in 1867, at about half past four in the afternoon, Frau Wimmer returned from church to find both the shop door and the kitchen entrance locked. The curtains of the workroom were drawn shut. Her stepdaughter, nineteen-year-old Élise Kolb, had been left in charge of the two youngest children. It was at first assumed that she had stepped out to visit a friend. The children, however, had seen no one leave. Frau Wimmer then helped her son August through the bedroom window so that he might unbolt a door from within. The boy reappeared, ashen-faced: “Lili is dead; she has been murdered.”
Neighbours hastened to the scene and forced the entryway. Élise lay upon the floor of the workroom, her throat deeply slashed. Her skirt was disarranged, and a pocket had been torn away. In the adjoining room, Lorenz Wimmer’s writing desk stood open, stripped of its money. Banknotes and coupons lay scattered across the floorboards, but the most substantial sums had been carried off. The doors had been bolted from within; the kitchen key was nowhere to be found. In the kitchen, the police discovered a pail of water in which the perpetrator appeared to have washed. No blade had been left behind.
The crime had been committed in broad daylight, within a dwelling whose windows looked directly out onto the street. What eluded the authorities above all was an explanation: how had the assassin gained entry, and why had the two children seen nothing? Investigators soon learned that Élise had spent the afternoon sewing in the workroom. Two young girls had seen her toward four o’clock; she had declined their invitation to go out walking. That very day, a cook from the adjoining house, Katharina Petrsilka, had taken Julie and August up to the attic under the pretext of changing her clothes. She had left them there alone, claiming she had to fetch an errand.
Katharina was employed as a cook in the household of the manufacturer Slawik. Her betrothed, Albert Troll, worked as a shoemaker. They spoke of marriage, but Troll declared he wished to set up his own workshop and lacked the requisite capital. During her visits to the Wimmer home, Katharina had repeatedly changed money on behalf of her employers, the Slawiks, and was thoroughly familiar with the layout of the rooms and the desk where Lorenz kept his paper currency. According to her subsequent confession, Troll had proposed stealing this hoard whenever a woman should happen to be alone in the house. He had bidden her purchase a razor; she claimed to have balked at the notion for several weeks before finally yielding.
On that Whit Monday, Lorenz Wimmer had departed for the countryside in the company of a neighbouring manufacturer. The domestic servant had been granted leave for the afternoon, and Frau Wimmer had gone to church. Élise remained behind with the little ones. Seeing her opportunity, Katharina left Julie and August to wait in the attic and ran down to find Troll, who was loitering near the house. “Now is the time,” she told him, according to her statement. He replied: “Then let us go.” She retrieved the razor she had bought and entered through the shop door; Troll slipped in by way of the kitchen.
Élise was sewing in the workroom and knew Troll by sight. Katharina related that he stole up behind the girl, seized her by the head, and severed her throat while she herself held the victim’s hands. The wound, gaping and instantly mortal, had been delivered with a single, resolute stroke, according to the medical report cited in the Pitaval. Élise collapsed. The two confederates hurried into the adjoining chamber, where they first attempted to pry open the commode. They presently discovered a key, unlocked the desk, and seized the banknotes and coin. Troll washed his hands in the kitchen; Katharina flung the razor and another key down the privy. She concealed her blood-stained garments in the attic, whereupon the pair departed together.
They concealed the plunder in Troll’s lodgings. Then, repairing to a goldsmith, they purchased two wedding rings for their impending nuptials. They spent the remainder of the evening at a suburban tavern. Around nine o'clock, Katharina returned to the Wimmer residence, trembling and shivering uncontrollably. On the following morning, she handed over several blood-stained articles of clothing to her mother, alleging that she had suffered a nosebleed, and gave her twenty-five florins to pay her rent. Her mother washed one dress and sent another garment to a laundress.
The inquiry initially traced the stolen banknotes. The police published their denominations and serial numbers, and soon learned that Katharina was sporting costly garments and spending five- and ten-florin notes with abandon. She claimed to have won the money in the lottery. On June 15, at the police station, she was informed that this alleged windfall would be investigated. Blanching, she cried out: “My God, what do you want of me? I did not kill Lisi!” She was placed under arrest. A search conducted at the Slawik residence uncovered in the attic a crinoline, a freshly washed blue skirt, and a torn brown skirt bearing traces of blood; in the privy, the constables recovered a blade and the missing kitchen key. At Troll’s lodging, they seized banknotes matching the stolen denominations—several of them stained—as well as a table knife and items of jewellery.
Katharina identified the money and, before the magistrates, delivered a full confession. She insisted that Troll had conceived the plot, had instructed her to buy the razor, and had struck the fatal blow; she had done no more than hold Élise’s hands. Her mother, she maintained, knew nothing of the murder. Troll denied everything. He claimed that Katharina had brought him the money, maintaining first that it came from a lottery prize, then that it was a marriage settlement remitted by her family. He shifted his account regarding when he had received the bills and attributed the stains to a visit to the butcher. He conceded having been near the house, having waited for Katharina, and having purchased the wedding bands, but swore he had never crossed the threshold of the Wimmer home.
The prosecution’s case did not rest upon Katharina’s confession alone. Witnesses placed Troll near the house prior to the crime and observed him leaving in Katharina’s company. A young servant girl attested to having seen blood upon Katharina’s forearm. Two witnesses reported that immediately following the deed, Troll had stepped into a tobacconist’s shop and remarked that one ought to “flay the murderer into strips”; he insisted he had uttered those words on the Tuesday, not on that Monday. The police also established that he had lied concerning the provenance of the money and had sought to hide it after Katharina warned him of the officers' approach. Chemical analysis of the stains upon his clothing, however, failed to determine with certainty whether they were of human blood.
The trial opened on August 1. In the courtroom, Katharina reiterated that Troll had demanded the razor and had slit Élise’s throat. He answered that she was lying merely to drag her betrothed down into her own ruin. When brought face to face, she looked upon him and declared: “It was you. I can say it to your face.” He retorted that she was an inveterate liar. She recounted their entry through the kitchen and how she had pinioned the victim's hands; he maintained that she was fully capable of having acted alone and delivering the money to him afterward.
Elisabeth Petrsilka, Katharina’s mother, was likewise placed in the dock. The Crown relied in particular upon the laundered clothing and the money she had received. She denied any knowledge of the true origin of either the linen or the florins. The tribunal acquitted her. For Troll and Katharina, the outcome was far different: both were pronounced guilty of murder committed in the course of robbery. Katharina was sentenced to the gallows, Troll to life imprisonment. According to the record, Austrian law prohibited capital punishment in the absence of a direct confession or eyewitness testimony; the prosecutor had accordingly concluded that Troll could not be condemned to death, notwithstanding the verdict of guilt.
In the courtroom, Katharina implored her mother’s forgiveness. Troll, steadfast in his denials, announced his intention to appeal. Katharina’s sentence was subsequently commuted by the Emperor to life imprisonment. She was conveyed to the Neudorf penitentiary; Troll was transferred to Klausen. The Pitaval recounts that he departed Vienna with a laugh upon his lips, while the scandalised populace looked on as the man they deemed the true slayer of Élise was led away into exile.