Nine skull fragments and three projectiles were stitched to the cover sheet of a dossier discovered in a cellar of the ancient fortress of Meissen. The papers bore the date of 1697. They led back to a winter morning, to a man fallen into a mill ditch, and to three prisoners whose confessions failed to tell the same tale.
On February 15, Peter Eulitz, owner of the Wilßchwitz mill, reported to the hereditary magistracy of Meissen that Erasmus Peinler, known by the epithet of the “bone merchant,” lay dead in his millrace. Upon the adjacent highway, the snow preserved impressions of blood, gunpowder, and wadding paper. A little further along, footprints sank deep into the snow. On the opposite bank of the ditch stood a cellar whose door, customarily bolted, hung open. It was presumed that the murderer had lain there in ambush.
The examination of the corpse swiftly turned suspicion into the certainty of violence. Three projectiles had entered the right thigh. One had severed veins and arteries; the two others had passed through the muscle tissue. The balls were recovered from his clothing. The left side of the cranium was shattered to such an extent that nine fragments could be detached and filed with the dossier. The physicians pronounced the bullet wounds and the blows dealt with a blunt instrument to be alike fatal. Nothing in these physical observations yet revealed who had fired or who had struck the blows.
The inquiry extended to those persons observed in the vicinity. On the preceding evening, two cavalrymen had diced and drunk until eleven of the clock in an inn at Staucha. They carried swords, but no firearms; they were described as quiet and in good humor. Two men who had kept watch in the timber-master’s yard at Staucha later reported that, around three in the morning, they heard a gunshot echoing from the ditch, followed by an outcry: “Ah! Ah!” They had gone on their way, believing someone was thrashing an unruly lad or that a hare had been shot. A short while later, they heard the dull sound of repeated blows.
On the morrow, another clue came to light. A cavalryman named Matthes Möbius had dispatched a broken carbine to a locksmith in Mügeln, urging that it be repaired with all haste. The girl charged with the errand explained that her master had fallen upon the stairs and broken the piece. Under interrogation, Möbius stated that the weapon belonged in truth to Michael Beck, a trooper of another regiment. Beck was summoned before his military auditor. Almost immediately, he confessed to having slain Peinler alongside Hans Weinert, at the instigation of the victim’s wife.
This confession brought the inquisitors to the Peinler inn. There they came upon Weinert seated at table, and took into custody the widow, Maria Peinlerin, who still lay abed with her newborn infant. The two soldiers were examined by the military authorities; the widow was interrogated at Meissen. All acknowledged their complicity in the murder, but their accounts differed sufficiently to compel the authorities to hold confrontations. The narrative that emerged from these depositions thus bears the stamp of a procedure in which each deponent sought to qualify their own measure of guilt.
Maria was twenty-five years of age and declared that she had wed Peinler at the insistence of her parents, without affection. Her husband, according to reported testimony and depositions, was notorious as a thief and a receiver of stolen goods. It was told of him that he had stolen a calf from an adjoining mill, bidden the miller to dinner, and served him his own beast. He was also accused of having purloined a firearm from the Carlowitz estate and of harboring footpads to assist them in disposing of their plunder. These are accusations and rumors recorded by the compiler; they are not to be mistaken for established convictions.
Maria claimed she abhorred these dealings and refused to partake in them. She asserted that her husband urged her to sell the purloined wares, threatening her with violence whenever she resisted. The interrogatories describe her as initially hostile to Weinert, who frequented the inn and whom Peinler had allegedly sought to draw into his thefts. Then suspicion and strife gave way, according to the depositions collected, to an illicit liaison between the woman and the trooper. Maria resolved to rid herself of her husband; Weinert consented, himself fearing Peinler’s denunciations.
Their designs miscarried repeatedly. Maria was said to have suggested that Weinert slay her husband during a burglary, so that it might appear the householders had shot him. On another occasion, she was said to have slipped buttered bread dressed with poison into his pocket. None of these schemes bore fruit. The conspirators then consulted Beck, for Weinert was reluctant to approach single-handed a man described as robust, armed, and habitually wary. The three agreed upon an ambush at the canal crossing.
On February 14, Peinler informed his wife that he would depart at dawn for Meissen. She sent her nine-year-old daughter to summon Weinert. He sent Beck in his stead. According to Beck’s deposition, Maria inquired of him whether her husband was still to be shot. He warned her that she would face interrogation and risked dragging them down with her; she replied that she would remain silent. Beck and Weinert spent the evening in drinking, then concealed themselves in the barn upon straw beds Maria had laid out. Toward two in the morning, she carried them a glass of spirits. Later, from the window, she signaled to them that Peinler had finished his breakfast and was gone.
The two soldiers repaired to the open cellar beside the race. Weinert fired first, whereupon Beck discharged his carbine. Wounded, Peinler cried out and attempted to scramble up the bank. Weinert fired a second time with a pistol. The man tumbled back into the ditch. The two troopers pursued him and battered his head until he moved no more. The testimony attributed to Beck relates that the barrel of Weinert’s weapon was bent under the force of the blows, and a piece broke off from the stock. They rifled the dead man, took what meager pence he carried, and left behind the books and apples stowed in his sack. Then they thrust the corpse deeper into the canal, covered it with snow, and fled.
The woman was delivered of her child shortly thereafter. The chaplain, fearing for her life, advised that the murder be kept from her. Some days elapsed before Weinert slipped to her bedside to inform her of what had transpired. Subsequent depositions disagree regarding her conduct following Peinler’s death. Beck maintained that she appeared grief-stricken before the world, but joyful in private; she rejoined that she had counterfeited no sorrow, though she freely confessed her relief at being unburdened of her husband and his debts. Under interrogation, she acknowledged having transgressed the commandments and replied that she merited punishment as a murderess and adulteress: “Yea, truly.”
The dossier also records the confessions of the troopers, noting that they had taken the oath under the articles of war. Yet its concluding folio provides neither sentence nor date of execution for Beck and Weinert. The preserved acts, as summarized in the volume, say nothing further of their judicial fate. This silence leaves the proceeding truncated, notwithstanding the rigor of the examinations and the precision of the physical proofs.
Regarding Maria, the record is more distinct. After she was afforded the opportunity to enter a defense, the Leipzig jurists consulted by the court determined that, should she persist in her confession or her guilt be otherwise established, she might be enclosed in a sack with a dog, a cock, vipers, and a cat, and drowned. Her petition to have this sentence commuted to beheading was denied. She was permitted to see her mother and her children, and a deacon was appointed to minister to her. A register entry dated July 23, 1697, records that she was enclosed in a sack and drowned in the Elbe in conformity with the sentence.
The final entry of the executioner’s bill enumerates his charges: three groschen for the cords and the sackcloth, four groschen and six pfennigs to a woodcarver for fashioning a dog, a cock, a serpent, and a cat. The beasts, the account notes, were no longer cast living into the water; carved effigies were prepared instead. Upon the paper stained by time, the fragments of bone and the lead shot had preceded the executioner’s reckoning. The dossier leaves unresolved the fate of the two troopers; it preserves, on the other hand, the exact trace of the punishment visited upon Maria, and of the wooden figures fashioned to stand for the beasts no longer thrown into the river.