At two o’clock in the morning, the servants came down from the garret directly above the master bedroom. Christine Meder had cried out for help. Johann lay in his bed, struck violently upon the head; she herself stood near the door, her hands and feet bound. The chamber was soaked in blood. In her first account, she maintained that two strangers had forced their way into the house. Yet no one in the dwelling, nor in the neighbouring houses, had heard the nocturnal visitors she claimed to have received.
The house in Ehrenbreitstein had its peculiarities of layout. The household occupied the first floor; a passage ran through the rear building and opened onto the narrow alley of the Trottögäßchen. Johann’s writing desk, found open in the parlour, had been ransacked. His watch was gone, as was a sum of money initially estimated at two hundred and fifty thalers. Christine later claimed two hundred and sixty. Upon the floor, investigators noted the prints of bloody bare feet. The axe found near the bed, a kitchen implement, was covered with blood and hair.
The widow recounted that before retiring, her husband had welcomed two late travellers and lodged them in the guest room. She claimed to have been awakened by the sound of a heavy blow. One of the men had gagged her and bound her limbs, she said, while the other fell upon Johann. After questioning her about the household funds, the intruders had taken the watch and the contents of the desk, fleeing through the passage door. She affirmed that a long swoon had prevented her from raising the alarm sooner.
The inquiry did not dismantle this tale in a single day, but tested it detail by detail. A tax official, on night patrol near the house, had seen no one enter. The cords used to bind Christine came from the house itself, as did the axe. The bindings had been tied without leaving any noticeable marks on her skin. Nothing explained why the parlour lamp had gone unnoticed by passers-by, nor why so many gold and silver trinkets remained untouched in the desk. The investigators observed that Christine might easily have freed herself; moreover, she had made no attempt to give the alarm by knocking upon the wall or pulling the bell-cord hung above her bed.
A fresh trail emerged on the very next day. Two residents of Koblenz informed the police of Christine’s intimacy with Joseph Keller, a private tutor in that city. The earliest inquiries were not enough to warrant an arrest: kin, physician, and neighbours reported no grave discord between the spouses, and Johann’s relatives spent several days scouring the Nassau countryside in search of the two strangers Christine had described, finding no trace of them. The widow was at first spared suspicion; her pregnancy and frail health even led the authorities to postpone her detention. A search of Keller’s lodgings yielded no stolen goods, yet his memorandum book contained entries suggesting substantial loans from the widow. She admitted having lent him money; he initially denied it. He had some twenty thalers in his pocket and had been spending freely since the beginning of Lent. To account for this money, he attempted to secure false attestations of private loans. On 29 February, the police arrested him at the railway station just as he was about to depart along the Rhine.
Christine, being with child, was at first cared for at her brother-in-law’s home; she was not formally placed under arrest until 20 April. For several weeks, she denied both the adultery and any foreknowledge of the crime. Keller, likewise, disclaimed all complicity. Interrogations and subsequent confrontations slowly shifted their testimony. During a confrontation on 27 April, Keller acknowledged their liaison and the borrowed funds; as they parted, he placed a finger to his lips and drew his hand across his throat—a gesture the compiler interprets as a silent injunction to hold her peace. The following day, having been confronted with several witnesses, Christine asked to speak with the magistrate and named Keller as the man she had seen strike down her husband. The next day, Keller confessed to the killing of Johann, while maintaining that Christine had urged him on and that he retained no recollection of the blows themselves. On 30 April, she admitted that they had concerted the murder together, though she persistently denied that the scheme had originated with her.
This mutual recrimination was not new. The retrospective account in the Pitaval relates that throughout the winter, the two lovers had debated various means of ridding themselves of Johann. The depositions mention experiments or projects involving poison, noxious gas, chloroform, and later a pretended assignation at Andernach where the husband might be struck down and cast into the Rhine. Concerning the authorship of each plan, their versions flatly contradicted one another. What emerged with greater clarity was the gradual contrivance of a staged scene: to make the murder appear the work of thieving strangers.
On the night of 24 February, the family had supped together; the servants went to bed around ten o’clock. Johann played a game of dominoes with a frequent guest before the latter took his leave. According to the Pitaval narrative, Christine then left the passage door unlatched so that it might be opened from without, setting a lamp and tinder-box in the corridor. Keller entered toward one o’clock, barefoot, clad in a borrowed cloak and wearing false whiskers; he seized the axe. These preparations are recorded in versions that diverge in some particulars, but the scene they illuminate bore no resemblance to two weary travellers seeking lodging for the night.
Keller maintained that he had awakened at home with no memory of the violence. Yet blood was found upon his socks, his cap, and his cloak; the garment he had cast into the privy of the school where he taught. After his condemnation, he disclosed where he had concealed the watch and the money. The watch was recovered from the privy of an inn; the thalers, buried in a vineyard, had already been turned up by day-labourers. This revelation grievously undermined his assertion that he could recall nothing of what followed the deed.
The trial opened before the Assizes of Neuwied on 5 September 1860 and concluded on the 15th. Keller admitted having killed Johann, but denied premeditation. Christine pleaded not guilty. The defence pleaded that her ailments and convulsive seizures might have impaired her volition; the physicians, however, refused to declare her irresponsible. There remained a narrower question, which the physical evidence could not resolve: had Keller alone struck the eleven blows, or had Christine joined in the butchery? The prosecution observed that certain wounds seemed to have been dealt from different positions around the bed. Keller hinted that a second hand might have wielded the weapon, only to retract his words. Christine denied having ever touched the axe.
The jury adopted the bill of indictment: Christine was guilty of having instigated the murder and aided in its execution; Keller was convicted of having slain Johann with premeditation. On 15 September, the court sentenced both to death. After receiving his judgment, Keller described where he had discarded the lamp, the watch, and the purse; the lamp, he said, had been cast into the Rhine. In a subsequent petition for clemency, he went so far as to accuse Christine of having struck blows herself. The Pitaval treats this belated accusation as an untruth.
The jury recommended mercy. On 18 October 1861, a royal rescript commuted both capital sentences to life imprisonment at hard labour. Christine’s physical share in the eleven blows was never determined by the verdict.
This account follows the retrospective chapter published in Volume XXXII of the Neue Pitaval in 1862; it does not rest upon a direct inspection of the original trial minutes.