On 27 September 1857, following ten days of fruitless searching, the villagers of Engi discovered the body of Elisabeth Baumgarten in a rocky hollow upon the alpine pasture of Laueli, wedged between granite boulders. She had set forth on the morning of the 17th to gather medicinal roots and had failed to return. Her husband, Fridolin Luchsinger, had himself taken part in the search parties. According to the chronicle, nothing suggested that the corpse had been dragged to the spot: the missing woman’s sack, her small weeding mattock, and her neckerchief lay close beside her feet. Death, concealed within a fold of the mountain, was to be recounted before the court through a far narrower inquiry: what had the husband done, and at what precise moment had he resolved to do it?
The account in Der neue Pitaval, published at Leipzig in 1859, places the affair in the Swiss canton of Glarus and dates the crime to 17 September 1857. This retrospective chronicle summarises hearings and pleadings; it is not the official trial transcript. It contrasts a man reputed to be peaceable, who confessed to the killing, with the setting of a marriage from which both parties had been estranged for years.
Fridolin Luchsinger, born in 1822, had married Elisabeth Baumgarten, born in 1816, in the year 1840. The chronicler reports that she was with child before the nuptials and that the young man’s kinsmen had urged him into the match; this detail derives from the narrative itself, without independent verification. The newly wedded pair did not return home together: Elisabeth repaired to her parents’ house. Thereafter, they resided together only at intervals. Four children were born to them, but the two eldest died in infancy; their two younger sons were still living at the time of the inquiry.
The household had assumed the character of an intermittent separation. Elisabeth would depart for her mother’s home for days, weeks, or months at a time. When Fridolin returned from his labour to find neither hearth fire nor wife, he was capable, according to the Pitaval, of keeping silent for weeks on end. The chronicle portrays them as two souls fundamentally incapable of understanding one another, while underscoring their good repute: he, an industrious and mild-tempered workman; she, a frugal housewife and devoted mother, though deemed unyielding in her obstinacy. Yet such portraits established no clear motive.
In the summer of 1856, after two years of complete estrangement, Fridolin demanded that his wife either return to him or consent to a divorce. She promised to come back, but left again six weeks later on the plea of her mother’s illness. On 16 November, the spouses appeared once more before the authorities. He petitioned for a formal separation; she opposed it. In February 1857, the matrimonial court dismissed the petition, ruling that there was no malicious abandonment within the meaning of the law. Elisabeth declared that she had suffered neither threats, nor violence, nor ill-usage. No attempt at reconciliation ensued, according to the record; Fridolin worked as before, and Elisabeth went about digging roots upon the high pastures.
On Thursday, 17 September, at about five o'clock in the morning, she took the path toward Laueli, carrying a small sack on her arm and a mattock across her shoulder. At the footbridge in Engi, she greeted an acquaintance, explained that she was running late, and quickened her pace. This was her last reported appearance alive. Neither she nor her implements were seen again. Her brothers and other relatives searched in vain; Fridolin likewise joined the searchers. For ten days, neither the woman, nor the sack, nor the hoe could be found.
The discovery occurred on Sunday the 27th, between two and three o'clock in the afternoon. The Pitaval describes a hollow concealed by crags, virtually invisible from without. Elisabeth lay upon her back, her head resting near a boulder and turned toward the left; her limbs were drawn up or extended against the rocks. The sack contained gentian roots; the hoe and the kerchief also lay at her feet, seemingly set down in order. The chronicler notes the absence of any signs of dragging and deduces that she had perished upon the very spot. This conclusion cannot be independently verified here.
On the following day, the physicians proceeded with the forensic examination and the autopsy. The report records ecchymoses on the neck, face, and forearm, as well as a contusion upon the lower abdomen. The lungs and certain vessels were engorged with blood; the medical men observed blood and fluid between the meninges. Their conclusion was that asphyxia had been produced by external violence. The marks appeared to them consistent with the pressure of human fingers upon the throat. Their reconstruction of the struggle, with the assailant kneeling astride the victim, remained a deduction drawn from the lesions, not the testimony of an eyewitness.
The inquiry initially pursued two separate lines of investigation. A prospective tenant of a mountain pasture was said to have threatened Elisabeth on account of her digging roots, which damaged the sward; his interrogation, however, afforded no foundation for an indictment. The other suspect was Fridolin: he had been pasturing goats on the very same mountain on the day of her disappearance, and his marriage was notorious for its misery. Yet on the morning following the discovery, he had set out with his flock without viewing the corpse or requesting an investigation. The chronicler notes that he defended himself before he was formally accused, citing his young herd boy as a witness.
This eighteen-year-old youth recounted that he had accompanied Fridolin to Laueli, and that they had parted company around midday. The lad had descended toward Kräuel, whilst the goatherd, by his account, had made for Siwellen. They met again later and returned to Engi toward six in the evening. The boy affirmed that he had seen no third person, least of all Elisabeth. Fridolin, by contrast, placed his own wanderings near the springs known as the Brunnentöpfe and maintained that he had not set eyes upon his wife. This discrepancy did not prove murder, but it compelled the magistrates to reconstruct the hours and routes of that fateful day.
Fridolin was placed under arrest. He initially insisted that he had not seen Elisabeth, although they had been upon the same mountain; he subsequently ceased driving his flock thither and urged the boy to testify to his innocence. On 7 October, he requested to be heard. He confessed to having left his assistant and climbed back toward the rocks. In this first version, Elisabeth had allegedly come upon him and provoked him with a remark regarding his relations with other women. He stated that he had choked her "a little," without intending to kill her, and had then discovered that she no longer answered.
This statement agreed neither with the position of the body nor with the forensic findings. The examiners put it to him that all physical circumstances pointed to an encounter within the rocky cleft and to a victim lying flat upon her back. Fridolin altered certain particulars, whilst persistently maintaining that he had merely wished to punish or frighten her. Interrogations continued on 21 and 29 October, and again on 16 and 19 November. On each occasion, the line he drew between a momentary outburst of violence and a deliberate intent to kill was tested against the terrain, the injuries, and the contradictions in his testimony.
On 20 November, he asked once more to speak. He admitted having seen his wife before stepping between the stones with her. The Pitaval records that they sat down and that the altercation flared up anew. Fridolin acknowledged seizing her by the throat, throwing her down, and pinning her to the ground with his knee. That very evening, he went a step further: he declared that he had resolved to kill her after they met, in the immediate aftermath of their intimacy. He maintained that he had formed no prior design. The chronicle provides neither the verbatim minutes nor the full details of the conditions governing each deposition.
Following her death, he had preserved total secrecy. He acknowledged having accompanied her kin during the searches, while taking care to remain far from the body. He claimed to have contemplated returning by night to wrap the dead woman in a sheet, carry her down near the bridge of Engi, and thus allow for a Christian burial; the searchers had discovered her before he could act. The chronicler records his weeping and invokes an "evil demon" to account for the crime. This psychological interpretation belongs strictly to the author: the recorded tears establish no motive, nor do the confessions render entirely transparent the successive stages of his design.
On 1 December 1857, the criminal court deemed the investigation complete; the final report was laid before the State Commission on the 3rd. On 15 December, Fridolin appeared before the court, accompanied by his brothers and relatives. The prosecution characterized the act as spousal murder with mitigating circumstances, demanding a sentence of twenty-five years in chains. The defense argued for manslaughter without premeditation, pleading the prisoner's prior good character, his confessions, and his remorse. The chronicle does not furnish an exhaustive transcript of the debates, but summarizes the arguments that illuminate the verdict.
After two hours and a half of deliberation, the court found Fridolin guilty of the murder of his wife. It admitted as mitigating circumstances that, according to the evidence placed before the judges, the criminal intent had entered his mind only at the moment of their meeting, that he had previously enjoyed an unblemished reputation, and that the act had been committed in a state of emotional turmoil. He was sentenced to lifelong imprisonment in chains, to be served in the Zurich penitentiary, the canton of Glarus possessing no suitable penal institution. The comparison drawn with a proposed penal code that would have exacted the death penalty belongs solely to the chronicler.
Fridolin waived his right of appeal and was transferred to Zurich. The narrative concludes with the provisions made for his two sons: legal costs were remitted, creditors reduced their claims by a quarter, approximately 250 francs were preserved for the children, and the family dwelling was retained in the event that the father might return after fifteen years, should a pardon prove attainable. A letter from his sister, dated 7 March 1858, conveyed this news to him. The Pitaval thus concludes its chronicle upon a note of communal solidarity that could neither overturn the verdict nor restore Elisabeth to life. The court had ruled solely upon the intent it could establish at the moment violence turned to death.