The key hung on the other side of the door. In a prison, such a detail ought to have reassured everyone. Mathias Weber saw in it the beginning of his freedom.
The prisoner known as Fetzer had already attempted to pierce an exit; discovered, he had been lodged higher up in the tower of Cologne. He tore away a plank, forced a first door, and crept down to the next. There, a hole cut out for the passage of cats allowed him to peer into the corridor. The turnkeys had stepped away. Using a scrap of wood, he knocked down the key, drew it painstakingly toward himself, and tried it in the lock. It turned. The tower, reputed impregnable, had just lost its captive through an aperture intended for a domestic beast.
Johann Nikolaus Becker relates this escape in his judicial history of 1804. The narrator was well acquainted with the tribunals and the men he described; he also harboured, in the face of Fetzer’s dexterity, an admiration his volume scarcely conceals. It renders the brigand at times rather more alluring than his victims might have wished. For this slight, gaunt fellow, ingenious enough to weary any locksmith, was by no means a harmless jester making sport of his warders.
Born in 1778 in the vicinity of Krefeld, Weber had known military service, pillage, and the highways encumbered by war. One of his earliest exploits recorded by Becker was the ambush of a mail coach near Arnhem. Soldiers cut loose a portmanteau and found gold within. Money squandered too rapidly, finer attire, and a life turned suddenly easy soon drew the eye of a superior officer. A few ducats proved sufficient, according to the narrative, to quell his curiosity. Thus this first inquiry came to an end at the very juncture when it promised to bear fruit.
Having returned to Krefeld, Fetzer frequented houses where vagabonds, thieves, and wares of unquestioned provenance were taken in without scrutiny. There he met men already seasoned in housebreaking. Their partnerships shifted, as did their hideouts; the names of towns later served to christen bands that wandering roads united and dispersed. In Cologne, Düsseldorf, or Neuss, thievery had its recruiters, its lodgings, and its receivers. The plunder had to move as securely as those who had seized it.
One night, the premises of a widow in the Schildergasse were marked out. The men assembled at midnight upon the market square. Lookouts were posted; one of the thieves slipped in through a cellar aperture and handed the goods out to his confederates. Laden with bales, they reached a breach in the ramparts near Saint Gereon. Towards three in the morning, at a secluded farmstead, they hired a cart to continue their carriage. The division of the spoils took place at Nettesheim, beneath the eyes of their host. Behind the burglary, an entire small confederacy thus pursued its trade until the dawn.
At Liblar, their stratagem nearly miscarried for a reason bordering upon the comic. An accomplice had taken a room in the targeted inn; he was to open the doors to the others during the night. The landlord, however, had bolted his chamber from the outside. The gang stood waiting for a man who was himself a captive. The master of the house, aroused by the noise, came to the door to drive off the prowlers. He offered them the very opportunity they had lost: they threw themselves upon him, bound him fast, delivered their comrade, and ransacked the house.
Elsewhere, resistance drew blood. In a dwelling near Neuss, an inhabitant came forth armed with an axe. Overtüsch fired upon him; the other inmates were bound and the valuables carried off. Fetzer took part in these forays. In his recollections he might separate the marksman, the lookout, or the scout who had marked the quarry; yet for those awakened by the sudden irruption of several ruffians, such distinctions softened nothing. The band brought with it a latent violence ever at hand, even when each man hoped to depart without having employed it.
Then, at last, came the nameless body.
A wheel sank into the soft earth and laid bare a human foot. The corpse of a young woman was disinterred, felled by a blow to the head delivered with some blunt instrument. Her identity remained at first unknown. Years later, the public prosecutor Keil obtained a clue from Adolph Weyers; the trail led to Gertrude Stucks, Fetzer’s companion, and to a barn where several persons had lodged.
The farmer’s wife had heard a disturbance, then shrieks. She had been threatened with death should she speak. The body, dragged behind a hedge, had subsequently been buried under cover of darkness. Put to the question, Fetzer admitted having struck Gertrude. He attributed his fury to an altercation concerning their child and denied any intent to kill. This explanation came from his lips alone; it could not restore a voice to the dead woman. The man who was fond of boasting of his paternal affections had left the mother of his child beneath the loam of a field.
His final capture arose, however, from a far less consequential matter. Pistols originating from a theft were identified in the possession of a band to which he belonged. Weber had not taken part in that particular robbery and placed too much reliance upon this narrow innocence. Following a transfer to Bergen, Keil and his clerk Diepenbach inspected the prisoners. They recognised a description, caused certain bodily marks to be verified, and restored to the captive his true name. Justice had laid its hand on Fetzer while pursuing another rogue altogether.
He still endeavoured to evade removal, fabricated a crime to remain under another jurisdiction, and plotted fresh escapes. At Mainz, and subsequently at Cologne, his dexterity demanded ceaseless vigilance. Keil nevertheless won his confidence. The prisoner recounted his thefts; whenever a memory returned to him in the night, he notched the wall so as not to let it slip. These confessions laid open to the magistrates safe houses and confederacies that borders had long shielded. Another curiosity possessed him: having never seen a guillotine, he requested a drawing of one, and proceeded to cover the walls of his cell with its likeness.
On the 17th of February, 1803, the courtroom was packed to lay eyes upon him. He answered with an assurance that astonished Becker, correcting the tallies whenever an interrogator underestimated the value of his hauls. Sentence of death was pronounced that evening. Two days later, Cologne conducted him to the scaffold. Up to the moment of his departure, he continued to furnish intelligence, yet refused to confirm any participation of which he was not entirely certain.
Along the way, he insisted upon looking at the crowd. Brought beside the engine, his attention returned to the mechanism that had so occupied his thoughts in prison. He who had learned to outwit so many fastenings asked to examine the blade. This time, no key had been forgotten upon the wall; no turnkey had stepped down to his dinner. The machine did its work.