On November 2, 1865, two sisters emerged from their father’s cellar to fetch ice. They had walked but a few streets when Paulino Torio, a sailor from a Spanish vessel anchored in the port of Hamburg, began to shadow them. He had previously sought the hand of nineteen-year-old Emmy Karoline Vogel and suffered repeated rebuffs. That evening, she walked beside Alwine, her junior by two years. They refused his escort; he maintained his pursuit behind them. The first crime of this affair took place upon the third-floor staircase of a seamstress’s lodging, without a single witness to the decisive moment.
The sisters resolved to take refuge at the home of their seamstress, Elise Borum, in order to shake off Torio, who still pursued them. She resided at No. 88 Hütten. Alwine entered first, calling for a light to be brought. Emmy uttered a cry, staggered toward them, and collapsed. Torio had vanished. At first, it was taken for a swoon. The young woman was sprinkled with water and vinegar; a nurse, and subsequently Dr. Ross, were summoned. The physician soon pronounced her dead, without initially discerning the cause. A more rigorous examination on the morrow revealed, beneath the left breast, a narrow wound that traversed the abdomen. The blade had severed several vital organs and two major arteries. The loss of blood had been nearly instantaneous.
The police sought the man the two sisters had seen at their heels. Torio was no stranger to the Vogel household. He had frequented the tavern kept by their father, Johann Karl, whenever his vessel put into port. He had written to Emmy, presented her with gifts, and renewed his suit for her hand. She had rejected him. Under examination, the sailor made no attempt to conceal this first murder. He recounted that her refusals, the mockery he fancied he heard, and the humiliation of his passion had caused his wrath to ripen. He had purchased a dagger on October 21; on the evening of November 2, when he caught sight of the two sisters, he followed them with the premeditated intent to slay Emmy, and perhaps also Alwine and whoever else chanced to be in the tavern. In the stairwell, he struck blindly, by his account, and then fled.
Yet this candor had its limits. The murder of Emmy, which he appeared to claim as an act of vengeance, was succeeded a few hours later by another scene whose import he long endeavored to alter. Having quitted Hamburg, he made for Teufelsbrück, where the Heitmann couple resided. The chapter presents his version first: he had passed time with Jürgen Heitmann, drinking wine and partaking of bread and ham. A remark, which he claimed not to have understood, allegedly gave him offense in the vestibule. Torio drew his knife and struck the man; when Margaretha rushed forward with a cry, he stabbed her in turn.
He then asserted that he had quitted the house, realized he had left his knife behind, and returned. Heitmann was still breathing, propped against the door and lamenting the death of his wife. Torio retrieved the weapon and struck him several times, as he claimed, to shorten his suffering. The judicial record did not accept this explanation as established fact. Later, the sailor shifted his version once more: he spoke of a quarrel arising from a broken glass, of a blow struck by Heitmann, and of a knife the latter had allegedly seized. The prosecution, on the contrary, maintained that this was murder accompanied by robbery. After the blows were dealt, Torio had ransacked the dwelling, forced open a coffer, taken money, and then stripped Jürgen of his watch and chain. He admitted these acts, but denied that they had formed his initial design.
The river had complicated his flight. The tide had risen; unable to reach his own skiff, he cast off another vessel further downstream. An oar remained stuck fast in the mud. He reached Altona, drank coffee there at daybreak, and then allowed himself to drift toward the spot where his own boat had been discovered, before making for Rissen. Upon his arrest, the physical objects and the locations lent weight to portions of his narrative. He recognized the lamp, the pieces of iron employed to force the coffer, and the positions where the bodies had been found. He likewise reconstructed his movements through the house. These identifications confirmed his presence and several of his actions; of themselves, they did not settle the question of the motive behind the double murder.
The two cases were joined because the same man had committed them within a few hours of each other, across territories subject to separate jurisdictions. The defense sought to sever the crime committed at Teufelsbrück from the Hamburg proceedings. Counsel argued that Hamburg could not sit in judgment over an act committed in Holstein, and invoked, moreover, the mental condition of the accused or an extreme paroxysm of passion. The objection was no mere abstraction: it was necessary to determine which tribunal should examine both episodes and possess the authority to pronounce a single sentence.
On January 17, 1867, the lower court delivered its judgment following a public reading of two and a half hours, rendered first in German, and then in Spanish. It dismissed the plea of incompetence. The judges held that the acts were linked, that trying them concurrently would shed light upon the motive of the second crime, and that the courts of Holstein had consented to the Hamburg jurisdiction taking cognizance of the matter. The judgment distinguished the two motives as the court understood them. In the case of Emmy, it retained premeditated vengeance following romantic rejection and the perceived indignity of mockery. In the case of the Heitmanns, it concluded that murder had been committed for the purpose of robbery; even if the intent to rob had not been proven at the delivery of the first blow, Torio had returned into the house with the resolved purpose of laying hands upon their property.
The court declared Torio fully responsible and condemned him to death. It dismissed the argument that a rudimentary upbringing or the foreign origin of the accused could suffice to diminish his criminal responsibility: it observed that he knew homicide to be prohibited by human and divine laws and punishable by death. This reasoning, reflecting the categories and prejudices of its era, must be read as the jurisprudence of the bench, rather than a neutral description of a people or a culture.
The death sentence was not the final judicial act. The defense petitioned for the recusal of the appellate judges and prevailed on April 29. The entirety of the case file was to be transferred to Leipzig, where a faculty of law was tasked with preparing a formal legal opinion on appeal. The documents were dispatched there on May 28, 1867. Torio’s fate thus remained suspended upon a determination that had yet to be delivered.
During his detention, the sailor’s strength ebbed away. The chapter depicts a man initially refractory who subsequently grew docile, refusing to be transferred to the infirmary and begging to remain in the guardhouse. He was given a Spanish primer, which he cherished and kept beneath his pillow; he spoke frequently of his mother, but sought no royal clemency. Behind these details preserved by the compiler, one cannot discern what the prisoner truly thought of the pending appeal or of his condemnation. The record states only that his health declined, that he was ultimately transferred to the hospital on June 26, and that he died the following day, June 27, 1867, of consumption.
Thus the case came to a close without the capital sentence having been executed, and without the Leipzig opinion having decided the appeal. A young woman had perished upon the stairs of the house where she and her sister had sought refuge to rid themselves of Torio; an elderly couple had been slain within their home; the accused had been sentenced, only to be carried off by sickness before the law had exhausted its course. The tribunal had named two crimes and two motives; the prisoner had left behind confessions that illuminated certain actions, alongside shifting accounts that continued to obscure others. Justice had pronounced its sentence. It had not been granted the time to deliver its final word.