On November 2, 1807, All Souls’ Day, Anna Eichstädter arrived at the Thomashof, an isolated farmstead in the parish of Ober-Lauterbach. She had come to demand from Francis Salesius Riembauer the money and protection he had repeatedly pledged to her. By nightfall, she had vanished. Six years later, an accusation prompted magistrates to break the earth near an outbuilding of the farm. Feuerbach, who records the examinations and the trial, identifies Riembauer as the perpetrator of the homicide on the strength of his own confession, the depositions of witnesses, and the physical traces uncovered upon the premises.
Riembauer was an ordained priest. He possessed the art of appearing austere and charitable, a reputation that had won him the unreserved confidence of pious rural households. At the Thomashof dwelt the widow Frauenknecht and her two daughters, Magdalena and Catherine. In December 1806, Riembauer purchased their farmstead for four thousand florins. The deed falsely acknowledged that half of this purchase price had already been paid down. Subsequently, the priest presented the family with an accounting of disbursements that purported to discharge the remainder. The widow and her daughters nonetheless continued to reside upon the property, ensnared in a transaction whose formal covenants bore little relation to the truth.
Magdalena became Riembauer’s mistress. Under the pretext of having her taught the culinary arts, he sent her to Munich, where, in June 1807, she was delivered of a son. The expenses of her sojourn—reckoned at five hundred florins in the reckoning tendered by the priest—were deducted from the sum he still owed the family for the estate. Anna Eichstädter, a former mistress of Riembauer, had likewise borne him a child. He had hitherto provided for her necessities, but their connection was unraveling, and Anna addressed letters to him demanding that he make good upon his engagements.
During the summer, while Riembauer was absent in Munich upon administrative affairs, Anna repaired to the Thomashof. She ransacked his bedchamber in search of money, departing without having obtained what she claimed as her due. She then sent him urgent, pressing letters. Riembauer met her in Ratisbon and gave her a sum of money. According to his subsequent depositions, she demanded further aid and insisted that he sever all ties with Magdalena. He left her. She, on her part, stood in desperate need of resources to sustain herself and rear their child.
On November 1, Anna entered the service of a new employer. She left behind as security a silver necklace and other valuables, and borrowed a green cotton umbrella bearing the initials J. O., intending to visit relatives. She never returned. Her absence was remarked, yet none could fathom whither she had gone. Her new master, a curate whose village the records designate only by its initial, suspected she had joined Riembauer. He wrote to him, suggesting that if Anna could not assume her duties, she might at least restore the umbrella. The addressee replied that he had seen neither the woman nor the object. This denial, a seemingly modest exchange between two ecclesiastics, was to assume an entirely different weight once Catherine broke her silence. The girl had caught sight of the umbrella at the Thomashof, and Riembauer would ultimately admit to having kept it. Meanwhile, Anna’s kin sought her in vain, both in Ratisbon and in her native town. Men spoke of a drowning, or an encounter with highwaymen; none of these conjectures brought her back.
On the morrow, Anna reappeared at the Thomashof. It was there, according to the record, that she met her final day. For years, Catherine Frauenknecht preserved absolute silence regarding what she had witnessed. She at length declared that her sister Magdalena had confided to her how the priest had taken a razor and severed Anna’s throat. Catherine further supplied circumstantial details concerning the conveyance of the body, its burial within a recess beneath the floorboards of a small outhouse, and the efforts undertaken to scour away the blood. She had seen a bloodstained shoe and the green umbrella. Catherine’s disclosures were initially confined to the circle of confessors and spiritual directors whom she consulted, certain of whom counselled her to keep the matter concealed.
In 1813, she finally laid her accusations before the secular authorities. Anna’s disappearance ceased to be merely an uneasy absence; it became an inquiry into murder. The magistrates examined those connected with the Thomashof, inspected the buildings, and excavated the ground at the designated spot. Near the surface, they laid bare the skeleton of a woman alongside a single shoe. The cranium retained two rows of white, even teeth. The dentition, the personal effects, and the attendant circumstances all pointed directly to Anna Eichstädter. Within the room, investigators observed stains of blood and freshly planed floorboards. A local carpenter named Michael recalled having lent his hand-plane to the household at that very juncture.
Riembauer was placed under arrest. At first, he made no admissions whatever. He endeavored to cast the guilt upon Magdalena and her mother, alleging that they had murdered Anna and that he had done no more than conceal the crime. This narrative conflicted with Catherine’s testimony and with the material evidence. The interrogations multiplied; Feuerbach chronicles more than a hundred of them, the dossier swelling to forty-two volumes. The priest perpetually devised fresh explanations, retracted previous statements, attempted to suborn witnesses, and deployed casuistical subtleties to justify that which he refused to confess.
The inquiry extended likewise to the deaths of Magdalena and her mother, both of whom had succumbed in June 1809 to a virulent fever then prevalent in the district. Catherine suspected Riembauer of having administered poison to them. The authorities directed their bodies to be exhumed, yet detected no trace of noxious substances. Feuerbach notes the accusation without deeming it established, taking care not to confound it with the homicide of Anna, which Riembauer was presently to acknowledge.
On November 2, 1815, eight years to the day after the disappearance, the skull unearthed at the Thomashof was set before the prisoner. He persisted in his denials. Two further years elapsed. In November 1817, he watched a condemned man named Lammfromm, who had confessed to a murder, being led to the scaffold. The tranquil composure of this man astonished him; it was explained to him that the convict had enjoyed such peace ever since unburdening his conscience. Riembauer declared himself deeply shaken by the spectacle. He began to speak anew, offering first an artfully arranged tale, and at length admitting, across the course of thirteen interrogations, that he had slain Anna with his own hands.
He explained that he had dreaded lest she expose their liaison and destroy his reputation, as well as his prospects of advancement within the Church. He maintained that he had acted throughout in pursuit of a supposed “pious intention,” invoking the theological dissertations of Benedict Stattler concerning secrecy and the preservation of honor. These arguments, cited by Feuerbach, illuminate the manner in which Riembauer sought to clothe his self-interest in doctrinal pretexts; they alter neither the reality of his admission nor the material certainty of the corpse’s concealment.
The proceedings concluded on August 1, 1818. Riembauer was adjudged guilty, yet sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in a fortress rather than to the scaffold. Five years of judicial investigation had intervened between the initial excavations and this final decree. The court assigned two grounds for remitting the capital penalty: the skeleton exhibited no mechanical lesions that could, of themselves, establish the manner of death; nor had the priest been shown to possess a notoriously criminal character prior to the act. Feuerbach vehemently contested these reasons, holding the depositions, corroborated by the confessions, to be fully adequate for a sentence of death. The controversy henceforth turned solely upon the measure of punishment. In the archives of the case, the umbrella had traced a simpler journey: lent to Anna, reclaimed by its owner, denied by Riembauer, and finally identified among the chattels he had appropriated. His letter of denial remained behind him. A fortress awaited him.