The Jar Marked “Rat Poison”
On Sunday, December 4, 1853, the goatherd Jakob Kraft returned home after divine service. His wife, Wilhelmine, had set aside his favorite dish: flour dumplings boiled in broth. She served it to him in a separate pot; the remainder of the meal stood in another vessel. Touched by this solicitude, Jakob remarked that he would not have taken schnapps before eating had he known his dinner was ready. A few hours later, he was seized with vomiting, complained of an inward burning, and could retain no sustenance.
His wife assured him that the foul taste proceeded merely from the liquor. When he begged that the dog be let in to lap up what he had discharged, she refused. On the morrow, the symptoms persisted; by Tuesday, Jakob implored her to summon the pastor and the burgomaster. She answered that such matters could wait, and that he would remain a burden to the township quite long enough. He expired on Wednesday, December 7, after three days’ suffering. Wilhelmine had gone out, ostensibly to gather apples to stew for the invalid; she returned only after his death, bearing four fruits in her apron.
Suspicion of poison swiftly gripped the village. On December 8, a neighbor warned Wilhelmine of the rumors circulating that she had administered something to her husband. “My conscience is clear,” she replied. A judicial post-mortem examination was decreed. On December 9, as the authorities placed a guard upon the dwelling, Wilhelmine vanished, leaving her garments behind in the kitchen. She later explained that she had intended to drown herself in the Diemel, but had instead taken shelter beneath fallen leaves in a small garden cellar. The constable discovered her that evening, shivering and famished.
The magistrate reached Helmarshausen upon notifications from the pastor and the burgomaster. Night having fallen, he postponed the inspection of the body and summoned the children alongside several neighbors to reconstruct the three days of the fatal illness. The children recounted how their father had cried out for help, while their mother left him to languish. The shepherd Schöttler, who had called on Wednesday evening, found Jakob powerless even to raise himself. These depositions charted the stages and misery of the sickbed, though the chronology alone could not identify the fatal substance.
Her flight deepened suspicion, yet afforded no proof of the cause of death. A search conducted through the kitchen brought to light a small apothecary’s jar labeled “Rat Poison,” concealed beneath a hollowed gourd-half on the shelf where vessels were kept. A small measure of phosphorus paste was missing from it. The corpse, already showing signs of decay, displayed an inflammation of the stomach and intestines. The chemists, however, detected neither free phosphorus nor arsenic within the viscera. The medical board nonetheless concluded that a corrosive substance had most likely induced the malady, and that phosphorus offered the most plausible explanation, while frankly conceding that their analyses had failed to isolate it.
This qualification was of prime significance. The medical report deemed the missing quantity consistent with the observed symptoms, without elevating such an estimate to the dignity of a chemical certainty. It added that prompt medical attendance might perhaps have averted a fatal issue; yet the household had summoned no physician during those first days. In February, an exhumation was attempted, but putrefaction was too far advanced to yield any fresh chemical proof. The prosecution was thus compelled to establish simultaneously the administration of the poison, the felonious intent, and the putative role of Konrad Zimmermann, a neighbor with whom Wilhelmine maintained an illicit commerce.
Zimmermann, a widower and former soldier turned road-mender, had for a time lodged under the Krafts’ roof. Jakob had long complained of his wife’s neglect and of Zimmermann having usurped his place in the conjugal bed. In 1853, after the authorities forbade the road-mender from returning to the house, the paramours met elsewhere. Wilhelmine was with child; she gave birth while in custody, in January 1854. A few days thereafter, she disclosed to the pastor that Zimmermann was the infant’s father, beseeching him to see that he provided for its care.
Throughout the preliminary inquiry, she had steadfastly denied both adultery and poisoning. On February 3, after her confinement, she requested an interview with the pastor and confessed to having mixed the missing paste into her husband’s dish. The following day, before the magistrate, she confirmed that she had reserved for Jakob a separate portion into which she had stirred the drug. She avowed that the thought of taking his life had occupied her mind for several weeks, and that she had bought the poison to that end. She repeated that resentment toward her husband had played its part, but conceded that her devotion to Zimmermann and the prospect of a shared life weighed far more heavily upon her.
Her accounts regarding Zimmermann underwent a similar shift. At first, she maintained that he had never urged her to slay her husband. Later, she asserted that he had repeatedly advised her to procure poison, telling her that Jakob was well rid of. She even claimed he had bid her obtain some deadly draught from an apothecary. Zimmermann denied everything. He ultimately confessed to a carnal intimacy with Wilhelmine, which he characterized as venal, but protested that he had never promised her marriage nor had any hand in the design. Several women reported previous utterances wherein he had expressed a wish that Jakob might perish; he denounced these as outright falsehoods.
The assizes opened at Kassel on September 27 and 28, 1854. Wilhelmine admitted her guilt from the outset. The jurors unanimously returned a verdict of guilty against her. In Zimmermann’s case, the finding was more subtle: the jury acquitted him of having originated the murderous design, as well as of any direct assistance in administering the poison, yet found that he had encouraged Wilhelmine to carry her purpose into execution. The court sentenced him to ten years’ penal servitude, and Wilhelmine to the scaffold.
This distinction proceeded from separate questions laid before the jury: had he engendered the murderous resolution; had his counsel precipitated the poisoning of December 4; or had he merely fortified a resolve already formed? The jurors answered the first two in the negative and the last in the affirmative. Zimmermann’s defense turned less upon toxicological evidence than upon the timeline of their colloquies and the credibility of Wilhelmine, who had initially concealed his part before leveling direct accusations against him.
On appeal, Zimmermann’s sentence was commuted to five years in March 1855, for want of precise evidence regarding the extent of his influence. Wilhelmine had already recanted her accusations before the court on January 11, declaring she had implicated Zimmermann solely because he intended to wed another woman and she felt forsaken. The following day, speaking to her daughter in the presence of a warder, she cast her retractation in an entirely different light: Zimmermann, she alleged, had promised to care for the children if she took the whole burden of guilt upon herself. The record preserves both assertions, leaving it impossible to assign her shifting testimony to any single motive. Falling ill, Wilhelmine died in the night of April 22–23, 1855, prior to the promulgation of the final decree. Zimmermann obtained a retrial; in May 1856, a fresh jury pronounced his acquittal.
The labeled apothecary’s jar and Wilhelmine’s own confession had satisfied the jurors of her guilt in administering the poison. As for Zimmermann, the original trial had failed to elevate hearsay and reported remarks into juridical proof of instigation. The rehearing of the case culminated in his deliverance. Between these two adjudications, a woman perished in gaol and a man stood under the shadow of a capital charge, though the laboratories had never once succeeded in isolating the fatal drug. The record thus left two conclusions of vastly unequal force: a conviction grounded upon an unreserved admission of the deed, and an acquittal wrought when a second jury re-examined the true measure of a paramour’s complicity.