Before the trial, Bacheran felt excited like a soccer fan on the eve of the final cup. It was scheduled for January 15, 1951, a Monday. He woke up at 5:30, much earlier than the official time for breakfast with his mother and aunt. Next to his bed was the binder with the old and already slightly yellowed newspaper clippings from December 1949 to January 1950. He had read them carefully once more before he went to sleep. There were few new ones. Der Abend had recapped the case the week before in a long article. The headline – partly in large capital letters – was a real eye catcher: Written on the victims’ pack of cigarettes was Beautiful woman at Zoo… Below, on the right hand side of the page was a particularly good keystone photo of Elisabeth Kusian. A truly beautiful woman. The article spoke of One of the most horrifying cases of robbery and homicide in Berlin since the war and pulled all the stops in the last two sections to make it sound really exciting: What is Elisabeth Kusian hiding? “If I’m condemned, you will be the only person I will tell the truth to!” she admitted to one of the investigating doctors. – “A deviant, a psychopath with disharmonic character traits. No genetic defect, no mental retardation. She is perfectly competent to stand trial,” according to the Medical Examiner. Kusian’s attorneys, two of Berlin’s mostfamous defenders, Dr. Weimann and Dr. Nicolai are not talking. Let us wait. The Telegraf of January 14, 1951, the day before, Sunday, had given the Kusian case 500 words in its Berlin section and mainly covered the psychological aspect of the two murders: Few trials have attracted as much attention as the one against Elisabeth Kusian, who killed twice. She will stand before the Moabit court tomorrow morning. The sensational aspect of this trial is not so much in the seriousness of the crime itself as in the psychological background and the personality of the defendant. – ‘All or nothing.’ seems to have been her motto. “If you want to reach your goals you have to use all the means at your disposal.” says her diary entry of June 20, 1949. (…) A warmhearted, model nurse, a sacrificing mother, a tender lover, on the one hand. A weak, sex driven woman, a devious and brutal murderer on the other. Two souls in one body. Will the trial lift the mystery?
It was time to wash. There was a strict order as to who got to use the bathroom from such and such a time to such and such a time. He was first although he left home last most of the time. At the breakfast table too, Kusian was topic number one.
His aunt felt a degree of understanding for the murderer. “So many people have been killed since 33… What’s a person’s life worth, she must have thought. And life had betrayed her in every way. It’s no wonder that she wanted to take what she thought she deserved.”
“Erna!” Bacheran’s mother was deeply shocked. “Nothing can excuse such deeds and I’m just sorry they did away with the death penalty. Imagine if we had had something to do with her…”
Bacheran left the house a little after 8:30. The sun had just risen. There had been a light frost during the night but now, it was probably two or three degrees above freezing. The landscape was so grey that the red tail lights of the cars were the only touches of color anywhere. He felt frozen to the bone and longed to be on some atoll in the South Seas. Jack London was one of his favorite authors. He ran down the steps of the U-Bahn. It was not particularly brighter there either apart from the few dim lights hanging from the ceiling, but at least it was comparatively warmer. It wasn’t so easy to get from Neukölln to Moabit. He thought for a while and then decided to go to Stettiner Station first and from there to walk to Sandkrug bridge and take the 44.
Helga was already standing on Turnstrasse in front of Moabit Criminal court waiting for him. He crept up silently behind her and whispered in her ear: “My name is Hermann Seidelmann from Plauen. How much is it with you today?”
“Very funny!” She was a little annoyed but still she gave him a kiss. He couldn’t leave it alone though. “From the back, not the front.”
“Stop that!”
Bacheran played dumb. “What’s wrong? Don’t you see the long line here? We don’t need to join it since we have reserved seats in a sense and we can go in through the back, on Wilsnacker strasse.”
It still took a good fifteen minutes before they could take their seats in Room 230. They were in the second row on the right.
Although the clock showed just 9:27, the big Criminal Court room was already bursting at the seams. And outside on the landing hundreds more who had been unable to get an entrance pass, stood, prepared to wait, every one of them gripped by one question: “Did she do it or are we in for a big surprise?”
Bacheran and Helga weren’t a minute too early since they had barely settled in when Elisabeth Kusian was led in. She was not wearing a nurse’s uniform but an old dark blue suit and a white blouse and she looked very well groomed. She seemed slimmer, almost skinny and was artfully coiffed. Her face however was pale and waxy, only the tip of her nose looked red. She was constantly kneading her rough and remarkably powerful hands as if carefully washing them and disinfecting them before an operation. Flashbulbs fired at her. It went on for ten minutes. “Like Gina Lollobrigida,” Bernhard said. Although Elisabeth Kusian did not look particularly beautiful and somehow was not fascinatingly ugly either: she just looked plain. Soon she fell into a sort of trance and sat strangely perched on the defendant’s bench, leaning forward away from the back. “She looks like she’s sitting on the john,” Helga whispered. The background noise reminded Bacheran of a school auditorium just before a big event. Everyone was excited, and also filled with happy anticipation. Many of the people sitting in the back took out their opera glasses. Journalists came in; they were greeted by the defense attorneys. Behind Bernhard someone was saying that Dr. Arno Weimann, a younger brother of the Medical Examiner, had often represented members of outlawed political groups.
The high court judges entered the room, and everyone rose. The trial began at exactly 9:30 AM. The county court director, Dr. Korsch, led the proceedings. Six jurors were sitting by his side. While Dr. Korsch was swearing in the jurors in a booming voice, the prosecuting attorneys, District Attorney Dr. Marion Countess Yorck zu Wartenburg and District Attorney Schulz, took their seats. The countess with the big name stood out because of her medieval page boy hair cut. Bacheran tried to remember: Ludwig, Count Yorck zu Wartenburg was a Prussian Field Marshal and, on December 30th 1812, in Tauroggen, he had concluded, basically on his own, a neutrality pact with the Russians thereby provoking the downfall of Napoleon. Count Peter Yorck zu Wartenburg was a co-founder of the Kreisauer circle and had been hanged as a resistance fighter against the Nazis. “To be judged by such a woman is a real bonus,” Bacheran said in typical Berlin humor. “I’d like that one myself.” State Attorney Kuntze took his seat at a desk of his own and allowed himself the hint of a smile as if he anticipated the bombshell that was about to explode…
The presiding judge asked Elisabeth Kusian to approach the judges’ desk. She walked slowly, feeling her way, swaying from side to side and she seemed to be a little lost because of the many microphones. She had never been in such a situation. Her voice failed her as she gave her name. Afterwards she spoke in a low voice with an accent from Thuringia. “I have had to fight all my life. I didn’t have enough money. I was mostly the one who had to bear the brunt of a dysfunctional marriage. I was in love with another man…”
Me…Me… Me…, Bacheran thought.
Kusian waxed more and more eloquent, but when Dr. Korsch asked his first question about the two murders, she became a totally different person and refused to go on.
“I refuse to answer,” she declared in a firm voice. “I don’t have anything to say, I will say nothing…”
At that point Arno Weimann got up – and the bombshell exploded: “In this case the defense will do a very rare thing: we intend to plead against the former statements made by our client. We first thought that the murders could be attributed to Mrs. Kusian’s morphine habit. But in the meantime we have established that although she did use Morphine and Pervitin, she was not addicted to them. We now request that the court investigate this state of affairs. We submit that Mrs. Kusian did not commit these murders, that she could not have committed them!”
Unbelievable! But it was to be expected. There had always been talk of the mysterious other person. A few people in the room laughed at this. Everyone whispered excitedly: was it possible that the defense knew so much more than the District Attorney and the investigators from Homicide? The judges and jurors looked around reprovingly. “I knew it,” Helga whispered. “Now they will try their best to make us look bad, to attack all the work we did, everything we established in the Democratic sector.”
“Come now…This is more likely an attempt to take advantage of the mood in the city which is very much pro-Kusian. Things that should not happen cannot happen. Put differently, certain types of professionals cannot be murderers or else our entire value system breaks apart: doctors, pastors, mothers, nurses, pediatric nurses…”
Dr. Nicolai, the other defense attorney now stood to speak. “At the time of the crime against Mr. Seidelmann, Mrs. Kusian was marked down as ill. Her left hand was wounded, one of her fingers was in a splint. Would she really have been capable of throttling such a strong man as Mr. Seidelmann, in such circumstances? No!”
A clever chess move, Bacheran coolly acknowledged. But Dr. Korsch was not easily pushed into a corner. He exchanged a few more words with the defense attorneys and then signaled to the court clerk to approach; he asked him to phone the doctor who had handled Elisabeth Kusian that day and have him appear in court: the Robert-Koch Hospital was just across the street from the court house.
While they waited Elisabeth Kusian was asked to talk about her life. She spoke in a throaty voice and gave a factual account. Bacheran didn’t learn anything new. Apart from the fact that Walter Kusian, her ex-husband, had worn the ‘Golden insignia’ of the Nazi Party.
After the doctor arrived and gave his statement to the court, the defense was forced to accept its first defeat. The hospital register which the doctor had brought with him clearly showed that, on December 3rd, the day of the first murder, Nurse Kusian had only superficial wounds on her index and middle finger.
“And…?” asked Dr. Korsch. “Did she… could she have carried out the murder?”
The answer was clear and straightforward: “If the defendant was capable of such an act, then she could also do it with her bandaged hand.”
The presiding judge then heard the relatives, friends and acquaintances of both murder victims, and also the female co-workers and friends of the defendant.
First the Seidelmann family testified. They gave a thorough description of all the things Bacheran and Helga had long known. “My brother in law would not consort with such a ‘woman’,” said one of the women. Even Hannes Seidelmann was absolutely convinced that his brother Hermann would never have had an extramarital relationship. His widow shuddered when Dr. Weimann handed her a glass of water – the same glass that Kusian had touched before: “No, I will not drink from that glass.”
Herta, Vera and Christa, the Moabit nurses, all stated unanimously that the defendant had been selfless, totally dedicated and kind to her patients.
The excitement started growing only when Annemarie Gruschwitz, Kusian’s friend, was called to the stand.
Dr. Korsch looked at her. “You lent the defendant the suitcase she used to dispose of the body parts. When Mrs. Kusian returned it did you notice any traces of blood?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you asked Mrs. Kusian about them?”
“I did.”
“And what did she say?”
“That she had carried rabbits in it.”
The president acted somewhat surprised and Bacheran had the impression that he didn’t entirely trust Kusian’s friend. He didn’t use the word ‘accomplice’ but seemed to imply it. “Tell me, Mrs. Gruschwitz, you were not at all suspicious, even when Mrs. Kusian brought you Mr. Seidelmann’s overcoat – with blood on it…?”
“No, I wasn’t. Lisbeth said she had had a nose bleed.”
Bacheran also found this display of naiveté a little surprising: after all, at the time, there had been at least some news of the severed corpse in the rubble. On the other hand: would he personally have been alerted if a good friend had brought him a bloodied coat to exchange or sell? Probably not.
Still, he could hardly believe it when Annemarie Gruschwitz said she had gone to Zoo station with Kusian. “I sold the coat for 30 D. marks to a foreigner and Lisbeth sold a pair of shoes to a man selling chocolate in a stall for 8 marks.”
“And – she didn’t tell you where the stuff came from…?”
“She did: from a grateful patient.”
“And on the third day of Christmas, did Mrs. Kusian give you a hat and a scarf?” These things belonged to Dorothea Merten. “Yes, she did. But how could I have guessed that the… ‘Poor me,’ she said to me, ‘I don’t have anybody to spend Christmas with. Here, take this.’”
Dr. Korsch turned to the defendant. “What do you have to say to this, Mrs. Kusian?”
“I refuse to make a statement.” That was all she said.