Early morning fog enveloped the city on January 17, 1951, the thermometer showed 0 degrees Celsius. On this the third day of the proceedings, Bacheran once again leafed through the papers as he sat on the train: he was very curious to see what the court reporters had to say. My Husband was the Murderer – Shocking turn of events in the Kusian trial, The Tagesspiegel announced. The Telegraf as well: Mrs. Kusian accuses her husband – Surprise in the double murder trial. Both papers reported that Walter Kusian had been immediately arrested in the district court room, which surely was not correct. What he found most convincing was the Tagesspiegel’s commentary which, among other things, said: The defendant should be considered a pathological liar – as both the police investigation and the course of the trial demonstrate. During her testimony she displayed a deft instinct for the imponderables of the trial responding with such speed and so cleverly that one could only react with astonishment again and again. She is not a woman who lies occasionally, she is a fantasist who constructs a new reality that she bolsters with such logic and such precision that it appears true at first. One can rightfully wonder whether Kusian still knows that she is lying or whether she has come to consider her lies as the truth.
He had once again met Helga at the Ostkreuz station and taken her in his arms: this time she had brought the Berliner Zeitung. The Kusian trial did not make the headlines in that paper. What did was a letter that Otto Grotewohl, Minister President of the GDR had written to Conrad Adenauer, and that the Chancellor had not received very warmly. The headline read: Let’s do things right: the Germans at one table!
Bacheran repeated out loud: “The Germans at one table! Well, since your leaders want you to do that, put it in practice immediately. My love, now, now it’s time we sat at one table!”
“Yes, dear, the only question is where the table will be.”
Once again they were caught in a dead end.
Bacheran read her what the citizens of Berlin had told the paper: “‘I am profoundly disappointed by the flat refusal Dr. Adenauer has opposed to Minister President Grotewohl,’ declared the well known doctor and freedom fighter from Neukölln, Dr. Pavloff…” Bernhard paused. “He must be the one with the dogs… Ah, look here, the Magistrate’s colleagues at the New City Hall: ‘Adenauer’s answer can only be described as a blow against all nation loving Germans. Adenauer acted solely in the interests of his imperialistic masters.’” As far as that was concerned Bacheran could only agree with the East Berliners. To his mind, Conrad Adenauer was as much of a divider of the German people as Walter Ulbricht. A sad topic. To get away from it he perused the article in the next column, on the Kusian trial and, to his surprise, the name Grotewohl came up again: Western radio stations and the Western media have for days on end been busy spreading a full blown Kusian mania amongst the public they serve. Naturally they put on this show for the benefit of their dear fellow West Germans and West Berliners not just to expose the wicked specimen of humanity she represents: all this noise is intended to drown out any echo from the letter sent by Minister President Grotewohl to Bonn and his recommendations for reestablishing German unity, and limit the reactions to it throughout the country. The end justifies the means, in tried and true fashion, and no murder is too foul for the hidden impresarios to use for their purposes. (…) In short, there is nothing in the Kusian trial itself that can explain how a deadly serious criminal trial has been transformed into an American style thriller.
Bacheran thought a while and turned to Helga. “There is a kernel of truth in this and I’m not saying that just to please you.”
The third day of the trial in Moabit started with a little celebration: District Court Judge Korsch was celebrating his 70th birthday on that day.
“I hope he hasn’t overextended himself with the Kusian case,” Bernhard whispered. “Maybe it’s too much for a pensioner…”
When State Attorney Kuntze spoke it was almost as if he had heard these remarks and wanted to disprove them. He gave a long explanation: “I had the witness Walter Kusian arrested yesterday because of the defendant’s statements. Whether she is to be believed or not we cannot know for sure yet. It is my duty to examine every possibility in detail and objectively. On the one hand the defendant has acknowledged that she has lied throughout her life. On the other hand, what the defendant stated cannot be rejected out of hand. Therefore I authorized the arrest of Walter Kusian so that he would not have the opportunity to destroy any potential evidence. I now urgently ask the press and the radio to broadcast the following appeal: To the taxi driver who, on December 26, 1949, came to the house at 154a Kantstrasse and picked up a male customer carrying a heavy bag, please contact the police. The same appeal goes to the couple who allegedly saw a man and a woman loading heavy bags into a car on the night of December 26! I also move to subpoena Mrs. Maria Schütz to appear in court: she allegedly saw a man and a woman going down the steps carrying heavy bags.”
Bacheran could see why Kuntze insisted on these points. If there really were credible witnesses who saw both Kusians together then that meant two things: Walter Kusian was the murderer and his ex wife could only be indicted as an accessory to murder. Mm… The State Attorney turns out to be the defendant’s best defender. That was rather comical.
Dr. Korsch seemed at a loss as to how to proceed. He stated that the Prosecutor’s summons normally called for the adjournment of proceedings since neither the taxi driver nor the couple could be expected to be found in less than two days time.
Bacheran heard a loud sigh: Helga said, “All this should have been taken care of by the investigating officers in the Western sector.”
“True, that’s a professional error.” He couldn’t help but agree. But then he went back on what he just said. “How could they have suspected that Kusian would retract her confession and implicate her husband?”
In the end, the court decided to deal with several trial exhibits and to hear the witnesses that were available.
The first to be called was the widow Stöhr. At first the landlady form Kantstrasse didn’t say anything new about Elisabeth Kusian but everyone listened up when she mentioned that on December 26 her tenant had entertained another guest apart from Mrs. Merten. “A big dark woman…”
Up until then Kusian had been sitting in the defendant’s dock in an attitude of submission, looking down, but she suddenly jumped up and spoke in a bold and shrewish voice: “I don’t know any big dark woman. There was no woman at my place.”
This time, Dr. Korsch was paying attention: “Why then did you tell your friend Mr. Muschan about a woman?”
“I said many things to him that were not true.”
“You may sit down.” The judge turned back to the landlady. “Mrs. Stöhr, could you please go on telling the court what went on December 26?”
“Yes… At noon, a blond haired woman came with a typewriter. I didn’t see her myself but my mother told me about her. Later I saw the big dark lady in the apartment.”
Dr. Nikolai, the defense attorney, broke in. “Was there any light in the entrance hall? Is it possible that you only saw a shadow – and that in reality the person was Mr. Kusian?”
At this, Walter Kusian, sitting in the lower defendant’s dock, looked up in alarm.
“No, it wasn’t him. I know him.”
“I saw Mr. Kusian,” Mrs. Stöhr continued, “only at a quarter to seven: he was standing at the entrance and speaking with Mrs. Kusian. At a quarter to eleven, 10:45, exactly, Mrs. Kusian asked me to come into her room and admire the Christmas feast she had laid out for Mr. Muschan. On the table there was also the typewriter. And next to it a note with a few typewritten words: ‘I hereby swear my never ending love! Elisabeth.’”
“And did you notice anything else that you could …?”
“Yes, I did. Mrs. Kusian borrowed three glasses from me a little earlier, around 10PM.”
The judge looked a little impatient. “Mrs. Kusian, who was the third person you borrowed the glass for?”
The answer came right back: “My husband.”
Walter Kusian jumped up. “That’s not true. The only thing I can think is that my wife has lost her mind. I am innocent. If I had committed a crime I wouldn’t be so stupid as to keep the victim’s clothes in my room!”
Dr. Korsch now turned his attention to Walter Kusian. “Where were you on the evening of December 26?”
“I was at my place on Sternstrasse.”
The family of his landlords were then called to confirm his alibi, but all they could only say was: “Sorry, we have no idea.” They did not know where he was on New Year’s Eve either. “Around midnight we heard a door slam shut. It could have been him or not. In the morning of the first of the year though, he wished us a happy New Year: he looked happy, he was dressed up in party clothes,” said their 21 year old daughter.
“Miss Sielaffs, you must try and remember everything precisely. It’s a question of minutes, they will make the difference to Mr. Kusian’s fate.”
“I can’t say. “ Exhausted and crying, she sat back down.
Bacheran concluded that the court had not made a convincing case against Walter Kusian. He kept looking at the faces of the people who were being sworn in and thought he could detect a growing anti Kusian sentiment in their faces. He had the same impression when the public came into the room that was filled to capacity. There were still hundreds of people who had not secured a ticket waiting in the halls hoping for news. Even they no longer felt any sympathy for Kusian, no expression of pity was to be heard anymore. She appeared too refined, too calculating, she had been able to turn on the tears too often and had played too blatantly to the six jurors. When the verdict came, it would be decided by a two thirds majority and Kusian and her lawyers were evidently counting on the non professionals. The three experienced professional judges, who were much more difficult to impress, they considered to be less important.
The following witness was a certain Hildegard Zepter who had been a patient of Elisabeth Kusian in Robert-Koch Hospital. Her statement was clear and to the point. “At 7:30 in the morning of January 1st, Nurse Elisabeth got on the S-Bahn; my husband and I were riding the train on our way home. She was alone. She was carrying an empty rucksack under her arm. ‘Happy New Year, Nurse Elisabeth!’ I called out to her. But she didn’t answer. Instead she pressed herself into a corner seat near the window and shoved the rucksack under the seat. I had the impression that she didn’t want us to speak to her because she didn’t like being seen like this on the morning of New Year’s Day. I found her behavior very strange.”
The defendant immediately retorted: “It wasn’t a rucksack, I was returning from my husband’s place, I was carrying a grey woolen blanket.”
Bacheran wrote down in his notes: ‘This is the strongest statement yet against Kusian. The defense is going to have to think of something to counter it, otherwise they lose!’ The defense did think of something …
“We already know the reason why Mrs. Kusian made a confession a year ago,” Dr. Nicolai started. “First, because she wanted to protect her husband and second because she had been pressured by the Eastern police.”
At that moment there was a loud retort from Superintendant Pohl of the Volks Police: he was the one who had heard Kusian’s first confession and officially recorded it. “No. She was not.” It’s a violation of police duty to pressure anyone into confessing, he said.
This was met with a resounding burst of laughter on the part of the audience. Dr. Korsch felt it his duty to give his wholehearted support to the exemplary and thorough investigation the East Berlin team had conducted. “Its results are the only reliable foundation this trial has at its disposal.”
After this short interlude the defense was allowed to continue. “Let us go back to the confession… Mrs. Kusian has now recanted. As we know. So I wish to use an example to explain what the situation is now. Mrs. Kusian has stated officially that she hid Dorothea Merten’s corpse under her sofa and that she then spent the night making love with Kurt Muschan on that same sofa. This is pure fantasy, she only said that in order to put an end to the ordeal of interrogation in East Berlin. Now, let’s look …”
What happened then was something Bacheran had never experienced before, something he would have thought absolutely unthinkable: The Moabit district court house became the stage of a Broadway play, a bedroom farce, entitled “The Sofa”. The presiding judge granted a motion to bring in the sofa from Kusian’s room.
As soon as the sofa was brought in, the judges, the witnesses and the Prosecutor stood around it. Dr. Nicolai, a heavy set man, knelt down on the floor, lay down on his stomach, rolling to the side like a ball and endeavored to force his entire frame under the piece of furniture. This failed twice since there was barely 20 centimeters between the bottom of the sofa and the floor. When he finally did manage it, the sofa’s legs were lifted a few centimeters above the floor.
“You see,” said Arno Weimann. “It’s absolutely impossible to lie down on this sofa and even less possible to make love on it.”
But Dr. Korsch was not convinced. He signaled to Walter Kusian to come over. “Lie down under here, you are approximately the same size as Mrs. Merten.”
Walter Kusian did as he was told – and lo and behold: he fit relatively easily under the sofa. When one the judges sat on it and even lay down and got up again, he stated he had not felt anything under him.
Dr. Spengler, the court Medical Examiner, who had examined both Seidelmann’s and Merten’s bodies gave the seal of scientific knowledge to the whole scene when he declared that because of the rapid changes in body mass after death, it was entirely possible to hide the body under the sofa without any difficulty.
“Thank you very much,” said the Prosecutor and the defense looked fairly crestfallen.
“We will adjourn for lunch,” the President said.
Bernhard and Helga went to the cafeteria and managed to find a table, close to the bathroom.
“The district courtroom as fair ground,” Helga commented.
“In this world everything turns into a show,” Bernhard said. He could often be very clear sighted. “But it’s nothing new really: think of ancient Rome, think of Shakespeare: the whole world is a stage – and then the Nazis.”
“Which is exactly why we need a new order of things,” Helga said. “A world where everything won’t turn into light opera, where people seriously try to rid the world of war, need and misery. Only Socialism can provide that. A scene like the one with the sofa wouldn’t have happened with us.”
“I didn’t find it very enlightened myself but it did in the end contribute significantly to the truth.”
Helga remained skeptical as she ate her peas. “I can see many unanswered questions… Why did Kusian have three glasses in her room? We can rule out that both Mrs. Stöhr and Muschan are lying in this case. So who was the third person? Was it the big dark lady? The landlady probably didn’t conjure her up herself. You know, I think there’s much more to this than meets the eye, something completely different.”
“Yes, of course.” Bacheran put on a very serious air and spoke in the slightly Saxon accent of a member of the Central Committee of the SED. “The entire thing is a conspiracy between ex Nazis and monopoly capital. Seidelmann and Merten knew the whereabouts of Martin Bormann and of other leading members of German Fascism in hiding. They intended to pass on their knowledge to the peace loving forces of the GDR. But, before they could act, their intentions became known by people in places like Argentina and Paraguay and by the American secret services. And so they asked Elisabeth Kusian to eliminate them both. She was to be rewarded with a million dollars and the opportunity to settle in the United States, under the name Betty Cuthbert; there she would become the head of the Mayo clinic.”
Helga did not find that funny. “It does sound funny but it’s not totally impossible. At least not for me.”
After the lunch break the proceedings in the district courtroom became strictly factual since this time scientific experts were called to the bar.
Professor Schnettka taught chemistry. He presented his findings: traces of blood in the rucksack and the suitcase, in between the floor boards of Mrs. Kusian’s room, on the bread knife that the landlady had lent her and on one of the defendant’s rubber gloves.
“Could this not have been the defendant’s own blood?” The president asked.
The defense immediately latched on to this. “At the time in question she had eczema on her left leg.”
To Bacheran’s deep shame, but to Helga’s quiet rejoicing, it turned out that the Western police had forgotten to ascertain the defendant’s blood type. Therefore the proceedings were interrupted in order to allow that the defendant be taken to the Robert-Koch hospital nearby. An hour later it was established that she was blood type A.
“In that case everything is clear,” Professor Schnettka concluded, “because the blood type we found on the aforementioned objects is type AB – Mr. Seidelmann’s blood type. As for Mrs. Merten’s blood type, we unfortunately cannot ascertain it because she was dissected in the Eastern sector and remains there.”
Once again Bacheran shook his head in disgust. Christ! But at least there were no more doubts about Seidelmann. Or were there…?
The following expert took the stand. “The dismembering of both corpses was performed by a medically trained person; it was done in a professional manner and with great dexterity,” Dr. Spengler declared. “In Seidelmann’s case a few hours after death, in Merten’s case a few days later. Decomposition was already very advanced in her case, which shows that the corpse had been kept in a heated room for some time.”
The defense did not query any of this. “But, Dr. Spengler, can you tell us how such a small woman as the defendant could overpower a man as powerful as Seidelmann…”
“She possesses remarkable strength. Mr. Muschan, who is a heavy set man, for example, stated that she once lifted him up in the air for fun and whirled him around.”
Finally, Dr. Niederthal summarized the dozens and dozens of pages of his psychiatric report. In his opinion, Elisabeth Kusian was genetically burdened on both sides of her family: she had an easily excitable father and an unbalanced mother. As a child and later as a young woman, she always dreamt of escaping the narrow confines of her home and village in Thuringia and wanted to experience the wider world. That this was not going to happen through marriage to Walter Kusian, she found that out painfully. When her husband was away at war, she held parties in her home, orgies even. She never worried about what her neighbors would think. Her thirst for life was enormous. She pretended that her mother was a Hungarian countess and that she herself was a painter. Everything was for show. But it all stopped when her husband returned from the war.
Bernhard knew all this and only listened with half an ear. He felt a shock of recognition though when he heard the words ‘hunger for life’. That was something he could understand and it was a motivation it was hard to condemn since the Nazis had betrayed it so horribly through the war they had instigated. The big question then was: would she also have killed twice if there had been no Third Reich, if instead Germany had evolved into a perfectly normal republic like the United States for example? No. But maybe she would have? Even under the Weimar Republic, had it continued to exist, she would have been nothing but a ‘little’ nurse, she would not have had much money and she certainly wouldn’t have a married a millionaire.
The presiding judge’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Doctor Niederthal, do you consider the defendant capable of committing the double murder?”
The psychiatrist answered. “She attended several lectures on criminal medicine intended for members of the police: there were extensive discussions of the process of throttling.”
“And what about diminished capacity?”
“That does not come into play in the two murders. In spite of her occasional abuse of drugs, we consider her to be fully responsible for her actions.” This ‘we’ referred to Waldemar Weimann and himself. “In the confrontation between her desires and reality, life in the real world, the defendant is the loser. The fact that she wore her nurse’s uniform during both murders and that she keenly observed her victims as they died is typical of a diminished sense of self. Although she has to be considered as abnormal, the deviant tendencies she exhibits remain within normality and, in our opinion, do not justify the application of Paragraph 51, section 1 or 2.”
“Thank you.” Dr. Korsch gathered his papers. “Under the circumstances, tomorrow’s session is adjourned. Per request of the defense. The court will reconvene on Friday.”