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Short Stuff: Marianne Bachmeier: Vigilante Mother · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm open to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, sitting in for Dave.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: So this is a good old fashioned short stuff, the
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  Speaker 1: oh Man.
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  Speaker 2: Edition Vigilante Justice. Thank you to Perplexity and YouTube and
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: how Stuff Works and Morbidology for the information on the
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: kind of shocking story of mary Anne Bachmeyer.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, Maryann Bachmeier. You say vigilanti, you usually think
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: guys in the Old West, right now. Maryon Bachmeyer was
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  Speaker 1: a woman in Germany and Lubeck, I believe, Germany in
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  Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties who carried out essentially an execution in
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  Speaker 1: the middle of open court to kill the murder of
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  Speaker 1: her daughter. And if you want to start talking about
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: moral quandaries and ethical twists, this is about as good
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  Speaker 1: as it gets.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, as bad as it gets on May fifth, night
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  Speaker 2: eight And you know, trigger warning because this involves sexual
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: violence and violence against a child, which is the worst
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  Speaker 2: thing you can imagine. But her daughter Anna was abducted
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  Speaker 2: at the age of seven by a man named Klaus Grobowski.
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  Speaker 2: He was a thirty five year old butcher. He was
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  Speaker 2: out on probation. He had a history of crimes against
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  Speaker 2: children and sexual offenses, and little Anna got in an
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  Speaker 2: argument with her mother apparently that morning skipped school, and
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  Speaker 2: Grabowski lured her to his apartment because he said that
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  Speaker 2: he had cats that she could play with.
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  Speaker 3: He sexually assaulted her over the.
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  Speaker 2: Course of several hours and then strangled her to death,
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  Speaker 2: put her body in a cardboard box and disposed of
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  Speaker 2: it in a canal. And that is the most awful
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  Speaker 2: part of the story. So I'm glad that parts over with.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And mary Anne was a single mom,
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  Speaker 1: did you say that? No, So Grobowski was actually turned
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: in by his fiance, and like you said, he was
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  Speaker 1: out on probation. He'd actually been chemically castrated before and
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: his chemical castration was reversed when he met his fiance
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  Speaker 1: while he was in prison, and so he was caught
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  Speaker 1: fairly quickly, I believe, and he was put on trial
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  Speaker 1: for the murder of Anna. And during this trial, and
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  Speaker 1: within the first I think couple of days, his defense
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  Speaker 1: was I didn't sexually abuse her. She said that she
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  Speaker 1: was going to tell her mom that I did sexually
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  Speaker 1: abuse her if I didn't give her money. So that's
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  Speaker 1: why I killed her, And that caused mary Anne Bachmeyer
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  Speaker 1: to absolutely snap. Not only was her young seven year
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  Speaker 1: old daughter sexually assaulted and murdered, now she was being
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  Speaker 1: slandered in open court by the guy who murdered her.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and gaslet. The whole country is being gaslet by
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  Speaker 2: this guy. So on day three of the trial, she
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  Speaker 2: comes into court and she has smuggled in a gun,
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  Speaker 2: a small caliber of twenty two barretta pistol, and she
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  Speaker 2: shot him very calmly, apparently, walked over, fired eight shots
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  Speaker 2: at him. I saw seven and other places, but both
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  Speaker 2: places I saw that she hit him six times, killed
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  Speaker 2: him on the spot. And the court was going nuts, obviously,
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  Speaker 2: but apparently she was very calm through the whole thing
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  Speaker 2: with her demeanor, said things like I wanted to kill him,
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  Speaker 2: he killed my daughter. I wanted to shoot him in
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  Speaker 2: the face, but I shot him in the back. I
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  Speaker 2: hope he dies.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and her just calmly saying this stuff too, while
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  Speaker 1: the rest of the court's going crazy. I mean that's
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  Speaker 1: movie type stuff, you know, Yeah, for sure. So I
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  Speaker 1: say we take a little break and come back and
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: talk about how people felt about this Vigilanti execution in Germany.
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  Speaker 2: After this, all right, So the vigilanti killing has happened
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  Speaker 2: in court in front of everybody, so like, you know,
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  Speaker 2: kind of no doubt what happened. As to her guilt goes.
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  Speaker 2: Details emerged about, you know, her past, and you know,
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  Speaker 2: how what kind of a mother she was. Some people
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  Speaker 2: at some point like questioned her grief a little bit
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  Speaker 2: criticized her parenting, but most people, a lot of people
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  Speaker 2: were like, heck, yeah, you know, you avenged the death
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  Speaker 2: of your daughter. They're in plain view and you took
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  Speaker 2: care of things very quickly and efficiently. And one hundred
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  Speaker 2: thousand dollars deutsch mars were raised for her legal defense
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  Speaker 2: because of that right.
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  Speaker 1: And I have to say I looked into it. It's
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  Speaker 1: pretty gross. The people who are like, oh, I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: I questioned her moral character. She had a kid. She
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: had two kids out of wedlock, one at sixteen, one
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  Speaker 1: at eighteen, and she adopted both of them off right
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  Speaker 1: after they were born because she was sixteen and then eighteen,
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  Speaker 1: when she was twenty three, she had Anna. She made
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  Speaker 1: the decision to raise her on her own as a
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  Speaker 1: single mom. And then so that was like her like
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  Speaker 1: her past that people were like, oh, I don't know
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  Speaker 1: about that. And then her behavior after Anna died. She
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  Speaker 1: apparently married and spent a lot of time at work.
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  Speaker 1: She worked in a pub, and that was enough for
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  Speaker 1: people to be like, I don't know about this lady.
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  Speaker 1: I was okay with her murdering this guy in open court,
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  Speaker 1: but she's spending time at a pub and I've lost
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  Speaker 1: faith in her.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, which surprises me. For Germany, because they loved
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  Speaker 2: their beer.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I should also say this is West Germany, and
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  Speaker 1: I don't know if Germans has referred to it historically
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  Speaker 1: like that still or if they prefer people just say Germany,
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  Speaker 1: because this is nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty one and
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: it was definitely still West Germany that we're talking about.
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  Speaker 1: So if you're German, right in and let.
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  Speaker 2: Us know, Yeah, yeah, for sure. So she initially had
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  Speaker 2: a murder charge put on her. They eventually convicted her
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  Speaker 2: of manslaughter and unlawful possession of a firearm. That always
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  Speaker 2: cracks me up when a tiny little offense is tacked
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  Speaker 2: on a six year prison sentence.
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  Speaker 3: She served three and got out.
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  Speaker 2: People thought that that was a fairly lenient sentence for
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  Speaker 2: obvious reasons. And if you talk about a pretty evenly
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  Speaker 2: split survey. There was a survey about a year later
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  Speaker 2: in eighty three by the Allensbach Institute, and twenty eight
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  Speaker 2: percent felt the sentence was just right, twenty seven percent
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  Speaker 2: thought it was too harsh, twenty five percent thought she
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  Speaker 2: got off too lightly, and twenty percent weren't sure. So
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  Speaker 2: it's very evenly pretty much evenly divided as to how
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  Speaker 2: people felt about her even serving those three years.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and plus it also sparked a lot of debates
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  Speaker 1: about other stuff too, in particular whether or not the
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  Speaker 1: German or German court system was a little too lenient
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  Speaker 1: with repeat offenders. Remember h Grabowski was out on bail
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  Speaker 1: or on probation. I'm sorry, So that was a big,
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  Speaker 1: a big discussion. And also, like you know what, like
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  Speaker 1: what right does a person like that have, Do you
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  Speaker 1: have like a moral right to murder somebody who did
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  Speaker 1: that to your child? And then also does that right
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  Speaker 1: extend to your if somebody did that to your husband
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  Speaker 1: or your wife or your brother, Like is it just
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  Speaker 1: specifically is it really narrow that only a mother could
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  Speaker 1: do that only for her young child, only under circumstances
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  Speaker 1: like this. This is the stuff that the people of
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  Speaker 1: Germany were talking about at the time.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
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  Speaker 2: She served those three years, was released in June of
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  Speaker 2: eighty five, and obviously wanted to sort of get away
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  Speaker 2: from all that. She withdrew from the public eye. Pretty
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: you know, pretty smart move and moved to Nigeria. She
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: married a tea, moved to Nigeria. She was there through
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: the nineties, but got divorced after a few years, and
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  Speaker 2: then after her divorce, went to Sicily and developed pancreatic cancer,
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  Speaker 2: a terminal case of cancer. So that eventually got her
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  Speaker 2: to go back to Germany. Such that she was, you know,
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  Speaker 2: in the mid nineties, like occasionally interviewed and stuff like that.
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  Speaker 3: Again because she was back there.
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  Speaker 2: In the mid nineties, she was interviewed for a television
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  Speaker 2: show where I don't know why she felt like she
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  Speaker 2: needed to admit this because everyone knew what happened, but
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  Speaker 2: sort of was like, yeah, I did this, I meant
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  Speaker 2: to do it, and just passed away about a year
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  Speaker 2: later in nineteen ninety six, at the young age of
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  Speaker 2: forty six from cancer.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think what she was saying too was that
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  Speaker 1: she finally admitted that it was premeditated, because that's not
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  Speaker 1: the case against her. Hinged on. Was it something that
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  Speaker 1: she had planned out.
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  Speaker 3: And you brought the gun into course?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but was it planned rather than that? And
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  Speaker 1: like the prosecution apparently had firearms experts that were like,
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  Speaker 1: she hit this guy six out of seven or eight.
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  Speaker 1: However many shots she fired times like you actually would
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  Speaker 1: have to have firearms training the average person would do
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  Speaker 1: to for that number of hits. So like people were saying, like,
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  Speaker 1: she definitely thought about this planet it out, prepared for it,
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  Speaker 1: and she finally admitted in nineteen ninety five that she did.
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  Speaker 1: And she had a really hard life man dead at
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  Speaker 1: forty six of pancreatic cancer. And I also read that
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  Speaker 1: she herself also had been sexually abused as a child too,
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  Speaker 1: So she had a really hard, hard to add life.
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  Speaker 1: You know.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel for h for sure.
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  Speaker 2: She was late to rest beside her daughter there in
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  Speaker 2: burg Tor Cemetery in Lubek, Germany.
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  Speaker 3: YEP.
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  Speaker 1: So if you're in Lubec, Germany and you want to
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  Speaker 1: go pay your respects to marry Anne or Anna or both,
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  Speaker 1: you can.
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  Speaker 3: Do that, that's right.
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  Speaker 2: And this certainly is something so people talk about over there, especially,
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  Speaker 2: you know, as far as all the kind of things
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  Speaker 2: we were saying, and certainly we're not weighing in on
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: that here far as vigilanti justice goes. But the world
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: was probably a better place without that guy walking around.
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  Speaker 1: Probably hard to disagree with that, Chuck, and I think
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: before we say anything else. Short stuff is that.
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• 10:17
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