River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1882-11-09
MURDERER AND PHILOSOPHER.
a Berlin student Commits Five-fo lid
zSurdcr-A Remarkable Trial.

For the last two days the First Dis
trict, Criminal Court and jury have
been engaged l. the trial of a case which
would certainly have afforded De
Quincy some interesting material for
his essay on Murder as One of the
Fine Arts" Berlin has not had to listen
to such q sensational and painful story
of crime for long time, and certainly
the black calendar of the city of intel
ligence is by no means pleasant read
ing. The chief actor in the present
tragedy was man named Conrad, aged
thirty four, who began life as a pEilo-
sophie tailor, somewhat after the style
OF Kingsley's Alton Locke, and, after
roaming through tho gamut Of various
occupations, including military service,
ended by strangling III one night his
wife and four children. The trial of
the murderer, which excited the deep
est interest, as it was feared that the
evidence against him might possibly
break down, has disclosed terrible de-
gree of social depravity, well calculated
to make the humanitarians of the nine
teenth century pause and think. Con-
rad, the family murderer" as the
newspapers term him, is a man, for his
station in life, of great force of charac-
ter, intelligent, inquiring, well read,
inventive, ready, and of remarkable
self possession. He had been diligent
reader of the poet Schiller and of the
naturalist Charles Darwin, and his de-
sultorv course CT study had ended in
making him, like many others of his
class in Germany, believer in nothing
whatever. Not only had he renounced
all his religious faith himself, but he
had compelled his wife to leave. the
Church, and had brought up his chill
dren in heather darkness. The strug-
gle for existence, grew ever harder with
him. He transferred his affections
from his own wife TO another, an un-
married woman. He denied the pat
ernity of two of his children, and his
household became a perfect hell. He
wanted to be free to marry the object
of his second love, and with one blow
he cut the fve-fold knot that bound
him to his VOWS. On the mothers bed
lay volume of Schiller, open at the
poem of the "Kindermoerderin" (child
murderess), which the father placed
there so as TO suggest to the officers of
justice that his wife had committed
both infanticide and suicide. This was
the critical point in the whole case
whether the father or the mother had
committed the horrible crime, and but
for the judicial habit here of cross
questioning the prisoners, there is no
saying how far the diabolical craft and
GOODNESS with which Conrad planned
and executed the deed. with his calm
and self-collected demeanor in Court,
might not have aided him. A letter of
triumph, however, which he wrote to
his mistress before the breath could
have been long out Of his wife's body,
formed strong link in an otherwise
somewhat fragile chain of circumstan
tial evidence, so he was found guilty
and condemned to death. His own
theory was that, having had quarrel
with his wife on the night in question,
he rushed out of her insupportable
presence into another room, where he
fell asleep, and that then the mother
did the fearful havoc. In the morning
he sent for lock- smith to pick the
lock which he himself had fastened,
and he made most dramatic pretense
of weeping and fainting when con-
fronted with the results of his noctur-
nal hand work. Fiction however yiel
ded to reality when sentence of death
was pronounced upon him, and when,
altogether colapsing he had 20 be
brought around with wine. To detail
the social deprsvity revealed by this
trial would only shock your readers.