Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1882-10-21
A Family Murderer" !"

The Berlin correspondent Of the London
Times says For the last two days the First
District Criminal Court and jury have
been engaged ip the trial of 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 a sensational
and painful story of crime for long time,
and certainly the black calendar of the city
of intelligence is by no means pleasant read
ing. The chief actor in the present tragedy
was man named Conrad, aged thirty-tour
who began life as philosophic tailor, some
what after the style of Kingsley's Alton
Locke, after roaming through the gamut OF
various occupations, including military SER
vice, ended by stranging in one night his
wife and four children. The trial Of the
murderer, wich excited the deepest interest,
as it was feared that the evidence against
him might possibly break down. has dis
closed q terrible degree Of social dcpravity
well calculated TO make the humantarians
OF the nineteenth century pause and think.
Conrad, the family murderer" as the news
papers term him, is Il man, for his station in
life, of great force of character, intelligent,
inquiring, well read, inventive, ready
had been Il diligcnt reader of the poet
Schiller and of the naturalist Charles Dar-
| win and his desultory course of study had
ended in making him, like many others of
his class in Germany, a 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 brought
up his children in heathcn darkness. The
struggle for existence grew ever harder with
him. He transferred his affections from his
own Wife to another, an unmarried woman
He denied the paternity Of two of his child
ren, and his household became q perfect
hell. He wanted to be free to marry the
object Of his second love, and with one
blow he cut the iivefold knot that bound
him to his VOWS. In the night between the
llth and 18th of August last he stranglcd
his wife and four children while they slept.
In the morning the corpsess of the mother
and her youngest child were found hanging
at the back ofa door, while the dead bodies
of the other three were discovered similarly
suspended in Il wardrobe. On the mothers
bed lay a volume of Schiller open at the
poem ofthe "kindermorderinn' child mur-
dcress), which the father placed there so as
to suggest to the officers of Justice that his
wife had committed both ntnnticidc and sui
whether the father or the mother had COM
mttcd the terrible crime and but for the judicial
habit here Of cross-qucstioniug prisoners there is
no saying how far the diahoicll craft and cDnncss
with which Conrad planned and executed the deed
with his calm and Scf-collcctcd dcmrannr in court.
might not have aided him. 4 lctic: of triumph
however, which hc wrote Ia his mistress before
the breath could have been long ont of his wlcs
body formed Il strong link in an otherwise some
what irlgl" chain Of crcnnstantal evidence, so
hr found guilty and condemned to death.
His own theory was that, having had IL quarrel
with his wife on the night in question, he rushed
out of her insupportahlc presence into another
room, where he fell asleep, and that then the
mother did the fearful havoc In the morning
he sent for Il blacksmith to pick the lock which
he himself had fastened, and he made q most
dramatic prctcnce of weeping and faintng when
confronted with the results of his nocturnal handi-
work Fiction, however. yielded to reality when
sentence of death WAS pronounced upon him. and
when, altogether collapsing, he had to be brought
round with wine. To detail the social dcpravity
revealed by this trial would only shock our
readers.