The Sun. — 1829-09-05 (London, England)

CRIMES OF A BAVARIAN PRIEST.  A trial for murder of a very singular and horrible kind, before the Supreme Criminal Court in B:tvaria, has just terminated. The trial occupied no less than four years, and the pleadings and documents amounted to forty-two volumes : the criminal was examined one hundred times, and it was only at the last examinations that a confession of his guilt was wrung from him. Riembauer, the criminal, was born in the lowest rank ; but at a very early age gave marks of an intellect of a superior order. His ambition was to enter the ecclesiastical state ; and through the medium of the curate of his native village, Randerstadt, he was enabled to gratify it. Riembauer was born in 1770 ; at the age of fourteen he was admitted to the Lyceum of Ratisbon, where his conduct and progress were exemplary rapid ; in 1795 he was ordained a priest, and performed the duties of assistant-vicar in different villages ; in 1807 be underwent, with much honour to himself, an examination for a curacy ; in 1808 he was appointed curate of Priel ; and in 1810 be was promoted to the curacy of Randerstadt. Riembauer carried his customary zeal to the exercise of his sacred duties ; in the performance of which he was apparently as sincere as he was punctual. His sermons were eloquent ; his denunciations of vice severe and frequent. It is not wonderful that, so accomplished and gifted as he I,as, with an elegant person and seductive manners, Riembauer should be looked on by the country people as a saint of the first water. The crimes with. which Riembauer was charged were chiefly incontinency. He had a child by the curate of Huskerchen's cook-maid ; another by Anne Marie Eichlaetter, the curate of Hernsheim's servant ; a third by a milliner of his acquaintance ; a fourth by another curate's serving-maid ; a fifth by Madeline Frauenkneicht,--whose father he swindled out of 5,000 florins, and whom, together with her mother, he poisoned ; and lastly, he had several more children by Ann Weinegar, his last kitchen-maid. With all his victims he performed a marriage ceremony at the altar. The crime for which he was at length arrested was the murder of Anne Marie Eichlaetter. The girl had importuned him on several occasions for money, and threatened, on being refused, to expose him. She was induced to visit him at the house of the farmer Frauenkneicht, and was there murdered by him. Whilst the monster was in the act of cutting the unhappy girl's throat, Catherine, the youngest daughter of Frauenkneicht, happened to peep through the key-hole, and observing what was going on, called her mother and sister Madeleine to witness the scene of hlood. The mother was anxious to denounce the murderer ; but on his expressing profound repentance, and threatening to commit suicide, she was induced to bury the transaction in silence. Shortly after this murder, Madeleine and her mother fell sick, Riembauer compounded their medicine, and they died—the one within five days of the other. Catherine, who was twelve years of age at the period of the murder, became subject to fits of melancholy, and to convulsions, from its effects on her imagination ; and at length, unable to retain the secret, told it to her confessor, with the other particulars ofl Riembauer's conduct. The confessor, who thought to turn the confession to Catherine's pecuniary advantage, wrote (in Latin) the following letter to the poisoner of her mother and sister, and robber of her father :—" A case has been submitted to me which you alone can solve.' A certain man, whom you well know, owes a certain stranger somewhere about 5,000 florins. If your conscience be awake, pay this debt. If you do not answer within four weeks you may tremble for the consequences." No answer was returned, and Riembauer was accordingly denounced. Among other particulars, Catherine stated, that Anne Marie Eichlaetter had a peculiarly fine set of teeth ; and after her deposition was taken, in a closet where the body had been" deposited a skeleton with a case of teeth as described, was discovered. In the confession of the criminal, it is worthy of remark, that be defended himself on that dogma of the Jesuits,— that it is allowable to kill another if there be no other means of saving one's honour or good re-; nown ; the fallacy of which Pascal has so triumphantly shown. " I also (he says) recollected that other principle of the Jesuits, " that thei end sanctifies the means." 1 reflect upon thei great evils that the public scandal with whirl,;Anne Marie menaced .me would causeto.thei people and to my sacred profession, and I said  ,to myself, " if a priest of such unblemished Fe.; putation were found to be a sinner, great would the detriment thereof be to religion ;" therefor?, as there were no other means of avoiding public scandal but by the death of Anne Marie, and that this death tended to produce a laudable re' stilt, I do not think that I have acted criminally' for my intentions were pure, and ad majoras Dei Gloriam. Moreover, before killing Ann! Marie, I exhorted her to repent of her sins, and I gave her absolution." This holy ruffian has. been condemned to imprisonment for an unh mited time.