Post by redsycorax on Aug 3, 2022 1:37:05 GMT
Although we usually think of the membership of Germany's UBA as an ensemble, the organisation's membership had their own individual exploits. None more so than the "Feathered Fury", Horned Owl (Georg von Tregor), amidst the streets of his native Frankfurt. Usually, they did not involve gaudily dressed criminals with picturesque names or grandiose, convoluted motivations. Unfortunately, sometimes they were quite 'grim and gritty'.
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A8 AUTOBAHN, FRANKFURT TO MUNICH:
It was just as well Willi was off on a school camp, reflected the Horned Owl as he drove down Frankfurt's darkened streets, uneasy at the darkening night. He wouldn't want his son to see what he had been called upon to investigate, crime fighting protegee and companion in arms or not. While Horned Owl gave no quarter to criminals, he was also a doting father and while he was justly proud of his young son's achievements at school and on the streets alongside him, he didn't want his lad to grow up too fast. Although that was difficult in their line of work. However, he might have to face the facf that his son would be exposed to horror despite his father's best intent, given that war with England, France and probably, eventually, the Americans, now seemed inevitable over Poland. He would have to prepare him somehow for what would ensue.
However, that set of circumstances did not apply to the situation that he now had to face about three and a half hours away, across the A8 autobahn from his native Frankfurt, through Nuremberg, to distant Munich. Just as well his mask had infrared visors, although he kept an apprehensive eye skywards, conscious of the possible threat from RAF and French airforce bombers should the balloon go up. But fate smiled on him that evening. While the autobahns had been cleared for priority military vehicles, the UBA had special clearance for its higher profile and more quotidian crime fighting work. And while this wasn't one of the "Grosse Notiz' ("Big Note") cases, it was no less important. Whatever else was happening far to the east, it held off that night. The Fuhrer seemed to have abandoned any idea of holding one last defiant Nuremberg rally to anger the "Allies", so the roads were thankfully clear. That gave him time to mentally review the circumstances of his latest particular case...
MUNICH:
It had been going on since at least 1928. A young woman's body had washed up at Grossehesselohe, down the Isar River from Munich. She was later identified as that of Katharina Schatzl, a native Munich girl of sixteen who worked as a maid and was only sixteen at the time of her death. She had been raped and strangled. Dear god. What sort of depraved madman could do that to a girl, little more than a child, though the Horned Owl to himself, placing himself all too easily in the circumstances of young Katharina's grieving parents. Part of him attributed the onset of this cruelty to the decadence of the former Weimar Republic, but inwardly, he knew better than that. Abrasions and soil traces on her body had suggested that the assault had happened somewhere near the Benedictine Schaftlarn Abbey to the south of Munich, which bordered the Isar. However, then, the trail had gone cold. And all that had happened over eight years ago, in 1931.
The second assault had happened three years later in May 1934, when newlywed Anna Geltl hadn't returned home after a bicycle ride in the emerald vistas of Forstenreider Park, to Munich's southwest. Abrasions and bruises on her body suggested that she had struggled against her assailant, but had been shot in the head. And the monster who had done this had mutilated her womanhood. The Horned Owl tasted bile in his throat and fought down his instinctive reaction. It hadn't helped that by this time, the Reich had emerged and the resultant investigation was hampered by the inevitable assumption that the killer 'must' be Jewish. Which was ridiculous. More likely, it was someone who had been brought up badly, possibly with a shell-shocked father from the Great War who had taken it out on his children or else a mother who had been forced to have the child and who was either too immature or too irresponsible to bring him up properly. No, he would not make the same mistake. For one thing, despite rigorous interrogation and railroading of the tiny handful of possible Jewish suspects, no convincing forensic evidence had been found to verify their presence in Forstenreider Park at the time. Given the mobility restrictions on Jewish movement anyway, their particular vicinity would have been under close surveillance from the Gestapo and SS.
In September 1934, a third murder had happened, but this time it took place in Munich's northern districts, up at Milbertshofen. When her horse returned riderless, the parents of Berta Sauerbeck (24), a clerk had called in the Kriminalpolizei and only hours later, their daughter's body was found in a garbage pit. Although she had been shot in the back of her head, like Anna Geltl, she seemed to have survived that horrendous attack, only to perish from asphyxiation after the assailant had buried her there. At that point, however, ammunition from the Geltl murder had provided a match with that of Berta Sauerbeck, which clearly indicated that the murderer must be the same man. Steeling himself and looking closely at the photographs and description from the KP records, Horned Owl realised that given the configuration and depth of the bruises, the assailant had to have been a muscular, tall man, probably engaged in some form of manual labour. Which indicated that it wasn't someone more characteristic of the underworld, he also concluded. They usually didn't have that much of a build on them, unless they'd drifted downward into criminality after an earlier life of arduous physical labour. Which was entirely possible, but the KP had beaten him to it and most of the known figures who had met such criteria had been eliminated due to their alibis at the time. And what's more, they had been repeatedly investigated over the ensuing years. Again, however, the trail had gone cold.
That is, until 1937. Did that mean the lust-murderer had some 'safety valve' for his perversions? Had he married, or was he visiting a prostitute on a regular basis? In May 1937, though, Rosa Eigerling (25), a seamstress, had been shot in the head in the backalleys of Gemmering, in Furstenfeldbruck to the west of Munich. And the ordinance was a match for the Geltl and Sauerbeck murders and sexual assaults. Moreover, as with Anna Geltl, three years beforehand, there was specific bodily mutilation in that given area. Which led the Horned Owl to wonder, was this crime based on some perverted version of exaggerated religious piety? Did this man believe that women should be 'chaste' and was he demonstrating what he believed 'should' happen to 'women like that?' Although, as a devout Catholic, Georg von Trogel did not personally approve of prostitution, he was also a pragmatist. It had to exist to fulfil some men's needs, so it should take place in safe conditions under the rule of law. Vigilante violence and mutilation was no 'solution' to that social problem. Moreover, none of these women were registered as prostitutes in state-regulated brothels, he noted from the KP case notes.
Mercifully, there had only been an additional single case that met the assailant's modus operandi. As with Anna Geltl again, the attack and mutilation of Maria Jorg (25) had taken place in Forstenreider Park, and the domestic servant had been shot in the head beforehand. And, like the earlier Schatzl case, rock and soil particles and abrasions suggested that the killing had occurred near the Schaftlarn Abbey. That was in Autumn 1938. Putting aside his paperwork and KP case notes, Horned Owl realised that something was nagging at the back of his consciousness. He returned to an alleyway, changed from his Horned Owl uniform and checked back into his hotel as Georg von Trogel.
When he awoke, he realised why this case felt so familiar. It was so reminiscent of the Paul Ozgorow case that the Bat and he had just concluded a month ago. He looked over the forensic records of the four women's autopsies and realised something about the fine detail involved. Yes, of course- there were signs of particulate matter from anthracite coal, which indicated that the possibility that a railroad worker might be the perpetrator here, too. Although, he realised, if this were the case, it might also be possible that the lust-murderer in this case had no previous criminal record either. As to why the Kriminalpolizei hadn't detected him before these young women's tragic deaths, there might be several reasons why. They included empire building rivalries between Reichminister Wilhelm Frick, himself a native Bavarian, and Heinrich Himmler over their respective control over police operations, exaggerated perceptions of "Jewish criminality" in the context of lust-murder, the legendary corruption within Munich's police department itself under Brigadefuhrer Lothar Beutel and the rape scandal that had recently brought him down, and the animosity between the Gestapo and SS over the appointment of Erich Isselhorst as his replacement. Any or all of those could be involved. He could expect no co-operation from the Munich or Bavarian Kriminalpolizei given the byzantine infighting that had engulfed its leadership and ossified its mission and objectives.
HOFBRAUHAUS PUB, AUBING, MUNICH:
He decided to assume a factory worker disguise and visit one or more of the local railway worker pubs, hoping that eventually, he would find the clue that could unlock this case. And then, on his third day, in the Hofbrauhaus in Aubing, where the Nazi Party itself had held its inaugural beerhall meetings in the early twenties, he found his quarry. Her name was Josefa Eichhorn and, obviously drunk, she was having a lewd conversation about her husband, Johann, which indicated that she enjoyed their quite physical lovemaking, even if her husband's ardor left bruises on her. Surreptitiously, he looked over at Josefa and noticed the depth and colouration of the bruises. From inconspicuous eavesdropping during the rest of the evening, the Horned Owl discovered that Johann Eichhorn was a shunter who worked in the Deutsches Reichsbahn railway yards in Munich, moving passenger and freight trains to and fro within the vast Munich station complex. Josefa Eichhorn's candour and gossip about her husband's exploits and sexual prowess damned him, as the woman rambled on about his physicality and libido, particularly after a spell of vigorous cycling in one of Munich's parks. Sure enough, one of them turned out to be Forstenreider. Using his surveillance and covert operations, the Horned Owl tailed her home and then staked out the property from a derelict warehouse across the road.
FORSTENREIDER PARK, MUNICH:
And thus, on an autumn day in late August 1939, the trap was sprung. As the Owl watched from the trees above the footpath, Johann Eichhorn began to make a nuisance of himself with a twelve year old girl and escalated his ministrations to her. Ultimately, he began shoving her and began to try to drag her into the copse by the footpath, much to the horror of passers by. At that point, the Horned Owl decided to play his hand and leapt from his hiding place. The railway worker sneered at him, calling him a flying rat, but his bravado ceased abruptly when the first punch landed. However, Eichhorn seemed to have his own proficiency at combat, and a Nazi Party insignia on a dropped identity card suggested that he might have been involved in one of the party-aligned paramilitary groups in the past or present. As the two men grappled, a third figure witnessed both, waiting for a time to intervene. Ultimately, Eichhorn broke free and brandished a pistol. However, the next minute, he was felled by a diminutive form, who leapt onto the man's shoulders and thrust a small sack over his head, pulling its cord tight. As Eichhorn stumbled around trying to dislodge both, the Horned Owl seized his advantage and landed a knockout blow. Before then, the Bat had leapt from his quarry's shoulders and somersaulted away. There was considerable applause from the park bystander crowd and the breathless twelve year old girl rushed up to the Bat and passionately kissed him. For once, the Horned Owl reflected in private amusement, his companion's wit and riposte seemed to have deserted him as he stuttered and cleared his throat in response to the young woman's attention to him. At that point, the Kriminalpolizei arrived. Later, the Owl learnt that the Bat had returned from the youth camp earlier, read his father's note in the Owlsnest, and travelled south to meet up with him.
EPILOGUE:
Worse was to come. In the Munich Kriminalpolizei cells over the next few days, Eichhorn boasted to his cellmate that he had raped and murdered far more than the five women that he was on trial for assaulting and murdering. Whether that was attributable to psychopathic bravado or sadistic pride in his own predatory prowess will never be known. As for Eichhorn's embarrassing Nazi Party membership, the city party hierarchy hastily rid itself of his membership, instituted press censorship of the case details and had Eichhorn tried in the privacy of one of their 'special courts.' Given the amount of forensic evidence and detail from the existing known cases, however, there could be no doubt of the outcome. The Sondergericht found him guilty of the five murders and numerous rapes that he had carried out over the last decade and accordingly, he was sentenced to death. Due to delays caused by the declaration of war and invasion of Poland in September 1939, the serial killer and psychopath Johann Eichhorn was guillotined at Standelheim Prison in Munich on December 1, 1939. He went down in German folklore as "Minus Zweihundertdreiundsiebzig" (Minus 273). or, as is evident from his temperature ascription, "Absoluter Nullpunkt"... Absolute Zero.
The Horned Owl and the Bat received the usual commendations and expressions of gratitude from the Nazi hierarchy, particularly Heinrich Himmler, who was especially grateful for the avoidance of embarassment and the circumspect attitude that the Feathered Fury and his companion took when it came to questions like the apparent paralysis of the Munich Kriminalpolizei when it came to locating and apprehending the murderer caused through their infighting and placing Nazi obsessions with "racial purity" and the "Jewish problem" above the need to stop Eichhorn's depredations. Once more, the people of Germany had good reason to be grateful for the perserverance and skill of the winged detective and his companion in crimefighting.
THE END [4.30 PM , August 6, 2022]
++
A8 AUTOBAHN, FRANKFURT TO MUNICH:
It was just as well Willi was off on a school camp, reflected the Horned Owl as he drove down Frankfurt's darkened streets, uneasy at the darkening night. He wouldn't want his son to see what he had been called upon to investigate, crime fighting protegee and companion in arms or not. While Horned Owl gave no quarter to criminals, he was also a doting father and while he was justly proud of his young son's achievements at school and on the streets alongside him, he didn't want his lad to grow up too fast. Although that was difficult in their line of work. However, he might have to face the facf that his son would be exposed to horror despite his father's best intent, given that war with England, France and probably, eventually, the Americans, now seemed inevitable over Poland. He would have to prepare him somehow for what would ensue.
However, that set of circumstances did not apply to the situation that he now had to face about three and a half hours away, across the A8 autobahn from his native Frankfurt, through Nuremberg, to distant Munich. Just as well his mask had infrared visors, although he kept an apprehensive eye skywards, conscious of the possible threat from RAF and French airforce bombers should the balloon go up. But fate smiled on him that evening. While the autobahns had been cleared for priority military vehicles, the UBA had special clearance for its higher profile and more quotidian crime fighting work. And while this wasn't one of the "Grosse Notiz' ("Big Note") cases, it was no less important. Whatever else was happening far to the east, it held off that night. The Fuhrer seemed to have abandoned any idea of holding one last defiant Nuremberg rally to anger the "Allies", so the roads were thankfully clear. That gave him time to mentally review the circumstances of his latest particular case...
MUNICH:
It had been going on since at least 1928. A young woman's body had washed up at Grossehesselohe, down the Isar River from Munich. She was later identified as that of Katharina Schatzl, a native Munich girl of sixteen who worked as a maid and was only sixteen at the time of her death. She had been raped and strangled. Dear god. What sort of depraved madman could do that to a girl, little more than a child, though the Horned Owl to himself, placing himself all too easily in the circumstances of young Katharina's grieving parents. Part of him attributed the onset of this cruelty to the decadence of the former Weimar Republic, but inwardly, he knew better than that. Abrasions and soil traces on her body had suggested that the assault had happened somewhere near the Benedictine Schaftlarn Abbey to the south of Munich, which bordered the Isar. However, then, the trail had gone cold. And all that had happened over eight years ago, in 1931.
The second assault had happened three years later in May 1934, when newlywed Anna Geltl hadn't returned home after a bicycle ride in the emerald vistas of Forstenreider Park, to Munich's southwest. Abrasions and bruises on her body suggested that she had struggled against her assailant, but had been shot in the head. And the monster who had done this had mutilated her womanhood. The Horned Owl tasted bile in his throat and fought down his instinctive reaction. It hadn't helped that by this time, the Reich had emerged and the resultant investigation was hampered by the inevitable assumption that the killer 'must' be Jewish. Which was ridiculous. More likely, it was someone who had been brought up badly, possibly with a shell-shocked father from the Great War who had taken it out on his children or else a mother who had been forced to have the child and who was either too immature or too irresponsible to bring him up properly. No, he would not make the same mistake. For one thing, despite rigorous interrogation and railroading of the tiny handful of possible Jewish suspects, no convincing forensic evidence had been found to verify their presence in Forstenreider Park at the time. Given the mobility restrictions on Jewish movement anyway, their particular vicinity would have been under close surveillance from the Gestapo and SS.
In September 1934, a third murder had happened, but this time it took place in Munich's northern districts, up at Milbertshofen. When her horse returned riderless, the parents of Berta Sauerbeck (24), a clerk had called in the Kriminalpolizei and only hours later, their daughter's body was found in a garbage pit. Although she had been shot in the back of her head, like Anna Geltl, she seemed to have survived that horrendous attack, only to perish from asphyxiation after the assailant had buried her there. At that point, however, ammunition from the Geltl murder had provided a match with that of Berta Sauerbeck, which clearly indicated that the murderer must be the same man. Steeling himself and looking closely at the photographs and description from the KP records, Horned Owl realised that given the configuration and depth of the bruises, the assailant had to have been a muscular, tall man, probably engaged in some form of manual labour. Which indicated that it wasn't someone more characteristic of the underworld, he also concluded. They usually didn't have that much of a build on them, unless they'd drifted downward into criminality after an earlier life of arduous physical labour. Which was entirely possible, but the KP had beaten him to it and most of the known figures who had met such criteria had been eliminated due to their alibis at the time. And what's more, they had been repeatedly investigated over the ensuing years. Again, however, the trail had gone cold.
That is, until 1937. Did that mean the lust-murderer had some 'safety valve' for his perversions? Had he married, or was he visiting a prostitute on a regular basis? In May 1937, though, Rosa Eigerling (25), a seamstress, had been shot in the head in the backalleys of Gemmering, in Furstenfeldbruck to the west of Munich. And the ordinance was a match for the Geltl and Sauerbeck murders and sexual assaults. Moreover, as with Anna Geltl, three years beforehand, there was specific bodily mutilation in that given area. Which led the Horned Owl to wonder, was this crime based on some perverted version of exaggerated religious piety? Did this man believe that women should be 'chaste' and was he demonstrating what he believed 'should' happen to 'women like that?' Although, as a devout Catholic, Georg von Trogel did not personally approve of prostitution, he was also a pragmatist. It had to exist to fulfil some men's needs, so it should take place in safe conditions under the rule of law. Vigilante violence and mutilation was no 'solution' to that social problem. Moreover, none of these women were registered as prostitutes in state-regulated brothels, he noted from the KP case notes.
Mercifully, there had only been an additional single case that met the assailant's modus operandi. As with Anna Geltl again, the attack and mutilation of Maria Jorg (25) had taken place in Forstenreider Park, and the domestic servant had been shot in the head beforehand. And, like the earlier Schatzl case, rock and soil particles and abrasions suggested that the killing had occurred near the Schaftlarn Abbey. That was in Autumn 1938. Putting aside his paperwork and KP case notes, Horned Owl realised that something was nagging at the back of his consciousness. He returned to an alleyway, changed from his Horned Owl uniform and checked back into his hotel as Georg von Trogel.
When he awoke, he realised why this case felt so familiar. It was so reminiscent of the Paul Ozgorow case that the Bat and he had just concluded a month ago. He looked over the forensic records of the four women's autopsies and realised something about the fine detail involved. Yes, of course- there were signs of particulate matter from anthracite coal, which indicated that the possibility that a railroad worker might be the perpetrator here, too. Although, he realised, if this were the case, it might also be possible that the lust-murderer in this case had no previous criminal record either. As to why the Kriminalpolizei hadn't detected him before these young women's tragic deaths, there might be several reasons why. They included empire building rivalries between Reichminister Wilhelm Frick, himself a native Bavarian, and Heinrich Himmler over their respective control over police operations, exaggerated perceptions of "Jewish criminality" in the context of lust-murder, the legendary corruption within Munich's police department itself under Brigadefuhrer Lothar Beutel and the rape scandal that had recently brought him down, and the animosity between the Gestapo and SS over the appointment of Erich Isselhorst as his replacement. Any or all of those could be involved. He could expect no co-operation from the Munich or Bavarian Kriminalpolizei given the byzantine infighting that had engulfed its leadership and ossified its mission and objectives.
HOFBRAUHAUS PUB, AUBING, MUNICH:
He decided to assume a factory worker disguise and visit one or more of the local railway worker pubs, hoping that eventually, he would find the clue that could unlock this case. And then, on his third day, in the Hofbrauhaus in Aubing, where the Nazi Party itself had held its inaugural beerhall meetings in the early twenties, he found his quarry. Her name was Josefa Eichhorn and, obviously drunk, she was having a lewd conversation about her husband, Johann, which indicated that she enjoyed their quite physical lovemaking, even if her husband's ardor left bruises on her. Surreptitiously, he looked over at Josefa and noticed the depth and colouration of the bruises. From inconspicuous eavesdropping during the rest of the evening, the Horned Owl discovered that Johann Eichhorn was a shunter who worked in the Deutsches Reichsbahn railway yards in Munich, moving passenger and freight trains to and fro within the vast Munich station complex. Josefa Eichhorn's candour and gossip about her husband's exploits and sexual prowess damned him, as the woman rambled on about his physicality and libido, particularly after a spell of vigorous cycling in one of Munich's parks. Sure enough, one of them turned out to be Forstenreider. Using his surveillance and covert operations, the Horned Owl tailed her home and then staked out the property from a derelict warehouse across the road.
FORSTENREIDER PARK, MUNICH:
And thus, on an autumn day in late August 1939, the trap was sprung. As the Owl watched from the trees above the footpath, Johann Eichhorn began to make a nuisance of himself with a twelve year old girl and escalated his ministrations to her. Ultimately, he began shoving her and began to try to drag her into the copse by the footpath, much to the horror of passers by. At that point, the Horned Owl decided to play his hand and leapt from his hiding place. The railway worker sneered at him, calling him a flying rat, but his bravado ceased abruptly when the first punch landed. However, Eichhorn seemed to have his own proficiency at combat, and a Nazi Party insignia on a dropped identity card suggested that he might have been involved in one of the party-aligned paramilitary groups in the past or present. As the two men grappled, a third figure witnessed both, waiting for a time to intervene. Ultimately, Eichhorn broke free and brandished a pistol. However, the next minute, he was felled by a diminutive form, who leapt onto the man's shoulders and thrust a small sack over his head, pulling its cord tight. As Eichhorn stumbled around trying to dislodge both, the Horned Owl seized his advantage and landed a knockout blow. Before then, the Bat had leapt from his quarry's shoulders and somersaulted away. There was considerable applause from the park bystander crowd and the breathless twelve year old girl rushed up to the Bat and passionately kissed him. For once, the Horned Owl reflected in private amusement, his companion's wit and riposte seemed to have deserted him as he stuttered and cleared his throat in response to the young woman's attention to him. At that point, the Kriminalpolizei arrived. Later, the Owl learnt that the Bat had returned from the youth camp earlier, read his father's note in the Owlsnest, and travelled south to meet up with him.
EPILOGUE:
Worse was to come. In the Munich Kriminalpolizei cells over the next few days, Eichhorn boasted to his cellmate that he had raped and murdered far more than the five women that he was on trial for assaulting and murdering. Whether that was attributable to psychopathic bravado or sadistic pride in his own predatory prowess will never be known. As for Eichhorn's embarrassing Nazi Party membership, the city party hierarchy hastily rid itself of his membership, instituted press censorship of the case details and had Eichhorn tried in the privacy of one of their 'special courts.' Given the amount of forensic evidence and detail from the existing known cases, however, there could be no doubt of the outcome. The Sondergericht found him guilty of the five murders and numerous rapes that he had carried out over the last decade and accordingly, he was sentenced to death. Due to delays caused by the declaration of war and invasion of Poland in September 1939, the serial killer and psychopath Johann Eichhorn was guillotined at Standelheim Prison in Munich on December 1, 1939. He went down in German folklore as "Minus Zweihundertdreiundsiebzig" (Minus 273). or, as is evident from his temperature ascription, "Absoluter Nullpunkt"... Absolute Zero.
The Horned Owl and the Bat received the usual commendations and expressions of gratitude from the Nazi hierarchy, particularly Heinrich Himmler, who was especially grateful for the avoidance of embarassment and the circumspect attitude that the Feathered Fury and his companion took when it came to questions like the apparent paralysis of the Munich Kriminalpolizei when it came to locating and apprehending the murderer caused through their infighting and placing Nazi obsessions with "racial purity" and the "Jewish problem" above the need to stop Eichhorn's depredations. Once more, the people of Germany had good reason to be grateful for the perserverance and skill of the winged detective and his companion in crimefighting.
THE END [4.30 PM , August 6, 2022]