A courthouse in Lubeck, Germany was the location where Marianne Bachmeier made her entrance on March 6, 1981. She did there with a sense of purpose.
Then, all of a sudden, she reached into her purse and pulled out a loaded revolver, opened fire on Klaus Grabowski, who was 35 years old and a sexual offender.
Marianne Bachmeier’s daughter, Anna Bachmeier, who was seven years old at the time, was allegedly abducted, abused, and murdered by it.
Grabowski took his final breath and passed away on the floor of the courtroom, having been struck by seven of Marianne’s bullets. This occurred within a few seconds subsequent to his death.
Despite the fact that she was detained right away, the spiteful mother did not exhibit any signs of remorse. Despite the passage of forty years, the phrase “Revenge mum” continues to linger in people’s minds, and her sentence continues to cause division throughout an entire nation…
The death of a child is the worst tragedy that a parent can go through, and it is frequently referred to as the most difficult experience that a parent can go through.
The circumstances of Marianne Bachmeier’s life were irrevocably altered on May 5, 1980. During the 1980s, Marianne was a single mother dealing with the challenges of running a tavern in Lubeck, which is located in northern Germany.
Marianne’s own childhood was marked by a number of traumatic experiences and a lot of sadness. In Nazi Germany, the Waffen-SS was widely considered to be one of the most notorious organisations. Her father had been a member of this organisation.
Over the course of her childhood, she had been sexually assaulted by a number of different males. Marianne was just 16 years old when she realised she was pregnant. Due to the fact that she was unable to raise the child on her own, she made the decision to place the child for adoption when she was a teenager. Marianne experienced a second pregnancy when she was 18 years old, and she turned her child up to an adoption agency for the second time.
Anna was Marianne’s third child, and she was born in 1973. Anna was her sister. Marianne brought up Anna on her own, despite the fact that she was still a single mother.
Anna was described as a “happy, open-minded child” by various sources; nonetheless, it transpired that she and her family would soon be subjected to a shocking occurrence.
Anna and Marianne got into a fight in the month of May in the year 1980. It was determined by the little girl that she would not go to school and instead walk to the residence of a friend. Anna, however, was taken captive by Klaus Grabowski, a native butcher who was 35 years old at the time.
Grabowski confined Anna to his flat for a number of hours, during which time he subjected the young girl to physical and emotional abuse before ultimately causing her death by strangulation. The perpetrator of the murder wrapped Anna’s body in a box and put it in a concealed location on the bank of a canal when he had finished with her.
After some time had passed, Grabowski went back to the area in order to bury the body of his victim. However, he was taken into custody that very same evening at his favourite pub in Lubeck, after his fiancee reported him into the authorities.
During that particular period, Grabowski was already a convicted sexual offender who had previously served time in prison for sexual assaults committed against two different female women.
It was during his time in prison in 1976 that he voluntarily underwent the procedure of castration. He started hormone therapy two years later in order to reverse the chemical castration that had been performed on him. This was done so that he may have a romantic relationship with his fiance.
Immediately after the murder of Anna, Grabowski admitted to the crime, but he denied having sexually molested the girl. Grabowski took his allegations even further and asserted that Anna had attempted to extort and seduce him while he was on trial.
In point of fact, Grabowski said that the person he murdered was to responsible for his heinous conduct. It was his assertion that the sole reason he had slain the young girl was because she had attempted to blackmail him. Grabowski claims that Anna demanded money from him and threatened him, stating that she would tell her mother that Grabowski had inappropriately touched her if she did not receive the money.
It was determined that Grabowski’s explanation was not credible by the court.
Marianne, Anna’s mother, was left in a position of powerlessness, resentment, and hatred as a result of his weird and terrible story, which drove her mental. A decision was made by Marianne to take matters into her own hands on March 6, 1981, which was the third day of the trial.
Bypassing the security checks and all of the guards, she was able to sneak a gun into the courtroom. She did this deftly. Not long after she entered the hall, she removed the loaded gun from her handbag, aimed it at the person who had murdered her daughter, and unloaded the magazine completely. Grabowski was quickly taken down by seven of the eight shots that hit their target. At that moment, he passed away.
Anna’s mother dropped her gun, a Beretta M1934, instantaneously as the firing ended. Then, her voice reverberated throughout the room:
“My daughter was murdered by him… When I shot him, I intended to shoot him in the face, but instead I shot him in the back… I really do hope he is dead.
After she fired fire, Marianne allegedly referred to Grabowski as a “pig,” as stated by two law enforcement officers who were present at the occurrence.
She was taken into custody by law enforcement officers within the courthouse, and she was immediately charged with murder. Marianne stated that she had a dream in which she shot Grabowski, and that she saw a vision of her daughter in court. This occurred during her trial in 1982.
Experts who testified during the trial stated that Marianne’s behaviour necessitated specialised training with the firearm, which suggests that she had all of the necessary preparations and plans in place before to the shooting.
Additionally, the mother was visited by medical professionals, who enquired about the possibility of obtaining a sample of her handwriting. The response that Marianne provided was written as follows: “I did it for you, Anna.” Additionally, the sample was adorned with seven hearts, which many people saw as a symbolic representation of each year that Anna had lived.
In the event that she was found guilty, Marianne was going to be sentenced to life in jail.
The act of vigilantism committed by the mother garnered a significant amount of attention from the media, not just in Germany but also for the rest of the world. The term “Revenge mum” was used to refer to Marianne, and many people believed that she ought to be found not guilty throughout the trial.
In spite of the fact that she carried out vigilante justice, the heartbroken mother who took revenge for the death of her cherished daughter was lauded by many people and received a great deal of support and empathy.
When Marianne was first introduced to the public, the media depicted her as a saint. Once that happened, however, journalists began to investigate her past. The fact that Marianne submitted her first two children for adoption was brought to the attention of the media. Some of the elements that began to ruin the picture of a loving and self-sacrificing mother included the fact that she spent a significant amount of time at the bar where she worked.
It was in 1983 when Marianne was found guilty of both unauthorised possession of a firearm and premeditated manslaughter. She was given a sentence of six years in prison, but she was released after it had been served for three years.
According to the findings of a survey conducted by the Allensbach Institute, her punishment caused confusion among the population. About twenty-eight percent of respondents thought that her sentence of six years was acceptable, while another twenty-seven percent thought that it was too harsh, and another twenty-five percent thought that it was too lenient.
Marianne moved to Nigeria and married a German teacher after she had completed her sentence of incarceration. After getting divorced in 1990, she relocated to Sicily, which is located in Italy.
After receiving a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, Marianne relocated to Lubeck, her hometown and motherland, in order to be closer to her family.
Her act of vengeance continued to be ingrained in the recollections of a great number of Germans; newspapers continued to publish articles dealing with the occurrence well into the 1990s.
In 1994, thirteen years after her performance, she participated in a rare interview that was broadcast on German radio.
“I believe that there is a significant distinction between the situation in which I kill a young girl because I am frightened that I will be sentenced to spend the rest of my life in jail. ‘I heard something come out of her nose, I was captivated, and then I could not tolerate the sight of her body any longer,’ she claimed. “And then there is also the ‘how,’ making it so that I stand behind the girl and strangle her.” This is a literal interpretation of his words.
A confession was made by Marianne in 1995 during an interview with the Das Erste television channel. She stated that she had shot Grabowski after giving it some thought and in order to stop him from spreading additional lies about Anna.
Marianne was transferred to a hospital in Lubeck on September 17, 1996, where she passed suddenly. She longed to pass away at the house she had previously occupied in Sicily, but she was never able to do so.
A churchyard in Lubeck was the location where Marianne was eventually laid to rest close to her cherished daughter.
The outcome of Marianne’s lawsuit and the extent of vigilante justice are still up for dispute. She was a sexual offender who had already been convicted of child abuse on multiple occasions, and a significant portion of the population supported her actions and believed that they were appropriate punishments for him.
Others, on the other hand, were of the opinion that Marianne’s decision to take matters into her own hands was quite inappropriate. The critics said that she ought to have deferred to the judge in making the outcome of the case.
