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Law and Crime
Former Prosecutor Discusses New 'Death of an Assassin' Book
This German story has a twist that involves American soldier Robert E. Lee.
Posted November 4, 2015
Former U.S. prosecutor Ann Marie Ackermann, who has lived in Germany the last 20 years, has written a new book about a 19th Century German assassination. In the following interview, Ackermann talks about the American connection to this fascinating story.
Question: You've written the book Death of an Assassin. Is a 19th Century German murder something that would interest American readers?
Yes, because it’s American history wrapped up in true crime packaging. A German murderer fled to the United States and ended up becoming the first soldier to die defending Robert E. Lee in battle. That happened during the Mexican-American War. Lee wrote home about him, but nobody in America knows the backstory—that the object of Lee’s admiration had a story of his own to hide.
That enables me to tell American history in a true crime format: German immigrants in Philadelphia, an all-German company in the Mexican-American War, and Robert E. Lee’s early life against the backdrop of one of Germany’s most unusual cases. The book contains original research based on interlocking pieces of the German and American archives.
What makes this case so unusual from Germany’s perspective?
It was a record-breaker. In the 19th Century, most murders were solved within weeks, if not days. And a local investigator usually solved them. With 37 years between the assassination and solution, this case was the oldest cold case in 19th Century Germany to ever be solved, and the only one ever solved in America.
The German investigator was the first person I know of to use forensic ballistics to eliminate a suspect weapon. He predated the man who’s considered the founder of forensic ballistics by half a century.
You live in Germany now.
Yes, I live in Bönnigheim, the German town where the assassination took place. That’s how I discovered the case.
How did you find it?
Would you believe it was through my bird-watching hobby?
I wrote an article on the history of the local birdlife for Bönngheim’s historical society. While researching it, I read a 19th Century forester’s diary in the hopes he’d mentioned a bird here and there. He did, but he also told how he helped corroborate the solution to a 37-year-old cold case. An unknown murderer had gunned down Bönnigheim’s mayor in 1835, and a solution came from Washington, D.C. in 1872. This forester found evidence in the archives of Bönnigheim’s forestry department to corroborate the American solution. It was a key piece of evidence that convinced the German prosecutor to close the case as solved.
I knew immediately this was an unusual case. Thinking it would make a great story for Germans, I began tracking the murderer through the American archives. When his trail led me to Robert E. Lee, I knew I had a great story for Americans too. That’s when I got a book contract with Kent State University Press.
What took you to Germany?
It was love! I married a German and moved to Bönnigheim nearly 20 years ago.
When did you decide to turn your career from prosecuting criminals to writing about them?
In Germany, I would have had to repeat law school to practice, and that wasn’t feasible with small children. I opened a small freelance translating business focusing on criminal law and psychiatry. With the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law as one of my clients, I expanded my knowledge of German and foreign criminal law. I retired from translating about the same time I discovered this case and now enjoy writing full time.
As a former prosecutor, does that give you an advantage in digging into a book and researching it?
It helps me better read between the lines of an investigative file. Two things that shape any criminal investigation are the rules of evidence and available technology. Both were quite different 180 years ago.
Just as understanding a modern American criminal investigation requires familiarity with the chain of custody or fruit of the poisonous tree, reading the investigative file alongside Württemberg’s rules of evidence was essential to understanding the investigator’s approach. A German evidence rule dating back to 1532 was one of the reasons the case went cold so quickly. The investigator never explicitly cited the rule in his file, so if you don’t know about it, parts of the investigation wouldn’t make sense.
Likewise, the technology was very different. This case took place before photography and fingerprinting became commonplace. Witness statements, searches, and autopsies typically formed the lynchpins of period investigations. So when the investigating magistrate had a stroke of genius and used forensic ballistics to rule out a suspect weapon, I could better recognize his feat in historical context.
Was that what attracted you to this case, the evidence?
I found the investigator's early foray into forensic ballistics fascinating. Alexandre Lacassagne is considered the father of forensic ballistics, the fine art of identifying a firearm based on the scratches it leaves on a bullet. In this case we see a German investigator examining scratches on the projectiles removed from the body at autopsy. Those scratches showed the murder weapon was a rare rifle. The investigator test fired suspect weapons, made comparisons, and could eliminate individual suspect weapons as the murder weapon. He did this more than half a century before Lacassagne purportedly invented the technique. Unlike Lacassagne, the German detective couldn't publish anything about it—and get credit for inventing forensic ballistics—because the case was still open. He couldn't tip the murderer off that he knew what kind of rifle it was. So this case adds a new chapter to the history of forensic ballistics; it moves the birthplace of forensic ballistics from France to Germany.
An American solution to the case arriving in Germany nearly 40 years after the murder presented an interesting evidentiary issue. Did the letter writer tell the truth or not? And how could anyone prove it? The Germans did find corroborating evidence. It convinced the German prosecutor to close the case as solved.
What obstacles did you encounter in your international research?
The hardest part about the research was also the most fun—learning to read Germany’s old Gothic handwriting. All the relevant German archival material is in that old script. Not only does the alphabet look different, but the language itself has changed. Of course I had help from professionals in deciphering the old texts, but as I learned to read the handwriting on my own, it opened windows into Germany’s history and culture. That, in turn, has made me feel more connected to my adopted town and country.
Are you working on any other book projects?
I have several ideas about historical German crimes that might be interesting to Americans, but until I do some research in the archives, I can't say yet whether there's enough material for a book. A book about Mark Twain's travels in Germany is another possibility. He travelled in my region of Germany in 1878, and some German archival material might round off our knowledge of his German travels.
Ann Marie Ackermann, a former U.S. prosecutor, lives in Germany. Her book, Death of an Assassin: The German Murderer Who Died Defending Robert E. Lee, will be released in a true-crime history series by Kent State University Press in 2017. Read more about it at www.annmarieackermann.com. To organize a crime scene tour in Bönnigheim, Germany, contact Ackermann via her website.
