The Case of the “Cannibal” Franz Bratuscha

Excerpted from:
 
Gesammelte Kriminalistische Aufsätze
(Collected Essays of Criminology)
Volume 2, by Dr. Hans Gross
 
(Translated by Daniel Rastatter)
 
 
41. The Case of the “Cannibal” Franz Bratuscha.
(German Lawyers Newspaper, No. 3, Volume 1904.)

Some time ago, in the district courts of Maribor on the Drau, a criminal case was heard that caused much excitement, but even stranger is the fact that long after the verdict, the confession in the case was found to be false. Undoubtedly, we are faced with a mystery. However, it is not clear whether the mystery lies in the mind of the one who confessed – actually the two who confessed – or whether the mystery lies in the course of events themselves.
 
At the time the case was pending[1], it was described by Dr. Aug. Nemanitsch, the case prosecutor for the higher regional court. I understand from his presentation the following essentials:
 
On April 16, 1900, Johanna Bratuscha (born 1888 in Prasdorf) made a fire in a hollow tree at Majsperk near Ptuj and fearing punishment, disappeared from her home. However, she was seen nearby on May 6. Her father, the winemaker Franz Bratuscha, reported her disappearance to the police who made fruitless inquiries in their search for the child.
 
Some time later Franz Bratuscha read a newspaper article that was dated June 20, 1900, about nine weeks after the disappearance of his child. The article reported that the emaciated body of a unknown girl was found in a Spielfeld cabin. Bratuscha first wrote to the Spielfeld minister of court, then went there himself and explained that, according to the descriptions given to him, the found girl must be his missing child. The authorities showed him what they retained of the girl's clothes and Bratuscha identified the dead girl's clothes as that of his child. He said he had bought the fabric out of which the clothes were made and was ready to send the unused remainder of this fabric to the courts. Because of the identification, the dead girl's clothes were given to Bratuscha and he took them with him.
 
This case of the dead girl appeared to be closed, but a policeman kept his eye on it because he had learned that a second girl had disappeared. This girl, born in 1891, was the illegitimate daughter of Therese Holz. The mother, a resident of St. Leonhard in Maribor said when asked that her daughter worked as farm hand in Wildon, although she did not know the name of the farm.
 
The location and distance of the places mentioned is important: To the south is Majsperk; 16 miles to the north and a little east is St. Leonhard [present-day Lenart], 14 miles from Leonhard, due north of Majsperk, is Spielfeld (26 miles from Majsperk), 14 miles north of Spielfeld is Wildon (all measured as the crow flies).
 
The policeman was not satisfied with the information given to him and on March 29, 1901 obtained Holz's confession that she had abandoned her sick daughter (at the trial she confessed to having strangled the same). It could now be completely assured that the dead child found in Spielfeld belonged to Therese Holz, and therefore the assessment of the case provided by Bratuscha had to be wrong.
 
The assessment, as mentioned, was only due to the exhibited clothing, but it is nevertheless remarkable under the circumstances. The two girls were three years apart in age and may have had clothes of different sizes. This consideration can be given no weight because the difference may disappear under certain circumstances. However, it must be remembered that Bratuscha must have known the clothes of his daughter.
 
Because he lived in boundless poverty, his daughter could not have had a large wardrobe. Since his appeal of the identification was detailed, one can dismiss the idea that he was innocently mistaken and adopt the view that he gave an intentionally false statement. And if he had been mistaken, it is almost impossible that his wife, the mother of the missing child, would have failed to correct the error.
 
We must assume that when Bratuscha came home from Spielfeld, he had not shown the clothes to his wife. This failure would be suspicious in itself as there would be no person better informed about them. Or if he had shown the clothes to his wife, it is inconceivable that after seeing these clothes, which were probably of her own making, or at least patched by her, she would not have told her husband, “These are not the clothes of our child!”
 
As it was now established that the child found in Spielfeld was not Bratuscha's, he was asked to return to the clothes mistakenly handed to him and he returned them to the policeman.
 
Bratuscha was also summoned to court, but before he appeared, he went to the policeman and asked him about the summons. Here he behaved so remarkably that the policeman at once undertook a search of Bratuscha's home. He found some clothes, allegedly from the vanished child, and believed they contained traces of blood. When the policeman confronted Bratuscha and demanded information on the whereabouts of the child, Bratuscha confessed that he had strangled his child. This confession Bratuscha then repeated before district courts in Ptuj, the examining magistrate, the jury court, and after his conviction before the chairman of the hearing.
 
However, in front of the police, judges, and the jury he would not confess because he performed freely in front of the latter, and thus added his statements voluntarily. The contents of the confession is based on a dream. He had a dream shortly after the disappearance of his daughter in which he found her in a forest, but in the dream his daughter had a black face, and when he asked her why it was black, the daughter replied, “That is the concern.” This dream he had told his wife and he added that, if he really would find his daughter, he would kill her and burn her. With this, his wife would have agreed.
 
Some time later he had found his daughter in a miserable condition in the forest; she was strangled and her body was hidden. In the evening he took her home and with his wife's help, he used a knife to dismember her, then burned her corpse in the furnace. He had cut some pieces from her thighs, cooked them on an earthenware plate and ate them. He had read that people eat human flesh in the wild and “do not die of it.”[2] The bones he had thrown in the garbage.
 
In the preliminary investigation, every effort was made to corroborate the details of Bratuscha's story. In particular, the investigation continued for the lost child. A house search was made for evidence. Bones were found on the manure pile, but these, however, were identified as animal bones. The blood stains on the clothes of the child were not expertly studied. The state of the corroborating evidence is described as follows: First, the blood was discovered prior to the confession and second, Uhlenhuth testing, which alone can distinguish human blood from animal blood, was not performed. Therefore the preliminary investigation did not reach any important finding.
 
Bratuscha's wife initially admitted her role in the dismemberment and the burning of the corpse. She then denied her role, but after taking an oath, she again confessed. After the trial, as Bratuscha was sentenced to death (later commuted to life at hard labor), he stated for the record: Everything he said about his and his wife's guilt was “the full and unadulterated truth.” Bratuscha's wife was convicted of abetting (for help in removing the body) and sentenced to 3 years of hard labor.
 
So now the case was legally closed. But in August 1903, the District Court of Krško in Carniola gave notice that they had a thief in custody who initially gave a false name, but then said she was the missing Joanna Bratuscha. An investigation was immediately begun that ultimately removed all doubt: The girl who was murdered, burned, and partly eaten by her own father was alive.
 
While the investigation was taking its course, and nothing definite was known in Maribor, the imprisoned Bratuscha told the prosecutor that he had heard of the discovery of his daughter and asked that his criminal conviction be quashed. The prosecutor explained that his conviction could not presently be quashed, for what would happen if the rumor proved true and the girl was not Bratuscha's daughter? In reply Bratuscha gave an obscure answer: “Then everything will remain the same.” When Bratuscha's fellow prisoners learned that his allegedly murdered daughter had been found, they noticed he showed neither joy nor excitement as his demeanor remained unchanged. When the prisoners asked him what he intended to do, he said to them quietly, “The police have brought me here, they will bring me out again.”
 
As I said, the girl was Bratuscha's daughter, and he was within the meaning of §360 Austrian Str. P.O. acquitted and is now in custody for defamation of his wife.  He claims that the policeman had first extorted a confession from him, and then he thought to himself: “a promise is a promise” and therefore he did not any more withdraw the confession, but repeated it before the survey judge, the investigation judge and the oath tribunal!
 
If we look closely at how the case progressed, the question arises as to whether any action taken in the case was reckless. I will take the daily newspapers not to be amiss if they explained now, having regard to how the case ended: They should have known that the confession, with such horrible details accompanying it, was untrue.
 
But the detective must, after careful study of the act and accurate reflection on the course of events, come to a conviction in accord with the much abused phrase: tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner (to understand everything is to forgive everything). Such a phrase finds fair use in our case.
 
We know, however, that a confession is not proof, but a confession has the value of proof, which the laymen knows and is even expressed in law (German St. P.O., specifically §253 and §402, and indirectly §136 - Austrian St. P.O., specifically §§ 25, 202, 204, 206, and indirectly, §199).
 
For our case, the final sentence of §206 is especially decisive: “Is the confession fully supported by the other results of the preliminary investigation or by investigations initiated by the prosecutor?” We apply these laws to the case as follows:
 
The confession was certainly broad enough and was “supported by the other results of the preliminary investigation,” because:
 
1. Bratuscha's wife confirmed his confession.
 
2. The allegedly murdered girl actually disappeared.
 
3. During the house search, a dress of the child was found. It could be assumed that a child living in such poor conditions would not likely possess a second dress, although it is possible.
 
4. Bratuscha undoubtedly lied in claiming the child of Therese Wood as his own. His attempt to pass off another child as his own suited the suspicion that he had murdered his child.
 
5. Bratuscha's 10-year-old son indicated that on the night in question, the furnace was heated so strongly that he had to leave his sleeping place (on top of it) for the night.
 
6. Bratuscha is stated to have often been incredibly cruel toward his children; he had smashed the face of the aforementioned 10-year-old with a stone – because the wind had taken away the child's hat.
 
7. This is a lot of evidence, by the way, to suggest that Bratuscha is a very intelligent man who is highly superstitious. Therefore, the obvious assumption is that he had committed the act out of superstition. [3] This could be regarded as a sufficient motive.
 
Summarizing these results, it must be admitted that a comprehensive, widely supported confession was present, and further investigation was undertaken which ruled some elements out. The investigation for the child was done eagerly, but in vain; everyplace was searched and extensive digs were made, but these were probably done in vain. The only thing that was missed, was to examine the spots on the missing child's clothes. We could have used Uhlenhuth testing[4] to determine if the spots were human blood. But if this happened and the testing revealed the spots are human blood, animal blood, or not blood at all, would the charges against Bratuscha been dropped, or would he have been acquitted?
 
One would have said quite rightly: “According to Bratuscha, he strangled the child, and before he dismembered her, he removed her clothes. From where then should blood stains on the clothes come? The negative result was expected.”
 
To sum up as to how he could be found guilty, we must say: Do not accuse Bratuscha, do not condemn him. The evidence did not prove guilt as it left us in a state of ignorance. But now that we know that the confession is false, we still can not explain the course of events, but only conjecture. The following is possible:
 
1. As Bratuscha declared, the confession was extorted from him by the police. There is no way to absolutely prove this. Apart from the fact that one cannot trust the idea that a reputable policeman committed a completely senseless extortion, the investigation shows that the confession may not have been extorted. This result is bolstered by the fact that Bratuscha repeated his confession four times. And his claim that he allowed himself to be sentenced to death because he stood by the saying: “A promise is a promise” – this is difficult to take seriously.
 
2. The Slovenian Press explains it simply: Bratuscha had been misunderstood by his judges, who spoke poor Slovenian! This explanation falls apart, as Bratuscha speaks excellent German, and all officials who dealt with Bratuscha had to speak Slovenian well. A misunderstanding is conceivable in a fraud trial which depends on the exact meaning of a word or phrase, but not here, where a long, detailed description of such a horrible sequence of events is alleged to have been confused with the statement: “No, I have not done it!”
 
3. The common people claimed Bratuscha had simply wanted care in prison. This is unlikely because he would not have confessed to a capital crime, especially since it would require him to endure the terrible fear of being hanged. Moreover, contrary to this view, he decided to incriminate himself with his identification of Holz's child, an identification which can be viewed as a subtle attempt to exculpate himself.
 
4. Mental disorder is not excluded. But the court physicians who observed Bratuscha throughout prison rule this out.[5]
 
5. There is also the possibility that Bratuscha's confession could in part be true. Since there is no doubt that he is subject to superstition, it is possible that he killed a child for superstitious purposes (such as one of those children who come begging across the Croatian border).[6] He may have burned and partially eaten this child. As he was now forced to confess, he thought it better to state he killed his own child. Bratuscha is [Wende] and may have held the Slavic view of far reaching patria potestas (paternal power). This view is named after the popular opinion of Slavs that a father is allowed to do almost anything with his own child. Thus he may have thought he would be punished less severely for killing his own child than he would for killing a strange child.
 
One might assume that the “bloody” clothes which the policeman found in Bratuscha's house were not those of his child, but those of the alien, allegedly Croatian child. Since Bratuscha did not help the policeman by specifying the owner of the clothes, the policeman had to assume they belonged to his daughter.
 
Admittedly, no one would object to the notion that Bratuscha with remarkable cleverness sought to identify Holz's child as his own. This action would make no sense if he killed a stranger's child. Similarly, it is striking that Bratuscha's child, despite the boundless poverty of her parents, had two suits. (Their house recently burned down with all their belongings.) The policeman found a suit (jacket, coat, two petticoats) and the child must have been wearing a suit when she went missing. This argument could lead to the conclusion that the found suit is from an alien child who was murdered!
 
Any attempted solution such as the adoption of mental illness, encounters either acceptance or strong resistance. Perhaps the future will bring light on this strange thing. But we learn many things from the case: in particular, again, the role that chance plays. Had Bratuscha's daughter not been caught stealing, one would have believed the false name she used. So the court would probably never become aware that the alleged victim is still alive. Therefore: if new evidence arises by chance in a criminal case, how easy it is to see that the prosecution of the case is a mistake!
 
Further, in important cases, the confession must never leave any objective point undiscussed and uninvestigated.  In important cases, the coroner cannot presume that a confession exists and must proceed as though the accused denied the accusation. Old criminal courts did not allow murder charges to be brought against a suspect if police could not find the victim's body. Were such courts correct?


42. Regarding the Case of the Cannibal Bratuscha.
(German Lawyers Newspaper, No. 15, Volume 1904.)

The case presented by me about the alleged cannibal Bratuscha has now reached a final conclusion.
 
In view of the strange case, of the five possible ways the case can be explained, I have highlighted two.
 
Either: Franz B. killed another child, probably out of superstition, and thought better to state that the child was his own because people believed in the peculiar notion of the patria potestas. This would explain why a second suit of a child, allegedly blood-stained, was found in Bratuscha's possession. Since he lived in boundless poverty, his child would not likely possess a second suit.
 
Or: One would have to accept that Bratuscha is mentally ill. The court doctors, who are not known to be psychiatrists, declared him to be mentally healthy, so I have to propose that Bratuscha has a condition that will develop into mental illness. (Perhaps Bratuscha has a latent mental illness).
 
Thus stands the case. The courts have allowed the case to continue. They could pursue a charge of libel against Bratuscha for accusing his wife of dismembering the body, etc., but to avoid that they had to clarify for themselves Bratuscha's state of mind. With this delicate work Professors Kratter and Zingerle of Graz have been entrusted, who now, after careful observation of Bratuscha, have returned their opinions.
 
Their interesting work has come to the conclusion that Bratuscha was in a state of impaired mental activity at the time of the proceedings against him and that he is still functioning in this impaired state. Bratuscha's impaired functioning was caused by a psychopathic disposition that has triggered intense emotional affects, and his false statements, both former and current are so directly related to his condition that they are not deliberate lies, but are false memories.
 
These conclusions will be substantiated: The case is one of the greatest rarities, especially because Bratuscha, while facing the death penalty (which he much dreaded), did not recant his false confession.
 
False memories are often seen in different mental disorders, and it was the duty of psychiatrists to determine whether one of these are present here which caused the false confession. Heredity is not provable, but one of Bratuscha's children is an imbecile, while the other (the allegedly murdered Johanna) is undoubtedly mentally diseased and apparently a pathological liar.
 
Bratuscha was intelligent, mentally alert and resourceful, but very irritable and irascible. It is not provable that he suffered from dizziness, cramps, epilepsy, anxiety, etc., but he did not drink, have syphilis, have any excessive religiosity, or show any significant signs of cellular degeneration.
 
However, his irritability goes so far that one can speak of a psychopathic constitution, which was affected by hard work, grinding poverty and worry. The disappearance of his daughter upset him. His neighbors soon noticed his restless behavior and he became afraid that they would hold him responsible for the disappearance of his child. Therefore, his anxious, depressed mood is easily explained.
 
Now when the inquiry began against him, this was the impetus, to bring the man in a truly pathological condition. First he denied committing the murder, then he admitted doing it, and the more he is asked about it, the more he adds gruesome details. He indicates, “he adds to his confession more and more,” but brings in one contradiction after another, because he always tries to accommodate new questions. Here he again developed an amazing skill to explain everything and bring everything into agreement, and his good memory supports him: Intellect disorders are completely absent as well as conscious lies, since there is no motive for them.
 
Only through frequent reproduction of gradually gained false memories could they come to such a consistency that “the person at the trial with all the details worked out, could be ordered without opposition to present them in a confession.” Thus, it is understandable that no one doubted the confession.[7] So the case would be explained only by a pathological falsification of memory, although many unfortunate chance events are also involved.
 
The lesson to be drawn would be that we never yield to general knowledge but only to the opinion of specialists. The court physicians who declared Bratuscha to be healthy are excellent in their field, but they do not and cannot have the knowledge of the specialists equipped with the modern and detailed knowledge of the psychiatrist, who devotes himself only to his field. The times of the general expert are gone for good.
 
But we must admit that only later in the case, as we saw that the confession is false, that psychiatric interest increased and the use of specialists was needed. Before we knew it, we might well have used regular physicians, as the need for a very careful examination was not apparent at the time. We were not guided by the knowledge we know by hindsight.
 
In regard to the case of the cannibal now being solved, I do not claim that many obscure issues are or remain resolved, namely the false identification of Holz's child, the finding of the second suit, etc., but at least we know absolutely that Franz Bratuscha has not committed a punishable offense.


Notes

[1] In my Archives of Criminal Anthropology and Criminology, Vol. VII p. 300
 
[2] In fact, in his possession a book Australia and its People was found, in which cannibalism is discussed.
 
[3] Indeed, the superstition is very common that “no one can wear something with the court,” or that a person can be invisible who eats the flesh of his own child.
 
[4] This method only became known by the end of 1900 through German Medicine Weekly (No. 46) and the beginning of 1901 through the Archives for Criminal Anthropology and Criminology, Vol. VI, p. 317
 
[5] My personal opinion is that there will later develop in Bratuscha a primary paranoia-type madness in some form, because the doctors do not accept the its current existence. Many witnesses have noted the closed, sometimes irascible nature of Bratuscha to pray much (also under his breath at night) and noted that he often “absent-mindedly stared blankly.” Thus he exhibits inexplicable behavior in his actions.
 
[6] If there was an extensive investigation, the report of a missing child might be found, but no child was known to be missing on either side of the border.
 
[7] This prosecution and conviction is also justified by the psychiatrist.
H. Gross, Criminal Essays II