Richter, or examining judge, combined the duties of prosecuting attorney and police judge, being charged with the double office of examining into the crime and committing the prisoner (if the evidence warranted it) to jail to await trial by the central criminal court of the district. Prisoners might not be tortured into confession, the rack having been formally abolished by law in 1806; but they were held in close confinement during the entire period of their examination, which sometimes lasted for months.
The science of psychoanalysis had not been dreamed of in those days; yet something closely akin to it obtained in the Bavarian courts. The examining magistrate would ask the prisoner innumerable questions, many of them having only the most remote bearing on the case. Yet, at intervals, there would be sandwiched in questions of the utmost importance—questions which, coming amid irrelevant queries, might easily startle the accused into a damaging admission. All questions and answers were reduced to writing by a notary, and any unusual length of time taken by the accused in answering a given question, his demeanor at the propounding of questions calculated to elicit damaging replies, and similar facts were also noted in the minutes of the examination.[1]
Despite his declared intention of telling all, Bichel fenced skillfully with the judge for several days, contradicting himself a dozen times at each session; but inevitably being led to an admission of his guilt.
At length the magistrate asked him, "did you not pretend to have a magic mirror in your possession, a mirror in which young women might see their future husbands?"
Bichel was observed to change color at this; but stoutly denied it.
The judge, unhurried, confident his questions would bring out the truth, continued at intervals to ask: "Tell us of your magic mirror, Andrew Bichel," or, "Why did you pretend to have a magic mirror?"
Persistence at last prevailed. Worn out with constant questioning, his solitary confinement between court sessions making him a prey to his accusing conscience, Bichel at length broke down and confessed.
He had let it be noised about among the peasant girls, he said, that he possessed a magic mirror in which any girl looking would see her future bridegroom. And, to sweeten the bait for the silly flies he purposed catching in his web, he also said he would accept no fee for a look at this marvelous glass. But she who would see its secrets must come secretly—otherwise the charm would be broken—and she must come dressed in her best, as she would wish to appear when first beholding her future husband. His plan succeeded with shameless ease. So fast the girls applied that he had to turn some away for fear of conflicting "engagements."
The procedure was the same in each case. The victim was shown a piece of board about which a towel had been wrapped. This was the magic mirror. When the wrappings were removed, Bichel assured his dupe, the future bridegroom would stand revealed. But first he must pronounce an incantation and the girl must help him. With her own pocket handkerchief he bandaged her eyes, binding her hands behind her back with a piece of packing thread. Then, standing before the smiling girl, he pronounced these words: "Maiden, behold thy bridegroom. His name is—DEATH!" So saying, he struck her in the throat with a butcher knife he had concealed in his sleeve.
A basin was ready. He eased the terrified girl to the floor, placing the vessel where it would catch the blood from her wound, lest her clothes be stained, and so rendered unsalable. For it was for their clothing and a few tawdry trinkets that he had murdered all these innocent, credulous girls.
When the victim was exhausted, he undressed her, folded her clothes up neatly, ready to be packed in his "treasure" chests upstairs, and proceeded leisurely to dismember and bury her body. The astounded judge asked, "But why did you anatomize them before they were dead?"
To this Bichel made the astonishing reply: "Your excellence, they squirmed. It was delightful!"
WHEN the tedious process of collecting all available evidence at length came to an end, the written report of Bichel's case, comprising several volumes of closely-written German script, was certified to the central criminal court by the examining judge.
"Weary lawyers with endless tongues" had no opportunity to address the court under the Bavarian criminal code. The defendant's legal adviser was allowed to read the transcript of testimony taken before the examining judge, then to prepare a written defense of his client. In this brief he might base his defense on either the law or the facts, or both, and might use as much space as he deemed necessary: but he might not appear in person before the court. Thus it was that many an advocate won fame as a criminal practitioner, yet had never seen the judges whose decisions his pleas swayed!
Bichel's counsel did the best he could with the handicap under which he labored, and the central criminal court doubtless read his learned defense attentively; but the result of the case was foregone.
On February 4, 1809, nearly a year after his arrest, Andrew Bichel was led into court to hear his sentence.
It was au impressive scene. The judges in their robes of office, trimmed with ermine, the royal fur, in token of their right to dispense the King's justice, sat before a long table of age-darkened oak raised three steps above the court room floor. Behind them, and before the doors is and windows of the hall, stood halberdiers in coats of green and gold, the sunlight glinting on the polished heads of their weapons. The official justicer—the headsman—stood beside the steps leading to the judges' table.
A crowd had gathered to hear sentence pronounced, and broke into murmurs of suppressed rage as two stalwart jailors led the prisoner before the judges. The clamor of halberd butts on the floor brought instant silence, for the halberdiers were not slow to rap for order on the heads of the rabble if their first admonition to silence went unheeded.
Bichel halted before the judges' table, and the president of the court rose, facing him. In one hand he held a parchment scroll. Before him, on the table, lay a light wand of dried willow. The prisoner's pale face went a shade whiter as he beheld this, for well he knew what the wand portended.
A pause. The judge unrolled his parchment and read the sentence:
"That Andrew Bichel, of Regendorf, be dragged to the place of execution, and be not carried or allowed to walk; that he there be broken on the wheel from the feet upwards, without the previous mercy stroke, and that his body be afterwards exposed on the wheel as a warning to evil-doers."
As he finished, the president picked up the willow wand, snapped it in two and cast the pieces at Bichel's feet. This was to signify that as the wood was separated in two parts, so should the condemned man's soul and body be severed in the furtherance of the King's justice.
Almost insane with terror, Bichel was drugged from the court room, his vain pleas for mercy ringing fainter and
- ↑ It is to this faithful noting of the most minute details in the transcripts of these criminal examinations that we owe our ability to record practically all the important incidents in trials held more than a century ago.—Editor.
