The Mystery of Little Venice - Beitrag Bundesfremdsprachenwettbewerb

Zum diesjährigen Bundesfremdsprachenwettbewerb (Englisch) konnten drei Schülerinnen aus der Klasse 10 b – Nicole, Tabea und Kim – ihrer Kreativität freien Lauf lassen. Dabei entstand eine Folge für einen Crime-Podcast mit folgendem Fall:

Hello guys,
And welcome back to your monthly time travel to the biggest, bloodiest and most horrofiying murders of our history.  

Today we have to travel back to the year 1890 to a small town in Germany, that happens to be our hometown, Bamberg.
Where the mystery of Little Venice happened.
To put it into perspective, just two years prior the murders of Jack the Ripper happened in London and the story’s about him just got to this little town in Germany.

We just survived the blue plague, people that had it first turned blue and then suddenly died because they couldn’t breathe anymore, there was no cure for that disease.
Because of that many citizens were scared and turned to the church for help. The Catholic church gained much popularity because of that, and even after this time of hardship was over, people stayed with the church.

Many believers of god thought that this illness came over them due to their sins, so they went to confession to repell those.

Not soon after that murders began to happen in Bamberg.

There were three victims out of twelve that could be identified.

Now I am going to tell you about the first one.

Her name was Alice Schiller, she was 22 years old and just recently moved to Bamberg. She had blue eyes and waist length hair. She came from another city near Bamberg, but decided to move here after the blue plague because she wanted a new start to life .

The second victim was a woman named Wendy between the ages of 26-29, she had stricking blue eyes and long hair. That’s everything we know about her because- nah fooled you, we’re going to talk about that later.

And now the third and probably last victim. She was 25 years old and who could have guessed, had blue eyes and pretty long hair. Her name was Susi Müller.  She had lived in Bamberg all of her live and was pretty well known by everyone and especially the church.

Okey and if you listened closely you may have noticed a few similarities.

Yes exactly, first: they were all women between the ages of 20-30 , second: the long hair and third: the blue eyes!!!

There was another thing they all had in common that we haven’t mentioned yet.
They were all sinners.

First of all Alice who just recently moved to the city.  Her reason for moving here was that she cheated on her husband that she knew since they were teenagers. She chose Bamberg because of its local church that promised to repell her of her sins, even if it meant paying for it.

Second of all Wendy, who we didn’t tell you a lot about. She was a prostitute that worked in the Frauenstraße in Bamberg which was known for its brothels and connections to the church. She also didn’t have any family, so she lived with her customers and was robbing them. This didn’t stop her from being religious and even made her go to confession.

And now Susi, before the blue plague she was a normal mother and housewife, but due to the loss of a child from this illness she turned to drugs and became an addict. During one of her highs she accidentally killed her other child, which made her husband leave her, because nothing tied him down anymore and his hatred for killing their child was just too big. She also went to confession because she couldn’t life with the guilt of killing their child.
And now it’s getting quite horrible, so if you’re faint hearted, you should stop listening at this point.

Because everything about those murders, from the way they were killed, to the way their bodies looked when they were  found was really really brutal and crazy.

All of the victims were found in the water of Little Venice in Bamberg, which is near the church that all of these victims went to confess.

But the cause of death was not drowning but a slit to the throat with a rusty knife .

I know this sounds terrible but it’s not even the worst part about it.

Both their hair with the scalp  and the eyes were missing as well as their wombs and you could tell from an autopsy that all of those had been removed with the same rusty knife that they were later killed with, while they were still alive.

Another disturbing fact of their death was that they had chemical wounds all of over their bodys.

We would like to tell you that this was everything but the story doesn’t end here.

At the beginning of the 21 century local hikers of Bamberg found a small opening to a room underground in the nearby woods. The were curious and went inside. It seemed weird so they called the police. Later police statements were published that said that the room contained twelve life sized dolls of women, that had real hair, eyes and wombs in them.
Only three of them could be linked to people living 100 years prior.
The murderer was never found, so the reason why he did all of that  remains a mystery up until now.
As always we did a ton of research, like going to the city archives and collecting information about the victims, which wasn’t easy because this
happened about 140 years ago. We also tried to find the room in the woods, but apparently it was in an area where they now built houses on.

And while doing this research we found a lot of interesting clues and have our own theories.

Our first theory is that this murderer tried to be the German version of Jack the Ripper, this makes sense cause he had the same procedure of killing his victims by slicing their throat and removing their wombs. During our research we found out that at the time of the killings a historian who was obsessed with Jack the Ripper lived in Bamberg to study history there.

The second theory is that a doll maker that lived in Bamberg during this time as well, wanted to create a perfect and innocent women free from all mistakes. That’s why he cleaned them with acid so they could be spotless clean. With the removed body parts he created these dolls, which couldn’t speak or move, which stopped them from doing wrong and getting dirty again.

And now our last and in our opinion most realistic theory.
They all went to the same pastor to confess their sins, he was the only one who knew about their wrongdoings. It would make sense for him to wash them with acid to repell them of their sins. And he dumped the body’s in Little Venice because part of the river flowed under the church and was considered holy. He also removed their eyes because those were the windows to their evil souls, that were condemned by the devil.
Cutting their hair was a ritual done by pastors during that time to remove the bad thoughts. And he took their wombs to stop them from bringing more evil into the world.

That’s why we think this theory is the most likely because all evidence points to him.

If you have any other theory’s or thoughts please share them with us, we’re looking forward to hearing them.

Until our next time travel, don’t get killed and stay safe.

Bye.

 

Vielen Dank für euer Engagement!