Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Marianne Bachmeier: Vigilante Mother

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Marianne Bachmeier committed a shocking act of violence in court in Germany in 1981 to avenge the murder of her young daughter. Many people understood.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. The Week's Monster Fact will focus on a popular cat creature, and you better believe Weird House Cinema will cover some kind of head-scratching cat movie. So tune in August 5th through 8th for Stuff to Blow Your Mind's Cat Week. Find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too, sitting in for Dave. So this is a good old-fashioned short stuff, the Oh, Man edition. Vigilante justice. Thank you to Perplexity and YouTube and HowStuffWorks and Morbidology for the information on the kind of shocking story of Marianne Bachmeier.

Yeah, so Marianne Bachmeier, you say vigilante. You usually think guys in the Old West, right? No, Marianne Bachmeier was a woman in Germany, in Lübeck, I believe, Germany, in the 1980s, who carried out essentially an execution in the middle of open court to kill the murderer of her daughter. And if you want to start talking about moral quandaries and ethical twists, this is about as good as it gets. Yeah, as bad as it gets. On May 5th, 1980, and, you know, trigger warning because this involves sexual violence and violence against a child, which is the worst thing you can imagine. But her daughter, Anna, was abducted at the age of seven by a man named Klaus Grabowski. He was a 35-year-old butcher. He was out on probation.

He had a history of crimes against children and sexual offenses. And little Anna got in an argument with her mother apparently that morning, skipped school, and Grabowski lured her to his apartment because he said that he had cats that she could play with. He sexually assaulted her over the course of several hours and then strangled her to death, put her body in a cardboard box and disposed of it in a canal. And that is the most awful part of the story. So I'm glad that part's over with. Yeah, for sure. And Marianne was a single mom. Did you say that? No. So Grabowski was actually turned in by his fiance. And like you said, he was out on probation.

He'd actually been chemically castrated before. And his chemical castration was reversed when he met his fiance while he was in prison. And so he was caught fairly quickly, I believe. And he was put on trial for the murder of Anna. And during this trial, within the first, I think, couple of days, his defense was, I didn't sexually abuse her. She said that she was going to tell her mom that I did sexually abuse her if I didn't give her money, so that's why I killed her. And that caused Marianne Bachmeier to absolutely snap. Not only was her young seven-year-old daughter sexually assaulted and murdered, now she was being slandered in open court by the guy who murdered her. Yeah. And gaslit. The whole country is being gaslit by this guy. So on day three of the trial, she comes into court and she has smuggled in a gun, a small caliber, a .22 Beretta pistol.

And she shot him very calmly, apparently, walked over, fired eight shots at him. I saw seven in other places, but both places I saw that she hit him six times, killed him on the spot. And the court was going nuts, obviously. But apparently she was very calm through the whole thing with her demeanor, said things like, I wanted to kill him. He killed my daughter. I wanted to shoot him in the face, but I shot him in the back. I hope he dies. Yeah.

And her just calmly saying this stuff, too, while the rest of the court's going crazy. That's I mean, that's movie type stuff, you know? Yeah, for sure. So I say we take a little break and come back and talk about how people felt about this vigilante execution in Germany after this. week ahead for you on stuff to blow your mind it's cat week that's right to coincide with international cat day on august 8th we're dedicating every episode in the stuff to blow your mind podcast feed to your cute mysterious feline companions so tune in for core stuff to blow your mind episodes on the earliest archaeological evidence for domesticated cats

and the folkloric cats of the british isles the week's monster fact will focus on a popular cat creature and you better believe weird house cinema will cover some kind of head-scratching cat movie so tune in august 5th through 8th for stuff to blow your mind's cat week find us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this attention passengers the pilot is having an emergency and we need someone anyone to land this plane? Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this, pull

that, turn this. It's just like doing my ice club. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, No Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise and then as we try the whole thing out for real wait what oh that's the run right i'm looking at this thing listen to no such thing on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts all right so the vigilante killing has happened in court in front of everybody so like you know kind of no doubt what happened as to her guilt goes um details emerged uh about

you know her past and you know how what kind of a mother she was some people at some point like questioned her grief a little bit, criticized her parenting. But most people, a lot of people were like, heck, yeah, you know, you avenged the death of your daughter. They're in plain view. And you took care of things very quickly and efficiently. And $100,000 Deutsche Marks were raised for her legal defense because of that. Right. And I have to say, I looked into it. It's pretty gross. The people who are like, oh, I don't know. I question her moral character. She had a kid. She had two kids out of wedlock one at 16 one at 18 and she adopted both of them off uh right after they were born um because she was 16 and then 18 when she was 23 she had anna she made the decision to raise

her on her own as a single mom and then so that was like her like her her past that people were like oh i don't know about that and then her behavior after anna died she um apparently Mary Ann spent a lot of time at work. She worked in a pub and that was enough for people to be like, I don't know about this lady. I was okay with her murdering this guy in open court, but she's spending time at a pub and I've lost faith in her. Yeah, exactly. Which surprises me for Germany because they love their beer. Yeah. I should also say this is West Germany. And I don't know if Germans has referred to it historically like that still, or if they prefer people to just say Germany, because this is 1980 and 1981, and it was definitely still

West Germany that we're talking about. So if you're German, write in and let us know. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So she initially had a murder charge put on her. They eventually convicted her of manslaughter and unlawful possession of a firearm. That always cracks me up when a tiny little offense is tacked on. Six-year prison sentence. She served three and got out. People thought that that was a fairly lenient sentence for obvious reasons. And if you talk about a pretty evenly split survey, there was a survey about a year later in 83 by the Allensbach Institute, and 28% felt the sentence was just right. 27% thought it was too harsh. 25% thought she got off too lightly. And 20% weren't sure. So it's very evenly, pretty much

evenly divided as to how people felt about her even serving those three years. Yeah. And plus, it also sparked a lot of debates about other stuff, too, in particular, whether or not the West German or German court system was a little too lenient with repeat offenders. Remember, Grabowski was out on bail or on probation. I'm sorry. So that was a big, a big discussion and also like you know what like what right does a person like that have do you have like a moral right to murder somebody who did that to your child and then also does that right extend to your if somebody did that to your husband or your wife or your brother like is it just specifically is it really narrow that only a mother could do that only for her young child

only under circumstances like this this is the stuff that the people of germany were talking about at the time. Yeah, for sure. Um, she served those three years, uh, was released in June of 85 and obviously wanted to sort of get away from all that. Um, she withdrew from the public eye, pretty, you know, pretty smart move and moved to Nigeria. She married a teacher, moved to Nigeria. She was there through the nineties, but got divorced after a few years. And then after her divorce, went to Sicily and developed pancreatic cancer, a terminal case of cancer. So that eventually got her to go back to Germany such that she was, you know, in the mid-90s, like occasionally interviewed and stuff like that again because she was back there. In the mid-90s,

she was interviewed for a television show where, I don't know why she felt like she needed to admit this because everyone knew it happened, but sort of was like, yeah, I did this. I meant to do it and just passed away about a year later in 1996 at the young age of 46 from cancer. Yeah. I think what she was saying, too, was that she finally admitted that it was premeditated because that's what the case against her hinged on. Was it something that she had planned out? And I brought the gun. Yeah. Yeah. But was it planned even further than that? And like the prosecution apparently had firearms experts that were like, she hit this guy six out of seven or eight however many shots she fired times like you actually would have to have firearms training the

average person would to for that number of hits so like people were saying like she definitely thought about this planned it out prepared for it and she finally admitted in 1995 that she did um and she had a really hard life man dead at 46 of pancreatic cancer and i also read that she herself also had been sexually abused as a child too so she had a really hard hard sad life you You know? I feel for her. Yeah, for sure. She was laid to rest beside her daughter there in Burgtor Cemetery in Lübeck, Germany.

So if you're in Lübeck, Germany, and you want to go pay your respects to Marianne or Anna or both, you can do that. That's right. And this certainly is something still people talk about over there, especially, you know, as far as all the kind of things we were saying. And certainly we're not weighing in on that here as far as vigilante justice goes. But the world was probably a better place without that guy walking around. Probably. Hard to disagree with that, Chuck. And I think before we say anything else, short stuff is that.

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