True Crime Campfire - Counterfeit: The Murder of Viola Drath

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

Washington, D.C. has a long history of frauds and fantasists, people who showed up out of nowhere claiming to be somebody important, somebody rich, somebody royal. And people believed them—let them into the inner circle, invested money with them, gave them a seat at the table—only to find out later that they’d been had. That’s bad enough when all you lose is money, or a little bit of your pride. Far worse when your heart is involved. This is the bizarre story of Viola Drath, one of D.C.’s most respected players, a brilliant woman who was ahead of her time. Not the sort of woman you’d expect to fall victim to a breathtaking fraud. But as we’ve seen before on True Crime Campfire, even the smartest people can be taken in by clever acting and relentless charm. Join us for this true story, recently made into the movie "Georgetown" with Annette Bening, Vanessa Redgrave and Christoph Waltz.Sources:NY Times, Franklin Foer. The Worst Marriage in Georgetown. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/magazine/albrecht-muth-and-viola-drath-georgetowns-worst-marriage.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_Herms_DrathInvestigation Discovery's "Deadline Crime with Tamron Hall," Episode "The House on Q Street"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Washington, D.C. has a long history of frauds and fantasists. People who showed up out of nowhere claiming to be somebody important, somebody rich, somebody royal. And people believed them, let them into the inner circle, invested money with them, gave them a seat at the table, only to find out later that they'd been had. That's bad enough when all you lose is money, or a little bit of your pride.

Far worse, when your heart is involved. This is the bizarre story of one of DC's most respected players, a brilliant woman who was ahead of her time. Not the sort of woman you'd expect to fall victim to a breathtaking fraud. But as we've seen before on True Cram Camp Fire, even the smartest people can be taken. taken in by clever acting and relentless charm. This is counterfeit, the murder of Viola Drath. So, campers, for this one, we're in Washington, D.C., in the charming cobblestone Georgetown neighborhood, August 12, 2011.

A call came into the night. 911 dispatch from a distinguished-sounding man who said he'd just come home from a walk and found his wife unconscious on the bathroom floor. In an impatient German accent, the caller told him to hurry up. His wife wasn't breathing and there was blood around her head. When first responders got to the gorgeous old townhouse on Q Street, they found 91-year-old viola drath, dead and unrevivable. They initially assumed she'd accidentally fallen and hit her head. I mean, most people would think that. That's not an unusual situation for a 91-year-old lady. But they sent her body to the medical examiner for autopsy.

That would tell them for sure. Meanwhile, Viola's husband Albrecht took on the sad task of notifying her family and friends of her death. He said she died from a fall in the bathroom. She hit her head. To one of Viola's best friends who had just seen her and said she seemed to be doing great, this seemed totally out of left field. I mean, Viola was old, sure, but she was still sharp as nails and in good health. Albrecht told her, look, there were things you didn't know.

Viola had health problems she didn't share with anybody but him, stuff that wouldn't be obvious to anyone who didn't live with her. Hmm, and that was possible for sure, but Viola was one of those bigger-than-life people. It was tough for her loved ones to accept that she'd die from something as simple as a fall on the bathroom floor. And when the autopsy report came back, it was clear that her friend was right.

The Emmy found evidence of a savage beating, broken ribs, fractured skull, torn fingernails from trying to fight off her attacker. Worst of all, she found broken bones in Viola's neck and angry abrasions around her throat. Viola Drath had been beaten and strangled to death in her own home in one of the safest neighborhoods in D.C. On the investigation discovery showed Deadline Crime with Tamron Hall,

Viola's daughter Connie described her mom as fearless, independent, outgoing, adventurous, wanting to live life to its fullest. She sure as hell did that. For four decades, she'd been part of the fabric of life in D.C., a brilliant journalist with a sharp sense of humor and a sharper sense of style. She was a trailblazer, a female political correspondent at a time when that wasn't much of a thing. And in addition to her work as a political writer, she critiqued art and literature, belonged to foreign policy associations, traveled all over the world. Over the years, she'd formed herself a wide network of powerful friends. Somebody'd throw her a birthday party and the vice president would be there.

This was a woman who was very much admired. She had clout, and she'd earned it. Viola was born in Dusseldorf, Germany. Her road to membership in D.C. High Society started in 1945 in Munich. She was in her early 20s when she took a job as a translator for a guy named Francis Drath. At the time, Francis was the Deputy American Military Governor of Bavaria, and he and his new translator fell hard and fast for each other. After World War II, Viola and Francis moved to Nebraska.

and started a family. They had two daughters, Connie and Francesca, and Viola continued her education at the University of Nebraska, started writing for various publications, and found a gig hosting a TV show on a local station. But she had bigger dreams than that, and soon she was flying to New York on the regular to cover fashion shows and stuff like that for the magazine Madame. She started reviewing plays and art shows, too, and wrote prolifically about politics. Some of the textbooks she wrote are still being used by universities. She even made friends with the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Norman Mailer. He wrote some of his work at her in Francis' house in Nebraska.

Hey, do they give Pulitzer prizes for podcasts? Hmm. I don't know. Could we get a Pulitzer for making fun of dipship murderers and con artist, do you think? Ooh, for our flawless impressions of Dyson-Koff? I think that deserves something. Definitely. I'd say the nomination is probably in the works already. Nobel podcast prize.

Murder is a very sticky business. Where's my prize? Just contact us at the email address and the show notes and I'll tell you where to send it. Yeah, we don't need to show up in person to accept it. You can just mail it to us. I don't know. We're far too busy for that. You can laser cut it in half, send one to me. Like one of those best friend's necklaces that the middle school girls wear.

That's adorable. So then, in 1968, Viola and her hubs moved to D.C. Viola got a job as a political correspondence, and she was off to the races. She was an expert on European politics. Years later, an authority on Cold War Germany. She steadily built her reputation and career, and she didn't just write about politics. She got involved in them, too. She was a member of the National Committee on Foreign Policy.

She advised the first President Bush, and she was one of the inner circle, one of the crew, in with the cream of the political and social crop. Ew. Yeah. I know. That's a gross expression. So gross. She hung out with presidents, though.

It doesn't get much creamier than that. Ugh. Yeah. Presidents are mad creamy. Some of them, anyway. God. I wish you could see the face I'm making right now. Disgusting, Whitney. You said it. Blame it on me.

Viola and Francis, whom everybody called the Colonel, were ahead of their time relationship-wise, too. Oh, definitely. In an era where women were supposed to stay home making biscuits and babies and the men felt like their balls would drop off if they did a load of laundry, Well, you know, men die if they touch a broom, Whitney. And office chairs make people's uterus fly out of their bodies. Come on. Yeah, exactly. And in an era like that, Viola and the colonel had a very different dynamic. Viola went out and worked the New York fashion scene in the D.C. Beltway, and the colonel did all the hearth fire stuff, cooking and cleaning.

He was her rock, and they just adored each other. He had a career, too, by the way. He was a legislative liaison with a selective service. It's just that, unlike many men of his time, he was happy to support his wife's dreams, too. And he put his money where his mouth was and actually did chores around the house. Damn. I love it. Yeah.

They had a true love story. So, Viola was pretty much at the top of her game when in 1982, 62-year-old Viola got an invitation to attend a press conference. There, she met an 18-year-old German expat named Albrecht Muth. This kid was something else. Impeckably dressed, shoes so shiny you could see your face in them, every hair perfectly in place. Like, picture a young German Niles Crane. Or, for our younger audience, a number five from the Umbrella Academy. Those are both perfect.

Right? and his manners were as perfect as his clothes. He told Viola he'd been a great admirer of her work, quote, since his youth. Okay, you're 18, my dude. You are smack dab in the middle of your youth. Oh, yeah, Miss Viola, I've admired your vogue since I was in the Hoggy's pull-ups. You know, I used to try to talk to my contemporaries about this,

but all they wanted to do was watch the blues clues, peasants. I'm sorry. Okay. We sincerely apologize to our German campers for that. Please try and forgive us and don't unsubscribe. Hey, look, if I just made anybody look ridiculous, it was me with that criminally bad attempt at a German accent. True, true. So, Viola was impressed with this kid right away.

He was working as a congressional intern for the moment, but he had major ambitions. He told Viola he wanted to be like Lawrence of Arabia. Do one big history-making thing and be famous forever. Yeah, that doesn't sound ominous or anything, right? I think I'd be backing out the door at that point personally. Like, that kid is a little intense. But I guess when you're somebody like Viola who's used to being around actual history makers, something like that just hits different.

She came away from that first meeting feeling like this was a young man with serious potential. And Muth apparently wanted her to be his mentor. He invited her out to dinner again and again and again, and finally she said, fine, okay, she'd go, geez. Muth picked out the restaurant, a German place, which was famous for two things. It's schnitzel and the fact that Henry Kissinger liked to eat there. He's a schnitzel fan, apparently, and Viola knew Kissinger, which I'm sure blew little Albrecht's mind. That night at the schnitzel place, they split a bottle of wine and talked for hours. She found this kid intriguing.

But, I mean, you know, she was busy, and he was 44 years younger than she was, and obviously there wasn't even a hint of a romantic vibe between them or anything. Viola was not only old enough to be his me-maw, but she was also happily married to the colonel. She just didn't have the time to take on a protege right then. So that dinner would be the last time she'd see Albrechtmuth for years. And then in 1986, Viola's beloved husband was diagnosed with cancer. He was quite a bit older than she was. he was in his 80s, and bless his hard, he went downhill really quickly, and when he died, Viola

suddenly found herself not only dealing with the terrible grief of losing the love of her life, but also having to learn how to take care of her own meals and housekeeping for the first time in her life ever. The colonel had always done that stuff for her. One of her friends told the New York Times that when he came to stay with her after the colonel died, she stood in the kitchen one morning, just looking kind of bewildered and said, do you know how to make breakfast? Like, That's how dependent she was on him. So, Viola was totally adrift without her colonel. She told friends she didn't feel like she had a reason to get up in the morning anymore.

She tried after a while to get back into the dating scene, but she didn't like the 60-and-70-something men who asked her out. Her daughter Connie told Tamron Hall, they were backward-looking, and she found that very depressing. She wanted to be forward-looking. Amen to that, by the way. Focusing on the past all the time is death. If you're going to stay awake and alive, this is my opinion anyway, you've got to look ahead, not back. Otherwise, just cobwebs start growing all over your brain and you just get exhausting to be around. It's like, no, thank you, I don't want to look at those picture albums from 1975 again.

Can we please try and find you a hobby? Please? So, anywho, it was into this depressing void that young Albrecht Muth came creeping around again. Like any predator, once he got wind of the colonel's death, I'm sure. sure he smelled blood in the water. By now, he was in his 20s and still the same impeccably dressed, brilliant young guy. Just a few months after Viola was widowed, he started visiting her every day. According to New York Times reporter Franklin Four, whose terrific article, The Worst Marriage in Georgetown is one of our sources for this case, they would sit there

and talk for hours and hours and hours. Politics, religion, art, any and everything. They'd drink tea together and Mooth would cook her fancy gourmet dinners and he'd sit at her baby grand piano and play because of frickin' course he was like a star pianist too so he could do everything Viola started calling him Muti and telling her friends that she liked how young and exciting he was and the people around her were like er-ro like this seemed a tad esq their friend's life was suddenly turning into a DC Beltway German expat version of Harold and Maude But, I mean, Viola seemed happy when she was around him. And I think he was filling at least some of the blank space the colonel's death had left in her life.

And then a few years into all this, Muth showed up in a tux with a bottle of bubbly and asked her to marry him. And she said yes. Holy shitballs. Her family and friends were less than stoked about this, as I'm sure you can imagine. Get out. Her daughter suspected Muth was way more. interested in their mom's money in DC insider status than he was in her. Yeah, and he did not make a great impression on them. The first time Viola's daughter Connie met him

was at a dinner party where Muth showed up wearing an eye patch. And when Connie asked him what happened to his eye, he told her he lost it when he was working as a mercenary in South America. And then when Connie saw him again just a few months later, guess what? No eye patch. And he never said anything about it. Just no eye patch now. Just I magically restored. When Connie asked her mom, like, what the fuck? Viola just kind of shrugged and said, oh, he has a vivid imagination. Okay. I think those of us in the biz just call that lying. But whatever. Yeah, exactly. Others just couldn't get past the age difference or his pretentious attitude. Dude was fond of

clicking his heels together like a soldier. Like, he'd just do it for no apparent reason. Yeah, thank you. I will have this scampy. Click, click. Like, oh, okay, sir, I'll be right. I'll be right back with that. Some of her close friends practically begged her not to marry him.

But Viola wasn't going to change her mind. She liked having Muti around. He cooked for her, cleaned for her, hosted fussy little teas and dinners for her and her friends with those impeccable manners of his. When her friends came over, he'd answer the door like a damn butler and announced the guest to Viola. Then he'd bow and leave the room.

Jesus, Murphy. Yeah, but she didn't just like him because he took care of her in the townhouse, obviously. Viola wasn't like that. She and Muti had big dreams for his career in politics. Viola adored him and wanted to do whatever she could to help him. And of course, that's what he was in this marriage for. Mm-hmm. Viola knew a diplomat, Soviet diplomat at the time, named Vladimir Petrovsky.

He was in charge of the UN's office in Switzerland, and Viola thought he'd be a perfect contact to help grease the wheels for Muth to get a prestigious job in Washington. So, they whined and dine this dude, flew over to Switzerland to see him, sucked up to him for months, and it worked. Before long, Petrovsky started assigning Muth to serve on panels for him with all kinds of high-ranking political insiders, senators and whatnot. Muth was in hog heaven. UN panels, hell yes. But some people whispered to Viola that he only got to do all this stuff because people admired her. Muti himself was too much of an odd duck to do it on his own. and it was true, at least to an extent.

He was brilliant for sure, but he was not great at, you know, dealing with other humans. Yeah, this guy's manner was so stiff, you could probably carry him out of a room by his big toe. God forbid you should ask him if it was hot enough for him or if he saw the game last night. He loads small talk. Probably give you a look that would stop a charging bear. For God's sake, he called his own wife, Madam. Times reporter Franklin 4 says he was so formal that he seemed more like Vaila's intern or her butler or something than her husband. And I wonder if Muth knew what some people were saying about him, that he only got his foot in the door anywhere in Washington because of Viola's reputation, and contacts.

Did that start a resentful little rage of Bruin underneath those perfectly ironed shirt fronts? Because I kind of bet it did. Yep. Mooth did have a raging case of mommy issues. His dad died like a month after he was born, so he was raised by his mom. And Mommy had been involved in the German political scene during his childhood. Apparently, there were a number of times when she had the chance to move up the ladder, except opportunities that would have given her a lot more power and influence.

But Mooth's mom had turned them down because, you know, single mom. She needed to be around for her kids. she couldn't spare the time and energy it would have taken to go full bore into a political career and albrecht resented the ever-loving fuck out of her for it oh yes little albrecht felt like his mom's refusal to grab the brass ring and kept him from enjoying life as one of the elite according to the new york times article he once wrote that powerful people quote fire at a different level of the human condition gross dude just No.

It's kind of depressing to see how much of politics is blatant nepotism. Albrecht sucked. But he got and kept a job because Viola was wonderful. Like, why do we allow this to happen? These people are running our country. I don't care who they rub elbows with. Yeah, that's some bullshit, I agree. So anyway, now that he had married into D.C. high society,

Mout was milking it for everything it was worse. He started calling the townhouse, the same one Viola and the colonel, had bought in 1968, the Albrectuary. Ugh, barf. He hosted little fussy dinner parties where he did all the cooking and serving himself, and you bet your ass everything was perfection. He invited everybody from five-star generals

to famous journalists and presidential cabinet members. Former VP Dick Cheney came one time. And y'all moved to sign seating based on the rank of the guests. So he'd put the most important people in the middle of the table, I guess so they'd have center stage, as befits the shiniest and most holy capital P, powerful people, TM. Okay.

It's awful, but imagine how fun it could be to downgrade your political rivals or whatever. Like, ah, yes, last month you were second from the center, but now you're really a fourth. Maybe, maybe think about that next time you smack talk me to the ambassador secretary, sweaty. Oh, God. Every morning he went for what he called his two-cigar walk, and at one point he started carrying, I swear to God, I'm not making this up, a riding crop. In Georgetown, D.C., place of cobblestone streets and prada stores

and restaurants where stakes cost $80. God. This dude is just preposterous. He is a preposterous person. Oh, yeah. I once have somebody referred to his riding crop. as a marching baton like drum majorettes use you know and he got so mad hilarious like what on earth could he conceivably be using the writing crop for on a walk fly swatting pushing away low-hanging

vegetation like a bad machete smacking children i i'm not sure we really want to know the answer to that to be perfectly frank with you i suspect we would not like it So it's not going to surprise you to hear that Albrecht also had a whole repertoire of Tom Clancy-type stories about his work for the UN and the German government. He said he'd once broken into then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright's house and hidden a listening device in her bathroom. Pervert? Right? Well, supposedly this was at the request of the German intelligence. So perverts, plural.

Why would you put it in the bathroom? That makes no sense. Anyway, it didn't work. all they could hear through the thing was running water. Or possibly Secretary Albright doing a wee-wee. I'm not sure which. But it was a hell of a story, and I'm sure it was complete and total horseshit.

He also claimed to have gone on covert ops for the UN. According to him, he was one of the big boys over at the UN. He called Kofi Annan Uncle Kofi. Ugh. Yeah, can we all just stop for a collective eye roll for a second? Ah, okay, I felt good. Just pre-flippin' posterous. Nothing was more important to our boy than being one of the cool kids,

by which I mean powerful, influential people. In the late 90s, he founded an organization that he called the Eminent Persons Group, a name with as big a stick up its ass as Moose had up his. He wanted it to be a think tank for the UN Secretary General, and he wanted it to be made up of some of the best and, of course, most admired minds in the world. He got some bigish names on board at the start, including a former French prime minister, Michel Rokar, and a former U.S. Defense Secretary. He sent out fancy pants invitations on personalized stationery with a coat of arms he made up for himself, calling himself, wait for it, Count Alby. He said he inherited the title from a relative he'd never met who allegedly died, I shit you not, falling off an elephant.

Now, I have no idea if this is true. I'm sure probably not, knowing what we know about Muth and his relationship with the truth, but holy shit, is that a good story? Mm-hmm. He got a hands it to him. He knew how to make up a good lie. Right. And apparently, we can all just start assigning ourselves titles now and just expect everybody to call us by them.

So I'm going to start calling myself the Pope. Sure. Okay? So from now on, I expect you all to call me Pope Whitney I first. Ooh, or better yet, supreme being. How about that? I'm Mother God, Katie. I mean, Amy Carlson's not using it at the moment, so I'll borrow it until she comes back. And he insisted people call him Count Alby, too. Like, there was no escape. He would correct you if you didn't do it. Ugh. Just obnoxious. So despite his work for Vladimir Petrovsky, Muth was still pretty much unknown, but he had a talent for figuring out how to get access to powerful.

folks. Normally, what people do, you know, is go through the proper channels. They'll reach out to the person's staff or intern or personal assistance, personal assistant, or whatever. But as Four points out in his New York Times piece, Muth figured that those people would be more likely to vet him,

because they'd be afraid for their jobs and reputations and wouldn't want to risk hooking their bosses up with a guy who, I don't know, liked walking around Georgetown with a writing crop and an eye patch he didn't need, for example. So he'd skip the proper channels and contact the powerful person directly. wife had quite the little black address book, and I'm sure he used it every chance he could.

Not only that, but when he and Viola had dinner parties and invited famous people, they'd always have a guest book. People would sign that, and later, Muth would use it to forge people's signatures on fake reference letters for himself. Good, gravy. Here's an interesting thing, Campers. When somebody approaches you with enough confidence, a vibe that says, I belong here, it tends to lower your guard. When these influential famous people would get this invitation from some guy they'd never heard of, they'd think, well, I don't know who he is, but if this landed on my desk, it must have gone through channels. They'd assume other powerful people had already said yes. This was one of Muth's favorite tactics, and it worked.

Yeah, I mean, he may have been socially awkward, but obviously had a pretty keen understanding of human nature, at least when it comes to this kind of stuff. Oh, yeah. He was very smug about how well he understood this stuff. Franklin Ford called it his social Ponzi scheme, and he quotes from an email Mooth wrote to Viola, bragging about how good he was at working people. He said, quote, you meet someone of import, check him out, determine if he can be of use. You make him yours. At some point, you must decide whether to run him as a useful idiot, he not catching on as to who you are and what you do.

Gross, what a pretentious little twat bag. I'd rather be a useful idiot than a useless idiot, moot. Oh, but he was just playing the game, Whitney. Running with the wolves, or whatever. Yeah. Here was the thing, though. Eventually, people would always start to see through his bullshit and realize what a creepy little weirdo he was. I'm sure.

His Count Albie stuff, his tendency to dress like he just stepped out of a period film about Germany in the 19th century. The fact that he started telling everybody to you. these ridiculous, clearly made-up stories about being in the French Foreign Legion. Yeah. Within a couple years, Muth lost funding for his eminent person's group, and members started dropping out. Bye. Discount Chocula. It's so good. Discount Chocula. Oh, it's so perfect. That's what he was. That is what he is. He is discount Chocula.

He got a free countship for just making up a story. And apparently, after this, our boy did not take it well. There had always been a bit of an edge to his and Viola's relationship. In the early days, they slept in separate beds in the same bedroom, and they'd lie there all night jabbing back and forth at each other, arguing about politics or whatever. They bickered, but a couple years into their marriage, edge turned bloody. Yeah, and content warning here for a domestic abuse campers, so if you don't want to hear

about that, you should probably skip the next few minutes. We're not going to be too vivid, but we will be sharing some details about violent encounters between Viola and Mout. From what we can tell, the first big incident happened when Viola came home from a trip to Europe. She was all excited to be home and see her husband, so she came sweeping into the living room saying, Mootie, I'm home. Well, apparently

Mootie was on the phone at the time, and he took objection to her interrupting. So he attacked her. Totally without warning, just punched her right in the face and started beating her up. Piece of shit. So the police came. They took him to jail. He spent some time there.

I'm not sure how much. And then, despite her family's desperate attempts to talk viola into leaving him, she took him back. And that was the beginning of a pattern that's very familiar to a lot of domestic abuse survivors. Things would be calm for a while and then something would set Muth off and he'd beat her again. It usually happened when he was drinking.

Apparently, dude was a mean, reckless, unpredictable drunk. Sometimes Viola's friends would see her in big sunglasses with black eyes underneath. Some of the tension might have come from the fact that Albrecht Mout was gay. At first he'd hidden it from her, but at some point she figured out that he was having affairs with men. Once she found out, he stopped trying to hide the affairs. He even moved in with a boyfriend for a while, and guess why that ended? Because Muth got drunk and threatened to kill the guy, and he kicked him out and got a restraining order. So good for him.

I wish Viola had done the same thing and stuck to it. But it was like she was addicted to the guy, and she'd always hated being alone, hated, hated, hated. She hated not having anybody to take care of her. Like so many abused spouses, she probably just told herself that, you know, he was good to her most of the time, and that the good outweighed the bad. But then, in 2006, there was a nasty blow-up. Viola and Muth were having dinner, and he crawled a little too far inside a bottle

and started talking trash about Viola's daughter. So naturally, Viola told him he didn't know what he was talking about. And then she got mad and told him he wasn't smart enough to get into law school, and at that, Moot stood up, picked up a chair, and threw it at her. It knocked her to the floor, and before she could get up, he started beating her and hitting her head against the floor. It was just awful.

And fortunately, she was able to get out of the house and go to her daughter's place where they, of course, called 9-1-1. And when the cops went to the townhouse to put the habeas grab-thus on him, he was nowhere to be found. So obviously, little shit-weasel decided he didn't want to go to jail. And for a while, he dropped off the map. Everybody was relieved. Her son-in-law had been telling her for years, Viola, this man is going to kill you if you don't get away from him. Everybody just hoped to God the bastard would stay gone. where he claimed to be was Iraq on a United Nations peace mission trying to negotiate with Iraqi insurgent Mukta al-Sadir.

And of course, he emailed everybody in Washington on the regular, sometimes multiple times a day like anybody gave a shit, to let him know how it was all going. And plenty of people bought it because Muta discovered that if he looked at the news in one time zone, like one that was hours and hours ahead of the states, and then put the breaking news into an email, people would think he had inside info. which is just amazing if you think of it. Like, it's as easy as that to con somebody. Just amazing. Now, of course, he wasn't on any damn UN peace mission in Iraq. He was actually down in Florida, US, working as a desk clerk at a hotel. And he was there for two years, and then with no warning, he just descended again on poor Viola.

And everybody thought, you know, surely this time she'd send him packing, but nope, much to the horror of the people who loved her, she took Muti back and dropped the abuse charges that she'd filed against him two years earlier. I know. So now that he was back in D.C., count Fowlby was ready for a fresh new scam.

Since everybody thought he'd been in Iraq, he decided to build his new fake persona around that. So he ordered a uniform from a retailer in South Carolina that sort of kind of resembled that of an Iraqi general as long as he didn't look too hard. And he got himself a cane. back came the eyepatch too at least some of the time

and he forged some official looking documents and started strolling around Georgetown in this ridiculous get-up calling himself a brigadier general of the Iraqi army I know it's bonkers so this dude was rockin an eye patch a cane presumably with a sword hidden in it oh you know absolutely a fake party city

general's uniform and a writing crop like didn't anyone tell him that it's possible to over-accessorize like damn dude take take one thing off I know I was just going to say like that's the rule right like you look in the mirror before you leave the house take one thing off somebody should have told him

nobody told him and he hosted events in this persona he hosted a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery to honor fallen soldiers for Pete's sake and all kinds of prominent people came people enough of them at least bought this shit apparently this dude was one hell of an actor as absurd a human being as he is he obviously had some skill at that

and viola by the way hated it I mean of course she did according to her daughter she saw through all of this bullshit and didn't understand why everybody else didn't and made her anxious but for some reason a lot of complicated reasons probably she stayed with him but she knew she could be in trouble She told one of her long-time friends, If anything should happen to me, you'll know who did it.

And everybody pretty much did. The day Mooth supposedly found Viola's body on the bathroom floor, he reached out to her family to let them know she'd died. And that same evening, at a gathering of family and friends, he handed her daughters a letter he'd taken the time to write earlier that day. A note of sympathy? Hell no. It was a demand for $150,000.

of Viola's money. Oh. Yeah. The letter, which of course had Viola's forged signature at the bottom, claimed she'd changed her will to leave him this cash. God, he's such a little shit stain. So much. So obviously, the first suspect is always going to be the spouse,

and I suspect the DC investigators were looking extra hard at Mooth from the get-go, because of the age difference between him and Viola and the fact that he was the one who, found the her body. Their suspicions increased tenfold when they dug up Mooth's history of beating Viola. When Mooth first sat down in the interview room at the police station, he didn't know yet that her death had been ruled a homicide. He was still spinning his, she fell and hit her head story. When one of the detectives broke the news, Mooth said, quote, you're kidding me. He's like, get out of town. For real? You're shitting me. Not the reaction I'd expect, but

Okay. He wanted to know if he was under suspicion, but then he answered his own question. Of course, I'm a suspect, of course. So I guess he'd watched a few episodes of Law and Order over the years. But he didn't seem rattled. He just sat there, calmly talking down to the cops like they were annoying peasants. And he denied doing anything to hurt Viola. Later that same day, they executed a search warrant on the townhouse.

And as Muth was standing there in the doorway, they realized he had scratched on his face. He tried to tell them he'd walked into something, but they sure looked like fingernail scratches to the cops. They knew Viola had tried to fight her attacker. She'd broken off a few of her fingernails in the process. They asked Mooth if the doors and windows said the townhouse were always locked, and he said yes, definitely. And here was the thing about that. There were no signs of forced entry into that townhouse, and Mooth admitted he was the only one besides Viola who had a key. So unless they were dealing with some

kind of Agatha Chrissy-like locked room mystery, he was probably their guy. When they asked him how the hell some random killer would have gotten in and out of the house without forced entry, Mooth just said, I have no idea. That is your job to find out.

Ooh, bitchy. So bitchy. So bitchy. So let's add it up. We've got a history of violence and abuse. We've got a financial motive and a forged document. we've got no forced entry into the house and no other likely suspects on the horizon. Plus, the forensic text had found something dynamite, as close to a smoking gun as they were going to get in this case.

Mooth's DNA under Viola's fingernails. When you add that to the fact that the ME found several of her fingernails ripped and broken in the struggle, that's pretty telling evidence. So on August 16th, 2011, the D.C. police arrested Albrecht Muth for the murder of his wife. for six hours they hammered at him in an interrogation room hoping for a confession I'm sure it won't surprise you much to hear that our boy didn't give him what they were after he just kept angrily denying he killed Viola arguing with the detectives with the tone of a spoiled brat kid trying to sass the babysitter at one point the detective said you're a monster you're a 140-pound monster and moot said

well thank you for the compliment yeah albrecht's being grilled for the murder of his wife but his focuses. Oh, they think I'm skinny. See, that was your reading of it. I just took it as he was pleased to be considered a monster. I don't know which it is. Those are both interesting theories. Another time, the detective mentioned Muth whooping Viola's ass in the past, and Muth made a face like he just had a bad oyster, and he said, I wish you wouldn't use that terminology. Oh, I'm sorry, man. You'd prefer I use more elegant verbiage to describe you beating the shit out of your 90-year-old wife. I'm so sorry.

And finally, in a tone that said, well, that settles that, Muth assured the investigators that whatever evidence they may have, he was the one who had the winning strategy. He said, I will forget everything about myself the minute I go before the judge. Tomorrow, I will be completely loony. Now, that is an interesting approach, isn't it, Camper's? Like, I don't think I've ever seen a suspect tell the cops ahead of time that they're going to try to play crazy in court, you know?

And I love this detective. He was like, you're already loony. He was so dumb with them at that point. And true to his word, as Mutz sat in jail waiting for trial, he tried every tactic he could to delay the proceedings and make himself look insane. He had a separate game plan for each of his fake personas, too, which is just astounding.

He sent out an endless stream of letters to journalists and important people all over D.C. claiming that Viola's murder was an Iranian hit gone wrong. They were mercenaries and they'd meant to get him instead. You know, because of his covert work in Iraq as a brigadier general. Yeah. Elite government assassins are known for beating their non-agenarian victims to death. They really like leaving behind a lot of physical evidence. He's got a point there. Yeah, and I'm sure it'd be real easy to mistake Viola for him, right?

And just in case that didn't fly, he also tried milk in his work with the UN, saying that because of that, he should be considered a military prisoner. He should be allowed to represent himself. He should get to wear his uniform. It's like, bro, they gave you a uniform. Okay, it's that nice orange jumpsuit you got on there. Really brings out your eyes. But the problem with that was the Iraqi government wanted no part of this fucking weirdo

and his big bag of con man bullshit. And they sent a letter saying in no uncertain terms that this joker was not and had never been an Iraqi general, for God's sake. So, of course, Moose response to this, was to say that, well, of course they're going to deny it. I mean, I was working as a secret agent. Uh-huh.

You know, I heard there was an initiative to give secret agents uniforms, like, just in case they lost track of them. Mout also bugged the shit out of Keith Alexander, a reporter for the Washington Post. This poor guy got three or four voicemail messages every blessed day, where Muth demanded that he helped him get in time. touch with various important people who could vouch for him. Like, for example, General Petraeus.

Like, dude, General Petraeus would not touch your lion ass with a 50-foot fucking barge pole. Leave this poor reporter alone. After a while, Mooth's refusal to back down from his, I'm a Brigadier General thing, started to worry everybody. His defense thought maybe he was delusional, and the prosecutor's worried he was pretending to be. Oh, you mean just exactly like he told the detective? he was planning on doing? Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly. So they had him evaluated extensively by a whole succession of psychologists and psychiatrists. When forensic psychologist Mitchell Huguenette came in to try to determine Mooth's psychological state and whether he was competent to stand trial, Mooth's first words to him were, Let the games begin. Or I guess, let the games begin. That turned Italian at the end.

I'm sorry. But let's take a second for another group. I roll and done. When none of his other shenanigans seemed to be fooling anybody, Muth upped the ante. He went on a series of hunger strikes, refusing to eat and refusing any medical treatment whatsoever. Oh, hell no.

I'd be out at that point. I can't even do a two-day juice fast. I get so hungry. I'm a danger to myself and others. Muth told his psychologist that he'd been ordered to do the hunger strike by the Archangel Gabriel. The psychologist thought it was interesting that he picked an archangel. A regular old angel wasn't important enough for Albrecht, I guess. That's right.

He stuck to it, lost 100 pounds. There are pictures of him from this time, and he looks like death's terminally ill cousin. It was not pretty. But legally, they couldn't force him to eat and they couldn't treat him. And still, he stuck to it. That was the power of this man's ego and his determination to win. I mean, remember when Bundy lost weight in order to escape from jail? Mm-hmm.

These types of people really give meaning to the phrase mind over matter. Absolutely. Finally, two and a half years into the circus, after yet another psychiatric evaluation, a judge finally ruled our guy competent to stand trial. He was too sick from his hunger strike to attend the trial in person, though, so he had to attend via video conference. It was the first murder trial in D.C. history where the defendant wasn't actually there in the courtroom.

And in January of 2014, a jury found our boy guilty a first-degree murder with aggravating circumstances and sentenced him to 50 years in prison. I'm sure he's enjoying playing Brigadier General or whatever the fuck it is in there. I bet his fellow inmates love that. God, I bet they got some wicked good stories about him, right? Like, if any of his fellow inmates happen to be listening, just saying we'd love to hear that scald and hot tea.

Please. Believe me, this is the type of guy who never stops. Like, he's going to be a scammer and a liar and a fake the rest of his life. Yeah, I'm just waiting for the poor journalist that he roaps in to do a tell-all interview and he's going to just lie the whole time. I'm just waiting for it. Yeah, and honestly, I would not be surprised if he tried an escape as well. Mm-hmm. 100%.

One of the really sad things about the story is that. that, like most abusers, Muth managed to isolate Viola from her support system. In his case, he didn't forbid her from seeing people. In fact, he kept a steady stream of guests running in and out of the house, but they were the people he wanted to impress. Viola's old friends, the people she really connected with, started coming around less and less.

Because they knew if they invited her somewhere, he'd be there too. And they found him pompous and ridiculous and cringy to be around. And it just got awkward. yeah one of her old friends told the new york times that he feels a lot of guilt now about that i mean viola had built up such a big network over the years she was so much admired and she was such a good friend of the people she was close to she's just really sad to me that the longer she was with this asshole moot the more isolated she got and that of course made her much more susceptible to his abuse and less likely to leave him that's how that works so campers one of the

lessons here is to really try and keep in contact with the people you love especially if if they're in a relationship with somebody that gives you a queasy feeling. Forensic psychologist Mitchell Huguenot, who spoke to Tamara Hall about this case for investigation discovery, said Muth wasn't motivated by money so much as his relentless lust for power and influence. I mean, it was relentless enough to motivate a marriage to a woman old enough to be his grandmother when he wasn't even straight in the first place. His career, such as it was, was all he cared about. And what Viola cared about mattered less and less, as the years.

went on. And this is so weird, y'all. After we'd already decided to cover this case, which remember is 10 years old, it's not like it's been in the news. We found out that there's a brand new movie about it with Annette Benning. Isn't that bizarre coincidence? It's called Georgetown, and we haven't seen it yet, but I'm definitely going to. I can't wait. I'm actually surprised it took 10 years for Hollywood to find this story. So go see that. Definitely read if you want more because I actually had to leave out a few really juicy details. So if you want more information, definitely read that Franklin 4 article

called The Worst Marriage in Georgetown from the New York Times. It is terrific. So good. Because there's always more juice. There's always more tea. There's always a few things we have to leave out. So that was a wild one. Right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay

safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons. Thank you so much to Mary Beth, Wendy, Jennifer, Sierra, Christy, and Ray, and a special shout-out to friend of our show Kelly, who I just realized was one of our very first patrons and never got her shout-out, which I feel bad about, so we love you, Kelly. And y'all, if you're not yet a patron, you are missing out.

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