GERMANY'S ROUSE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 96, 24 April 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

GERMANY'S ROUSE.

CAR MURDER SENSATION. WOMAN OFFERS HERSELF AT AUCTION. A woman putting herself up to auction to raise funds for the defence of the man who wronged her is the latest sensation in the German blazing car murder mystery which bears a remarkable resemblance to the Rouse case. There was the same story of an unknown found burned to death in an abandoned car, the same flight and disappearance of the owner of the car, and from the prosecution the same suggestion that the crime had been staged to enable an embarrassed commercial traveller to vanisli and touch indirectly the sum for which the car had been insured on the assumption that the charred remains were his own. His "Harem." There were also the other women in the 1 case, constituting the "harem" of the ; German Rouse. But where the parallel • with the English case does not hold is that the wife of the man is alleged to have been a party to the crime and to have attempted to collect the insurance money after it. It was the German woman filling the , role of Helen Campbell who came forward to raise funds for the defence of the man. Tetzner had actually married this woman, Fraulein Anna Wolfstein, bigamously, keeping her in ignorance of his previous marriage and, as in the case of Rouse, leading her to believe that the legal Mrs. Tetzner was just his mistress, with whom he had to keep up the appearance of living for business reasons. Another remarkable parallel with the Rouse case is that Frau Tetzner had agreed to adopt one of the children born to her husband and the other woman in the belief that it would keep him at home. Two other women who had been betrayed by Tetzner came forward, but the prosecution did not make use of their evidence. The police case, supported to some extent by the husband and wife's statements, is that the victim was "taken for a ride" while on tramp looking for work, and that on a quiet road Tetzen stoppe l the car to look once more for the loose nut. While he was looking his passenger was fast asleep inside the car. Tetzner then opened the petrol tank and laid a trail of petrol along the footboard to the feet of the intended victim, afterwards applying ?, match. But for one slip made by the murderer in his anxiety to make sure of the charred body being taken for his own. he might have got away. Suspicion Aroused. He put into the car after it had been burned out some articles of his own, including the driving license, It struck the experts at once as curious that these had escaped such a fierce lire, and the only possible explanation was that they had been placed there afterwards. The insurance company refused to pay the "widow," and when the man Ortner came forward with his story of the night when lie had been "taken for a rids," the police were called in and Frau Tetzner was arrested. She confessed her part in the affair. Some months later the "dead man'' was arrested, and made a partial confession, putting the whole blame on his wife. Anna Wolfstein was employed as a waitress in a fashionable restaurant in Berlin when Tetzner first met her and, because of her great beauty, she had many admirers. She refused them all for Tetzner; but when it was necessary to raise funds for the defence of the man who betrayed her, she declared that any one of the wealthy admirers could have her by bidding for her, the highest bidder to get the bargain in feminine beaut)', and the funds to be used for the defence of Tetzner and the endowment of the girl's two children, of which the accused man was said to be father. The suggestion raised a storm of protest. Tetzner was sentenced to death and Ins wife to four years' for complicity in the crime.