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Meet The German 'Revenge Mother' Who Shot Her Daughter's Killer In The Middle Of His Trial

The man on trial was charged with molesting and strangling Marianne Bachmeier’s 7-year-old daughter, Anna.

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On March 6, 1981, Marianne Bachmeier opened fire in a crowded courthouse in what was then known as West Germany. Her target was a 35-year-old sex offender on trial for her daughter’s murder, and he died after taking six of her bullets.

According to NDR, the seven-year-old had skipped school after an argument with her mother that fateful day and somehow found herself in the hands of her 35-year-old neighbor, a local butcher named Klaus Grabowski who already had a criminal record involving child molestation.

Investigators later learned that Grabowski had kept Anna at his home for hours before he strangled her with pantyhose. Whether or not he sexually assaulted her remains unknown. He then stashed the child’s body in a cardboard box and left it on the bank of a nearby canal.

Grabowski was arrested that same evening after his fiancé alerted the police. Grabowski confessed to the murder but denied that he abused the child. Instead, Grabowski gave a strange and disturbing story.

The killer claimed that he strangled the little girl after she tried to blackmail him. According to Grabowski, Anna tried to seduce him and threatened to tell her mother that he had molested her if he didn’t give her money.

Marianne Bachmeier was incensed by this story and a year later, when Grabowski headed to trial for the murder, she had her revenge. On the third day of the trial in Lübeck district court, Marianne Bachmeier grabbed a .22-caliber Beretta pistol from her purse and pulled the trigger eight times. Six of the shots hit Grabowski, and he died on the courtroom floor.

Witnesses alleged that Bachmeier made incriminating remarks after she shot Grabowski. According to Judge Guenther Kroeger, who spoke to Bachmeier after she shot Grabowski in the back, she heard the grieving mother say, “I wanted to kill him.” Bachmeier allegedly continued, “He killed my daughter… I wanted to shoot him in the face but I shot him in the back… I hope he’s dead.” Two policemen also claimed to have heard Bachmeier call Grabowski a “pig” after she shot him.

“I heard he wanted to make a statement,” Bachmeier later said, referring to Grabowski’s claims that her seven-year-old was trying to blackmail him. “I thought, now comes the next lie about this victim who was my child.”

The court ultimately convicted Bachmeier of premeditated manslaughter and sentenced her to six years behind bars in 1983.

In June 1985, Marianne Bachmeier was released from prison after serving only half of her sentence. She moved to Nigeria, where she married and remained until the 1990s. After she divorced her husband, Bachmeier relocated to Sicily where she stayed until she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, upon which she returned to a now-unified Germany.

With precious little time left, Bachmeier requested Lukas Maria Böhmer, a reporter for NDR, to film her last weeks alive. She died on Sept. 17, 1996, at the age of 46. She was buried next to her daughter, Anna.

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