“Revenge Mother” Shot Her Child’s Killer 8 Times
January 1980, 7 years-old Anna Bachmeier from West Germany skipped school after getting into a fight with her mother. She ran into 35-years-old Klaus Garbowski a local butcher. Klaus had a criminal record involving child molestation and was jailed for the sexual abuse of two girls. He lured them into his home claiming that she could play with cats. He then molested her and strangled her to death with a pantyhose. He then put Anna’s body in a cardboard box and left it on the bank of a nearby canal. His fiancé found out and turned him into police that evening. Klaus told police that the child tried to seduce him and blackmail him for money. His defence team claimed he had acted out of a hormonal imbalance which was caused by hormone therapy he received to try to reverse the castration he received years earlier. At the time, sex offenders in Germany often underwent castration to prevent re-offend.
On the third day of trial, Anna’s mother, Marianne Bachmeier, grabbed a .22-caliber Beretta pistol from her purse and shot it eight times. Six shots hit Grabowski, and he died on the spot. She was heard saying, “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’s dead.”