cash that Gormann had brought with him to buy the brooch. Gormann refused and was shot, but not before he managed to hit the murderer with the lead-filled cosh that Braun had kept for self-defense. The robber was subsequently captured and executed while Gormann himself spent six months recovering from his wound in the Charité Hospital.
“But as a result of his wound he lost the use of his right arm, which, I’m sure you will all agree, is a considerable disadvantage for a strangler. And recognizing that his career as a lust murderer was now at an end, Gormann sold his studio in Lichterfelde and went back to being a respectable member of Berlin’s banking community. It seems incredible but it was as simple as that.
“Gormann’s picture as the hero of Alte Jakobstrasse had appeared in the newspapers at the time. And so I took this picture to the Hundegustav Bar, where Gustave himself confirmed that Gormann was indeed the man who had sold him the pornographic Minette film. But was he the killer? It’s one thing selling an erotic film that includes a real murder, but that doesn’t necessarily make the vendor a murderer.
“The next day I went to the Dresdner Bank at number 35 on the south side of Behren-Strasse and Friedrichstrasse to take a closer look at my suspect. I was still not entirely satisfied that we had our man, and this feeling was underlined when, after we arrested him, we searched his house and found—nothing. Not one can of film. Not one length of Kuhlo wire. Nor any curtain material that matched the piece we had. Nothing. And of course Gormann himself denied everything. Back at the Police Praesidium on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz I was beginning to feel like a bit of a fool. Actually it was worse than that. I felt low enough to think that maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a detective, after all. I don’t mind telling you that I almost handed in my warrant disc right then and there.
“These are the dark moments that haunt every detective. The shadows of the shadows, as I sometimes think of them, when things can become easily mistaken for something else. When evil masquerades as good and lies appear to be the truth. But sometimes, after the shadows comes the light.
“Experience teaches patience. You learn to rely on routines. On habits. On trusting your own way perforce of doing several things at once. I often think that being a detective is a little like the traffic-control tower that stands in the center of Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz: not only do its lights have to control traffic from five different directions, it also tells the time and, in bad weather, provides much needed shelter for a traffic policeman.
“In Gormann’s neighborhood of Schlachtensee, I spoke to one of his neighbors who told us that several years before, he’d seen Gormann burying something in his garden. Now, there’s nothing unusual about that in Schlachtensee, at least there isn’t when the man has two arms. But a one-armed man burying an object in his garden is perhaps more unusual, even in Berlin just ten years after a terrible war that maimed so many. In short it might reasonably be supposed that a one-armed man who buries an object in his garden might have something important to hide. So we got a court order, dug it up, and discovered a tarpaulin-covered box containing several dozen cans of film.
“Gormann still denied everything. At least he did until we discovered that in one of the later movies he actually appeared in several frames; and with this evidence we finally secured a full and detailed confession. He told us everything—every horrible fact. His modus operandi. Even his motive: he blamed a woman for encouraging him to volunteer for the army in 1914, which, he said, scarred him for life. And he’d sold the film to the Hundegustav Bar so that he could see one of his victims whenever he wished. The rest he had planned to destroy. Three months later Gormann was beheaded at Brandenburg Prison. I attended the
“But as a result of his wound he lost the use of his right arm, which, I’m sure you will all agree, is a considerable disadvantage for a strangler. And recognizing that his career as a lust murderer was now at an end, Gormann sold his studio in Lichterfelde and went back to being a respectable member of Berlin’s banking community. It seems incredible but it was as simple as that.
“Gormann’s picture as the hero of Alte Jakobstrasse had appeared in the newspapers at the time. And so I took this picture to the Hundegustav Bar, where Gustave himself confirmed that Gormann was indeed the man who had sold him the pornographic Minette film. But was he the killer? It’s one thing selling an erotic film that includes a real murder, but that doesn’t necessarily make the vendor a murderer.
“The next day I went to the Dresdner Bank at number 35 on the south side of Behren-Strasse and Friedrichstrasse to take a closer look at my suspect. I was still not entirely satisfied that we had our man, and this feeling was underlined when, after we arrested him, we searched his house and found—nothing. Not one can of film. Not one length of Kuhlo wire. Nor any curtain material that matched the piece we had. Nothing. And of course Gormann himself denied everything. Back at the Police Praesidium on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz I was beginning to feel like a bit of a fool. Actually it was worse than that. I felt low enough to think that maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a detective, after all. I don’t mind telling you that I almost handed in my warrant disc right then and there.
“These are the dark moments that haunt every detective. The shadows of the shadows, as I sometimes think of them, when things can become easily mistaken for something else. When evil masquerades as good and lies appear to be the truth. But sometimes, after the shadows comes the light.
“Experience teaches patience. You learn to rely on routines. On habits. On trusting your own way perforce of doing several things at once. I often think that being a detective is a little like the traffic-control tower that stands in the center of Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz: not only do its lights have to control traffic from five different directions, it also tells the time and, in bad weather, provides much needed shelter for a traffic policeman.
“In Gormann’s neighborhood of Schlachtensee, I spoke to one of his neighbors who told us that several years before, he’d seen Gormann burying something in his garden. Now, there’s nothing unusual about that in Schlachtensee, at least there isn’t when the man has two arms. But a one-armed man burying an object in his garden is perhaps more unusual, even in Berlin just ten years after a terrible war that maimed so many. In short it might reasonably be supposed that a one-armed man who buries an object in his garden might have something important to hide. So we got a court order, dug it up, and discovered a tarpaulin-covered box containing several dozen cans of film.
“Gormann still denied everything. At least he did until we discovered that in one of the later movies he actually appeared in several frames; and with this evidence we finally secured a full and detailed confession. He told us everything—every horrible fact. His modus operandi. Even his motive: he blamed a woman for encouraging him to volunteer for the army in 1914, which, he said, scarred him for life. And he’d sold the film to the Hundegustav Bar so that he could see one of his victims whenever he wished. The rest he had planned to destroy. Three months later Gormann was beheaded at Brandenburg Prison. I attended the
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