A very, very cold case
By Steve Larkin
March 07, 2005
From: AAP
News.com.au
AN undertaker's letter confessing to the murder of a wealthy Londoner more than 160 years ago has sparked a fresh investigation in a small Adelaide Hills town.
Gustav Adolph Maerschel wanted to clear his conscience by penning the letter, which told how he stabbed his victim and spent a long night digging a deep grave under a pear tree to hide the body.
Police today felled the tree in the township of Birdwood, 50km north-east of Adelaide, finding a bone detectives said could be part of an arm, but more likely belonged to an animal.
Maerschel's letter was found inside a mantelpiece about two weeks ago as the owners of the Birdwood house carried out renovations.
In the letter, dated March 1932 and written on a page from a ledger, Maerschel confessed to stabbing the unnamed Englishman in 1843 before digging a grave to hide the evidence of his crime.
It was a job he was well equipped for. He was after all the small community's undertaker among other things.
Maerschel also told how he escaped any punishment after the constabulary failed to identify him as a suspect, despite an investigation at the time.
"The letter says that shortly after the gentleman moved here to Birdwood, he had several arguments with an English gentleman as he calls him, a gentleman from London," Detective Senior Constable Bob Sharpe, of the South Australian Police major crime squad said.
"During one of these arguments, the man from London has taken out a knife and there has been a bit of struggle.
"The fellow writing the letter has taken possession of the knife and stabbed the victim, one stab wound as we believe.
"He goes on to say that he then worked all night on his property to dig a hole which he described as eight feet deep, to bury the body and the possessions of the person.
"The letter states there was a police investigation at the time and he did not become a suspect in the matter."
Police today dug to a depth of about 2m before halting when hard shale made further progress difficult, even with the aid of an excavator.
"The man, to get down any further than that, has done pretty well," Det Snr Constable Sharpe said.
Maerschel's great nephew, Jim Rathjen, watched the police search, still shaken by the confession of his great uncle, who died in 1942.
"I'm very surprised because it was a fairly highly regarded family in the town," Mr Rathjen said, adding his great uncle was a wheelwright, builder, cabinet maker and "ironically the undertaker" in Birdwood.
"There has been absolutely no hint of this.
"Now, basically there will probably always be the question there - but as far as I know, he was a fairly reliable sort of guy."
Det Snr Constable Sharpe said the discrepancy in the dates of the murder and that of the letter was perplexing.
Some 89 years passed between the murder, and the date written on the letter, so Maerschel either lived a very long time, or was a very young murderer, he said.
It was not known when Maerschel was born.
The bone discovered today would be examined by pathologists, he said.