Der Fall Hetzel (Kälberstrick-Prozess) - Teil 2

Homizidale Strangulation oder plötzlicher natürlicher Tod?

Einzelartikel aus:

Archiv für Kriminologie Band 256

Heft 1 und 2 Juli/August 2025

Verfasst von:

Burkhard Madea, Elke Doberentz

The Hetzel-case (veal rope trial)
Summary The so-called veal-rope trial was one of the leading criminal trials of the 1960s. It was widely discussed by the public and in tabloid media and is cited even today as one of the most famous German cases of miscarriage of justice due to wrong expert evidence. The main point of contention was whether the death of the victim occurred due to natural causes during sexual intercourse as claimed by the accused or due to strangulation to enable anal intercourse. A young 25 years old woman was found dead in a road ditch. There was a dried mark on the front and left side of her neck. The autopsy was performed by two doctors with no expertise in forensic medicine, who violated medicolegal autopsy rules and provided an insufficient description of the autopsy findings. However, they noticed and reported signs of external violence to the neck, blunt force to the head, bite marks and anal penetration. Since the reports of the pathologist were regarded as insufficient, one of the leading German forensic pathologists, Prof. Albert Ponsold (Münster), who was famous for his textbook of forensic medicine, was asked for a written report based on the autopsy findings, photographs of the deceased and confessions of the suspect. Based on this, manual and/or ligature strangulation was diagnosed as cause of death. The suspect was charged with murder. During the trial, the expert made the definite diagnosis of ligature strangulation, manual strangulation was ruled out. This opinion was based also on further photographs taken after the autopsy. According to Prof. Ponsold blunt force against the head and ligature strangulation were used by the perpetrator to enable anal rape. The accused was sentenced to life-long imprisonment. Later, during the hearing of a retrial, it was claimed that the dried abrasion on the neck was not caused by ligatures strangulation but by the skin of the body lying on a stick in the ditch. The abrasion at the front of the neck was claimed to be a postmortem abrasion. Before the retrial, a massive press campaign against Prof. Ponsold was started. It was mainly influenced by the defence lawyers and a criminal novel writer, who turned it into one of the worst denunciation campaigns ever against a medicolegal expert before trial. In the retrial, the convicted murderer was acquitted due to an expert report by Prof. Prokop, who claimed that abrasions of the skin and haemorrhages of the muscles can be produced postmortem as new evidence and stated that cause of death was natural. Later, he wrote that this knowledge regarding postmortem abrasions and haemorrhages was previously known and not new evidence. Due to the press campaign against Ponsold, the German Society of Legal Medicine founded their own commission. Their report to the responsible public prosecutor supported the findings described in the expert report by Ponsold. During the time of the press campaign and retrial, various experts wrote reports on this matter which are not known to the public or even the forensic community. Therefore, some of the facets of this case of medicolegal importance shall be addressed here, and the denunciation campaign of the defence against Ponsold shall at least be mentioned.
Key words: Strangulation – Veal rope trial – retrial – new evidence – sudden death during sexual (anal) intercourse

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