Tag: books

Winter story-2

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Well, like I told you, I will tell you more about this story, even if it doesn’t fully fit the story from my dream. Last time I mentioned that there were two men who could have committed the crime, a crime that filled the newspapers at that time, not only because the victim was a prominent woman, but also because it happened on a famous train, perhaps.

Let’s see how the investigation went. As you can imagine, they started by researching the place of the murder and asking questions to the people who were on the train. The train conductor said he had seen a man around 25 years old, with brown hair, smoking in the aisle. He remembered that this young man had a ticket for a journey toward Hegyeshalom, on the Austrian–Hungarian border, and Buchs, on the Swiss border. So this guy became a suspect, as you can imagine.

He fit the description of a prominent Romanian guy who used to take possession of women’s belongings while they were traveling by train. He had an impressive rap sheet.

The investigation continued, and a few days later they found her hand luggage in a room in Basel. Inside those bags, however, there was no trace of her fur coat or her jewelry. At first, the police suspected the Romanian man, Teodorescu, who was known for robbing women on trains. But he was found at his parents’ house, far from the scene, like I already told you.

To gather more information, they did what you can always do: follow the goods. So they did. The investigation then shifted toward locating the missing items. What could they do? They started to look for places where the goods could be sold or transformed into money, so pawn shops were searched, places where such things might have been sold or hidden.

Well, they didn’t find much information there. But unexpectedly, the fur coat appeared in a completely different setting: during church mass in Zurich. Detective Karl Nievergelt recognized it on Johanna Wunderlich, the owner of a boarding house. It almost seemed that God had made a miracle to ease the road to finding the killer.She claimed she had received the coat from a Hungarian student boarder, Karl Strasser, 23 years old, the son of a bank teller.

There were now two suspects: the Romanian man with a long criminal record, and the student, Strasser. From the information I found, it seems that both did it, but the focus was more on the guy who was brought to justice. Even so, from what I found, both had thrown her out of the train. She was still alive when she fell, but she died because of the wounds from the impact. Teodorescu was never captured, and the case was judged without him.

Witnesses came from different countries. From Romania, there was an odd witness, more quiet. The witness was the wagon itself. The wagon in which the crime happened was brought to Leoben so the crime could be reconstructed in front of the court and the jurors. They showed the couch and the window from which she was pushed out. The time of the murder was established as 1:42 in the night of September 26–27.

The killer who was brought to justice, the student,was a small guy, looking even smaller between the big guards, around 1.80 meters. He looked like a regular guy, not someone who would stand out by his looks. More like a public worker from that time, not someone you would think could push a person and kill. He targeted Maria Farcașeanu and waited until she climbed on her seat to reach her luggage. Then he did it.

He seemed to be a man of culture. During the trial, he tried to turn it into a kind of conference, talking about the decadence of his time. Unfortunately for him, this worked against him. The prosecutor used the fact that he was educated to make his situation even worse because an educated man should have known better. The Austrian court sentenced him to death. A request for pardon was made, but it was not approved. Later, the sentence was transformed into life in prison. In the end, two lives were destroyed: the life of the woman, an intelligent businesswoman, and the life of the killer, who destroyed his own life through his deed

Winter story

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Let me tell you more about my inquiry. You already know my fascination with old, haunted houses. As you can imagine, I’ve been searching,carefully, patiently for something that feels right.

At first, I thought the answer might lie in well-known crimes from the 19th century. Visiting old houses is enjoyable, of course, but so far it has led nowhere. Without a story, a trace of darkness, a reason, a house is just a building. The only other option would be to wander through Bucharest aimlessly, hoping that chance alone would lead me to the house. But that requires a kind of luck I don’t possess. And if I did, the story would be far too simple. Maybe too easy… don’t you think?

So I began where everyone begins: with research. Hours spent searching the internet, looking for crimes that might fit, events that left something unresolved behind them. I was certain I would find more than enough material.

I was wrong.

What I believed would be an easy task turned out to be frustratingly difficult. There is surprisingly little information available, as if time itself had chosen to erase certain things. Still, during those first searches, I came across a story. It wasn’t what I had imagined, and it didn’t lead me to a house, but it lingered in my mind.

It was a crime that took place on the Orient Express.
Not Agatha Christie’s story, although it is said her novel may have been inspired by this very event.

The crime happened in 1935. The victim was a Romanian businesswoman, found outside the train, at the edge of an embankment. Her body was discovered by a brakeman from a freight train, lying in a ditch. She was barefoot. There was a deep wound near her right eye, evidence of a struggle. In her hand, she held strands of hair, hair that did not belong to her.

Along the railway, scattered over several kilometers, were her belongings: her shoes, an embroidered scarf, a hat, and a handbag containing her identification papers—Maria Fărcășeanu and her train ticket. Any suggestion of suicide was quickly dismissed. Violence was undeniable.

The autopsy revealed something even more unsettling: she was still alive when she was thrown from the train. Robbery was believed to be the motive. The last train known to have passed through that area was the Orient Express, traveling the route Istanbul–Bucharest–Paris. And so, the investigation began.

They soon discovered that Maria had been carrying considerable wealth: expensive jewelry, a diamond wristwatch, pearls, gold pieces, and a luxurious fur coat. Sometimes, it seems, elegance can be dangerous when it draws the wrong attention.

She was an extraordinary woman,a business owner, the founder of an art school, prominent in her field, officially recognized by the Ministry for her work. She owned the first artisanal shop in the country and exhibited in Paris. A pioneer. A wife. A mother. Beautiful. Independent.

And yet, her life ended violently, in the darkness between stations.

Her death caused a sensation at the time, widely discussed in both the Romanian and Austrian press, made even more shocking by the setting,a train already surrounded by legend. The investigation ultimately concluded that two men had thrown her from the moving train.

But this story doesn’t end here.
It feels like a door only slightly opened.

I’ll tell you more tomorrow.