The journey to death

In November 1809, 24-year-old Dorothea Blankenfeld had only one goal: she wanted to travel from Danzig to her fiancé, who was stationed 900 kilometers away in Vienna as a civil servant in the French imperial army. All alone and with her entire dowry, she set out on the arduous journey. After 700 kilometers, she arrived in Dresden, where the secretary of the French governor there, who was aware of her marriage plans, had arranged accommodation for her at the Hôtel de Bavière at Schlossgasse 337. Dorothea asked him to find her a ride to Vienna. As two French army postilions named Antoine and Schulze had previously approached him asking for passports because they wanted to travel to Italy, he recommended them to Dorothea as a ride. The group, consisting of a groom, the two coachmen, and young Dorothea, reached their penultimate stop in Meitingen at around 4 p.m. on November 26, 1809. From the next stop in Augsburg, their travel routes diverged. The group spent their last night at the postmaster Lahmer’s, who gave them two rooms on the first floor for the night. One for Dorothea and the other for the men. Between 3 and 4 p.m., Lahmer and his postman Lemmermeier were startled by screams. Then the stable boy rushed down the stairs, crying because he had been beaten by one of the stagecoach drivers. Around 6 a.m., the post coachman Antoine asked for the upper rooms to be heated. One of the servants noticed that there was blood on his hand, which probably came from the beaten boy. He complied with the request, but wondered why they had not already left at 5 a.m. as planned, as they had told him the evening before. At 9 a.m., the travel group loaded the coach. Postmaster Lahmer noticed a bundle that the young woman was loading with the stagecoach driver and the horse boy. It seemed heavy. Why was the woman helping and not the other stagecoach driver, and where was he? Finally, the stagecoach departed and Lahmer wanted to clean the rooms. However, when he entered the young woman’s room, there was blood all over the walls. He informed the patrimonial court of the lord of Meitingen and reported the crime. The court sent mounted bailiffs to arrest the suspects. They apprehended the suspects at the Gögginger Tor in Augsburg. When they searched the carriage, they found the heavy bundle containing a woman’s corpse. Shocked by the discovery, they questioned the traveling party. But only the 14-year-old horse groom named Carl Marschall began to talk. He explained that the coachman Antoine was in fact his brother-in-law Joseph Antonini and that the young woman was his wife and sister Maria Therese Antonini. The dead woman was Dorothea Blankenfeld, whom they had picked up in Dresden and murdered in Meitingen. However, the couple denied this and testified that Carl Marschall had murdered Dorothea Blankenfeld without their knowledge. Maria Therese Antonini claimed that she had wanted to protect her brother from prosecution and had therefore helped to cover up the crime. She also described her brother as a depraved individual who had treacherously murdered his father and wanted to kill his sister. She wanted to give him one last chance by letting him accompany her on her travels as a groom. The autopsy revealed that Dorothea Blankenfeld had been struck a total of nine times with a blunt object. Her skull had a large fracture that extended from the upper frontal bone across the left side of the skull in a semicircle to the temporal bone. However, she had not died from the wounds, but from further violence. In addition, Dorothea Blankenfeld’s collarbone was broken and the victim’s hands were abraded and swollen. The officers did not believe that the boy was the sole perpetrator. Therefore, they interrogated the couple relentlessly. After the 19th interrogation, Maria Therese Antonini confirmed her brother’s version of events. Her husband continued to deny any involvement in the crime. Joseph Antonini was a 30-year-old man who was born in Messina as the son of a cloth maker. He learned the trade of wig maker and was allegedly kidnapped by Algerian pirates during a sea voyage to Naples, who wanted to sell him at the slave market. But the pirate ship was boarded by a French warship off the Egyptian coast. This enabled him to return home. He then served as a drummer in a Corsican battalion of the French army. After that, he made a living as a hired servant and sutler until he found work with the Postillion. It is questionable whether this adventurous life story was not purely a figment of Joseph Antonini’s imagination. The fact was that Joseph Antonini had already been reported to the police twice. Once on suspicion of theft and a second time on suspicion that the couple had stolen items in their possession. Since the couple could not prove that the items belonged to them, they were arrested but released again after eight days. While Joseph Antonini was in prison, he confessed to a fellow inmate that he had stolen 300 louis d’or and several diamond rings and had broken out of prison in Erfurt. His 26-year-old wife Maria Therese and her brother Carl Marschall were from Berlin. Their father was a factory worker who lived in great poverty. Maria Therese had met her husband in Berlin and married him in Küstrin in 1806. No one knew how the couple made a living. When they were released from prison in Berlin in October 1809 for possession of the stolen items, they planned to travel with Carl to her husband’s hometown of Messina. In Dresden, Carl and Joseph had pretended to be army postilions to the secretary in order to obtain passports. Later, his wife took on the role of second postilion and Carl became the horse boy. The trio needed money, and when they met the well-dressed Dorothea Blankenfeld in Dresden, they hatched a plan to murder her. At first, they wanted to suffocate her in her sleep with smoke. Then they planned to throw her into a deadly ravine, but were unsure whether they should kill Dorothea instead. The trio discussed the perfect method of murder so many times that they were only able to carry out their plan at the last stop in Meiting. Beforehand, they had drugged Dorothea with mulled wine laced with opium to find out whether the murder was worth it. Although there was no cash in the suitcase, there was jewelry, expensive clothing, and fine lingerie. On the way to Meiting, Joseph Antonini used horror stories to coax Dorothea Blankenfeld into revealing that she was wearing a golden corset with 2,000 Prussian Reichstaler in gold sewn into it. This sealed her death sentence. Carl found a mang roller in Meiting to use as the murder weapon, with which they planned to kill Dorothea Blankenfeld. They drugged her with alcohol mixed with opium. Around midnight, Carl looked through the connecting door to see if she was asleep. When he saw that she was, he told his brother-in-law and sister, who then discussed the method of killing her again. Joseph Antonini now wanted to kill Dorothea Blankenfeld by dripping liquid tin into her ear. Carl, on the other hand, wanted to pour the tin into her eyes. But they abandoned this method because the tin cooled too quickly. At four o’clock, Carl went to Dorothea Blankenfeld’s room with the mangrolle in his hand and his brother-in-law in tow. She was sleeping peacefully. Joseph Antonini then urged his brother-in-law to kill her. The boy hesitated, so Joseph Antonini took his arms, raised them high, and struck Dorothea’s head. She woke up with a start. But Joseph Antonini pushed her down, while his wife rushed into the room and held her feet. Dorothea Blankenfeld begged for her life. Carl suddenly became afraid and wanted to run away. But his sister grabbed him and pushed him back onto the bed. He had to strike again with the mang wood, but immediately dropped it. Joseph Antonini was so startled that he let go of Dorothea Blankenfeld, who ran to the door. But Joseph Antonini was able to grab her in time and struck her several times with the mang wood. He then tore off her nightgown and corset. He wanted to dispose of the dying woman on the manure heap and bury her there. But she was too heavy, so she remained in the room. Since she was still alive, Joseph Antonini took a rope, put it around her neck, and pulled until she was dead. She was then put into a sack, which was wrapped in a bedspread and tied up. The next day, Maria Therese put on the dead woman’s clothes to take on her role. But the deception was quickly discovered and a few hours after their departure, the trio infernale was already caught. The Royal Court of Appeal in Neuburg sentenced Joseph and Maria Therese Antonini to death by the sword for the murder of Dorothea Blankenfeld. This verdict was upheld on appeal. According to the Münchener Politische Zeitung, Joseph Antonini died in prison on June 6, 1811, from lung abscesses before the sentence could be carried out. On July 1, 1811, his wife Maria Therese Antonini was executed. Due to his young age and his confession, Carl Marschall was sentenced to 10 years in a workhouse. With that, Dorothea Blankenfeld’s final journey was finally history.