Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
On July 24, 1884, around midnight, the engineer of the express freight train from Vienna to Marchegg saw a person lying on the tracks in the headlights near Gänserndorf. The engineer immediately applied the brakes and the train stopped just before reaching the body. When the engineer got out, he saw that the person was a man who had already been run over by a train and cut in half. The man had apparently thrown himself in front of a train to kill himself. The body was taken to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Vienna and autopsied there. However, the forensic examination revealed that it was not a suicide, but clearly a murder, as the man had been stabbed. Meanwhile, railway employees had discovered a bloody drag mark on the tracks where the dead man had been lying, which led to the nearby pine forest and ended abruptly at a certain point. It was presumed that a fatal struggle had taken place there. The police were informed and were able to identify the dead man as Franz Krca, who had been drinking heavily with the two day laborers Thomas Sik and Julius Zavzalek in a tavern in Wagram the evening before the crime. Afterwards, the three men set off together. Franz Krca wanted to walk from Vienna to his Bohemian homeland. But he never made it. The police apprehended the two day laborers that same afternoon, as they were not far from the scene of the crime and were still wearing the bloody clothes from the murder of Franz Krca. On the way to the police station, they confessed to the joint murder of Franz Krca. In his drunken stupor, he had boasted that he was going to emigrate to America. The two day laborers therefore believed that he had earned money in Vienna for his trip overseas and wanted to rob him. They lured him into the pine forest, where they overpowered and killed him so that there would be no witnesses. Afterwards, they searched for the money but found only the ridiculous sum of 21 kreuzers. To make the murder look like suicide, they laid Franz Krca on the railroad tracks. They had not expected Franz Krca to be autopsied. Thomas Sik was sentenced to death and his teenage accomplice Julius Zavalek to 18 years in prison for the murder of Franz Krca. This solved the case of Franz Krca’s murder, which had been disguised as suicide and which had been caused by his own boasting.
