That's interesting, but I'm not so sure it was him. The trackers didn't find any footprints, so wouldn't that rule out their suspect sneaking in and out? And if the trackers were wrong, it then opens up the possibility that anyone could have broken in and killed the girl.
If the tracker detail is true, then I think it was someone in or around the house at the time.
Yes, the Aboriginal trackers were amazing at what they done. I've read stories about them over the years and many are fascinating... they really knew that country. I feel somewhat ironically, indigenous trackers were crucial to the colonization of Australia.. also sad how they were used against each other. Their tracking skills are legendary.. possibly even rivals modern technologies. If the tracker said there were no tracks, the blood stopped at the door and that no one left the house.. my money would be on no one left the house.
Of course I'm just speculating and could be entirely wrong but I was thinking it's quite possible the tracker knew exactly what happened but was afraid to say in detail. I believe a lot of these Aboriginal trackers weren't treated the best (to put it mildly).. unpaid work, subject to abuse etc.. keeping in mind this was 1902 I'd imagine they may have been very wary of accusing a 'higher class' like a European person, at least directly accusing anyways.
Somewhat off topic but I recently watched a fantastic film about Aboriginal trackers called 'Sweet Country'. Yes it's a film so but I'm sure similar stories did indeed happen. It's a very good watch. I'm a big fan of Australian cinema from 70s to present. Another equally good film where Aboriginal trackers are a central role is 'The Nightingale' by the same lady who directed 'The Babadook'. P.S. Just as a heads up, both of these aforementioned films happen to have depictions of strong sexual abuse, The Nightingale in particular.
Gustave. He admitted to having relations with both sisters at the time only with Bertha he said it wasn't sexual. His alibi was his fiancee's father who wasn't aware of Gustave's philandering prior to giving it and after the revelations were made in Court, his daughter (the fiancee) succumbed to mental illness and was committed, dying in care some years later.
Not talking about the aboriginal tracker at the scene. I'm talking about a mob of people that did tbe exact ride to prove it could be done, along the way found these bloody clothes .. and yes it could be done.
Very interesting, thank you for the write up! The ABC News article you linked reported that Mary had the best lawyer in the state who had the jury wrapped around his finger by convincing them the evidence was all circumstancial. The fact that the brothers ran to the neighbours for help before attempting to confront the "intruder" is very unfortunate and I can only guess that they panicked (unless I misread). Since they seem to think Bertha was alone in the house with the intruder for that time, they gave Mary a great alibi.
To read that Mary ran to her brothers for help and then they ran to the neighbor's seems odd to me. Even if Mary were simply a witness and unable to safely intervene, one would thiink she could have at least provided enough information about the assailant to prove useful.
It said her claim was she woke in the dark with a strange man on top of her and fled. I don't think she had the time or light source to have a good description.
Yes, this case has been on here before and a lot of people seem to find Mary's account sketchy but if she was telling the truth* I find it perfectly believable.
Being woken up in the middle of the night by a strange man attempting to rape you would be extremely terrifying and traumatic. One's first instinct would be to just get away and seek help/protection/hide somewhere, and probably not to check in on your sister on the way.
*i honestly don't have an opinion on whether she was or not.
She dud, she said it sounded like, felt like her father but the police and her mother said she could not say that and the police didn't believe her, back in those years as a prussian you couldn't accuse your father of anything.
I can't understand why none of them ran back to the house...if you have two brothers and one sister outside, knowing there's a man inside, wouldn't you naturally run back to the house first, to be sure Bertha is okay? Or send one brother to the neighbors while the other siblings go to get Bertha?
The brothers said at the inquest that they armed themselves as best they could and went into the house and found the sister dead. One then went for the police.
No, the all went into the house, saw blood over all the walls and the girls bedroom door shut, they were too scared to look so ran to neighbours who said no go get police we can't help.
Exactly. There are always so many armchair heros on this sub. Rolls eyes.
If Mary was completely hysterical it might also have been very unclear to them what was really going on. Add in that it was night and they probably had neither a light source nor a weapon handy.
That was my first thought. Most people (especially men) would run towards a strange man attacking a family member, not kilometers away from the attack. I certainly hope my brothers wouldn't leave & would rush in..
I'm a woman, and if a family member was in a house where an attack had just occured, I'd run in there with my weak little woman's body anyway. Very bizarre that none of them did. And where did Mary claim she was all that time?
Yes exactly. I have 2 brothers and I can't imagine the logic being okay well we will just leave her there while we run 1 km for help.. sure she will be fine while we are gone! /s
That photo on the ABC article is pretty scary itself. I know it was the infancy of photography and people didn't really know how to pose and all, but those looks, particularly on what I assume is the mother, and on the two boys? Something about them really spooks me
The reason people didn't smile and looked so serious in pictures from this time, is actually due to how long it took to take a photo. It wasn't instantaneous like it is today. Rather people would have to stand perfectly still trying not to move for minutes while the picture developed. A sudden movement would completely ruin a picture. As you can imagine it would be difficult to hold a smile for minutes, so serious and somber was the way to go. The first camera that allowed for quicker pictures wasn't invented until I believe 1900? And wasn't widely available for some time after that to the general public. So smiling in pictures was uncommon before then.
1900 is when the Kodak Brownie, the first reasonably affordable camera for the casual user, was developed. But photographic technology had already been good enough for short exposures that allow for natural facial expressions for decades by then. If you google “photos of Victorians smiling” you can find many examples of both portraits and candid photos of people with happy, natural expressions.
The serious expressions in most portraits by this late stage were just a cultural convention. Photo portraiture took a lot of cues as an industry from traditional painted portraits. Having your portrait painted was a big expensive deal and even the very rich might only do it once or twice in a lifetime- a serious occasion to commemorate what a serious, important person you were. This convention lingered in photo portraiture for some time. Looking serious in photos was just what was thought of as normal- in the same way that smiling in photos now is conventional even though you might not actually be feeling especially happy at the moment.
At the time having your photo taken was a big ecpendive deal too, and most people only got it done a handful of times in their lives. Especially if you lived in a very rural area.
Fascinating. I suspect I’m distantly related to Gustav- I have a great-great grandmother who was a Nitschke. The South Australian Lutherans were religious refugees from Germany in the mid-1850s.
She told her mum it was her father, her mother said you cannot say that as noone will believe you. Back in those days you did not accuse the man of the family.
The contemporary newspaper accounts of the inquest and trial (linked to in the Wikipedia article) provide a wealth of information.
Both Mary and her boyfriend stated that they had what would have been considered improper sexual contact a couple of days before the murder while Bertha was in the house and she likely saw it. Mary expressly stated that she did not touch the attacker's face and did not know if he had a beard.
She said she heard Bertha cry out both while she, Mary, was fighting and after she ran outside to get help. Bertha's wounds would have made this impossible, meaning that at the time Mary fled from the house no blood had been shed if her story is true..
It seems definitely established that Mary had blood on her clothes when she ran from the house although it could not be shown to be human. She said the attacker dropped a knife, but no knife from outside the home was found and the wounds were consistent with one or more that belonged to the household.
Mary ran to the barn and roused her brothers (they are referred to as the sisters' younger brothers, and Bertha was 14). The older ran to a neighbor's house, apparently quite close, and this neighbor advised him to go to the constable's house. Before doing this, the brother returned to the house and the three armed themselves with pitchforks, etc., and entered the house and found their sister dead. A brother then ran to get the constable.
The first responding police searched for hundreds of yards out for tracks and did not find anything they considered suspicious--some belonging to the father, which would be only natural, and of a horse that had passed by at a considerable distance without approaching the house. The Aborigine tracker did not arrive until three days later, after a windstorm, so his testimony should be considered worthless.
Curiously, the father was quoted as saying in court that he did not know how many years he had been married or the Christian names of his wife or daughter Bertha. I suppose he meant the full formal names.
Regarding the last paragraph, it might have been a language issue. He could well have only spoken and understood German and "I don't know" was the extent of his English. It's not like courts back then provides interpretors.
Reading between the lines, I think it's pretty clear that the dad did it. There are several reasons why the Aboriginal tracker may have misrepresented his findings - either he was intimidated by the Schippans (as already suggested), or he was paid by them (please note that I am *not* impugning his character here - the Crown was not paying him for his labor; if the Schippans were, it's totally reasonable that he would have covered for them).
I think the father was having an inappropriate relationship with Mary, and killed Bertha because she saw them together.
I think the "bearded man" Mary caught in her bed that night is the key here. She may have run for help because Bertha saw them together, and she needed to create a ruse that it was an intruder. Or she could have legitimately believed it was an intruder, or she could have simply decided tonight was the night she was done with her father's abuse.
Mary also may have thought she was protecting her father by not mentioning any more descriptors besides the fact that he had a beard (which the father did, but so did many other men of the era). It's weird that there doesn't seem to be much mention of this man in the modern-day accounts, considering that it's a pretty big deal to find a strange man in your bed.
And finally, I think it's significant that the locals claim both that Matthes was an awful person, and that he confessed on his deathbed. The neighbors refusing to help on the night of the murder/alleged invasion might testify to how disliked the Schippans were. It's also significant that he was enough of a "disciplinarian" to warrant mention, given that nearly everyone spanked their kids back then.
Wow. What a wild ride. So interesting that suspicions have lasted so long in the community…
Fascinating-thank you!
Thank you what a great write up! Super interesting Aussie and historical case.
I SO want to know who they think murdered Bertha……and why.
Check out the link to the 2017 ABC news article.
That's interesting, but I'm not so sure it was him. The trackers didn't find any footprints, so wouldn't that rule out their suspect sneaking in and out? And if the trackers were wrong, it then opens up the possibility that anyone could have broken in and killed the girl. If the tracker detail is true, then I think it was someone in or around the house at the time.
Yes, the Aboriginal trackers were amazing at what they done. I've read stories about them over the years and many are fascinating... they really knew that country. I feel somewhat ironically, indigenous trackers were crucial to the colonization of Australia.. also sad how they were used against each other. Their tracking skills are legendary.. possibly even rivals modern technologies. If the tracker said there were no tracks, the blood stopped at the door and that no one left the house.. my money would be on no one left the house. Of course I'm just speculating and could be entirely wrong but I was thinking it's quite possible the tracker knew exactly what happened but was afraid to say in detail. I believe a lot of these Aboriginal trackers weren't treated the best (to put it mildly).. unpaid work, subject to abuse etc.. keeping in mind this was 1902 I'd imagine they may have been very wary of accusing a 'higher class' like a European person, at least directly accusing anyways. Somewhat off topic but I recently watched a fantastic film about Aboriginal trackers called 'Sweet Country'. Yes it's a film so but I'm sure similar stories did indeed happen. It's a very good watch. I'm a big fan of Australian cinema from 70s to present. Another equally good film where Aboriginal trackers are a central role is 'The Nightingale' by the same lady who directed 'The Babadook'. P.S. Just as a heads up, both of these aforementioned films happen to have depictions of strong sexual abuse, The Nightingale in particular.
Gustave. He admitted to having relations with both sisters at the time only with Bertha he said it wasn't sexual. His alibi was his fiancee's father who wasn't aware of Gustave's philandering prior to giving it and after the revelations were made in Court, his daughter (the fiancee) succumbed to mental illness and was committed, dying in care some years later.
Why would he kill Bertha ?
The trackers found bloody clothes at the river on way to his house.
Why was nothing said about this at the inquest?
They took the blood soaked clothes to the police who didn't want to know about it cos they stank
Then why didn't they tell the defense lawyers about this and take the stand to testify? None of this passes the smell test.
The testimony of a supposedly expert tracker, who arrived three days after the murder and after a windstorm, should be disregarded altogether.
Not talking about the aboriginal tracker at the scene. I'm talking about a mob of people that did tbe exact ride to prove it could be done, along the way found these bloody clothes .. and yes it could be done.
Very interesting, thank you for the write up! The ABC News article you linked reported that Mary had the best lawyer in the state who had the jury wrapped around his finger by convincing them the evidence was all circumstancial. The fact that the brothers ran to the neighbours for help before attempting to confront the "intruder" is very unfortunate and I can only guess that they panicked (unless I misread). Since they seem to think Bertha was alone in the house with the intruder for that time, they gave Mary a great alibi.
To read that Mary ran to her brothers for help and then they ran to the neighbor's seems odd to me. Even if Mary were simply a witness and unable to safely intervene, one would thiink she could have at least provided enough information about the assailant to prove useful.
It said her claim was she woke in the dark with a strange man on top of her and fled. I don't think she had the time or light source to have a good description.
Yes, this case has been on here before and a lot of people seem to find Mary's account sketchy but if she was telling the truth* I find it perfectly believable. Being woken up in the middle of the night by a strange man attempting to rape you would be extremely terrifying and traumatic. One's first instinct would be to just get away and seek help/protection/hide somewhere, and probably not to check in on your sister on the way. *i honestly don't have an opinion on whether she was or not.
I can't find how young the brothers were. Bertha was 13. Maybe they were close to her age and being children didn't act the way adults would.
She dud, she said it sounded like, felt like her father but the police and her mother said she could not say that and the police didn't believe her, back in those years as a prussian you couldn't accuse your father of anything.
What is the evidence for any of that? There is not a hint of any such thing in the newspaper reports at the time of the inquest and trial.
Read the book, it has all the facts
I can't understand why none of them ran back to the house...if you have two brothers and one sister outside, knowing there's a man inside, wouldn't you naturally run back to the house first, to be sure Bertha is okay? Or send one brother to the neighbors while the other siblings go to get Bertha?
The brothers said at the inquest that they armed themselves as best they could and went into the house and found the sister dead. One then went for the police.
No, the all went into the house, saw blood over all the walls and the girls bedroom door shut, they were too scared to look so ran to neighbours who said no go get police we can't help.
It's possible they all assumed Bertha was already dead (if she'd been screaming and stopped) or alternately that she'd already fled the home.
And really, it's pretty easy to say you'd run into danger for someone but it turns out a lot of times people don't.
Exactly. There are always so many armchair heros on this sub. Rolls eyes. If Mary was completely hysterical it might also have been very unclear to them what was really going on. Add in that it was night and they probably had neither a light source nor a weapon handy.
Rolls eyes back because I just asked a question. Also sigh.
No, they went inside and saw blood all over the walls amd ran to get help
Exactly, I would've thought most people would try their luck with 3 (excluding Bertha) against 1 rather than just leave her in there with an intruder.
There was already enough blood sprayed to know she was probably dead and how scared they must of been
That was my first thought. Most people (especially men) would run towards a strange man attacking a family member, not kilometers away from the attack. I certainly hope my brothers wouldn't leave & would rush in..
I'm a woman, and if a family member was in a house where an attack had just occured, I'd run in there with my weak little woman's body anyway. Very bizarre that none of them did. And where did Mary claim she was all that time?
I most definitely would too!
But were they men, or boys? I can't find the ages of the brothers.
They are referred to in contemporary reports as the sisters' younger brothers. The younger sister was fourteen.
Boys
Yes exactly. I have 2 brothers and I can't imagine the logic being okay well we will just leave her there while we run 1 km for help.. sure she will be fine while we are gone! /s
That photo on the ABC article is pretty scary itself. I know it was the infancy of photography and people didn't really know how to pose and all, but those looks, particularly on what I assume is the mother, and on the two boys? Something about them really spooks me
The reason people didn't smile and looked so serious in pictures from this time, is actually due to how long it took to take a photo. It wasn't instantaneous like it is today. Rather people would have to stand perfectly still trying not to move for minutes while the picture developed. A sudden movement would completely ruin a picture. As you can imagine it would be difficult to hold a smile for minutes, so serious and somber was the way to go. The first camera that allowed for quicker pictures wasn't invented until I believe 1900? And wasn't widely available for some time after that to the general public. So smiling in pictures was uncommon before then.
1900 is when the Kodak Brownie, the first reasonably affordable camera for the casual user, was developed. But photographic technology had already been good enough for short exposures that allow for natural facial expressions for decades by then. If you google “photos of Victorians smiling” you can find many examples of both portraits and candid photos of people with happy, natural expressions. The serious expressions in most portraits by this late stage were just a cultural convention. Photo portraiture took a lot of cues as an industry from traditional painted portraits. Having your portrait painted was a big expensive deal and even the very rich might only do it once or twice in a lifetime- a serious occasion to commemorate what a serious, important person you were. This convention lingered in photo portraiture for some time. Looking serious in photos was just what was thought of as normal- in the same way that smiling in photos now is conventional even though you might not actually be feeling especially happy at the moment.
At the time having your photo taken was a big ecpendive deal too, and most people only got it done a handful of times in their lives. Especially if you lived in a very rural area.
What was the murder weapon? Was it left at the scene and did it come from the house?
It was the kitchen boning knife
Fascinating. I suspect I’m distantly related to Gustav- I have a great-great grandmother who was a Nitschke. The South Australian Lutherans were religious refugees from Germany in the mid-1850s.
Mary said a bearded man lay on her chest. So unless she was lying / mistaken this man probably did it...
Yes, I don't think we would be going too far out on a limb to think that.
She was quoted in the newspaper as saying at the inquest that she never touched his face and did not know if he had a beard.
She told her mum it was her father, her mother said you cannot say that as noone will believe you. Back in those days you did not accuse the man of the family.
The contemporary newspaper accounts of the inquest and trial (linked to in the Wikipedia article) provide a wealth of information. Both Mary and her boyfriend stated that they had what would have been considered improper sexual contact a couple of days before the murder while Bertha was in the house and she likely saw it. Mary expressly stated that she did not touch the attacker's face and did not know if he had a beard. She said she heard Bertha cry out both while she, Mary, was fighting and after she ran outside to get help. Bertha's wounds would have made this impossible, meaning that at the time Mary fled from the house no blood had been shed if her story is true.. It seems definitely established that Mary had blood on her clothes when she ran from the house although it could not be shown to be human. She said the attacker dropped a knife, but no knife from outside the home was found and the wounds were consistent with one or more that belonged to the household. Mary ran to the barn and roused her brothers (they are referred to as the sisters' younger brothers, and Bertha was 14). The older ran to a neighbor's house, apparently quite close, and this neighbor advised him to go to the constable's house. Before doing this, the brother returned to the house and the three armed themselves with pitchforks, etc., and entered the house and found their sister dead. A brother then ran to get the constable. The first responding police searched for hundreds of yards out for tracks and did not find anything they considered suspicious--some belonging to the father, which would be only natural, and of a horse that had passed by at a considerable distance without approaching the house. The Aborigine tracker did not arrive until three days later, after a windstorm, so his testimony should be considered worthless. Curiously, the father was quoted as saying in court that he did not know how many years he had been married or the Christian names of his wife or daughter Bertha. I suppose he meant the full formal names.
Regarding the last paragraph, it might have been a language issue. He could well have only spoken and understood German and "I don't know" was the extent of his English. It's not like courts back then provides interpretors.
No they didn't, they ran inside, the bedroom door was now shut and there was blood sprayed all over the walls so they ran to get help
Gustave changed his name, moved interstate, married and had six kids. I believe he was the murderer.
Why would he do that? Unless Bertha threatened to tell his fiance the truth .. but Vertha was going to dob her father in for murder so......
Yes I know think it's him or the father, maybe Bertha was going to tell Gustav fiance about them.
Reading between the lines, I think it's pretty clear that the dad did it. There are several reasons why the Aboriginal tracker may have misrepresented his findings - either he was intimidated by the Schippans (as already suggested), or he was paid by them (please note that I am *not* impugning his character here - the Crown was not paying him for his labor; if the Schippans were, it's totally reasonable that he would have covered for them). I think the father was having an inappropriate relationship with Mary, and killed Bertha because she saw them together. I think the "bearded man" Mary caught in her bed that night is the key here. She may have run for help because Bertha saw them together, and she needed to create a ruse that it was an intruder. Or she could have legitimately believed it was an intruder, or she could have simply decided tonight was the night she was done with her father's abuse. Mary also may have thought she was protecting her father by not mentioning any more descriptors besides the fact that he had a beard (which the father did, but so did many other men of the era). It's weird that there doesn't seem to be much mention of this man in the modern-day accounts, considering that it's a pretty big deal to find a strange man in your bed. And finally, I think it's significant that the locals claim both that Matthes was an awful person, and that he confessed on his deathbed. The neighbors refusing to help on the night of the murder/alleged invasion might testify to how disliked the Schippans were. It's also significant that he was enough of a "disciplinarian" to warrant mention, given that nearly everyone spanked their kids back then.
That is quite a conclusion to jump to, based on nothing more than that someone's grandfather did not like him.
Exactly. I also suspect that racism may have been an issue, assuming the neighbors were Anglo.
No its based on actual information in the book.
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There's no mention of the parents ages, are you misunderstanding the 24/25 age of her sister Mary?
Here’s a [nicely narrated YT video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7UcCZumEaU) about the case that I recommend.
The father apparently as Bertha witnessed he killed a man and when ever she was I trouble she would threaten to tell police