If you ask anyone, they are going to tell you they are interested in justice. The problem is, that our idea of justice may not always perfectly align with the justice we see in the court system.
One mother who was experiencing this problem decided to take matters into her own hands. When a man was on trial for killing her 7-year-old daughter, she snuck a gun into the courtroom and shot him dead.
Marianne Bachmeier is the mother who did this in 1980. It happened when Klaus Grabowski was on trial for killing her daughter, who was only seven years old at the time. When Marianne stood up in the courtroom, however, it was to put an end to his life.
It all started when Anna Bachmeier was found dead on May 5, 1980. The community where it happened was suddenly in the middle of a murder scene and people were fearful.
When Klaus Grabowski came forward to say he was guilty of committing the crime, he found himself facing trial for what he did. His fiancée had originally alerted authorities to his guilt, and that is when he confessed to murdering her.
Despite the fact that Grabowski denied any type of sexual assault, there were some suspicions in that matter. The criminal record he already had built for child molestation was also of concern.
Marianne was concerned that going to jail was not enough punishment for the killer of her daughter. That is when she walked into his trial on March 4, 1981, and pulled out a 22-caliber Beretta pistol. She fired eight shots and six of them struck Grabowski.
According to eyewitnesses, she referred to Grabowski as being a pig and said that she wanted to kill him. Her doing so in the courtroom was certainly not hiding that desire.
She was called ‘Revenge Mother’ by many after this took place, and some were sympathetic to what she did. Others said that this type of vigilante justice was wrong.
She was convicted of premeditated manslaughter in 1983 and sentenced to six years in prison. She would serve three years in prison before being released.
Because of a resurgence of interest in her story, the courtroom shooting was reenacted and showed up on YouTube in 2022. You can see it below: