An identical account in all newspapers gave the first public
notification that a murder had been committed:
“At six o’clock yesterday a foreman and a workman from Brenner’s
factory found the headless body of a girl in a shed on Bornholmer
Street. The body was held by ropes in an unnatural position, and
was so tightly wedged in among beams, boards, ladders, barrows, and
refuse, that the police officers who were immediately summoned had
the greatest difficulty in disentangling their gruesome find. The
news spread rapidly through the neighbourhood, and a rumour that
increased in definiteness pointed to the body of the murdered girl
as that of the sixteen-year-old Ruth Hofmann residing in Stolpische
Street. A notification of her disappearance had been lodged at police
headquarters several days ago. The theory that it was she who was the
victim of a murder of unparalleled bestiality became a certainty some
hours later. A mason’s wife found in the mortar-pit of a building
lot on Bellermann Street the severed head, which proved to belong to
the body and was identified by several inhabitants of the house on
Stolpische Street as that of Ruth Hofmann. Except for stockings and
shoes, the body was entirely naked, and its mutilations indicated
felonious assault. There is at present no trace of the murderer.
But the investigations are being present with all possible care and
energy, and it is warmly to be desired that the inhuman brute may soon
be turned over to the ministers of justice.”