Vigilante justice: Meet the ”Revenge mom”

According to all accounts, Anna was a lively, inquisitive, and intelligent young child. Marianne worked diligently to run a small pub in Lübeck, where she lived with her mother. Despite their difficult lives, the two had a strong bond. When Anna vanished on May 5, 1980, following a small argument at home, that bond was cruelly broken. She had never followed through on her plan to skip school and go to a friend’s house. Klaus Grabowski, 35, a convicted sex offender who had previously molested two young girls, lured her and kidnapped her on the way.

The neighbor, Grabowski, had a violent and manipulative past. He had voluntarily undergone chemical castration as part of his sentence for his previous crimes. However, he later underwent hormone therapy to undo the effects in an effort to return to a “normal” life. Despite his past, he had returned to the community with little fanfare and was living with his fiancée at the time of Anna’s murder. He tortured Anna and finally strangled her to death while she was imprisoned in his apartment for several hours.

He left Anna’s little body by a canal in a cardboard box. After learning of the crime, Grabowski’s fiancée informed the police, preventing him from moving and burying her later that day. That same evening, he was taken into custody at a nearby bar.