Hours after Viola Drath, 91, was found dead in her Georgetown home Friday, her husband approached her family with a signed document that said he would get as much as $200,000 from her estate if she died.
Police indicated in court papers Wednesday that the signature on the document is fake and that Drath’s husband, Albrecht Gero Muth, forged it as part of a clumsy attempt to cover up her slaying and walk away with an inheritance.
The Washington Post's Anqoinette Crosby sits down with reporter Jenna Johnson to hear what Albrecht Muth had to say in e-mails to The Post. (Aug. 17)
The Crime Scene
Muth, 47, has been charged with murder in Drath’s killing. As he made his first appearance in court Wednesday, charging documents filed in D.C. Superior Court revealed new information about Muth’s possible motive and how his story unraveled.
Muth told police that someone must have broken into the house and killed his wife of 22 years, but detectives found no evidence of forced entry and saw scratches on Muth’s forehead that were consistent with someone putting up a fight against him, an investigator wrote in the documents.
A medical examiner determined that Drath probably died sometime overnight Thursday into Friday, and Muth allegedly spent 12 hours in the two-story townhouse, several times passing the bathroom where her body was found, before “discovering” her and calling authorities. She was strangled and beaten so badly that her ribs were fractured, according to the documents.
Muth, in e-mails to The Washington Post before his arrest, denied killing his wife and vowed to find the real killer. He was equally defiant in court Wednesday, disrupting the proceedings by asking Magistrate Judge Karen Howze to order the five-page charging document read in its entirety in open court.
He spoke in a loud baritone and objected to his defense attorney’s speaking on his behalf because “she has no facts.”
The judge denied his request.
Dana Page of the District’s Public Defender Service said that the government had no evidence, no DNA, no witnesses and no statements linking Muth to the slaying. “The government is putting their spin on what the detectives said my client said,” Page said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner argued that Muth was the only person with “access and opportunity” to kill Drath. “He is the only one with motive,” Kirschner said.
Muth was ordered held in jail until a hearing scheduled for Sept. 2. Howze cited the scratches on Muth’s face, the fact that no one else had been in the house at the time of his wife’s death, and Muth’s history of domestic violence as reasons to hold him in custody.
Drath’s death was the end of a difficult and sometimes violent marriage to Muth, who family friends said they feared was erratic and manipulative. Those close to Drath said they warned her that Muth was seeking her status and money. According to interviews and police documents, Muth pretended to be an Iraqi general and developed high-level government, military and media connections while he was actually unemployed and living on a $2,000-a-month allowance from his wife.
Friends said Drath’s tale is a tragic one with an end that they had warned her was coming.
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