Another roundup of links and what we know about Viola Drath’s killing in Georgetown.
The Washington Post, WUSA and WJLA have more details about Drath’s relationship with her husband, including emails he has sent this week saying he believes police think he is a suspect in the case.
Wrote the Post:
Drath obtained several protective orders against Albrecht Gero Muth during their 21-year marriage, according to D.C. Superior Court records. In 2006, Drath told police that Muth had become violent during an argument, attacked her with a chair, sat on her and held her captive in her home, the records show. Drath was 86 at the time; Muth, 42. The case was dropped when Drath decided not to pursue it in court as the trial approached.
Although authorities initially thought Drath had died in her Q Street bathroom of natural causes, an autopsy Saturday determined that she had been killed. Muth said in an e-mail Monday that he thinks he is the lone suspect in a D.C. police homicide investigation: “There being to them no one else who could have done it. . . . I take no issue, [I’m] the first one to look to, so look, and then look beyond.”
In an e-mail that Muth appears to have sent to government officials and forwarded to The Post, he said he was planning to speak with police officials to convince them of his innocence and to get them to “look for the killer . . . and bring all assets at my disposal to their side towards that end.” He communicated with The Post only through e-mail and declined requests for a telephone or face-to-face interview.
D.C. Police Assistant Chief Peter Newsham said that no arrests were “imminent.”
The Washington Times, where Drath once was a columnist, also has a new report on the case, including more details on Drath’s biography.
Wrote the Washington Times:
Born in Dusseldorf, Germany, Ms. Drath worked as a journalist and college professor and wrote numerous books. She was honored for her contributions to the German unification process and her analysis of postwar foreign policy between the United States and Germany. In her later years, she also dedicated much of her time to organizations that supported service members
German business newspaper Das Handelsblatt, for which Drath was a correspondent, lamented the loss of the “grande dame who exuded dignity until the end” and lamented the silencing of a “great trans-Atlantic” voice.
Switzerland’s Berner Zeitung ran a story headlined “Mysterious murder in Washington.”
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