Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on social media platforms, especially X. It is being claimed along with the video that it features a woman named Marianne Bachmeier, a German woman who shot the rapist of her seven year-old daughter in the court. It is also being claimed that she was later sentenced to six years of imprisonment. During the investigation we found the viral claim to be misleading. This case indeed happened however, the viral video is not from a real incident but is rather a video of reconstruction of the incident from the German film, ‘No time for tears’.
Claim:
X user Baba Banaras shared the video on his profile with a misleading claim.
Check the archive version of this post.
Other users too are sharing the same video.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by uploading the video in the InVid tool and then running a reverse image search on the same.
We found a news report on unilad.com, the report was titled: Mother who got her revenge by firing seven shots in front of a packed courtroom.
The report further mentioned that people are rallying in support of Germany’s Revenge Mother after viewing resurfaced reconstruction footage.
The report also mentioned that Grabowski, a 35-year-old butcher from Lübeck, West Germany, lived next door to Bachmeier. He was arrested after confessing to the murder of her seven-year-old daughter. It was revealed that he had kept the child in his home for hours before strangling her with pantyhose and disposing of her body in a cardboard box by a canal. Although he denied sexually assaulting the child, Grabowski had a prior record of child molestation.
During his trial in March 1981, Grabowski’s defense argued that hormone therapy following his voluntary castration had affected his mental state. On the third day of the trial, Bachmeier entered the courtroom with a .22-caliber pistol and shot Grabowski eight times, killing him. Witnesses reported hearing her express her intent to kill him, calling him a “pig.”
It further said: A clip of a reconstruction of Bachmeier’s act of revenge in the courtroom resurfaced on YouTube on 26 December, 2022.
People have since flocked to the comments in support of the mother.
We found the original clip posted on the YouTube channel of Mim Mehmet Karaman.
The video was titled: Marianne Bachmeier: “I did it for you, Anna.”
The video has 7.7 million views so far and was uploaded on December 27, 2022.
We also found the details about the case in UPI Archives from March 2, 1983.
The report said: A woman who walked into a courtroom and fired seven bullets into a child molester accused of killing her young daughter was sentenced to six years in jail by a West German court today.
Through Google keyword search we realised that similar visuals were taken from a German movie titled: No Time for Tears
We found the complete movie uploaded by a YouTube channel, Sylvia Schmeiber nine years ago.
At around 1 hours 19 minutes in the video, visuals similar to the viral video can be seen.
The video was titled (translation): The Marianne Bachmeier case: no time for tears
Conclusion: Reconstructed video from an old German movie, ‘No Time for Tears’ goes viral as visuals of a real incident. The incident though real, the visuals are misleading.
