Murder or Mercy?

For 29 years after the birth of his child, Detroit Symphony Musician Eugene Braunsdorf did everything in his power to make her happy and comfortable. It was a heartbreaking task; Virginia was a spastic child, and grew slowly into a helpless parody of womanhood. At 21, she was only four feet tall, could not hold her head upright, and talked in gobbling sounds which only her father could understand.

At one time, to keep her at home and well attended, Braunsdorf had four jobs--one playing the bass viol with the orchestra, one teaching music, one on a Ford assembly line, and one as registrar with Detroit Business University. The strain of such a working schedule soon began to tell. In 1942 Braunsdorf fell ill, put all his earnings in a florist shop to recoup his finances, but eventually had to sell it at a loss. Finally, he resigned himself to leaving Virginia at a private sanitarium.

He visited her constantly. But he worried about her future. He lost his job in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, which, after constant financial difficulty, finally folded up. One morning last spring, he called at the sanitarium, told attendants he was taking Virginia to a dentist, drove her away in his automobile. Down a side road, he stopped his car, put a pillow behind the girl's head, and shot her dead. Then he fired two shots into his own chest, lost consciousness, revived, and shot himself twice more.

Eugene Braunsdorf lived, to be charged with murder. Last week, in Detroit recorder's court, a jury was faced with the question which has plagued law-abiding humans for centuries--what is justice for the distraught who kill in the name of mercy? The jury's answer: "Not guilty by reason of temporary insanity at the time of the killing." Spectators in the courtroom cheered; some of the jurors wept. It seemed certain that broken, weeping Eugene Braunsdorf--who had been judged sane when he was ordered to stand trial for murder--would be quickly freed after a new sanity hearing.

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