Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria: Encyclopedia II - Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria - Suicide or murder?

Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria - Suicide or murder?

Many people however doubted the truthfulness of the report. Before her death in 1989, Empress Zita, widow of the last Austrian emperor, Karl (r. 1916–1918), repeated the claim that the young couple had been murdered as part of a conspiracy to silence Rudolf after he had refused to take part in a French plot to depose his pro-German conservative father and assume the control as a pro-French liberal Austrian emperor. Empress Zita did not offer any new evidence and her claims, however widely rumoured, were not given much credence during her lifetime.

In December 1992 the remains of Baroness Vetsera were stolen from the cemetery at Heiligenkreuz. When the missing remains were tracked down, the police, to ensure they were the correct remains, asked the Viennese Medical Institute to examine them. While they did confirm that they were the correct remains, the institution noted how the skull contained no evidence whatsoever of a bullet hole, the supposed means by which Vetsera had been killed by the crown prince. The evidence instead suggested she may have been killed by a series of violent blows to the head. Separately, evidence came to light in the form of a report on the remains of the crown prince, made at the time of the double death. His body showed evidence of a major violent struggle. A report at the time had also noted that all six bullets had been fired from the gun, which it was revealed did not belong to the crown prince.

The official state report of the deaths claimed that the crown prince shot Vetsera before shooting himself with his own gun. It made no mention of the facts subsequently revealed, leading to the conclusion that for some reason a cover-up of the actual manner of the deaths had taken place. It is unlikely ever to be clarified as to what really happened. Two theories have been postulated. One is that the couple had a violent struggle and that the crown prince murdered his lover by battering her before shooting himself; in other words, a clear case of murder rather than the suggested double suicide. However, that theory fails to explain the ability of the prince to fire the gun six times as he killed himself, or indeed where the gun came from, given that it was not his weapon. The other theory is that some third party attacked both, battered Vetsera to death, and shot the crown prince. The latter theory does bear some resemblance to the theory postulated for eighty years by Empress Zita, who as Crown Princess from 1914 to 1916 had been a confidante of Rudolf's father, Emperor Franz Josef, and so may have heard his theories, and those of other members of the Austro-Hungarian court, as to the manner of the death of Crown Prince Rudolf.

However, it must be understood how difficult it was for the emperor to admit that his son and heir had killed the girl and himself in a state of "mental unbalance". If there had been any way to claim that the two had been murdered by a third party, that version would have been infinitely preferable. There would have been no need to accuse someone in particular; it would have avoided the public admission that the crown prince was a mad killer and that he had committed suicide.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Suicide or murder?", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki