WHEN THE opera world gets around to dramatising this story, it could be titled “The Diva and the Fisherman”. It’s a dramatic tale of an opera singer suspected of killing her fisherman husband and employing a Doppelgänger to rewrite his will to inherit the estate.
The end of the story is not yet clear: the 55-year-old is in police custody as investigators piece together clues in a bizarre crime.
Police began their investigation as a missing-person case last October when they were contacted by a tenant of Hermann H, a 71-year-old fisherman and fish breeder.
The tenant expressed concern for his landlord’s wellbeing because he hadn’t seen him for months around their small town of Kappel-Grafenhausen, near Freiburg in southwest Germany. When police questioned his singer wife, Waltraud, they said she was nervous and was unwilling to talk about her missing husband.
“We repeatedly tried to contact the man through his wife but she simply repeated that he was fine,” said a local police officer. “As our investigations progressed, the matter became more ominous.”
After searching the couple’s apartment several times, without success, police learned that Waltraud had made an appointment with a local notary, ostensibly to get her legal affairs in order. But the singer cancelled the appointment at short notice when the notary mentioned telling the police of the upcoming appointment.
A few weeks later, a man claiming to be Waltraud’s husband Hermann showed up at the notary’s office to sign a power of attorney in favour of his wife.
The suspicious notary contacted the police and “Hermann” caved in immediately. He admitted being paid by Waltraud to pretend to be her husband, and that he even went to a make-up artist with pictures of Hermann with orders to look as much like him as possible.
Police turned their attention again to his wife, but all is not as it seems with Waltraud.
Instead of working as an opera singer, local newspapers claim she worked in a local brothel and was known for trying to strike up relationships with regular customers.
Waltraud has declined to address the allegations against her, including the claim that she approached at least 10 people in the search for someone to play her husband. One of the men who declined the supporting role in the drama tipped off the police, who are now working on the assumption that Hermann is dead.