After Charles Kring killed Dora Broemser, his business partner’s wife, in St. Louis on January 4, 1875, for refusing to leave her husband and marry him, most people thought Kring’s claim that he and Dora had been lovers was either an outrageous lie or the romantic delusion of a raving lunatic. But over the next several years, as the case bogged down in continuances and appeals, public opinion gradually shifted to the point that many people felt Kring had been a victim of Dora’s “cruel seduction.”
In the fall of 1869, Charles Kring married Margaret Recker in Illinois, but Kring was not happy in the marriage. A daughter named Emma was born to the couple in 1870, and the next year the family moved to St. Louis, where Kring, who’d apprenticed as an apothecary in his native Germany, went into the drugstore business.
In the spring of 1872, Kring’s father withdrew his financial support for the project, and Charles had to sell the store. Shortly afterward, little Emma died, throwing Kring into despondency. He and Margaret moved away briefly, and upon their return to the city, Jacob Broemser offered Kring a job as a clerk in Broemser’s drugstore in a St. Louis suburb. When Kring assumed the position in September, Broemser introduced him to his wife, Dora, and Kring was immediately drawn to the beautiful twenty-five-year-old woman.
One night in late October, Broemser’s store caught fire, and Kring and other neighbors suspected that Jake had set the fire on purpose to collect the insurance. Kring took a temporary job at a drugstore in St. Louis, but after a few days Broemser, who’d received his insurance money, tried to persuade Kling into going back into business with him. Kling refused at first but relented after Broemser sent his wife to personally plead the case.
Dora helped out in her husband’s store, and during the winter of 1872-1873, she and Kring were often left alone together when Broemser made trips into St. Louis. Gradually, they fell in love or “became infatuated with each other,” as Margaret later described their relationship.
According to Kring’s story, Broemser confided that he had indeed burned his store to collect the insurance, but Kring kept the secret, even after Broemser burned the second store in April of 1873, because he did not want to disgrace Dora. Kring, who had reconciled with his father, even agreed to help finance a new partnership. By this time, Broemser had begun to suspect his wife and Kring had feelings for each other, but he seemed not to mind greatly. Either he naively trusted them not to betray their marriage vows, or, as Margaret believed, he “was trading upon his wife’s virtue.”
In the summer of 1873, the Krings and the Broemsers moved to Mud Creek, Illinois, where Kring and Broemser again went into the drug business together. Jake again spent a lot of time away from the store. Kring and Dora grew more and more attached, and they finally declared their love for each other and became intimate.
Like Broemser, Margaret also suspected her spouse of being unfaithful, but she would not let herself believe it at first, for she, too, was charmed by Dora Broemser.
Only when Jake Broemser, apparently exasperated at last by his wife’s attentions to Kring, confronted Margaret with a love letter her husband had written to Dora did Margaret finally leave Kring and return to her parents’ home.
Not long after the separation, Kring and the Broemsers moved to Nashville, Illinois. Jake was away on business most of the time, and Kring and Dora, according to Kring’s story, lived almost as husband and wife. A female resident of Nashville later confirmed that everybody in the small town knew an infatuation existed between Charles Kring and Dora Broemser.
In late 1873, the Broemsers moved back to St. Louis, and Kring soon followed. Dora was several months pregnant, and Kring was convinced he was the baby’s father. He confronted Dora, demanding to know whether she would leave her husband and marry him. She wouldn’t give him a definite answer and, instead, led him to believe she was contemplating aborting the child.
Greatly distressed by this news, Kring began to believe that Dora had, after all, only been playing with his affections to get him to go along with her husband’s criminal schemes and to provide capital for Jake’s business ventures. He declared his intention to kill Dora if she refused to leave her husband. If Kring could not have the woman he loved, no one else would have her either.
Much of the foregoing is Kring’s side of the story. What we know from contemporaneous reports is that, after receiving a brief New Year’s greeting from Dora, Kring penned a letter to her on January 2, 1875, again intimating his intent to kill her if she did not leave Jake. On the morning of the 3rd, he wrote another note to her threatening that they would soon lie in one grave, “for we have laid criminally in one bed,” if she did not agree to marry him.
On the evening of January 4, Kring carried out his threat, shooting Dora down at the corner of Fifteenth and Mullanphy streets, after he called her out of her nearby home and she refused to leave her husband for him. He then tried to kill himself, but the pistol misfired. Kring dropped the weapon and ran and then gave himself up at a nearby police station.
The mortally wounded Dora died a few days later. After a series of continuances, Kring went on trial in late December and was found guilty of first-degree murder. An appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court and several more continuances resulted in a new trial in May 1878. It ended in a mistrial when a juryman took sick, and a third trial also ended in a mistrial when the jury could not agree.
At his fourth trial in November of 1879, Kring accepted a deal offered by the prosecution and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He was surprised when the judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison and wanted to back out of the deal. The judge refused the motion, and Kring again appealed. Again the supreme court ordered a new trial.
Kring’s fifth trial got underway in May 1881, and he was once again found guilty of first-degree murder and scheduled to hang. Another series of appeals all the way to the US Supreme Court delayed the hanging, and while the case was being decided, Kring told his story to a St. Louis newspaper in early 1882. Reaction to Kring’s autobiography was mixed. Some people partially blamed Kring’s crime on Dora and asked for clemency while others urged that the sentence be carried out promptly.
In April 1883, the US Supreme Court sustained the motion for a new trial. Kring, who was sick, was released on bond and removed to a hospital. He died there on May 17 before having to face a sixth trial. Upon hearing of Kring’s death, most people on the streets of St. Louis expressed the sentiment that he had sufficiently expiated his crime. From a legal standpoint, the case was regarded by many as “the most remarkable in the annals of criminal history in this country.”
This is condensed from my newest book, Show-Me Atrocities: Infamous Incidents in Missouri History.
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