The Hanging Bride (UPDATED 5/18)

[Vedderman]

Additional images from an Austrian documentary just released about the case. These are just rough screengrabs so not the best quality, but all new images of this interesting cold case that has been featured here on DR for years.

All thanks go to user Annihilator for alerting me to the documentary's presence so I could add these.

[SimoneFlen']

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[Budd Dwyer]

Nice story
For some odd reason, I'm pretty sure it was a homicide. The position, the tree, the height ...the rope. Those detectives/forensics did a lazy job that day...glad that she has been identified, I wonder what family thought, when she just disappeared....

[Vedderman]

Originally Posted by Budd Dwyer

Nice story
For some odd reason, I'm pretty sure it was a homicide. The position, the tree, the height ...the rope. Those detectives/forensics did a lazy job that day...glad that she has been identified, I wonder what family thought, when she just disappeared....

I really have no idea. I find the idea that a 19 year old girl could wake up one morning, take a train 1000km through two other countries to a resort town, destroy all of her identification, and then hang herself in a very public place less than a day after she was eating breakfast back in Lana with her sister to be...very far-fetched.

But homicide is a really hard sell for me too. She had no injuries on her body aside from the ligature. It would have been extremely awkward and likely require several people to hang her that way on the tree. Keep in mind also that 30 minutes before she was found, the local garbage truck drove right past that tree and she wasn't hanging there. It would have been in full public view of several houses, during daylight, on a main roadway. Seems highly risky to have tried to stage a hanging by shifting a dead body that far up a tree with all those potential eyes. Why not just dump her in the ocean? Or leave her out in the woods? Why go to all the elaborate trouble to hang her up on a publicly-visible tree?

The report also said there were no dirt or grass stains on her clothing to indicate that the body was dragged. Nothing on her clothing was ripped or torn and her pockets were not inside out our twisted like she'd been searched. As both Annihilator and Frank have pointed out, the only notable stains on her clothing were the urine stains from her perimortem bladder release. And, tbh, the urine pattern down the back of her legs looks perfectly normal for a female hanging suicide.

There was no sexual assault on the body and nothing turned up in the tox screen to indicate she'd been drugged. The ligature burn matched the size, shape, and pattern of the rope exactly. There were no unaccounted-for bruises on her neck. In the documentary one of the forensic investigators points out that there was some minor bruising around her mouth that COULD have been from someone clamping a hand on her from behind. But they could just as easily have been from resuscitation attempts, petechiae, or minor bruises sustained during then hanging process, which we all have seen enough videos to know can definitely happen.

I dunno, man. The whole damned case is weird as hell. I can't get my head around suicide. If you want to just 'disappear' yourself and leave your family wondering, why travel 1000km just to hang yourself in a very public place? Why not just go die in the middle of the woods or take a header off the cliff into the ocean or something?

But staging a murder this way in a resort town in Spain? It also seems ludicrously far-fetched. Not impossible, but far-fetched.

Chances are very strong that we'll simply never know.

[HairyGrape]

Originally Posted by Vedderman

After 32 years, this woman has finally been identified.

She was a 19 year old Austrian student who had been staying with her sister in Florence before leaving unnanounced one morning and turning up dead 20 hours away in Portbou the following day.

Her sister became aware of the case due to a true crime program in Italy that ran a story on the girl's death just this week. The sister was able to ID her through the photographs and clothing descriptions.

There is still no indication what happened to all of the belongings she took with her when leaving Florence or why she was found hanging, but the 32-year mystery of her identity is now clear.

Wow! Now her family has to live with the fact that they "lost" her body. How sad

[Faust]

She is extremely beautiful, no to be a simp, but really.

[Faust]

The family must have known that she was gone, no?

[Vedderman]

Originally Posted by Faust

The family must have known that she was gone, no?

Yes. They had Missing Person posters up all over town and police searches underway within a day of her not returning when she said she would.

But since she traveled 1000km away through three countries and hanged herself (or was hanged, whichever) with no identification and because Spain was not using DNA searches in 1990 (Italy started in 1987), the correlation between the missing girl and the hanging girl was never made.

[Faust]

Originally Posted by Vedderman

Yes. They had Missing Person posters up all over town and police searches underway within a day of her not returning when she said she would.

But since she traveled 1000km away through three countries and hanged herself (or was hanged, whichever) with no identification and because Spain was not using DNA searches in 1990 (Italy started in 1987), the correlation between the missing girl and the hanging girl was never made.

Thanks for the info
Damn I feel like a serial killer or something, really intrigued by this case!!

[Vedderman]

Originally Posted by Faust

Thanks for the info
Damn I feel like a serial killer or something, really intrigued by this case!!

I hear ya. Been researching/following it for years. Which is why I had the update posted here about 2 hours after they announced they'd ID'd her in Lana.

I love hangings and I love mysteries. So this case is aces for my brain.