Albrecht Muth and the Murder of Viola Herms Drath

The Albrecht Muth and Viola Drath murder case ended with a Washington, D.C. jury convicting Muth of first-degree premeditated murder in January 2014 for strangling and beating his 91-year-old wife, journalist and socialite Viola Herms Drath, in their Georgetown rowhouse on August 12, 2011. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The case became one of the strangest in recent D.C. history, driven by Muth’s long record of fabricated identities, a 44-year age gap between the spouses, and a prolonged hunger strike Muth used to stall his trial for more than a year.

Who Viola Herms Drath Was

Drath was born in Germany in 1920 and came to the United States after marrying her first husband, a U.S. Army colonel.¹ She built a long career as a journalist and author, writing for the German financial paper Handelsblatt and contributing to the Washington Times.² She served as a foreign policy adviser to the 1988 George H.W. Bush campaign and sat on the executive committee of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. In Washington’s diplomatic circles she was a fixture.

The Marriage

Muth first met Drath in the early 1980s, when he was a teenage student at American University interning in a Republican senator’s office.³ Drath was still married to her first husband, who died in 1986. Muth returned to her life afterward, and the two married quietly in Richmond, Virginia, around 1989 or 1990. She was about 70. He was in his mid-twenties.⁴

Muth later told police the arrangement was “a marriage of convenience.” Friends said he had pursued Drath for her money and connections and that she, newly widowed, feared being alone.⁴ Muth did not work throughout the marriage and lived on a $2,000 monthly allowance from his wife.⁵

The Fabricated Identities

Muth moved through Washington in a tailor-made olive green Iraqi army uniform, gold-braided cap, swagger stick, and sometimes an eye patch worn for no apparent medical reason. He introduced himself as “Brigadier General Muth,” hosted what he billed as official Iraqi embassy dinners at the Georgetown house, and claimed inside knowledge of “Baghdad intrigue.”⁵ The Iraqi embassy said he had no military or diplomatic affiliation of any kind. Prosecutors later confirmed the uniforms had been custom-made by a tailor in South Carolina.⁶

The general was one of several invented selves. U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. said Muth “pretended to be an Iraqi general, a Count, and an East German spy.”⁷ Acquaintances called him a serial liar and a “delusionist.”

Twenty Years of Abuse

Prosecutors told the jury that Drath’s death was the end of a two-decade pattern of violence. Muth was convicted of assaulting her in 1992. He acknowledged it bluntly in an email: “I was convicted for having beaten my wife. I had beaten her.”⁸

In 2006, when Drath was 86, she reported that Muth attacked her with a chair, pounded her head into the floor, and sat on her during an argument. Charges were filed, but she decided not to pursue the case as trial approached, and the charges were dropped. D.C. Superior Court records showed Drath had obtained several protective orders against Muth across the 21-year marriage.⁹

The Killing

On the evening of August 11, 2011, witnesses saw Muth drinking and growing belligerent. In the early hours of August 12, a witness reported hearing a woman’s faint cry and a man’s laugh coming from the couple’s rowhouse on Q Street in Georgetown.⁷ At 7:56 a.m., Muth called 911 to report his wife unconscious. Police arrived and found Drath’s body on the floor of a third-floor bathroom.¹⁰

Officers initially treated the death as natural. On August 13, the D.C. Chief Medical Examiner ruled it a homicide, finding that Drath had died from strangulation and blunt force injuries.¹ The injuries did not match the accidental fall Muth had described in an obituary he tried to place. There were no signs of forced entry, and Muth told detectives only he and Drath had keys.⁷ Prosecutors argued he had killed her in another room and arranged the body in the bathroom to suggest a fall.¹⁰

Arrest, Forged Document, and a Strange Alibi

D.C. Metropolitan Police arrested Muth on August 16, 2011, and charged him with second-degree murder, a charge later upgraded to first-degree.¹¹ Within days of the killing, while Drath’s body was still in the house, Muth tried to present her daughter with a document claiming he was entitled to $200,000 from the estate. Police determined the signature was forged.¹² Evidence later showed Drath had been working to end the marriage and had already removed Muth from her will.⁷

Muth fired his attorneys and asked to represent himself. At a November 2011 appearance, he told the court his wife had been killed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who, he said, had a key to the house, and that he was not home the night of the murder.¹³

The Hunger Strike

In December 2012 Muth stopped eating, calling it a religious act “dictated to him by the archangel Gabriel.”¹⁴ He refused to call it a hunger strike, saying he would eat when “commanded or permitted to.”¹⁵

Muth, who stood over six feet tall, dropped to as low as 104 pounds. He was hospitalized at United Medical Center, unable to stand or sit. His physician, Dr. Russom Ghebrai, testified that he faced organ failure and cardiac arrest, eating only sporadically or accepting juice when his health bottomed out.¹⁴

Doctors at St. Elizabeths, the District’s psychiatric hospital, had earlier found Muth incompetent to stand trial, but a September 2012 evaluation reversed that finding and declared him competent.¹⁶ In February 2013, Judge Russell F. Canan ruled that Muth’s physical state made him unfit to represent himself and reappointed public defenders. The trial, first set for March 2013, was postponed at least twice. Authorities concluded they could not force Muth to eat, and prosecutor Glenn Kirschner raised the concern that he might die on a live video feed in front of the jury.¹⁷ Judge Canan called the case “limbo.”

Trial and Conviction

The trial opened in January 2014 before Judge Canan in D.C. Superior Court, prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Glenn Kirschner and Laura Bach.¹⁸ Muth was not in the courtroom. Because of his condition, he appeared by video link from a hospital, outside the jury’s view. Judge Canan ruled that he was deliberately manipulating the justice system to avoid trial.¹⁰

The case was circumstantial but, in Judge Canan’s words, “overwhelming.” Jurors heard the medical examiner’s findings, the absence of forced entry, the witness who heard a cry and a laugh, and the 20-year history of abuse. Prosecutors pointed to Drath’s decision to remove Muth from her will and the forged inheritance document as evidence of motive. A search of Muth’s laptop turned up internet queries about flights to Iceland, extradition arrangements with Mexico, and Canadian border crossings. Muth did not testify. His public defenders argued no physical evidence directly linked him to the killing.¹⁰

On January 16, 2014, the jury found Muth guilty of first-degree premeditated murder and found aggravating circumstances, concluding the killing was “especially heinous, cruel, and inflicted on a vulnerable victim.”⁷

Sentencing

On April 30, 2014, Judge Canan sentenced Muth to 50 years in prison, calling the hunger strike “a transparent attempt to avoid prosecution.”¹⁹ U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. said in a statement: “Albrecht Muth’s 20 years of violence toward his wife ended only when he strangled her to death in their Georgetown home. For the rest of his life, Muth won’t be able to masquerade as a military officer or member of a royal family while subjecting his wife to intolerable abuse. He will be a federal inmate paying the price for his brutal crime.”¹⁸

The Appeal

Muth filed a notice of appeal to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on May 13, 2014, docketed as Case No. 14-CF-0532. The appeal did not reverse the conviction. On April 29, 2016, Muth filed a motion to remand the case to the trial court, and on May 5, 2016, the appeals court granted the unopposed motion and issued a mandate returning the case to D.C. Superior Court.²⁰ The appellate docket lists the case as “Decided/Dismissed.”

1
NBC Washington. Death of Former Washington Times Contributor Ruled a Homicide
2
Nebraska Authors. Viola Herms Drath
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Oxygen. Who Is Albrecht Muth
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The Daily Beast. Socialite Murder: Viola Drath and Albrecht Muth’s Tumultuous Marriage
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The Guardian. Albrecht Muth Murder Charge: Viola Drath
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NBC Washington. Suspect in Viola Drath Death Wants to Wear Military Uniform in Court
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U.S. Department of Justice. Albrecht Muth Found Guilty of First-Degree Murder
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WJLA. Viola Drath’s Husband Albrecht Muth Arrested for Murder
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The Washington Post. Viola Drath, Slain Georgetown Woman, Had Sought Protection From Husband
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CBS News. German Man Convicted of Killing Socialite Wife
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ABC News. Georgetown Man Albrecht Muth Arrested for Murder of Older Wife
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The Washington Post. Viola Drath’s Husband Forged Inheritance Document, Court Papers Say
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ABC News. Albrecht Muth’s Refusal to Eat Delays Murder Trial
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The Washington Post. Albrecht Muth’s Refusal to Eat Forces Court to Delay His Murder Trial
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ABC News. Albrecht Muth’s Refusal to Eat Delays Murder Trial
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The Washington Post. Albrecht Muth, Weak From Hunger Strike, Is Ruled Competent for Murder Trial
17
ABA Journal. Due to Hunger Strike, Wife-Slay Suspect Is Found Unable to Stand Trial
18
U.S. Department of Justice. Albrecht Muth Sentenced to 50 Years in Prison
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Courthouse News Service. Man Gets 50 Years for Murdering Elderly Wife
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D.C. Court of Appeals. Case No. 14-CF-0532