Mayerling Incident - Exhumations and Forensic Evidence

Exhumations and Forensic Evidence

Mary Vetsera's body was spirited out of Mayerling and interred in the graveyard at Heiligenkreuz.

The official story of murder-suicide was unchallenged until just after the World War II. In 1946 occupying Soviet troops dislodged the granite plate covering the grave and broke into Vetsera's coffin in the bombed-out crypt at the village graveyard at Heiligenkreuz, perhaps hoping to loot it of jewels. This was not discovered until 1955, when the Red Army withdrew from Austria. In 1959, a young physician stationed in the area named Gerd Holler, accompanied by a member of the Vetsera family and specialists in funereal preservation, inspected her remains. Dr. Holler carefully examined the skull and other bones for traces of a bullet hole, but stated that he found no such evidence. Intrigued, Holler claimed he petitioned the Vatican to inspect their 1889 archives of the affair, where the Papal Nuncio's investigation found only one bullet was fired. Lacking forensic evidence of a second bullet, Holler advanced the theory, that Vetsera died accidentally, probably as the result of an abortion, and it was Rudolf, who consequently shot himself.

Holler witnessed the body's re-interment in a new coffin in 1959.

In 1991, Vetsera's remains were disturbed again, this time by Helmut Flatzelsteiner, a Linz furniture dealer, who was obsessed with the Mayerling affair. It was initially reported, that her bones were strewn round the churchyard for the authorities to retrieve, but Flatzelsteiner actually removed them at night for a private forensic examination at his expense, which finally took place in February 1993. Flatzelsteiner told the examiners, that the remains were those of a relative killed some one hundred years ago, who had possibly been shot in the head or stabbed. One expert thought this might be possible, but since the skull was not only in a state of disintegration, but was actually incomplete, this could not be confirmed. The crown of her skull showed a large area of trauma, indicating she could have possibly died from a blow to her skull, which would support the version, that Vetsera had not been shot by Rudolf. Flatzelsteiner then approached a journalist at the Kronen Zeitung to sell both the story and Vetsera's skeleton. That these were Vetsera's remains was confirmed through forensic examination. The body was re-interred in the original grave in October 1993 and after a court case Flatzelsteiner paid the abbey some 2000 Euros by way of damages.