Germany: Dead terrorist's brain row
It's been an unanswered question for as long as man has dealt with violent behavior: Is there something different in the brains of murderers and terrorists that causes or at least enables their behavior? East German prosecutors apparently tried to come up with an answer to that question in 1976, when Ulrike Meinhof hanged herself in prison.
BERLIN, Germany -- Prosecutors in Germany are investigating a claim that the brain of urban guerrilla Ulrike Meinhof was removed after her death and examined to find a reason for her violent behaviour.
Meinhof was a leader of the extreme-left Baader-Meinhof Gang which waged a campaign of killings, bombings and kidnappings against the establishment in the 1970s.
She hanged herself in prison in 1976.
Bettina Roehl, Meinhof's daughter, discovered the brain was being kept in a cardboard box in Magdeburg university in eastern Germany.
State prosecutors in Stuttgart said they were investigating if the brain had been removed illegally.
State prosecutor Eckard Maak told Bild newspaper on Saturday: "If Ulrike Meinhof did not give permission for her body to be used for scientific purposes, then the brain should have been destroyed after her autopsy."
Roehl said she wants the organ back to give her mother a proper burial.
She wrote in the Magdeburger Volksstimme newspaper on Friday: "You can only say there has been a proper funeral if the brain is buried with the body.
Well, of course; otherwise who knows what havoc a stray brain is capable of wreaking? If the brains of murderers, rapists, terrorists, and those who are just a bit off kilter are allowed to roam freely, who know what we'd end up with?
Wait...come to think of it, that might go a long ways towards explaining Larry Simon....
