Thread by @MikeStuchbery_

Here's a tale I came across a few months ago, leafing through some old dusty books at a historical society near here in Stuttgart, in the suburb of Degerloch.

It's about a bloke called Ernst, and, well, all I can say is, you've been warned... /1

Ernst August Wagner came from circumstances. He lost his father young, and things were never financially stable with his mother.

Nonetheless, he was a smart kid, winning a scholarship to become a teacher near Stuttgart. /2

He was 27 when he was posted to the town of Mühlacker to teach, where one night - and God help me, this is where it gets a little nuts - he seems to have sodomised a goat.

Following the event, he was paralysed with terror that he'd been spotted. /3

Now, you and I might do something we regret, but have the fear we'd been spotted fade away.

Not so with Ernst. The idea that the people of Mühlacker knew that he'd done the dirty with a goat consumed his every single waking moment. /4

It consumed his every waking moment for the next *twelve years*, even as he somehow married and had a few children.

Every day, he was tormented by the idea the people of Mühlacker were laughing at him.

By 1913, didn't even live in Mühlacker anymore! /5

On September 14, 1913, he gets up early in the morning and - this is where things take a very tragic, grim turn - he murders his wife and children.

Then he pulls out a number of guns, and... puts on his wife's best black veil. /6

He cycles down the hill to the main station, eats a sandwich, hangs out with his brother and then goes and posts a number of letters - including a manifesto.

Then he heads to Mühlacker, having picked up an additional 500 rounds of ammunition. /7

He's already killed four - his own family - and now it's time for his terrible wrath.

Pulling the veil on, he runs around the village, lighting fires in haystacks and barns. When farmers come to put them out, he shoots them. 9 villagers died this way. /8

Ernst was finally taken down when five really big Swabian boys tackled him and brought him down.

The police had him shortly afterwards, and took him back to Stuttgart. /9

Wagner was judged criminally insane and confined to an early psychiatric institution, relatively advanced for his age, where he lived for another few decades, until he died in 1938.

By all accounts he was a lovely bloke who spent his time writing poetry. /10

BTW, nobody in Mühlacker knew the first bloody thing about any goat.

Well, I mean, they did now. /FIN

I did warn you. I'm sorry.