Vox populi, vox Dei
Almost immediately after the onset of the investigation, the deputy minister of the interior issued a restraint to provide any kind of information about the case for the media and all uninvolved persons. However, to keep an act of such dramatic proportions and consequences secret would be virtually impossible, so within a couple of days, the news about it reached not only the citizens of Prague, but also people from the whole republic. Since the beginning of the investigation (i.e. from July 10, 1973) till the actual trial proceedings, there were only two short messages about the accident published in the newspaper (shortly after the accident took place), so the only way for the people how to learn some news about it was to pass it verbally from one to another. This, of course, caused some of this news to be either inaccurate or even completely fictional, as was the case with the stamped postcard written by a Prague citizen F. H., who in the recipient’s column wrote: Ministry of Interior, Dejvice. Written in a noticeably untidy and shaky script, the postcard contained the following message: “The SNB is our ally, and so we steal freely. Most recently on Vinohradská. Right now, we refrain from killing people, like that upstart in Dejvice did. 12 people dead and nobody gives a damn? Phew! Drunken was he probably, so she grabbed everything in her claws and proclaimed: Let the massacre begin! And the massacre indeed happened. 12 people dead and dozen others injured. PEOPLE, PLEASE BE INFORMED. ALL CZECHS UNITE” (even though here, you could clearly attribute the confused reading of the text to the sender’s rather low intellect than to some serious lack of information). Nevertheless, despite the opening day of the trial being not announced to the public, there were still many people who gathered in front of the Prague City Court’s building wanting to witness it. In most cases, however, they had little luck, as the public were (partially) allowed to attend the trial only from third day on. Naturally, what interested people the most was the last day of the trial, which saw the delivering of the verdict. Here, the members of the VB had to expel what was then later mentioned in the protocol as “a large crowd of people that wanted to enter the courtroom”.
So what was the actual public opinion on the crime which Olga Hepnarová committed? The existing documents would tell us that the people were, more or less, assuming two different stances on it. First, there were those who were deeply condemning the crime, asking for the maximum, capital punishment for the perpetrator, and then there were those who were convinced that such an atrocious act can only be committed by a mentally insane person and thus were searching for possible causes that may’ve contributed to it. Already during the ongoing trial proceedings, the City Court in Prague received numerous letters from both sides. In seven of those letters, people were urging the court to impose a death penalty, whilst in another forty, they demanded lesser punishment.
Once the final verdict of the death sentence had been delivered, people began sending letters in which they pleaded the authorities to grant Olga Hepnarová a pardon. Although they were coming from the whole republic, most of them were sent from the citizens of Prague. One of these letters, among other things, read: “… I cannot believe that a person who commits such an act can be deemed mentally sane and thus held responsible for his/her actions ..... I believe the society won’t be in any imminent danger even if the authorities decide to cease with the execution of the verdict …”. Together with the young age of the convict, this was perhaps the most common argument which the people stressed in these letters. A couple of letters, however, also arrived from abroad. “Your Excellency, my conscience obliges me to write you this letter in which I’m pleading you to grant Olga Hepnarová a pardon. I’m very well aware of all the atrocities which she committed in August of last year. I know that she killed eight people with a truck, but I also know that she demanded a death penalty for herself ........ People like this woman are seriously ill, so instead of killing them, we ought to help and cure them ........ To sentence such a person to death is a step in the wrong direction, as it is a decision that's being brought forcibly by the unquestionable and unchallengeable power of the state ........ Therefore, I wholeheartedly plead You to accept this humble request from me and grant this woman, Olga Hepnarová, a pardon.”, wrote the sender A.L. from Switzerland. One of the letters also came from Peru, and it was evident that its sender M.R.C. too had a pretty decent knowledge about the case. Even though he considered the act in question as a murder, he also maintained that the life of Olga Hepnarová should be remained intact. He believed that Olga Hepnarová must’ve endured a very severe mental crisis, possibly a consequence of some unpleasant experiences which she may’ve gone through in the past. He also examined the truck’s condition, its brakes, the exact position of the pedestrians during the accident, and also entertained the possibility of the accident being caused by a different vehicle. According to him, Olga Hepnarová must’ve suffered from a very serious form of paranoid schizophrenia.
One letter, however, stood above all. It consisted of eight densely written A4 size letters, which its sender wrote on a typewriter. The letter was also unique in its content, as it (contrary to vast majority of other letters) wasn’t a usual plea for mercy, so to speak. Instead, its author S.R. (which was presumably his pseudonym) described it as a “protest against the verdict” and entitled it as The Girl and the Power. To have his demands fulfilled, he chose a very specific form of reasoning, as he most likely believed that, in this particular case, what would weigh more would be arguments of political and scientific nature instead of the usual claims about humanity and forgiveness. The whole document offers a unique and very valuable insight into the mentality of people living in the then Czechoslovakia back in the 1970s and generally reflects the state of the society which they were living in.
One of the author’s motives that drove him to write his letter is mentioned right in the beginning: “Even nowadays, there are many people who don’t turn a blind eye to many shortcomings that our society is guilty of. They openly oppose them, wary of the unpleasant ramifications that may follow. But who will dare to take sides with a murderer? ....... To stand up for a girl that faces the power? A power that, under the pretense of justice, is about to cut her life short for good, inadvertently becoming a tool of human narrow-mindedness thanks to its nonscientific approach ....... And yet we positively know who would Bertrand Russell, the bourgeois philosopher and longtime opponent of death penalty, and the forever present Karl Marx, whose teachings our state adheres to, side with.”
Reading further, we can find many, sometimes rather naive, but sometimes also very interesting and original thoughts:
- ... “no specialist on this world should ever dare to proclaim that serving a sentence of 15 or 25 years is not enough time for a 22-year old girl to redeem herself” ...
- ... “many of what was published in the press suggests that this is not a common case of a murderer killing people, but a case that is very special and unique, involving a fellow member of our youth, whose personality is clearly beyond normal” ...
- ... “hate may not always have objective causes. What’s interesting on this fact is that, even during the old days of feudal drudgery, there didn’t seem to be such thriving ground for this specific form of hatred as it is in today’s age of socialism and capitalism. It is tempting for me to offer one, even if a very brief explanation on the matter, but that wouldn’t serve the purpose of this appeal. Although not rare at all, this very specific form of hatred is still not appropriately acknowledged. Many people – even experts who are ought to deal with it, consider it as an unknown and unexplored phenomenon, and, if it’s indeed acknowledged, its significance is often being overlooked and underestimated – last but not least because it would then reveal certain, rather unwanted characteristics that are inherent to the structure of our society. It is manifested in various ways, usually not in a form of a crime, and seldom in such a resolute and definite manner as in the case of Olga Hepnarová. Had the girl done this back in the days of Protectorate and the people waiting at the tram stop happened to be Germans, her portrait would be now wreathed with flowers and proudly guarded by pioneers – for even in Stalin’s words, a feeling of hate towards the enemy is a holy feeling. This only proves that, if manifested in certain specific circumstances, hate can be indeed viewed as a positive emotion – it just depends on the object that is subjected to it. Not everyone, however, can experience this emotion so intensely, yet to even act according to it.” ...
- ... “the expert witnesses from psychology, psychiatry and sexology forgot to conclude their opinions with a claim that one would seemingly deem as natural – i.e. that they based their opinions on the present day knowledge of their respective sciences and hence can’t rule out the possibility of evaluating the case in question differently in the future – no matter how distant this future may be – as their sciences continue to grow in knowledge” ...
- ... “how quickly can the scientists change their mind and adopt new, groundbreaking views on certain matters, can be illustrated on two examples (out of many others) pertaining to cybernetics and parapsychology ..... in 1955, the National Publishing House for Political Literature issued a Small Dictionary of Philosophy (written by two renowned scientists M. Rozental and P. Judin, the laureate of Lenin Prize), where, under the term cybernetics, we can read the following: Cybernetics is a r e a c t i o n a r y p s e u d o s c i e n c e, whose purpose is to not only serve as an ideological weapon for the imperialist reaction, but also as an instrument for realizing its aggressive plans. In its essence, it goes against the dialectical materialism, modern day scientific physiology founded by I. P. Pavlov, and the Marxist, scientific understanding of the laws, etc. It clearly defines one of the main aspects of the bourgeois view on the world, its inhuman nature and ambition to turn working people into machine components, production tools, and instruments of war /page 242/.
Now fast forward eight years to 1963, and you can read in Academy of Sciences’ Concise Encyclopedia that cybernetics is a m a t h e m a t i c a l s c i e n c e which, thanks to its very diverse use, contributes greatly to scientific philosophy, and whose further development and use is in full accord with the needs of communism. In Marxist philosophy, it has a very effective and stimulating, scientifically true, methodological and theoretical basis, which is necessary for its further development as well as its correct interpretation.
So as we can see, within just eight years, the cybernetics is no longer a reactionary pseudoscience, but a mathematical science. Hence, who’s to say that, within the next sixty or seventy years (which is roughly the amount of time which Olga Hepnarová has left on this planet), her case would be still viewed in the same light – especially when there are still great possibilities for today’s science to adopt new views and ideas in the future?” ...
- ... „in the name of Karl Marx, the opponent of death penalty, and his philosophy, a noose is being set for the young girl. And yet, there’s nothing stranger to Marxism-Leninism than to dwell on the same principles and blindly follow the letter of the law. But the courts, even though not dependent on the opinions of the expert witnesses in any way, accepted them without any objections ...... their verdict should always reflect the real and current mental condition of the convict ...... but in the case of Olga Hepnarová, they erred, as they didn’t take into account the fact that this real and current condition is not only the diagnosis per se, but – if we want a complex evaluation – the diagnosis together with the prognosis, which both act as a whole. And what’s even more important – the term prognosis should not only be understood in relation to the convict (and his/her personality), but also in relation to the future development of the respective sciences, which, in the end, could retroactively affect and even alter the original diagnosis. Hence, the opinions of the expert witnesses pertaining to one and the same case could, in the future, greatly differ from those of today, which is especially likely in this particular case due to a number of abnormalities that are evident even now.” ...
- ... “by carrying out the sentence, the state will offer its citizens the proof that its laws are indeed there to protect them. As a result, some of them will likely feel their moral superiority and satisfaction /as it is meant by the retaliation principle lex talionis/. But that still wouldn’t make the execution of the sentence beneficial to the society (note: here, the author contemplates the eventual profit from Olga Hepnarová’s death according to the “cui prodest” principle). Now suppose the society will indeed not benefit from the girl’s death... That alone would be good enough reason to keep her life intact, but it’d be too convenient for us to be satisfied with this claim only. Saving the life of Olga Hepnarová is a must, as it is indeed beneficial to our society ...... criminality has always been, is, and will long be the dark side of our civilization. There are various criminology schools that try to solve the problems of criminality nowadays, each using a number of different methods. At the forefront of their effort is the scientific study of the criminal’s personality, as it is precisely the results of this study that can, in the future, lighten the still dark and impassable path leading to the prevention of crime and eventual resocialization of the criminals. To cure a disease, we must first get to know it. But the doctors and scientists alike can’t allow themselves to be satisfied with a mere acknowledgment or description of the symptoms that define an unknown, hard to cure, or (till now) incurable disease. Doing so would be tantamount to committing a crime against the humanity, as it would also mean to shamefully deprive oneself of the chance of finding the cure for the patient or saving other human lives. To sense or see something where the others can see nothing – that’s what defines a true scientist. Don’t you see that we’re about to senselessly destroy a very rare object that can be used for scientific research of the criminal’s personality? Don’t you see that a young girl who murders out of hate towards people is someone that’s entirely different to a man who’s killing ruthlessly for money or because of other motives? Looking at it from a complex point of view, the case of Olga Hepnarová is a rare one ...... which is reason enough to not destroy it as a life of an abnormal individual of whom we know nothing except the symptoms of her disease ...... but whose personality we can study. A girl is about to die. But who’ll benefit from it? Can our society afford such luxury and not embrace this unique opportunity for research? It would be against its interests to waste it, and the future would not view the sentence merely as a regrettable mistake ...... what can’t be seen and can’t be touched doesn’t exist for many at all. Likewise, there are many that consider the claims about the benefit that we can gain from the research of this convict’s personality as a mere empty words, whilst in reality, they may conceal a revelation that can save tens or hundreds of human lives, for even in biological, sociological and psychological sciences, a new discovery may be just as important for the society as is the splitting of a nucleus.” ...
- ... „this appeal and protest against the death sentence for a girl named Olga Hepnarová is also an appeal and protest of Karl Marx. May his words shake the conscience of this obsolete judicial apparatus and may his question evoke an answer. In the end, I’d like to finish this letter with the words of Karl Marx – now, what a state of society is that which knows of no better instrument for its own defense than the hangman?” ...
In the same month as the aforementioned letter The Girl and the Power (i.e. in July of 1974), another stamped postcard (written by an unknown sender and addressed to: PRESIDENT LUDVÍK SVOBODA, PRAGUE – CASTLE) had been sent from the Prague’s main post office. Written in bold block capital letters, it read: “DEAR MR. PRESIDENT, PLEASE EXECUTE THIS EIGHT-TIME MURDERER HEPNAROVÁ! RESPECT THE VERDICT OF THE SUPREME COURT! IF NOT, YOU’RE ABOUT TO WITNESS AN UNPRECEDENTED REVOLUTION. THE CITIZENS OF PRAGUE 7”
-(sic)-
Used abbreviations:
SNB – Sbor národní bezpečnosti; National Security Corps
VB – Veřejná bezpečnost; Public Security Service