She walked into a German courtroom on March 6, 1981, sat down quietly in the third row, opened her purse, and pulled out a .22 Beretta. Then 30-year-old Marianne Bachmeier stood up, aimed at the man’s back, and pulled the trigger 8 times. 7 bullets hit. 6 of them killed him. The man dying on the courtroom floor was Klaus Grabowski, a convicted child molester who had lured Marianne’s 7-year-old daughter Anna into his home, held her captive for hours, sexually assaulted her, and strangled her to death with his fiancée’s pantyhose. He stuffed her tiny body in a cardboard box and dumped it by a canal. In court, his lawyers were preparing the defense that hormone treatment had made him do it. Everyone could see he was going to get off light. Marianne had seen enough. After emptying the magazine, she calmly dropped the pistol on the courtroom floor and said: “I wanted to shoot him in the face. I shot him in the back. I hope he is dead.” Then she let the bailiffs take her away without resistance. The German public lost their minds. Tens of thousands sent her flowers, money, marriage proposals. A magazine paid her 250,000 marks for her life story. Polls showed nearly HALF the country thought she was a hero. The judges, of course, did not. They charged her with murder. But they couldn’t make it stick. The jury convicted her only of manslaughter and illegal possession of a firearm. 6 years. She served 3. She walked out a free woman in 1985. When she died of cancer in 1996 at age 46, they buried her right next to little Anna in Burgtor Cemetery in Lübeck. Mother and daughter, side by side. Forty-five years later, Germans still call her one name: “Die Rachemutter.” The Revenge Mother. Sometimes the law is too soft. Sometimes a mother has to be the law.