Murderer Exonerated – The Tragic Death of Andrejs Zekants

The world suddenly stopped. The cold dark winter air was violently sucked from his lungs. Andrejs stumbled but kept on his feet. Blood began to trickle through his fingers as he instinctively brought them to his stomach. The bullet had gone clean through. Before he had time to register what had happened another shot rang out. The force of this second bullet brought Andrejs to his knees. The ground was freezing and icy and the only light came from the broken glass door and dirty windows of the pub. Lizette came running outside. What in God’s name was happening?

The drunken man, with wildness in his eyes turned his attention to this new threat. Two more shots rang out. Before she could register the scene before her, Lizette too had collapsed, screaming for help. Pain ripping through two bullet holes in her thigh.

The night was getting late but there were still customers in the pub. Men immediately ran outside to take control of the situation. The gunman panicked now, with so many eyes upon him. With everyone’s attention focused on the wounded publican and his wife, he turned and ran. In a drunken stupor, with an expression of revulsion and horror on his face, the gunman burst through the door of his nearby apartment. His wife was just heading for bed, tired of waiting up for her unpredictable husband. The man stood in the open doorway, inviting the harsh Latvian winter night to enter his humble home. Shivering, in a high state of agitation and holding a revolver, he looked his wife in the eyes.

“I just killed a man.”

The Scene of the Crime

Around 10 pm on February 12, 1912, 34-year-old Kārlis Upmanis, a textile worker in the industrial neighbourhood of Iļģuciems in Riga, stopped by the pub run by Andrejs Zekants and his wife Lizette. Kārlis Upmanis stormed into the pub on Nordeku Street and demanded several bottles of beer on credit. This man must have been known to Andrejs as he lived only a couple of blocks away. Andrejs refused to give him any beer without cash. This enraged the already inebriated Upmanis, who upon leaving the pub slammed the door so hard its glass panes shattered into the street.

Andrejs began yelling at Upmanis that he would pay for the damage. This enraged the drunken man further who yelled back insults and approached Zekants in a threatening manner. Andrejs, a sailor who had probably seen his fair share of rough and unruly characters, was having none of it. He shoved Upmanis down the stairs.

At this point, Kārlis Upmanis pulled a small revolver out of his bag. He got off three shots before Andrejs’s wife Lizette came running outside. Upmanis shot two more times. His first three shots hit Andrejs Zekants in the stomach, while the other two hit Lizette in the leg.

Upmanis quickly ran away, arriving at his nearby home and telling his wife that he had just killed a man. When the police arrived at the killer’s apartment on Baltas Street to arrest him, a scuffle ensued. An Officer Beloussov attempted to restrain the desperate and intoxicated man and was shot at twice. It wasn’t until Beloussov shot Upmanis in the arm that police were able to subdue him. The police found two loaded guns in his pockets, a Bulldog and a Nagant revolver.

One Year Later

Almost a year later, Kārlis Upmanis’s case came up for trial. He was charged with one count of murder (Andrejs) and two counts of attempted murder (Lizette and Officer Beloussov). The charged man admitted to the crimes but claimed he was in an “overwrought state, which arose from his extreme nervousness while intoxicated.” During the trial, a doctor testified in agreement saying that, “Upmanis was in such a highly nervous condition that he could not control himself or even understand what he was doing.”

Despite the admission of guilt and the evidence of the crimes, Upmanis was exonerated and given into the custody of his wife. Really nothing more than a slap on the wrist. This extreme lack of any real repercussions for a crime involving drunkenness, highlights the widespread issue of alcoholism in Riga at this time. After WWI, there were serious attempts to address the issue of alcohol consumption in Latvia. But obviously back in 1912, it allowed men to get away with murder.

The Aftermath

Andrejs Zekants died that night enroute to the Riga 2nd Hospital. Lizette survived her injuries and was now a widow with a 5-year-old daughter who would now never know her father. Andrejs was buried in the St. Martin’s Lutheran Church cemetery, but his beautiful grave is long gone. Lizette eventually remarried. Emilija grew up, married and had children of her own. She kept the blood-stained pants her father died in for many years and always wondered how her life would have been different if she had known her father.

Did Andrejs’s family believe that justice had been served? Were they outraged at Andrejs’s killer going free just because he was drunk? The case was interesting enough to have been written about in the paper just after the trial (which is how I know all these details). I wonder what Riga’s public thought about the outcome of this case.

What was considered ‘murder’ in the Russian Empire in 1912 (as codified in the Criminal Code of 1903) really only referred to ‘pre-meditated’ homicide. ‘Murders in the heat of passion’ often came with much lighter sentences. I feel however that basically having no punishment at all in this case was unusually lenient. I am sure that Andrejs’s untimely death affected not only his wife and child, but also his aging parents, his brothers, his cousins, business partners and other members of the community.

I don’t know what happened to Kārlis Upmanis after this. Was he able to live a normal life? Was he haunted by the life he had taken on that cold February night? This is all now just a distant memory of a tragic event from long ago.