Psychological tests set for man, 80, who strangled wife
The 80-year-old Souderton man who strangled his wife of 60 years during a quarrel over infidelity will undergo psychological testing before pleading guilty to the crime, his attorney said yesterday.
The 80-year-old Souderton man who strangled his wife of 60 years during a quarrel over infidelity will undergo psychological testing before pleading guilty to the crime, his attorney said yesterday.
Rudi Adolph Koos readily told officials that he had killed his wife, Waltraud, 75, on Jan. 5 in a fit of anger because he suspected her of cheating on him, said Frank Genovese, a Skippack lawyer.
But anyone who knows Koos, outwardly a calm man who lived quietly with his wife, can't fathom why he became enraged enough to kill, Genovese said.
And Koos is struggling to grasp why he did it.
"I don't think he knows, to tell the truth, at this point," Genovese said after a court hearing in Montgomery County.
He said that he'd hire mental-health experts to study the accused, but that it was too soon to say if there would be an insanity plea.
Koos, a retired machinist and bricklayer with no known history of violence, was ordered yesterday to stand trial on first-degree murder and related charges.
Kenneth Deatelhauser, Magisterial District Court justice in Souderton, accepted without comment Koos' motion to waive a preliminary hearing.
The case goes directly to Common Pleas Court in Norristown, where Koos will be arraigned March 3. Genovese said he couldn't predict how his client's guilty plea would play out, or if Koos could be spared imprisonment.
Assistant District Attorney Bradford E. Richman did not address the court other than to confirm the waiver. Neither did Koos, a bent figure who shuffled to his seat, his hands bound in front by a wide leather belt.
Genovese said Koos felt grinding remorse.
"He said whatever punishment he gets, he deserves," the attorney said. "His life ended the day hers ended."
Their connection began early in Germany, Genovese said. Waltraud was taken in by the Koos family when she was 13 or 14. Rudi Koos was drafted into the German Army in World War II at 15.
When he was discharged, the two married, then emigrated to the United States in 1957. They had lived in a Souderton apartment ever since.
"Once they got here, they put down their roots and fell into a comfortable lifestyle," Genovese said. "They never bought a house, but they traveled all around the U.S., and went back and forth overseas."
Genovese depicted a couple who stayed to themselves, except for visits with neighbors. He couldn't say where Koos had gotten the idea that his wife was unfaithful, but stressed that nothing untoward had ever happened.
"The problem is, in his mind, he believed it" did, Genovese said.
"This really was a relationship in which it was he and she. There was no family and few friends. They were very private, and when he thought she wasn't fully committed to the two of them, he couldn't take it."
