Shortly after 08:00 in the morning of 9 May 1950, retired civil servant Nic Ney was walking between Kayl and Dudelange when he noticed a car parked by the muddy roadside. He was curious and stepped up to the vehicle to take a closer look. At first, he was amused by what appears to be a taxi driver asleep in the back seat.
But then Ney noticed traces of blood on the face of the burly man. There was an open wound on the right side of his skull. The man was dead – and quite obviously did not die of natural causes. When the police arrived a few minutes later, it quickly became clear that suicide was also unlikely. The murder weapon was missing but the deceased had been shot three times – twice in the head and once in the chest.
Disastrous last journey
Just a few weeks before the murder, the brutal robbery of a taxi driver had shaken the country. At this second crime scene, too, there were signs of a murder-robbery: The driver’s identity papers and wallet were missing. Nevertheless, the victim was quickly identified: Nicolas Thommes, known as Tony. The 40-year-old ran a pub in Dudelange but at night worked for a taxi company in the city’s centre and railway station districts.
His last journey was a mystery. All that is known is that he had been booked for a journey during the night.
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“Hopefully our security authorities will soon succeed in bringing clarity to this matter, which is keeping the whole country on tenterhooks,” the Luxemburger Wort reported the day after the body was found.
“This second attack on a taxi driver may prompt our car hire companies to be extremely careful when picking up passengers. The public, however, expects the perpetrator to be caught as soon as possible and brought to justice. Because only exemplary punishment of the culprits can prevent our taxi hirers from continuing to fall victim to such unscrupulous and unfeeling fellows,” the Wort said.
A ‘Gielemännchen’ in the twilight
The investigation revealed evidence that Tony Thommes himself frequented dubious circles. He was a passionate card player and regularly gambled away money. He worked as a taxi driver in Arlon in the 1930s. From 1940, he also ran a bar there called Novelty. However, this chapter ended on 25 April 1946, when Thommes was kicked out of Belgium.
During the Second World War, Thommes was an active member of the local section of the “Deutscher Sprachverein” in Arlon. Founded in 1941, the association was a thinly veiled propaganda arm of the Nazi regime, intended to promote the Germanisation of the region. This “German friendliness”, as the press described it after the murder, ultimately led to him no longer being tolerated in Belgium.
Thommes returned to the Grand Duchy and settled in Dudelange with his wife, Josée, and their daughter, who was born in 1938. In Rue Gare-Usines, he opened a restaurant: the Café Novelty, just 2km from where his body is found. However, the first concrete lead to the perpetrator did not come from Thommes’ past, but much closer to home.
A woman in the spotlight
His wife’s half-sister, 25-year-old Ida-Maria-Klara Lucchi, came under increasing suspicion. She had been working as a maid in their household and the pub for several months and made contradictory statements during the investigation.
First she tried to cast suspicion on a Belgian from Arlon, then on a tenant living in the same house in Dudelange and finally on her fiancé – a deaf-mute Italian cobbler, with whom she wanted to open a repair shop in the small house next to Café Novelty. But with every statement she made, she only made herself more suspicious.
It also turns out that Ida Lucchi had already been sentenced to one month’s imprisonment in Belgium in 1949 – a rather unusual case at the time: for domestic violence against her then husband.
Did the murderess have accomplices? Excerpt from the Luxemburger Wort of 25 May 1950 © Photo credit: LW-Archiv
After several days of denial, Lucchi finally confessed to murdering her brother-in-law. Thommes had become a burden to her and her 35-year-old sister and had to be cleared out of the way. He was rarely at home and hardly looked after his wife, child and pub. His gambling addiction devoured his already meagre income, and he didn’t seem to think much of marital fidelity either. When he infected his wife with a sexually transmitted disease, the two women had had enough.
According to the two women, Thommes also sexually harassed his 25-year-old sister-in-law. An initial murder plan matured over months: Thommes must go and the murder weapon of choise was poison.
A first attempt fails
But things didn’t go to plan. While Thommes fell seriously ill and spent almost three weeks in hospital in Dudelange in February 1950, he didn’t die. Doctors failed to spot that he was the victim of poisoning.
The sisters devised a new plan: Lucchi was to give in to her brother-in-law’s advances and then shoot him. In return, Moneghini promised her half-sister the small house right next to the Novelty, No. 18 in Rue Gare-Usines.
Moneghini provided the money for a gun. Lucchi knew who to turn to: Nicolas Michels, a waiter from the city’s railway station district, connected her with Pierre Mousel, who apparently sold firearms on the black market. Neither of them had any reservations, as Lucchi claimed the weapon was intended for her brother. She claimed he was due to leave for Indochina and needed it for self-protection.
The day of reckoning
Lucchi booked Thommes’ taxi several times but – as she later admitted – could not bring herself to shooting him at first. On 8 May 1950 she finally made up her mind. First she enquired with Thommes’ employer whether he was actually on duty that evening. She then visited a cinema in the station district, watched a film and finally got into Thommes’ taxi at around 23:00.
Thommes was supposed to take her to her mother in the Belgian border town of Aubange and then back to Dudelange. Shortly after midnight, the taxi stopped between Kayl and Dudelange on a dark country road. Events took their course: Thommes moved to the back seat with his 25-year-old sister-in-law. When he briefly dozed off, Lucchi later said, she pulled out a revolver and fired three shots at close range: two hit his right temple, one pierces a rib and ended up in his right lung. Thommes was killed instantly.
A crime prepared and committed under the most disgusting circumstances by the victim’s wife and sister-in-law
Advocate General Jean Kauffmann
Lucchi fled at first, but then returned to the taxi and took the victim’s wallet – the crime scene was made to look like a bloody robbery gone wrong. She arrived home at around 1:30 at night, woke her co-conspirator and told her the deed was done. The two women hid the weapon in a concealed recess in the kitchen cupboard. They removed a metal monogram from Thommes’ wallet, split the 250 francs in cash, and burnt the wallet in the oven.
20 years in prison for both
The women would have been better off disposing of the ornament as well – investigators eventually discovered it in a drain in the house. It became a piece of evidence that helped tighten the net of the investigation around the two women suspected of the offence. The murder weapon initially remained undiscovered. Only when the web of lies collapsed and Lucchi confessed to the jointly planned murder was the revolver retrieved from its hiding place.
In the dock, both women expressed remorse for their crime. After two and a half hours of deliberation, the judges announced their verdict: both women were sentenced to 20 years in prison. In addition, they must jointly pay 50,000 francs in damages to Thommes’ father and 159,000 francs to his daughter.
From the Luxemburger Wort of 20 March 1952: “Voluntarily, with premeditation and with the intention to kill” © Photo credit: LW-Archiv
“The two defendants, who had repeatedly broken into violent sobs during the last hour, accepted the verdict calmly,” ended the trial report in the Luxemburger Wort of 20 March 1952. And: “If no appeal is lodged against the verdict within three days, the curtain will definitely have fallen on a crime which, due to its repulsive circumstances, can be described as the most disgusting ever to be recorded in Luxembourg.”
Transparency note: The article reconstructs the case solely on the basis of contemporary reporting by the Luxemburger Wort (1950-1952).
(This article was first published in the Luxemburger Wort. Translated using AI, edited by Cordula Schnuer.)
