Girlfriend Kills St. Louis Officer

On Monday evening, July 16, 1917, St. Louis Police Officer Julius H. Petring assigned to the North Market Division entered a rooming house at 2301 N. Market Street.  Petring asked the proprietor William Dietrich to rent a room for him and his wife.  His “wife” was his recently divorced girlfriend Freda Hagenmeyer.  Officer Petring had been seeing Freda Hagenmeyer, who his family knew as Freda Kroner, for about two or three months.

After renting Petring and Hagenmeyer a room, Dietrich and his wife retired to bed for the evening.  Officer Petring and Freda Hagenmeyer went to their room.  Around 8:00 a.m., Mrs. Dietrich awakened  the couple.  A little while later, Mr. Dietrich heard three shots ring out.

He was met in the hallway by Officer Petring, who told Dietrich, “She got me.”  When Dietrich and Petring entered the rented room, he found Freda Hagenmeyer sitting in a chair with a wound above her left eye.

Mrs. Hagenmeyer told Mr. Dietrich that Officer Petring shot her during an argument and she was able to get the gun away from him.  She shot him twice.  One of the bullets struck Officer Petring in the chest.  Petring collapse and died.  He was pronounced dead in the City Hospital at 9:15 a.m. on Tuesday, July 17, 1917.

Mrs. Hagenmeyer lapsed into unconsciousness and was transported to St. Louis Hospital.  I cannot find if Mrs. Hagenmeyer was ever charged with Petring’s death, which was ruled a homicide.  I cannot find a death certificate for her in the Missouri Secretary of States’ database.

Mrs. Dora Klerner, Mrs. Hagenmeyer’s mother, stated that Freda had obtained a divorce from her husband Fred Hagenmayer about two months prior to this incident.  Freda Hagenmeyer had been living with her aunt on Plover Avenue.

This case presents a number of mysteries.  Why was this murder considered in the line of duty?  Officer Petring was murdered during a domestic dispute with a woman that he had been seeing for months.  If he was on duty, he was absent from his post in a rented room with his girlfriend that he told the proprietor was his wife.

Would a woman be able to wrestle a gun away from a big policeman after being shot in the head?  What led to the argument that would leave both of them shot and one of them dead?

The most likely scenario is that they quarreled and Mrs. Hagenmeyer in a fit of anger shot Petring.  Petring wrestled the gun away from her and then shot her.  However, it could have been the way Mrs. Hagenmeyer described.  It is just less plausible.

Julius H. Petring was born on October 28, 1877.  He was 29 years of age when he died.  Officer Petring lived with his mother and sister in the 2700 block of Leffingwell Avenue.  Unlike most other St. Louis Officers, Julius H. Petring was shot with his own weapon by a loved one instead of a desperate criminal.  We will probably never know why.

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