Pastor Josef Steinkasserer and the mystery of St. Gertraud

Only one road leads into the Ulten Valley. It is located in South Tyrol, and its Italian name makes it seem as if the world ends here: “Val d’Ultimo” means something like the valley that comes last. In Ulten, the houses, many of them sunny farms with shingle roofs, do not have a street name. A number is enough to identify them. The valley is narrow and shady, and one third is made up of forest.

Even today, women in Ulten are most often called Maria and men Joseph. The Catholic Church has written itself deeply into the soul of Ulten. Even the places are named after saints: St. Walburg. St. Nicholas. And, right at the end of the valley, where this story takes place: St. Gertraud.

At the end of 2023, a blanket of snow will cover the village, which lies at an altitude of around 1,500 meters, while down in Merano, in the city, it will still be warm like autumn. Impassable peaks tower like a wall behind St. Gertraud. For over 700 years, a church has looked down from this hill on the approximately 300 sinful souls who live in this part of the community. They are stubborn and peculiar, they say in the neighboring village about the St. Gertraud residents, more stubborn and peculiar than the Ulten residents already are. As if these characteristics increased the deeper you go into the valley.

Right next to the church is house number 120, a three-story building plastered in bright white with small, dark lattice windows. A single man, an elderly couple and a family live in the former vicarage, now divided into three rental apartments. 50 years ago, the vicar and his wife lived here – until a crime occurred there on a windy November night in 1973 that remains unsolved to this day. At the center of the crime was a man who was new to the Ulten Valley but who everyone knew.