Man, 80, strangles wife then calls police

Waltraud and Rudi Adolph Koos lived a simple life after retirement. Every week, he mowed the lawn and she raked and picked up the clippings. They washed their car together. And once a year, they treated themselves to a trip to Atlantic City.

But Rudi Koos had long suspected his wife of 60 years of infidelity, authorities say, and this week, his doubts got the better of him.

Early yesterday, Koos, 80, called police to say he had strangled his 75-year-old wife in their Souderton kitchen after accusing her of having an affair, officials said.

He was charged with first-degree murder, and held without bail. The German couple had lived in the Broad Street apartment since they moved there in 1957, leading a quiet life with few friends and spending nearly all their time together.

But after years of suspicions, Koos' festering jealousy exploded into violence, authorities said.

Police said Koos, a retired bricklayer and machinist, had told them that at 9 p.m. Tuesday, he was watching television in the kitchen when his wife walked in and began laughing at him and calling him names because he had recently accused her of having an affair. He then pushed her, he told police, and she scratched his face.

He told police that he had "lost it" and pushed her onto the floor and choked her until she stopped moving. Then he folded her hands across her abdomen, put a pillow under her head, and covered her with a blue blanket, according to police.

At his arraignment yesterday, the 5-foot-3, white-haired man had two red scratches on his left cheek. He sat with his head bowed, and his voice could barely be heard. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for next Thursday.

Authorities could not explain what may have caused Koos, who served in the German Army as a teenager and suffered from polio, to allegedly snap, though they said his mistrust went back years.

"He suspected something like this years ago in Berlin," Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said.

Then a few weeks ago, Waltraud Koos, known as Trudi, went for a walk and came back later than expected and with her hair mussed, fueling her husband's suspicions, Ferman said.

The killing stunned the couple's friends.

"This doesn't make sense," said a neighbor, Grace Clemmer, who has known the Kooses for years. "They did everything together."

Shortly after he allegedly killed his wife, Koos called another friend to confess.

Bob Kearney, who worked with Waltraud Koos at the old American Olean Tile factory in Lansdale and now lives in Lafayette, Ind., said Koos had called him at 8:20 p.m. Philadelphia time just to set up a time to call the next day.

The phone rang again at 1:50 a.m., waking him and his wife. It was Koos calling back.

"He said he killed her. I couldn't believe it," said Kearney, 50. "I thought maybe he had mixed up his meds and was talking nonsense."

Kearney told Koos that he had to call 911 and report it "because the longer he waited, the worse it was going to be," he said.

"He was really shaken. . . . He was coming unglued. He was really upset," Kearney recalled.

After about 10 minutes, they hung up and Kearney called Souderton police. By then, Koos also had contacted police, who were on their way to his house.

According to the criminal complaint, he told police, "I killed her. I did it with my hands" because she was making fun of him. Koos said he had choked her until she "didn't move anymore."

Kearney didn't want to speculate on what may have set Koos off, but he said Waltraud had been a devoted homemaker who had cared for her husband after his operation for cancer last year.

"Things happen between people, but what could that poor little woman possibly have done?" he asked. "She ran herself down taking care of him" after his surgery.

She was much more outgoing than her husband, he said. In fact, she befriended Kearney at work and invited him to socialize with her and her husband.

After marrying and moving to Indiana in 2003, Kearney called to check on the couple every month. They had few friends, and their only child, a daughter, had died when they were in Germany, he said.

Grace and Vernon Clemmer, who lived next door, said the couple were inseparable. Waltraud was an excellent cook who shared her German delicacies with them, and loved dolls and growing flowers in her garden.

Grace Clemmer described Waltraud Koos as "not flirty." She speculated that Rudi Koos might have been frustrated at not being able to do as much as he used to because of his polio.

Koos, who was as meticulous with his tools and gadgets as his wife was with the house, was "a nice guy. They never had any problems. They were really kind and would do anything for you," Grace Clemmer said.

"I can't imagine her giving him any reason to be unhappy with her. She bent over backward to support him," Kearney said.