A German man charged with killing his 91-year-old wife says he's ready for trial despite a fast that he acknowledges has weakened him.
Albrecht Muth says in a handwritten letter to the judge that he is "willing, able and ready'' for a trial starting in December. He says he plans to act as his own lawyer.
The 49-year-old Muth is charged with the 2011 murder of his wife, journalist Viola Drath.
Drath, who was found bludgeoned to death in her Georgetown rowhouse, was an acclaimed journalist amd socialite until her death in 2011. The senicide, which came following a series of strange behaviors from her husband, and even suspected abuse, did not immediately see Muth as a suspect. It wasn't until after a coroner's report found damage to the cartilage in her neck and bruises on her scalp that police suspected the then 47-year-old East German transplant of the killing.
Muth has been starving himself intermittently for religious reasons, and though he tells the judge that it is "somewhat weakening me,'' he says he's following the "Holy Orders of the Eternal Father.''
Muth also repeated his oft-made assertions that he is a brigadier general in the Iraqi army and that his wife was killed in an Iranian hit job.
The trial is set to proceed in December as planned.
