Replacement custodial sentence
“I’ll make a state affair out of it”: A 76-year-old Amriswil woman would rather go to prison than pay a fine
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Agatha Bortolin is said to have damaged a wall with her car and then committed a runaway. However, she says “I am innocent” and has chosen an unusual path.
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Agatha Bortolin is sitting in her living room in an old house in Räuchlisberg.
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Agatha Bortolin is on the phone when she opens the door for the journalist and asks him in with a wave of her hand. Due to the scraps of conversation, it quickly becomes clear that the phone call is about the incident that made her nationally famous in the tabloids at the end of last week: Namely as a «jail grandee» who would rather go to jail than pay a fine.
The ceiling in the living room of your house in Räuchlisberg is deep, as is often the case in old houses. For those who are not used to this, such a room can quickly become overwhelming. The conversation is over. A lawyer was on the other end of the line. “Would you like coffee?” She asks with an audible Dutch accent, although she has lived in Switzerland since 1967 – more than half a century. “I use you all, I’m very straightforward,” she says and laughs. Instead of coffee, however, she serves tea at the request of her guest.
–Agatha Bortolin serves the journalist a tea.
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There will be coffee on October 14th for the police officers who will be out to fetch the 76-year-old. In the meantime, Agatha Bortolin will celebrate her birthday. “I’ll be 77 in three weeks,” she says.
“It’s ridiculous, you could have solved it differently”
To be picked up by the police in order to serve a substitute prison sentence, that could cause many other sleepless nights. “I didn’t sleep a few nights either,” Agatha Bortolin admits frankly. Now, however, she sits relaxed in her armchair and recounts her view of things, which happened on that August 31, almost a year ago.
The whole thing is “ridiculous”, believes Agatha Bortolin, because she is convinced that it could have been solved differently. She has never received a penalty warrant, she has never argued with anyone in court, she says, and describes herself as “an extremely peaceful and social person”. As someone who gives in rather than arguing.
But the incident a year ago – and especially its consequences – aroused the 76-year-olds’ lust for battle, as she says:
“Because I feel that I have been treated unfairly.”
She was put under pressure and taken by surprise, so that Bortolin prematurely took the blame for a trifle, as she says.
“Five policemen, where are we?”
But what had happened anyway? Agatha Bortolin describes how she went to Erlen that day to pick up her daughter, who was walking towards her from Lenzenhaus. Shortly after the Erlen town sign, she saw her daughter on Lenzenhausstrasse and wanted to turn the car around on the forecourt of a family house. She is said to have touched a sandstone wall while reversing, so that a stone fell from the wall onto the forecourt. The owners of the house would have heard and looked out the window. On the other hand, she didn’t hear anything, asserts Agatha Bortolin – “and I can still hear well” – neither did her daughter notice any corresponding noise, although she was only 20 or 30 meters away from the scene. Bortolins drove away in the direction of Amriswil. Meanwhile, the homeowner called the police and accused Agatha Bortolin of hit and miss.
After a short shopping stop on the way home, there was a nasty surprise at home when two patrol cars suddenly pulled up while unloading the purchases and three policemen got out.
–As soon as I got home after shopping, two police cars drove up to the 76-year-old pensioner.
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Even a year later, Agatha Bortolin still finds this lineup excessive. “A total of five police officers – where are we?” She asks rhetorically. It is simply ridiculous, even if the officers behaved correctly.
Wall owner showed no interest in an amicable settlement
Bortolins drove back to the crime scene, where a policeman and a policewoman reported the case. The woman was a little eager, Bortolin remembers and adds with a wink: “I am the victim of a hard-working policewoman and a frustrated wall owner.” She emphasizes again that it didn’t take all this effort.
“If someone had driven me into the wall, I would have said ‘Let’s have a coffee and see how we handle it’.”
But the damaged wall owner stuck to the criminal complaint and, according to Bortolin, the officer showed no interest in the parties coming to an amicable agreement in this case – so that this matter now degenerates into a farce that costs the taxpayer unnecessarily large amounts of money. Agatha Bortolin is now defending herself in this way because she feels that she has been treated shabbily. At the beginning she was willing to pay the fine, although financially she is not a bed of roses. The pensioner receives supplementary benefits, lives on CHF 2,200 per month and does not complain about them. “I get on well with it,” she says. But she won’t get along if you don’t take her seriously.
“The policewoman probably put me in a drawer, too: an old ‘truck’ with a ribbed hairstyle and accent, which is probably a bit stupid,” suspects Bortolin. Because when she told the officer that she hadn’t heard a frontal impact, she ruled her: “You must have heard something.” Her statements have been questioned again and again. For Bortolin the measure was full. “I will not allow myself to be portrayed as a liar.”
The public prosecutor rejected the pensioner on the phone
Bortolin is also disappointed with the public prosecutor. When she asked them to be able to pay off the fine in installments, three payment slips came in the mail without comment. Then Bortolin wrote three more letters asking for an interview, but she never contacted her. “That also has to do with decency, at least giving an answer,” says Agatha Bortolin. When she finally reached the public prosecutor on the phone, she rejected the pensioner.
“I told the public prosecutor that I would stop the payments” – Bortolin had already paid in two tranches of 200 francs each –
“Then I’ll just go to jail. And I would like to have milk coffee for breakfast. “
The Amriswil woman turned the tables and decided to dismount her buses. They wanted to intimidate her again, it wasn’t nice in prison and she’d like to pay the fine after two days – “but they don’t know me yet,” says Bortolin, almost defiantly.
“I put on striped clothes, I have fun”
She doesn’t know what to expect in prison, but refers to earlier experiences: “I worked and lived in a home in Serbia for several months under very bad conditions.” So what should shock her? Maybe it is a room with a toilet in it, where you can watch her. You will see it then. “But four days, I’ll get through that.” She is convinced that she can take it longer than Giuseppe Grasso from Weinfelden.
«Didn’t know that the cells were so filthy»:
The wine field Giuseppe Grasso only lasted three hours in the Thurgau cantonal prison
A neighborhood dispute in Weinfelden was also about a sandstone wall. At the beginning of this year, the Weinfelder Giuseppe Grasso should have served a so-called substitute prison sentence of twelve days for attacking his neighbor with fist blows. The twelve days were finally only three hours – then Grasso already buckled and paid for the bus. His girlfriend brought in the necessary 2,450 francs in cash so that Giuseppe Grasso could be released from the cell early. “I did not know that the cells were so filthy,” the short-term prisoner was quoted as saying. It was catastrophic, the mattress was against the wall, there were stains everywhere and the toilet was calcified. And the fact that the cell smelled of smoke was an unreasonable problem for the non-smoker. “It was definitely not a hotel,” was Giuseppe Grasso’s verdict after his brief stay in prison. (man)
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Bortolin announces that she will move in with striped convict clothes. She was having fun and said to herself that she wanted to make a state affair out of it, maybe also to ridicule the matter.
«I have to do this so that it doesn’t get too close to me. The other way around, I would probably have psychological problems – even in prison, even if it’s only for a few days. “
And she imagines what it is like with people who have been innocent in prison for several years.
Behind bars, she will primarily read and record her stay. Because it was said that she shouldn’t be leaning, which she usually likes to do. The 76-year-old jokingly says: “I could stab the guard with my Lismern needles.”
–Agatha Bortolin looks forward to her stay in prison with humor.
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So there won’t be any Lismern pinpricks during her imprisonment, but that doesn’t prevent Agatha Bortolin from taking a few more pinpricks beforehand. For example, when starting prison, which, according to the “summons to commence prison”, has to be made punctually in the morning at 8.15 am on October 14 at the cantonal prison in Frauenfeld. And the letter of June 14th also states: “Failure to show up will result in the police being brought in.”
This means that Bortolin will be picked up at home. There she wants to wait for the officials – and then, like all her guests, offer them coffee or tea.
Incidentally, Bortolin is demanding that the 400 of the total of 1280 francs that have already been paid in be returned because she feels innocent and only paid the money under pressure. Agatha Bortolin says:
“If you give me the money back, I’ll have to stay four days longer in prison and pack a few more clean underpants.”
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