Their bodies were found in their little terraced house in Bonn just a year ago, on October 1, 1992, when the neighbors--who had been puzzled that they had seen nothing of them, none of the usual rushing in and out, for a train, for a plane, in almost three weeks--used their spare keys to get in and take a look. The scene and the smell were nauseating. When the police arrived they had some difficulties identifying the bodies which were in an advanced state of decomposition. Petra Kelly lay in her bed, the bullet having pierced both temples and lodged itself in the mattress. Gert Bastian, the former Panzergeneral in the German Bundeswehr, was crumpled on the floor in the hall, having killed himself with the second cartridge in his double-barreled Derringer 38, the bullet entering his skull from above, high on the forehead, leaving him unrecognizable.
The autopsy was quickly done, and it was pronounced officially to be a "double suicide," although this was not literally true. No farewell note, no direct evidence of a "pact" was ever found. Petra Kelly had been killed in her sleep. The General had then left the bedroom, grasped his weapon with both hands ("like a professional," an expert noted), and did what he had told many friends he would do when the time came to "make an end of it" for both of them (how often had she said she could not live without him...) She was forty-four when she died; he was sixty-nine.
