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WASHINGTON – Count Albi shuffles into the courtroom in sneakers, spectacles, prison blues and a milk-chocolate crew-neck sweater, with a thin chain running between his legs like a cinched-up rodeo bronc. The Count appears rather undernourished for a nobleman, but then again you don’t find many other titled heads locked up in a psychiatric hospital, conversing daily with the Archangel Gabriel and alternating a hunger strike with a demand for sandwiches, while awaiting a ruling on whether he is sane enough to go on trial for murder.

Washington is on track this year for the fewest homicides in a generation, but the ones that do occur are unique. In this case, the Count was 47 at the time of his alleged crime; the victim, his wife, a socialite and writer named Viola Drath — better read this twice — was 91.

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From a seat near the back of the hushed little chamber on Judiciary Square, I watch the defendant slouch against the wall, eyes closed, oblivious — or pretending to be — to the goings-on. His head is shaved at the temples and there is a sort of an Adolf Hitler comb-over covering the upper dome. A thin goatee completes our picture of the slim East German in the dock.