Muth, Albrecht

The August arrest of Albrecht Muth, 47, on charges of killing his 91-year-old wife, Viola Drath, was seamy enough. Then reports circulated that Muth had claimed to be an Iraqi general, walked Q Street NW in uniform, and told reporters he had inside information from Baghdad. He’d faced restraining orders from a male entanglement as well as Drath and insisted his incarceration violated the Geneva convention. A real, live tabloid story in Georgetown! But the tale is compelling for non-tawdry reasons, too. Just how did a phony come to be identified in the Wall Street Journal as someone “known for hosting dozens of the city’s power brokers at outlandish soirées?” Option one: Because Georgetown no longer has gatekeepers to ostracize nobodies. Option two: Because reporters no longer hang out with real socialites, and wrongly labeled the couple as somebodies. Either way, it tells you something about modern D.C.