Luthar Hewall
Luthar Hewall was a rug-maker who lived and worked in the city of Urbitane on the planet Sameter. He was one of the victims of a string of serial murders that swept Urbitane in the year 241.M41.[1]
History
He was last seen alive on the 24th of Aquiarae (by Sameter's local calendar). He had delivered a finished rug to a high-rise apartment building, then proceeded to meet up with some friends for a meal in a mid-rise charcute.[1]
Hewall's body was found in one of Urbitane's soil stacks in early Sagittar (the next month) by sanitation maintenance workers. An examination of the corpse suggested that the killers had tried to burn Hewall's body after his death, and then disposed of his remains using the sewage system. In addition, the corpse was missing a number of its extremities. However, due to the advanced state of decay (exacerbated by the filthy soil stack) the post-mortem was inconclusive on the exact cause of the missing body parts; the investigators believed that it was possible that these had rotted away in the time before the body was found, however a number of marks on the ends of the forearm bones were suggestive of a saw or chainblade.[1]
More information was uncovered when a second corpse was found - that of a midwife called Idilane Fasple - that had been mutilated in a similar manner to Hewall's. The city's Arbites concluded that both victims had been killed by the same perpetrator. They were later able to link another recent death to the spate of killings.[1]
Both Captain Wrex and Minister Hansaard believed that the ritualistic nature of the murders indicated the presence of a heretic cult active in Urbitane. Following an investigation by Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn, however, he determined that the "cultists" were in fact veteran Imperial Guardsmen who, afflicted with severe shellshock, believed that their victims (including Hewall) were heretics and executed them.[1]
