With pressure mounting from both the public and the press, a group of U.S. Senators resolved to investigate the circumstances of Koch’s sentence reduction. The Senate investigation, led by Homer S. Ferguson, culminated in hearings at which major participants at Koch's Dachau trial were called to testify. Dachau trial chief prosecutor William Denson was particularly insistent that Koch's sentence reduction was unjust and that the witness testimony he drew upon was sufficient to secure her conviction and life sentence. Ultimately, the Senate investigation resulted in a recommendation that Koch be tried again – not by the U.S. Army, but by the newly independent West German judiciary. According to the Committee’s final report, in "being a woman," and in acting independently, Koch’s perpetration of violence had been "more unnatural and more deliberate." It was, the report concluded, "highly important that Ilse Koch receive the just punishment she so justly deserves without further doing violence to long-established safe-guards of democratic justice..."
