Cold Case

An unsolved case - 1977 in Arnsberg - the murder of Heinrich Brüggemann

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Saturday, 20 January 2024 15:54

This may also concern the former foreign troops in the Soest area.

This case dates back over 45 years: in 1977, was found dead in his flat in Arnsberg/Germany. The 37-year-old was found in his bathroom with numerous stab wounds and cuts. It can be assumed that the perpetrator and the victim knew each other.

The landlord, who was often simply called "Heino", was homosexual. Investigators found a condom in his apartment with the alleged perpetrator's DNA on it. However, there was still no match in the database.

The innkeeper's daily earnings and a revolver were stolen by unknown persons after the crime. The investigation has not yet led to the arrest of the perpetrator.

We are on the lookout for a young man who was around 17-18 years old at the time of the crime. He is described as having black hair and possibly missing something.

In the restaurant "Sternkeller" in Arnsberg, the suspect and the victim met.

There the man showed a letter of dismissal from his training company and brandished a 20 cm long knife. Heinrich Brüggemann left the restaurant with the young man that day and went with him to the victim's “Capri Bar”.

Witnesses who may be able to provide information about the case are asked to contact the Dortmund criminal investigation department on tel: +49231/132-7441.

The Case of Anja Beggers

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Tuesday, 25 October 2022 15:04

Cover picture Anja Beggers/Police Cuxhaven, 1977

Tonight, the murder case of Anja Beggers and the other girls who disappeared in the Cuxhaven area between 1977 and 1987 will appear for the third time on XY Unsolved. (German Police File)

What happened to the girls?

Eduard Zimmermann had already been the subject of three cases in XY -Unsolved in December 1979. Unfortunately, the public broadcaster ZDF considered its own copyrights more important than supporting the search for the perpetrator, so the film clip from the programme at the time was deleted from YouTube.

Bodies or mortal remains were only found in a few cases.

The majority of German citizens who followed the daily events in the 1970s still remember the eerie series, in which a total of 13 girls are presumed to have perished between 1977 and 1987.

According to the authorities, seven of the missing girls in the Cuxhaven-Bremen area have not reappeared until now.

Chronologically, the following girls have disappeared without a trace:

Anja Beggers, (†16), from Midlum, disappeared after visiting a disco in Bremerhaven on 7 October 1977.

Angelika Kielmann disappeared without a trace on 7 June 1978 after a visit to a disco.

Anke Streckenbach († 19) from Cuxhaven. She disappeared on 16 May 1979 after attending a disco.

Andrea Martin, (†19), from Garlstedt, disappeared on 30 November 1980 after a visit to the US barracks.

Christina Bühl (†15), from Heerstedt, disappeared on 14 August 1982 after a visit to a disco.

Ute Flemming (†10) from Osterholz-Scharmbeck disappeared on 3 July 1985 when she wanted to go to her friend's house.

Jutta Schneefuß (†23), who hitchhiked from Loxstedt to Bremerhaven on 13 June 1986, was never seen again. She left behind a daughter.

(Irene Warnke (19 years old, from Ringstedt) Her remains were discovered in the Entengrütze ditch in Bederkesa on 3 September 1986. She had been raped).

There were speculations about a serial killer in the Cuxhaven-Bremen area at that time who had been up to mischief.

A triangle could be drawn on the map by the places where the murders were committed and found, as well as the places of disappearance.

The police cannot confirm the theory, nor do they have any other clues that clarify the facts of the case today.

The case of the then 16-year-old Anja Beggers from Midlum near Cuxhaven has impressed itself on the public consciousness.

On 7 October 1977, the then 14-year-old girl disappeared without a trace after visiting a disco in the "Moustache" in Bremerhaven and has not been found since.

The television programme Aktenzeichen XY of 7 December 1979 revealed that the unknown person had called her mother several times and claimed that Anja was still alive. Once even that she was living in Berlin and had a child, as the gazettes of the day reported.

In March 1978, a strange piece of paper with supposed calls for help from an Anja was discovered by a boy from Lüneburg in a paper towel box at a motorway service station in Hamburg-Stillhorn. This is how the identity card turned up in a Munich sex shop a few years later when a group of teenagers is checked by a saleswoman. Today, Beggers would be 61 years old.

With a typical black and white photo from those days, she was even searched for on the Interpol site. So far, everything has come to nothing.

Likewise, Angelika Kielmann, then 19 years old, from Cuxhaven, was standing at the junction Westerwischweg/ Abendrothstraße after a visit to the Cuxhaven discotheque "Container" 7 June 1978 and has been missing since last seen. Anke Streckenbach, (then 19) had also last been in the same discotheque. Since that day, 15 May 1979, she has disappeared without a trace.

For a long time, it was probably assumed that some of the girls had fallen victim to a murderer who sought his victims in the discotheques in the 1970s.

This is contradicted by the fact that Beggers' identity card turned up again. Also, the girls were thought to be involved in the drug scene at the time because discos were frowned upon. Rumours that Anja Beggers had been in the former Colonia Dignidad in Chile and had fallen into the hands of a cult at that time can neither be verified nor do they seem to be true.

Thus, rumours also arose that Beggers had fallen into the hands of Göhrde's murderer and his suspected accomplice.

This was also true for the other girls who were probably murdered. The only striking thing in these cases was that the series ended suddenly. Because the murderer was in prison, or dead, or had simply turned to a new field? Any questions could not be answered.

At the time, investigations were conducted in all directions, kidnapping by a gang of white slavers was not ruled out, even the Dutch police got involved in the mysterious case. But, to no avail.

If you have any information: Please contact the Cuxhaven police or any local police station.

Cuxhaven CID Address: Werner-Kammann-Straße 8, 27472 Cuxhaven Phone: +49 4721 5730

The mysterious disappearance of William Bradford Bishop Jr.

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Sunday, 11 September 2022 13:01

William Bradford Bishop Jr. adorned FBI wanted posters for decades and was wanted worldwide. 46 years have passed since those fateful days in March 1976. William Bradford Bishop Jr. must now have reached the age of 86.

It's a gripping story, the kind of story fables are made of! Bradford Bishop loved scotch and wine, and he preferred peanuts and spicy food, according to his file with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington.

Over the years, the reputation of the fugitive Bradford Bishop became a legend, much like D.B. Cooper or the Isdal woman. There's even a song about him- "The Ballad of Bradford Bishop" composed by the group Coup de Grass from Charlottesville, Virginia.

Back in 2018, the FBI removed him from the ranks of the ten most wanted. Nothing had become of the case, and the FBI found no resolution. Neither did the local authorities in Maryland. After all these years, clues are still coming into the FBI's Baltimore office.

The disappearance of the crime suspect is a complete mystery and several authorities over the years have come to believe that they inadvertently enabled Bradford Bishop to escape by issuing legend documents. The FBI is realistic about this case. "Even for seasoned travellers, it can be difficult to maintain a new identity in a foreign country," said Steve Vogt, special agent in charge of the Baltimore division. "If you are a US citizen, it is usually easier to hide in this country," he explained. "Americans overseas tend to stand out."

In the meantime-this was October 2014- police even thought they had found Bradford Bishop with the exhumation of the decomposed remains of one John Doe, a hitchhiker who was killed by a car outside a restaurant in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1981 and buried anonymously in a pauper's grave. But the genetic test came back negative, even though the two men looked alike.

In the Washington Post in 2014, the FBI described Bradford Bishop as " ... a seasoned world traveller fluent in five languages - as smart, savvy and able to blend in and build a new life in the United States or abroad."

It is likely that Bradford Bishop lives or lived in Europe. A further possibility is that he returned to California, where he was born.

Bradford Bishop was actually a normal guy who, according to the FBI, was a "hiker and camper who enjoyed canoeing, skiing and motorcycling".

Other sources believe that he went into hiding in the former Yugoslavia during the civil war from 1991 to 1995. However, according to a call from an anonymous tipster, there was also the possibility that Bradford Bishop had been taken to a consulate in New York. This call was made two years after the actual event.

What had actually happened?

Bradford Bishop was linguistically a highly gifted person who in his younger years had served in the US Army in Germany from 1961 to 1963, then worked for the American State Department. Rumour has is he also worked for the CIA in countries such as Botswana in the Gaborone branch, which was at the time exotic. It is documented that he worked for the army's intelligence service in Italy. According to the FBI's in-depth analysis, there had been a security problem with Bradford Bishop in 1967 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Since his Army days, he had a clearance for top secret matters. But the CIA announced during 1976 that Bradford was too small a fish to have been the target of foreign agents. He spoke Serbo-Croatian, Italian, French, Spanish and several other languages, which were then very useful to him during his probable escape.

Bradford Bishop is still wanted today for the murders of his wife, mother and children. He probably committed in the between the first and the 2 of March 1976 at their house at 8103 Lilly Stone Drive, Carderock Springs, Bethesda, Maryland.

The victims were Brad, 14; Brenton, 10; and Geoffrey, 5; Bishop's mother Lobelia, 68, and his wife Annette, an ex-cheerleader.

The exact timing of the murders is unclear. Witnesses at the subsequent inquest said they would investigate Bradford Bishop's involvement in intelligence activities in detail.

This is also the story of the famous ballet dancer Jacques d'Amboise, a soloist in George Balanchine's New York City Ballet. D'Amboise wrote in his memoirs that he almost walked into the drama that night in 1976. He and his wife had been invited to see the man he had known and respected for decades: Bradford Bishop.

In all the years before the crime, Bradford Bishop had been in and out of psychiatric therapy for treatment of depression. Otherwise, according to the investigating officers, there was no motive to be found for this grisly act. There was no evidence of infidelity towards his wife, no evidence of financial or professional problems. It became clear how wrong this statement was, when in 2017 the fugitive's daughter, Kathy Gillcrist was identified. She was an adopted child, of which she was aware. But Gillcrist did not know that her biological father- Bradford Bishop- was such a well-known man. Since then, the FBI has also been looking into the years Bradford Bishop was at Yale University, from 1957-1960. Perhaps a motive for the events of 1976 could be found in his years at Yale. He was prone to violent emotional outbursts, irascibility and took strong antidepressants. In 2014, it was revealed that he was bankrupt.

In March 2000 Lorene Klepacki of Asheboro, N.C., paid $38 at a flea market at the Greensboro Coliseum for an old diary. Inside the notebook was written, "Bradford Bishop Diary." A relative read about the Bradford Bishop case on the internet and called the Montgomery County Sheriff's office. The diary, which spanned the six years from October 1965 to October 1971, spoke volumes about Bradford Bishop. The name "Sonny" appeared in the diary and became the subject of much speculation as to whether she might have been the mysterious dark-skinned woman witnesses had seen in connection with the dumping of the bodies.

The trail peters out

Bradford Bishop murdered his family and then drove their dead bodies in a red Chevrolet station wagon to the area of Columbia, North Carolina, about 450 km from the actual crime scene in his native Maryland. He tried to set their corpses on fire in a previously dug hole. This was done with gasoline and other accelerants that Bishop had bought in Montgomery County.

He tried as best he could to cover his tracks. But at this point he was seen by a witness out with his dog and later probably in the company of a dark-skinned woman.

It was not until the 8th of March 1976, more than a week after the suspected crime, that a neighbour who had not seen the family for some time informed the police. One of the officers found blood, human bones, tissue, fibres and hair on the landing between the veranda and the front door, then on the floor and walls of the entrance hall, then all over the house.

The bodies of the family members, already found on the 2d of March 1976, were identified by means of the dental chart. The bodies were "overkilled", as the coroner recalled years later.

The car Bradford Bishop had used was found a few days later in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, near the Great Smokie Mountains, about 640 km from where the family had been found.

A witness testified that the car was parked there between the 5th and 7th of March 1976.A

After that, Bradford Bishop disappeared, with the exception that he was said to have been seen in a good dozen countries in Europe.

Three sightings were particularly interesting because they were apparently people who knew him from before or recognised him, such as a colleague who was with him on a business trip to Ethiopia.

Another witness recognised him in a park in Stockholm twice within a week. She was absolutely certain, she stated to the FBI, that the man was Bradford Bishop.

She had not contacted the police because she did not know he was wanted for murder in the US. This all took place in July 1978, more than two years after the crime in Maryland.

In January 1979, Bishop was personally approached by a colleague in a public restroom in Sorrento, Italy. It is important to know that the witness, a certain Roy Alwin Harell Jr, knew Bradford Bishop very well and had spoken to him on the afternoon of his disappearance, according to the FBI files.

"Hi, you're Bradford Bishop?" And the man replied in a familiar American accent that he was not, and then fled into a busy city square in a literal downpour. He was poorly dressed, the witness stated.

On the 19th of September 1994, Bishop was standing a few meters away from a former acquaintance of the family, at the railway station in Basel, and she testified that he had got into a vehicle. Where he had travelled to, she could not say.

In 2010, authorities believed Bradford Bishop was living in Switzerland, Italy or a neighbouring state. It even came out that he had been in contact with a murderer at the state prison in Marion, Illinois, before the 1976 crime. Why, it was never clarified. Ken A. Bankston, as the man was called, died of cancer in prison in 1983, and he never revealed the secret of the correspondence.

Sources:

State Department, USA

FBI

Washington Post

New York Times

The murder of Horst Strohe, Heumarkt, Cologne, 1992

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Thursday, 09 December 2021 09:10

It was the murder of Horst Strohe, at night around 1 a.m. on 13 September 1992, that terrified an entire city then as it does now.

The brutality of the crime against the victim, who openly lived with his homosexuality, is unmatched.

Numerous witnesses saw the then 54-year-old man being literally executed with kicks to the chest and against the head in a square not far from white benches below the OVB office on the street "Am Malzbüchel", in the connection next to Heumarkt.

The investigators at the time did not rule out that possible witnesses in 1992 wanted to remain unidentified - out of concern that details of their sexual inclination might become known. Today's investigators forget that the victims were treated as badly by the police as they were by sections of society.

The brutality of the crime was unprecedented and showed how homosexuals were systematically made fair game by sections of society as late as the 1990s.

What had happened?

That was also the question asked by the investigators in Aktenzeichen( German police file XY on October,13 2021 when they presented the case of Horst Strohe, who had been kicked to death on Heumarkt, on the programme.

Until now, it is still not clear whether Strohe was the victim of a random act of violence or knew the perpetrator beforehand.

At that time, it was known in the circles around the Heumarkt and Alter Markt in Cologne that homosexuals openly moved around in pubs there. In addition, it was known, since 1991, as contemporary witnesses reported, that foreign youths gathered in the area up to the office of the OVB and the then fast food restaurant Mc Iwan at the KVB tram stop Heumarkt in the direction of Deutz to go "homosexual gossiping" in front of the said pubs. According to contemporary witnesses, this also applied to the transvestite theatre Timp, where the later victim had to walk past.

There were also the places where the homosexuals looked for their partners, met for one-night stands. The area extended towards Severinsbrücke on the Rhine. It was known that Strohe frequented homosexual circles between Heumarkt and Severinsbrücke, which was called the "leather scene" during the years.

It was already common for several youths to pounce on the victims and demand some kind of protection money or simply strike. People were cautious at that time when they came out of one of the bars at night. This is what witnesses from the time report. In 1993, for example, there was allegedly an incident in front of a former fish shop/snack bar on the previously declared Heumarkt.

Strohe went to the bus stop in the direction of Heumarkt and was attacked on the way by his later murderer and killed with numerous kicks to the head. This happened in the immediate vicinity of the brightly lit Hotel Maritim at the head of Heumarkt facing the Rhine.

The tram line also ran close to where Strohe, who worked as a computer technician and programmer for an insurance company and was known and respected by many in the "black leather scene", was murdered.

Especially in Hühnergasse, adjacent to Heumarkt, where the bar "Caroussel" was, one could hear how homosexuals were often harassed and threatened. Sometimes they were even hit. Or "Pustis" (Greek for faggot) was shouted, spat at etc..

The perpetrator is described by the Cold Case Unit under Commissioner Weber as follows: about 20 years old at the time, about 1.80 metres tall, slim and athletic. He is said to have been wearing a white shirt with a snake pattern. He might have been trained in East Asian fighting techniques. He may have been travelling with other men who are being sought as witnesses.

Police File : Crime Scene 1992, Police Cologne

Investigators are also looking for two witnesses from the deceased's personal circle who were at Heumarkt shortly after the crime, according to the police in Cologne.

First Chief Detective Markus Weber will present the case in the programme. Witnesses can be contacted by the Cologne police on 0221 229-0 or by e-mail to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Can the mystery of the Isdal woman be solved in history of the former Hotel Regina in Geneva ?

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Monday, 12 July 2021 12:19

Many more clues to the most mysterious murder case in post-war history

There are new findings about the Isdal woman, who was found dead around Bergen / Norway in November 1970. But also only fragments in a large mosaic that the beautiful unknown woman left behind.

Already in 2019, Le Républicain Lorrain in Forbach / France wrote about the mysterious acquaintance of a man from the Grand Est in the weeks of summer 1970.

The two spoke almost exclusively about painting and art. She had a "Balkan accent" but spoke German, French and Dutch, as Le Républicain Lorrain reported. The unidentified person, who served as an informant for the regional newspaper in Lorrain, said: "She (the alleged Isdal woman) said she had several documents and passports that allowed her to cross the Berlin Wall and travel to the GDR without any problems."

Overall, the statement in the French source is astonishing. It is perfectly aligned with the events that then took place. Allegedly, she had quite a few passports and wigs in the luggage collected from friends in the Wiesberg district of Forbach, where she also spent the nights. Also, clothes, which certainly did not come from a poor woman from the Balkans.

But where were the objects, documents, when the CID in Bergen found the suitcases in a locker at the local railway station after the death of the Isdal woman in early December 1970?

Riddle after riddle.

Why should this woman, who was sitting high on a horse in a lumberjack shirt and corduroy trousers, now suddenly be lying dead in Isdal/Norway? And this after she had met two unknown men, probably Yugoslavs, two days before her demise.

Just another clue in the puzzle: Did the Isdal woman's death journey already began in Geneva?

The trail of the Isdal woman leads not only to Lorraine, not far from the German border, but also to Geneva.

To the then luxury Hotel Regina at the Quai du Mont Blanc, owned by Émile Kähr and subsequently by his sons. There, where Tito's and Ulbricht's foreign currency procurers hung out. Here, in the midst of Geneva's art scene, within a stone's throw of Geneva's galleries, the connoisseurs of old masters met, and not only them.

In the diaries of the Isdal woman, a remark was found that she stood at the Hotel Regina in Geneva. After decryption of the code she used in her papers, it was revealed she stood at the Hotel Regina on the Quai du Mont Blanc in Geneva from the March 16th to March 19th, 1970.

But the Hotel Regina in Geneva, in the years a well-known spot for East-West contacts, also had an eventful history, as one can read in the Journal de Genève. Mysterious events took place: for example, documented in the issue of September 22, 1959. The French-language article can be found here.

We have because this act is so exceptional in the borough, translated the article.

"Towards the end of last night, two unknown persons presented themselves to the porter of the Hotel Regina, 7 quai du Mont-Blanc. Mr. Alois Arnold, 78 years old, 20 avenue Jacques-Martin in Chêne-Bougenes, who was just finishing his deputy duties, the incumbent being on leave at the time. By one of the strangers, who had taken out a percussion instrument from a red leather bag, (the man) was hit on the head. Mr Arnold collapsed while the second assailant held him down and grabbed him by the throat. Meanwhile, the first robber had gone behind the counter, blown up the cash drawer (!) and taken more than nine thousand francs (worth about 4456 euros at the time).

When there was a noise, the two attackers made their way towards the salons and jumped through a ground floor window onto the Square du Mont Blanc. Mr Arnold soon regained his senses. The septuagenarian, who was very alert despite his age, managed to call the police by phone. The police rushed to the scene and began a search, which, however, proved fruitless. In fact, the clues about the unknown persons are rather vague: height 160 cm, rather thin, age between twenty and thirty, complexion and hair dark, language with a southern accent, light-coloured clothes, unkempt appearance.

Mr Arnold, who had lost a considerable amount of blood, was taken to the polyclinic and then to the Cantonal Hospital, where doctors found a deep wound on his head - but he had not suffered a fractured skull - and traces of strangulation on his neck. He will have to stay in the cantonal hospital for a week.

Only a while ago, the night porter of the Hotel de la Paix narrowly escaped some people who, after breaking open a window, tried to attack him."

It is surprising that this attack happened around eight o'clock. The perpetrators were also looking for something else. Unfortunately, the whole eventful history of the Hotel Regina cannot be told in one article, but it was wild. Another article shows the usual "business" in those days.

"Yesterday, late in the morning, the Pioneers of the Permanent Standby went to the Hotel Regina, Quai du Mont-Blanc 7, where a fire had broken out between the floor and the ceiling. The fire brigade had to carry out demolition work to reach the scene of the accident.

This was due to an accidental cause. It actually appears that a cigarette, which was undoubtedly extinguished, fell into a small hole in the toilet, releasing smoke that necessitated the fire brigade's intervention."

Just a side note in this matter is that the Bristol Hotel at Krambugata 3, in Trondheim, where the Isdal woman was staying, burned to the ground in 1976. Until now, it is not clear how the fire started.

Hotell Bristol brenner (1976)

In the 1950s and 1960s, for example, the annual writers' event was held in this fashionable setting in Geneva. The Isdal woman, obsessed with art, blended in perfectly with the surroundings. But, the star of the Hotel Regina was sinking, numerous tenants and changes of ownership led to the dissolution of the house in 1974.

What is today the Hotel de la Paix on the elegant shores of Lake Geneva, was in 1970 the Hotel Regina. No less distinguished.

The beautiful unknown must have resided there. At least she had a sewing kit from this house in the evidence of suitcases found in a locker at Bergen station days after her demise.

At the time, this sewing kit was laid out in the rooms of the posh hostel on Lake Geneva, along with a bar of soap and a Bible. Unfortunately, there are no more sign-in sheets from those days.

The question remained, why did they, who had otherwise removed everything from the suitcases that indicated the identity of the dead, leave just the sewing kit in the suitcase? It was like the Norwegian Military Intelligence Service's obfuscation against the Bergen police. Cases from the bottom drawer were dragged in.

The traces seem to have been deliberately removed to obfuscate the real reason, the art smuggling.

But what is stopping Norway's military intelligence service, 50 (!) after the woman was found, from handing over the documents that were seized in the suitcases at the time?

This secret must be far more important than obsolete AGM-119 Penguin anti-ship missiles, which were used as a grateful excuse at the time and led to strangely scattered rumours.

The most mysterious murder case in Europe - The way of the Isdal woman - Waldfischbach- Burgalben - Bitche (1)

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Tuesday, 06 April 2021 07:16

The most mysterious murder case in Europe after the Second World War

The way of the Isdal woman via Waldfischbach-Burgalben to Bitche/Lorraine

The long prehistory, which we have discussed in detail, can be found here.

The fate and above all the path of the Isdal woman, who was found in November 1970 in the Norwegian Ice Valley under the most mysterious circumstances, still lie in the dark.

But the eternal mystery seems to be clearing up.

In this article we want to shed a little more light on the contents of the beautiful stranger's suitcases, it utters bulks about the woman's itinerary and activity.

There was a backstory that accompanied the Isdal woman, who was born in Nuremberg, through the circumstances of the time, World War 2.

The evacuation of the young civilian population at the end of the war, practised by the Nazis as the so-called Kinderlandverschickung, led the Isdal woman to the German-French border region around the then shoe town of Pirmasens. To Waldfischbach-Burgalben, a small town in the Palatinate. At that time a rather sleepy place. Children and young people from Nuremberg came there in swarms.

She, too, who was probably born around 1930, fell into the Kinderlandverschickung of the last days of the declining German Reich. The Kinderlandverschickung was an instrument of the National Socialists to evacuate children and young people, whom the Nazis could not abuse for the "armed resistance", from the cities bombed by the Allies. This was not done out of philanthropy but because the Nazis could get the single mothers into the armaments' industry. The children were raised to be Nazis, living in camps and subjected to a repulsive military drill that determined their entire daily lives.

Von Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1983-056-13 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, Link

This is the backstory, which also emerged from the isotope analysis carried out at the university in Canberra.

However, the Kinderlandverschickung is completely incidental to the later events, but these historical connections help to reveal the identity of the beautiful stranger. After the Allied advance on the German south-western border in 1944, the children who had been sent could hardly be returned to their parents due to the lack of a functioning infrastructure. Therefore, the children were first "outsourced" in the direction of Bitche and then handed over to families in the surrounding area as the front drew ever closer. The Norwegian journalist Marit Higraff was already that far when she tried to "dig"2018 in the KLV documents. Many of the documents were lost without a trace at the end of the war or lie in tunnels in the Palatinate and Lorraine that have not yet been opened or are simply unknown.

The trail of suitcases

The objects she had with her in the suitcases are also helpful. A list of these was published by the Kripos in Bergen during the investigation. From the suitcases it is obvious that she led a regular life while travelling. It is strange, however, that the money was in envelopes, as if it had been given to her by someone else.

To understand that no one was really interested in the identity and real mission of the Isdal woman in Norway, one only has to read the articles of the day. In the Bergen Tidendes, the managing editor wrote a very different story from the one that was later told to the world. Parts of the Isdal woman's luggage were missing. Everything had been carefully searched before the police seized the suitcases at the railway station. Hotel employees remembered a peculiar quirk of the unknown woman, namely that she always squeezed two lemon halves. She was seen as an artist by numerous witnesses at the time. This was only one of the countless oddities of the woman with the pretty face.

The items from the Isdal woman's suitcases

It is quite obvious that before the police found the suitcases of the so-called Isdal woman, someone had searched them and made numerous manipulations. Like cutting off labels etc. That this was done by a third party, and not by the Israel woman herself, becomes clear when one looks at the contents of the suitcases as found by the police in Bergen in the locker. Hans Thue, one of the investigators in the case wrote on 12/6/1970 in the protocol marked 4968 A. 1970 (file sheet XI-13) (Likfunn i Isdalen 29.11.70) about how the Isdal woman had handled her suitcases and the contents.

At the same time, a rumour arose that she had been Belgian or French. However, in early December 1970, when the homicide investigation was still in full swing and only a preliminary autopsy result was available, a witness who was never mentioned again came forward claiming that the Isdal woman lived with someone in Bergen and had travelled together with a man on the Hurtigruten ship.

The chief investigator at the time, Oskar Hordnes, quickly settled on the spy theory. There was no proof of this, as the traces and also the observations that witnesses instead of the police communicated to the newspaper were hardly evaluated. In the end, these only served to increase the daily circulation, which is quite understandable from the point of view of the newspaper makers of the time. They managed to do this for weeks with ever new information that could not be found in the file. (Part2)

By <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Bjoertvedt" title="User:Bjoertvedt">Bjoertvedt</a> - <span class="int-own-work" lang="en">Own work</span>, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

The former Hotel Viking in Oslo, where the unknown woman was also staying.

All this time, there was speculation about whether the Isdal woman was a spy. At that time, pictures were important, but neither a camera, nor a film apparatus, nor films were found in the unknown woman's belongings. Now there is no way of knowing whether there might have been microfilms in the countless tubes or in the pottery clay that she had given to someone. Of course, she may have given the microfilms to the two unknowns in small containers, but that is where the speculation begins.

It was not entirely clear why the Isdal woman was carrying a scalpel from the Tuttlingen company Aesculap in her luggage, along with 5 blades. She had probably acquired these items in Germany. On her way to Norway. The price tags had been removed, as had other labels from items in the Isdal woman's possession. It was very unusual, even in those days, to travel across Europe with a scalpel. But there was a reason for this scalpel: the Isdal woman needed the items for works of art, namely to cut pictures out of frames, etc.

Her Nicol Shoes, Nicolbaby, Roma - Via Barberini 30, raise even more questions and suggest that the Isdal woman had been in Rome. What can only be conjectured. But the shoes were sold exclusively through the shop there at the time. A shop very close to countless galleries, such as the Palazzo Barberini, which, no one is surprised by the connection, dealt with old pottery. Several times she had also given under her alias the profession of waiver, known from the porcelain industry.

It was chic to shop in Beate Uhse's mail-order business. Every customer received a promotional gift and that was the matchbox. The famous matchbox.

Germany in the 1970s, and one should not forget that at the beginning of 1971 there were still countless ruins in Germany from the Second World War, which had already been over for 26 years. It was the time of German separation. A wall criss-crossed the country with barbed wire and mines to prevent escape from the East. The Isdal woman was a creature of her time and would not be at all possible in today's society.

The real existing socialism of the German Democratic Republic had already failed at that time. Only East Berlin was not in a position to dismiss communism as an experiment instead of heaven on earth and to ask the Federal Republic of Germany, which was anchored in the market economy, for help, which the GDR would certainly have received from the Federal Republic of Germany. It was the thaw between the two German states and Willy Brandt had travelled to Erfurt in March 1970.

(Continue in part 2 and 3)

The enduring mystery of the Kambo Mannen- some news

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Saturday, 13 February 2021 08:52

Nearly 34 years...

After more than 33 years the Kambo Mannen is not identified.

What happened in this September days 1987, when a conductor found the human remains of the later so-called Kambo Mannen besides the former train line between Kambo and Moss?

Whom the unknown stranger met before he was deadly injured by a train?

Two of his limbs had been severed, an arm and a foot. He had not been drinking alcohol prior his death and was killed by the train.

Who took his identification card, his papers, his passport? And his funds?

It was not clear for the train operator who saw something at first he thought it was a plastic bag on the rails, to see a human remains in front of his traction engine.

Today the train line it’s a pass for tracking and the trains are running through a tunnel which was built a few years ago. Long after the incidents with the Kambo Mannen. In all these years the mystery grew even bigger about the unknown alien.

Some newer information were revealed after a recent newspaper article in 2017 by the Norwegian tv2 nyheter in Oslo. But nobody could reveal what the person wanted in this specific area close to a radar station in the Cold War against the former Soviet Union. He had no camera with him or other tools for espionage. Maybe the Kambo Mannen was one of the spies of the military intelligence of the existing so-called Warsaw Treaty Organization. But this reason is unlikely.

The Warsaw Pact states sent plenty of secret scouts to the scene with foreign number plated cars in this specific area.

Yes, and there were many suicides in these days along train lines in Norway. But this is even more unreal with the Kambo Mannen.

What seems today some sort of bizarre game- were in those days in the two systems a common method to find needed information. In 2017, it revealed that the police forbid foreign number plates in the area close to the Gylderåsen station in Våler of the NATO Nike system of the Norwegian army.

If he had been a spy, at least a vehicle would have been found nearby. Keys that would have pointed to the vehicle. The Norwegian police these days experienced in these particular cases would have checked the circumstance and surroundings.

But it but this was not the only case of mystery and unidentified people in Norway in the last 50 years. It started with the most mystery case of the unknown stranger from the Isdal, who used multiple identities while she was in Norway, 1970.

Last traces led to former Tito Yugoslavia.

The woman with the strange code was mystified and certainly the target of the military intelligence of the Norwegian government. They had all reason to look for her luggage which was discovered by police in the train station in Bergen a few days after her death.

Exotic Circumstances

They were around about 15 people in Norway which could be identified and three cases led to Germany and the former East German hemisphere.

The last one to leave a strange mystery was the dead woman in the Plaza Hotel in Oslo in 1995. Jennifer Fergate.

But the Kambo Mannen came under different circumstances, which showed that he was searched before his death.

Someone could, of course, claim that the unknown person somehow came to Norway like a stowaway, then decided to commit suicide at short notice next to the railway line and buried his belongings somewhere along the way. Anyone reading this already knows that it does not sound realistic.

The trail of the later investigation to the German vessel- the MS Edelgard- was just a manoeuvre to mislead the real investigations which ended again on this railroad in autumn 1987.

Well, there were large smuggling rings that brought goods into Norway and shipped them into the country at previously spotted points. Alcohol and art smuggling were big business there. This sounds more realistic. First part of Kambo Mannen

Kambo Mannen's traces

His cloth could have been from a German second hand delivery to East Germany- different finds and numbers could not be explained and files about how it was delivered and to whom it was delivered would be destroyed by now. Second hand shops in the FRG were not so common and so popular.

Plenty of files of the East German former state security are destroyed or brought to a place where the government cannot gain any information any more. Funny enough files were found in a mine tunnel shortly after reunification.

Other files are still shredded pieces of the former East German State security HVA. It will take years to put them together again in painstaking detail, like a puzzle.

The Kambo Mannen did not reveal where he received the packet of Camel filter cigarettes which were solely produced with this specific tobacco for the Eastern Block market.

This leaves only the clothing, which has posed even more mysteries since the first day of the investigation than these exhibits have revealed.

The 55-60 year old man was wearing the following when he was found dead on the train line:

We have explained long before the Norwegians in tv2 in our first article the connection to some clothes. We refer to the first part.

A grey blouse jacket / military jacket -so called "Schimanski jacket". An item of clothing made famous by the television series Schimanski, the Duisburg fictional(!) "Crime scene", which was very fashionable at the time and was worn by the actor Götz George in each of these episodes.
One pair of blue jeans
A white shirt with dark, thin stripes
Two medical stockings with three blue stripes on top and open toe.
A yellow machine knitted jumper with a square pattern.
One white vest
One pair of Elan Body panties
A handkerchief with brown stripes in a square pattern.
A black belt made of artificial material.
A red Victorinox Swiss Army pocket knife of the model "Climber".
A soft pack of Camel cigarettes. Produced in the West for the Eastern European market.

Sources: Kripos Norge

It was common practice at the time to ship clothes collected by aid organizations in West Germany to the East. That meant to Poland or the former GDR. It was also customary for the German Red Cross, for example, to provide clothing to late settlers arriving from the East. This also applied to special prisoner from East Germany from the former GDR, which are little known in the world. Also, not in Norway.

These clothes were compulsorily catalogued.

Most of the labels were also cut out of them and, for example, plasters with numbers were affixed to shoes. This explains the discovery of the plaster in the shoe only now because at that time in the clothing depots one had to be able to match the shoes to each other in large quantity.

Another aspect is the sole insert, which was only studied a few years ago. This indicates that the sole was subsequently adapted to the shoe because it does not belong to the shoe and this in turn explains the second-hand clothes thesis.

Did the man come with an order from the GDR via the main access camp Friedland?

Von Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F079036-0029 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, Link

Are there any documents about the dead man still to be found here?

The former GDR smuggled its snitches to the West directly. In any case, the number is not a secret code, but comes from a clothing store.

More to read in the second part in March 2021

Silence upon the heather

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Thursday, 11 February 2021 08:27

(The links and the films are in German language)

Very silent

What became of the Kurt-Werner Wichmann case and the pieces of evidence that the Lunenburg police (Lower Saxon) presented to the completely shocked public worldwide more than a year ago?

Among them personal objects of people that Wichmann had buried before his suicide. From which years do the curiosities that Wichmann buried, along with an almost new Ford Probe, date?

What became of the case? The sensational cases?

Ilse Gerkens and the Ulrike Burmester case?

The Gerkens case has been open since April 11, 1968. Although Wichmann was only 18 years old at the time, he is associated with what happened.

The mother of an eleven-year-old daughter was shot off her bicycle with four bullets virtually after shopping.

The Ulrike Burmester case took place on May 14, 1969, when the 14-year-old schoolgirl from Lunenburg was reported missing by her relatives.

Her body was recovered from the Elbe River at the end of May 1969.

She had probably been sexually abused and then strangled. She had been dumped in the Elbe with a stone.

It is interesting that the accomplices are still at large and that the situation in which Ulrike Burmester was found is almost similar to that of the Schulze couple case and their daughter. The father died under the most mysterious circumstances, nearly on the same place as Mario Schulze dumped with a stone. After the last report, Schulze dumped himself.

Mother and daughter have not been found to date.

The tracks of the mother and daughter Schulze end at a lake a few kilometres away and only those of the father led away. However, no one can explain where the bodies of the mother and daughter are supposed to be. The police searched the entire area with a large contingent, including man trailer dogs.

Until now, it was assumed that this was an extended suicide. Incredibly, this suicide took place where Wichmann and his henchmen presumably committed the deeds.

What is clear, however, is that Wichmann acted not alone. A disturbing conclusion after many years.

Years later, the couple Ursula and Peter Reinhold from Hamburg-Bergedorf were found in the Goehrde forest after six weeks. On July 12, 1989, hikers found the badly decomposed and stripped bodies. Most of the Reinholds had already been skeletonized by animals and decomposition.

The cause of death could never be determined. Curiously, the couple's car was found at the railway station in nearby Winsen at Luhe.

Ever since lead investigator Juergen Schubbert was retired and also failed in court with his suit for continued employment beyond retirement age, many observers have been wondering whether the case should go to rest altogether.

Then, a few weeks ago, German media heard that the investigators would also pursue the trail of a paid killer, Wichmann. It may well be that the passionate cemetery gardener also received money for his misdeeds.

The Goehrde murders and the murder of the sister Birgit Meier of the then LKA (State Criminal Investigation Office) chief Wolfgang Sielaff were staged in a sensational film documentary.

After years of searching for his missing sister, the latter succeeded in discovering the mortal remains in an assembly pit in the former home of Wichmann, who took his life in 1993 in a different custodial context.

Up to the time Sielaff found his sister's remains, the ex-husband of those killed was the target of the investigation, although the prosecution knew he was innocent, they continued to investigate and never apologized.

Germany was flabbergasted.

But what was behind Wichmann's connections to the right-wing extremist scene in the Lunenburg Heath?

Not far away, a gigantic weapons depot was dug up after the attack on the Munich Oktoberfest in 1980. This weapons depot was attributed to the alleged NATO Stay Behind Network Gladio undertaken by a Forrester.

But is it true that this is where Wichmann obtained the weapons for his deeds?

Is it simply the time for heather to grow over the case?

Die Stem van die Apartheid (2/1999) - Shadows of the Night- the Murder of Dr Robert Van Schalkwyk Smit

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Sunday, 13 December 2020 10:04

Die Oranje Vrystaat

The Vrystaat smells of spicy bushes, not Diesel like yesterday on the army truck, past ostriches and zebras, along with dull-faced SADF soldiers sitting on the back of the truck being carted to the front. Cannon fodder for a proxy war between the great powers.

Ossewabrandwag

I have realized in the last few hours reading the newspaper cuttings, South Africa is ruled by a cult. Ossewabrandwag - my people, my God.
The eagle looks like one of the NSDAP.

Interestingly, this organization was founded in February 1939 and wanted to enter the war on the side of Germany. The Afrikaner Broederbond is recruited from this Afrikanerdoom environment, and it formed the National Party of South Africa (NP). The sect party provides the prime minister, in this case the obstinate and extremely dangerous P W Botha, called the Great Crocodile, even less flattering in Afrikaans: Die Groot Krokodil . He was born in Paul Roux, just over 100 km from here. He is a concrete-headed racist and capitalist. Botha will not release Mandela from prison in his lifetime. Nazis survived here in other guises. Scary to think if Hitler had won the war.

In the folder I received from the editor are also newspaper cuttings of a crime that, as one of The Star's journalists in Johannesburg lately wrote, was one of the most heinous in recent decades. That may be saying something if people are allowed to be tortured to death. Just disappear in a bright blue Ford Granada or a yellow SUV on the loading bed. Or simply slaughtered at home, tortured to death in police stations. Etc.

The murder of Dr Robert Van Schalkwyk Smit - the trail leads to Germany

One of the great mysteries is the death of Dr Robert Van Schalkwyk Smit and his wife Jeanne-Cora. The case is still fermenting in the collective popular soul of the Boers here. Since this regime in Pretoria can only be cracked from within, Smit became an absolute risk for the party. But this risk had a long history.

What had happened?

Smit was one of the most successful South Africans who, although he also came from the political sect of those who rule this country harshly, also wanted to expose corruption. This was, of course, about "Muldergate" and also about other dirty tricks that the NP came up with for its internal opponents.

There are countless rumors.

The rumor that is probably closest to the truth is that of the two German murderers who, for whoever, were deliberately directed to the scene of the crime, committed the ugly deed and then disappeared again.

The trace of the writing on the wall "RAU TEM" (Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit - Tegnies En Moord) "leads into the circles that remained of BOSS. Who knows who gave the order? Probably in their midst are also exiled Rhodesian's who just lost their homeland three years ago with the "Lancasterhouse Agreement".

"RAU TEM" is said to be a group of the Boss (Bureau for State Security) (Buro vir Staatsveiligheid (BSV)) and there is nothing good to report about the terrorist group that has meanwhile been dissolved in the "Muldergate" affair.

It is interesting to note that two years before the murder, when the South African embassy in Germany moved from Cologne to Bonn Auf dem Hostert 3, the secret nuclear papers disappeared without a trace under the eyes of the GSG 9 (!). The Bonn public prosecutor's office and the South African Secret Service (!), which was acting on German soil in this connection, jointly came to the conclusion after intensive investigations that the papers were gone.

Former South African Embassy in Bonn / Germany

Von Foto: Eckhard Henkel / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, Link

It is also interesting to note that Foreign Minister Pik Botha and Van Schalkwyk Smit were neighbours in Washington when both were on equally diplomatic missions for the Republic.

By <a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q41529430" class="extiw" title="d:Q41529430">William Fitz-Patrick</a> - <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.reaganlibrary.archives.gov/archives/audiovisual/contactsheets/1963.jpg">Photograph 1963-18A, White House Photographic Office: 1981-89 Collection</a> (see large PDF with description and link to photo contact sheet <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://reaganlibrary.archives.gov/archives/audiovisual/WHPHOTO1981.PDF">here</a>. From the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/">The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum</a>, Public Domain, Link

There was probably a nuclear axis between Bonn, Brasília and Pretoria. Smit, otherwise top of the class of the NP, was well-informed about the red threads of corruption. Perhaps he was blackmailing Dr Eschel Rhoodie, the propaganda chief of the NP.

Van Schalkwyk Smit was, of course, no orphan. He ran the country's largest insurance company, Santam, and was certainly involved in countless actions of the apartheid regime in Pretoria as the head of it and as the representative of the International Monetary Fund.

Van Schalkwyk Smit is said to be the originator of the trick that is being carried out by the thousands in Mauritius, the Seychelles, Taiwan and Hong Kong through South African shell companies.

The goods subject to the embargo are simply exported to the respective countries and from there to South Africa. This is also how the sanction of the Federal Export Office in Eschborn near Frankfurt is to be circumvented. In addition, there are dozens of flats all over the world through which almost everything is sold and bought.

What took place that evening in Springs in the Transvaal can only be conjectured. The police, when they do investigate, always investigate favoring the Botha government and its regime lackeys.
Allegedly, the perpetrators stayed for hours in the bungalow in Springs and literally tortured the victims there. Or even returned once because they had forgotten to take something with them. It was probably about documents from the nuclear deals. The investigations are so watered down that no one knows anymore what Pretoria pretended to be in the case, what the result should be or was. Dr Van Schalkwyk Smit came later home.

By this time, his wife must have already been executed by countless knife wounds and targeted shots to the head, following a torture. Smit died shortly afterwards. Whether the perpetrators were looking for something or just had a targeted murder mission remained entirely open in the investigations of the South African police. The statements of the lead detective, a brawny Boer, range between Smit was dragged halfway down the lower floor and Smit was already dead when he tried to unlock the door in the hallway.

A leaked report said that the flat, mainly the kitchen, had been searched. The perpetrators also left the inscription "RAU TEM" there. It is unlikely that documents on South African government corruption were stored there. As Dr Eschel Rhoodie said in England last year, there are said to have been countless bank accounts in Switzerland, he was on the run via Ecuador to Great Britain and from there to France, where he was then arrested.

Did Smit know before his death to report what was then exposed months later as the "Muldergate Affair" in 1977 in Pretoria?

Millions of South African rand, currently worth between US$ 1,20 and US$1,50 per Rand, which a high purchase value, had been embezzled to influence the press, to falsify the news in a way that was desirable for a dictatorship that wanted to stay in power for a long time. The Citizen or The Burger was chosen for this purpose. An idea that came from the head of BOSS, Hendrik van den Bergh. One of the most odious figures and guarantors of the South African dictatorship.
Allegedly, according to an inquiry report, Balthazar Johannes "B. J." Vorster, Botha's shamed predecessor, was involved in the whole story. Now he lives in Cape Town. Isolated and reviled by the local Boer celebrities.
The mastermind and string-puller for the government in Pretoria was Connie Mulder (Petrus Cornelius Mulder), an obscure character even for the brown henchmen in Pretoria.
They unceremoniously excluded him from the NP holy grail when things got too hot.

The Washington Post reported on the bad who-dunnit penned by the propaganda department a few years ago. And yet journalists here on the ground think that South Africa's only opposition paper, the Rand Daily Mail, has been completely undermined and the Boers are taking revenge on Helen Zille's article on the death of (Bantu) Stephen Biko.

The only credible lead

Mad Mike Hoare and his gang of murders
No one has had any real interest so far, but perhaps that will change in the years to come. Through a statement to the Erasmus Commission, a former judge of the Transvaal Supreme Court came into action who knew a South African Airways pilot who gave a statement about two Germans who had come to South Africa from Lutton Airport (UK) for the £40,000 job to murder van Schalkwyk Smit and his wife. These two Germans were part of Mad Mike Hoare's Commando 5 in the Congo. There, daily murders with the leaving of graffiti was normal, as one can see from numerous pictures of the time.
So, it is not surprising that the chief of the mercenaries in the Congo known as Mad Mike, whose most famous platoon leader was the unfortunately "legendary" Congo Muller, is also said to have been involved in the murder of the van Schalkwyk Smit couple. This, however, leads back to the influence of the South African government, which did not want to get its hands dirty with overseas mercenaries.

What the South African Airways pilot really knows only means that he has testified that two Germans accepted the order to murder the couple. This murder must have come from the "Muldergate scandal" with the accounts held in Switzerland and Germany. To make matters worse, evidence from Dr Eschel Rhoodie is said to be in a secure location, presumably in a Swiss bank vault.

This fact was reported by the New York Times, one of the absolute opponents of apartheid, as early as 1979, but unfortunately this lead, which is the most credible and the most likely, was not followed up. Mad Mike, the Irishman, had carried out similar actions in the Congo during the Katanga crisis. Countless of his comrades-in-arms were Germans who were better off fighting in the Congo in the 1960s than facing prosecution by the courts in Germany for crimes committed during the Nazi era.

A staircase joke of history is that Matt Mike now lives in South Africa and not so far away from what happened in Springs, in the Johannesburg area. What Schalkwyk Smit and his wife could know, the perpetrators certainly took with them. Congo-Muller, however, who revealed his true soul in a pathetic interview, drove off to the next battle with a skull and crossbones on his bonnet whenever he was needed for a murder in Katanga.

It would have been a simple step to find out who Mad Mike's mercenaries were from Germany and compare them with the entry documents to the Boer Republic. The clarification of the heinous crime, however, was not wanted. The murder of Schalkwyk Smit and his wife was desired to deter the enemies within.

Now that the shadow of night is settling over the Vrystaat, I am going to the takeaway and will eat a Boerewors and drink a Castle Lager.

Further search for the identity of the Isdal woman (II) - Jugoslavijo, dobar dan

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Monday, 31 August 2020 10:43

Traces in the fog of one of the most mysterious murders in post-war history

The case of the Isdal woman becomes more exciting than it initially appeared, even after the newer investigations by the public prosecutor's office in Bergen in 2016.

If you look at the case of the Isdal woman from the point of distance, it becomes clear that many documents from the police investigation from those days did not find their way to the Public Record Office in Bergen. These documents seem to have been withheld until today.

The reason is elementary; the purchasers of certain items would inevitably have to return them to their rightful owners. Other documents that were found in the suitcases of the unknown deceased, however, have already been published like the unfortunate matchbox from the Beate Uhse sex shop.

Why documents disappeared is or was the case can certainly no longer be determined today.

The Norwegian military intelligence service certainly did not cover itself with glory these days.

The probability that the Isdal woman also had a stay in Hamburg is very high. The German goods could have come from the Kepa / Karstadt in Hamburg, which was within a stone's throw of the station at that time. In the assortment, the items were found at Isdal woman's luggage. Numerous prehistories and journalistic research can be found here.

PHOTO: POLITIET / STATSARKIVET I BERGEN

It is 50 years ago in fall that prosecutor Carl Halvor Aas took over the investigation on that misty November day in 1970.

An alleged suicide with 60 Fenemal pills in her stomach and carbon monoxide poisoning was ruled out. These tablets were not available in Norway. Even the investigators did not believe in suicide.

Even after the fisherman's statement, one could have doubts about the completeness of the files. This statement is now in a different context. No espionage tools such as mini cameras etc. were found in the records of the unknown dead. Nevertheless, after meeting the two southern looking gentlemen on a forest path shortly before her death, which was observed by a witness, she was seen as a spy. The code she used in her diaries was simple and somewhat naive. Shoes and deodorant from Germany immediately pointed to a female spy. Besides, all signs had been removed from her clothes.

The penguin missiles will not have played a role in this context. Even the later interrogated employee of the Israeli Mossad "Lillehammer Affair" did not know the name. Instead, the visit to the Hotel Bristol in Trondheim is more interesting - as Vera Jarle from Antwerp from November 6 to 8. Before that, she had stayed at the Hotel Neptun in Bergen from 30.10.1970 - 06.11.1970 under the name of Alexia Zarna-Merchez, born on 27.11.1943 in Ljubljana.

According to the oxygen and strontium isotope analysis of the University of Canberra, the trail also led to the then internal border area between Serbia and Croatia. On an imaginary line between Užice and Sarajevo.

PHOTO: KART FRA PROF. JURIAN HOOGEWERFF/NATIONAL CENTRE FORENSIC STUDIES/UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA

The Isdal woman stated not only once that she was an antique dealer. This seems to be valid 50 years after the body was found in Isdal. The statement of the Italian photographer and the hotel report is available for this purpose. Apparently, she travelled again and again under false legends, but on several occasions, she also stated her profession as a decorator. She knew a lot about porcelain, the Italian photographer Giovanni Trimboli stated. Trimboli was a dubious figure who was said to have connections with the Mafia and smuggling, only long after his death it became public. Photographing him would only have been camouflage.

It was about art smuggling from the former Eastern Bloc

Border crossing point Helmstedt FRG/GDR 1969, kasaan media, 2020

East Berlin had since Aktion Licht (Action Light) in 1962, in which all the safe-deposit boxes in banks that had not been used since the war were opened by employees of the Ministry of State Security who had not reported in after the war.

The currency gorge of the GDR needed money. This "Aktion Licht" brought in more than 4 million DM at that time. Among them were countless works of art that were smuggled all over the world.

Incredibly valuable pieces (paintings, jewellery, antiques, etc.) were thus handed over to their owners in the respective countries by couriers. Only in February 1973, the KuA GmbH (Kunst und Antiquitäten GmbH) was founded in East Berlin. This company continued to operate as a "seller" via the former Yugoslavia until well into the 1980s. Years ago, a trace had already been revealed to an artist who lived at that time in Norway and in the south of France.

To a certain Kjell Varvin, to whom the trail of the Isdal woman now led, also in other contexts.

Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway) from Oslo, Norway - Vidkun Quisling og hans kone Maria.

Probably the henchmen had found clues to the legendary art treasure of Vidkun Quisling during "Operation Light" years earlier. Quisling, whose name today still stands for the greatest shame of Norway, was the governor of the Nazis in Norway and had built up a considerable art collection together with his Russian wife since the end of the 1930s, some of which disappeared in Eastern Germany after the war.

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Tristan Bruebach - more than 20 years after at the crime scene

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Wednesday, 15 July 2020 14:11

Tristan Bruebach - more than 20 years after at the crime scene (June 27, 2020)
A miserable but never forgotten crime
Our guest author Sunny Beatz follows the traces of the last hours of Tristan Bruebach. Every reader can imagine the perpetrator's atrocities very clearly in this sequence.

We pay the author great respect.

The crime must never be forgotten. Here you can read the story of Tristan Bruebach.

In the afternoon, shortly after four o'clock, I started my journey from Frankfurt / Main - equipped with a city map and my camera - in the direction of Hoechst, to get a personal impression of the scene of the crime and its surroundings in the murder case "Tristan Bruebach".

After a short orientation phase in the entrance area of the station, I first decided to visit the Bruno-Asch-Anlage, which was located in the eastern direction of my position. According to the female witness, the last time Tristan was seen alive here was at 3:20 pm sitting on a park bench.

Bruno-Asch-Anlage | © SunnyBeatz

According to the information board, the plant was "overhauled" towards the end of autumn 2019.

So I had to assume that today's appearance is not the same as in 1998. However, a passer-by told me on my inquiry that "not much has changed here. The benches were renewed."

I first walked the path on the right to the end of the layout.

Bruno-Asch-Anlage | © SunnyBeatz

There is also an information board, as well as a smaller, paved square with a conspicuously large number of male alcohol drinkers.

When I observed these people, I immediately remembered the description of the above witness, who said that she saw "two foreign-looking, male persons" sitting on the bench with Tristan.

This description could have been a good 90% of the people present at the station and its surroundings on that day.

After his stay at the station, Tristan is said to have set off in a westerly direction to the Unterliederbach tunnel.

At the end of the layout, I went to the opposite side of the tunnel and went back towards the station.

Bruno-Asch-Anlage | © SunnyBeatz

The measured time to pass through the installation (directly, at average speed, measured about 3 minutes).

Tristan is said to have walked between 15:20 and 15:30 from the Bruno-Asch-Anlage to the south entrance of the tunnel. There he finally died.

For this walking distance, I measured the time of about 5 minutes. Depending on the walking speed, the time was reduced to about 4 ½ minutes.

(© OpenStreetMap contributors / License: ODbL, note: www.openstreetmap.org/copyright)

Back at the station building, it becomes immediately noticeable that the entrance area, as well as the immediate surroundings, are exceptionally well frequented. I met here apparent commuters, pausing construction workers, people who were in the various cafés and conveyance stores and countless young people who were loitering there.

Especially the young people seemed to watch the events at the station very closely.

To get to the southern entrance of the tunnel, I walked past the station building and the bus stop and then turned a little further right onto a smaller path.

I want to point out explicitly that the tunnel is by far not as fluctuating as the station area! It is much more isolated and can only be found today if you know the area.

Way to the place of the crime (southern entrance of the Liederbach tunnel) | © SunnyBeatz

After following the path mentioned above for a few meters, I first came across the trail mentioned above, from which the 12-year-old witness claims to have seen a man with a black cap and a blond, long ponytail crawling up the path shortly after Tristan's murder.

The trail at the south entrance | © SunnyBeatz

Due to the high vegetation in the current season (end of June 2020) it is neither possible to reach the river bed in front of the entrance nor to have a view of the whole southern entrance.

Scene of crime (southern entrance of Liederbach tunnel) | © SunnyBeatz

I then left the trail behind me on the right side and followed the path further on.

Surprisingly, a few steps further on, I found another path towards the river bed before the southern entrance.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to descend there either, as it was an extremely steep slope.

A few meters further on and turning right, I reached a place from where I could take more photos of the river bed in front of the southern entrance. Here I saw for the first time that some parts of the Liederbach were not dry, contrary to my expectations.

Riverbed in front of the southern entrance of the Liederbach tunnel | © SunnyBeatz

I looked around there for a while and then decided to go back the way I came and visit the north side of the tunnel.

If you go back the same way, you also pass a playground very close to the tunnel.

The playground near the south entrance of the Liederbach tunnel | © SunnyBeatz

To reach the northern entrance of the Liederbach tunnel, I entered the station building for the first time, which had to be crossed.

Entrance area Bahnhof Hoechst | © SunnyBeatz

After I entered the entrance area shown above through the right door (seen from the inside), the first thing I noticed was the red convenience store.

After a short comparison with the video recordings of Tristan at the station, it should have been taken from exactly this convenience store.

The wall phones should have been installed in the area next to this kiosk in 1998. Today they are located on the opposite side, next to the travel centre.

I then went through the building towards Adelonstraße, where I turned left at the end.

Station Hoechst /exit in the direction of Adelonstraße| © SunnyBeatz

If you follow the route to the northern entrance of the Liederbach tunnel, you will first pass a building of the GRC on the right side of the sidewalk and a little further on a playground, which is located directly at the Liederbach tunnel.

North entrance Unterliederbach tunnel / surroundings | © SunnyBeatz

I first looked at the immediate vicinity of the north entrance, where I noticed that there are relatively many places in the vicinity where (possibly) children are staying. On both sides of the tunnel, there is a children's playground less than two minutes' walk away, and the young people mentioned above also seemed to use these places.

After arriving at the north entrance of the tunnel, I noticed - as on the opposite side - that the gate was open.

Nobody seems to be bothered by the fact, as a passer-by later told me that this had probably been the case for quite a while.

"In the past, they used to close it again and again, although today it is sometimes open for weeks. I don't know when they do that either. I often walk by here with the dog. In the morning, at noon and in the evening I go for a walk, and if it was still open in the evening, it was suddenly closed in the morning with my first round. Do they do it overnight? Must be..."

This is where my crime scene inspection ends.

I took some more pictures of the surroundings, talked to a few passers-by on my way back and then drove home - packed with impressions and emotions.

In the following article, I will report about these impressions and my findings.

Update: Case Maddie McCann: Friedrich Fuelscher and Johann Schwenn take over the defense for Christian B.

Published in Cold Case
Written by Mfasi
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Monday, 08 June 2020 11:45

Update June, 11th, 2020

Maddie McCann - The most severe child-abduction since the Lindbergh Baby

Christian B. was taken on yesterday by one of Germany's best barristers after his defence lawyers had resigned their mandates. Johann Schwenn together with his colleague from Kiel, Friedrich Fuelscher. Christian B. was transferred to a solitary cell in prison in Kiel. The prison management fears that other prisoners might attack the suspect. Friedrich Fuelscher said in an interview (German) that he wants to take criminal and civil action against anyone who allegedly spreads statements. Half the world would accuse his client of the most horrible deeds. His client would feel bad.

Christian B. cannot defend himself right now. He is incarcerated.

It seems incomprehensible how it can be that all the facts that led to Christian B. being considered as the possible perpetrator are only now becoming known. Everybody knew something, and now everybody wants to talk about his personal experiences with the suspected perpetrator. In the process, many lose their grip on the rule of law, which guarantees the presumption of innocence even for the worst crimes. Many don't notice that Christian B. cannot have committed all the crimes, at least not alone. He must have had accomplices if any.
It would be an absolute disaster if, due to the public statements, the background of the events could no longer be revealed. Perhaps this would mean that one would forgive oneself any possibility, if at all, of finding the children still alive somewhere. This issue cannot be the intension of the case.

Update June, 10th, 2020

The questions are becoming even more pertinent.

How could the First Prosecutor of Braunschweig, Mr Wolter, have known that Madeleine was dead, maybe the girls were sold.
Is there such an organization that kidnaps children...
What did they do to the children?
There is a proof on video, as Christian B. also used to film the misdemeanour with the 72-year-old American in Portugal. Or did this video or the evidence of Maddie McCann's death appear in any other context?
Did Christian B. have any accomplices who assisted him in these known crimes?

In this context, the Sun reports that Christian B. probably announced to his then British partner on the day before the abduction of Maddie that he would leave the following day, according to the Sun: So the whole affair was already known, since 2007.
"It's a horrible job, but I have to do it, and it's going to change my life. You won't see me for a while", as far as the quote of the main suspect, reported by Sun and RTL.
The cryptic comment of Christian B. pointed out that he kidnapped Maddie on behalf of whoever.
According to RTL, this former girlfriend also knew about Christian B. had abducted Maddie. She approached him about it in 2010. She didn't think he was capable of such an act, but he told her, according to the Sun, not to go to the place.
Meanwhile, the impression is growing that Christian B. had accomplices. Is there an organization of child molesters who carefully prepared their deeds?

Is Christian B. also connected with the disappearance of Hilal Ercan, who disappeared in Hamburg on January 27, 1999? Or with Katrin Konert, who vanished without a trace from a bus stop on January 1, 2001. An unknown woman with a Polish accent who called her sister, later claimed that she had got into a vehicle bearing Berlin license plates.
What about Inga Gehricke, who disappeared without a trace in a forest in 2015?
If all cases were real, it would be the worst series of murders, except the Göhrde murderer, since the end of the war in Germany.

Update June, 9th, 2020

Is this actually about a German paedophile ring?

In the meantime, Christian B., who has served a large part of his prison sentence for drug dealing, has applied for release from prison.

In the Maddie McCann murder case, the court in Braunschweig has not yet issued an arrest warrant. Senior Public Prosecutor Wolter from Braunschweig does not, however, have enough evidence to file charges.

In other cases, such as Carola Titze, who was murdered in the De Haan area of Belgium in 1996, investigations are ongoing.

In the case of Rene Hasee, who disappeared without a trace in the Algarve that same year, no initial suspicion could be found. But Christian B. is also under investigation for another mysterious murder case in recent decades, involving Peggy Knobloch. The girl's remains were only discovered by chance in July 2016 by a mushroom picker, after the girl disappeared on her way to school in 2001. Initially, the innocent Ulvi K., who is mentally handicapped, had been sentenced to years in prison as the perpetrator.

The case also moved into the interest of the investigators when the NSU was discovered, because, from the beginning, there was suspicion that the Nazi underground movement was financed by child abuse and child porn.

Besides bank robberies and other crimes.

Also, one of the perpetrators, Uwe Böhnhardt, had already been suspected of being involved in the murder of a child.

Bernd B. who disappeared without a trace in 1993 on the river Saale. Whether there was a connection between Böhnhardt and Christian B. cannot be clarified. Böhnhardt died in a suicide attempt after a bank robbery in Eisenach in 2011. According to the British Sun, Christian B. is said to have appeared in deeds under different aliases Fraenkel and Meisser.

It is said to be an association of paedophiles from Germany.

This suspicion has been known before in connection with the NSU. According to a report by the Guardian in London, a Hazel Behan who was abused in 2004 asked to have her case re-examined. She lived not far from the former temporary waiter Christian B. in Portugal.

As the BILD newspaper reported, Christian B.'s former partner in the Algarve was looking after children who were difficult to bring up, for whom she received 4000 Euro per child per month. It is not clear when Christian B. separated from his girlfriend. She is not supposed to have taken care of the children, other girls are said to have come back pregnant.

But if Attorney General Wolter had evidence that Maddie McCann was no longer alive, he said in an interview with Sky. In addition to the suspect's horrible remarks, it has now become known that he declared that "pigs can eat human flesh and a person could disappear completely", an unknown source is quoted as saying. The body of Maddie McCann is being searched intensively as more and more details are received through countless leads. It is probably about the properties in East Germany and Portugal. Whether Madeleine McCann was still alive after the kidnapping is unknown, but witnesses have explained this fact. There was no chance trace Maddie live.

'We think there are more victims': https://t.co/8JHdN5ZFA7
— Internationaler Presse - und Literatur Club (@kasaanmedia) June 9, 2020

How many more children like Maddie McCann have fallen victim to this cruel fate caused by Christian B.?

Christian B. is the prime suspect of having committed these acts. However, did he commit these acts alone?

Is Christian B. only a part of a network that specialists have feared for years, but nobody wanted to admit it really exists? It was reported that the rape and robbery of the 72-year-old American women were filmed 1 1/2 years after the disappearance of Maddie McCann on the Algarve Coast in Portugal.

By whom or rather how? For this crime, the Regional Court of Braunschweig (Lower Saxonia) Germany sentenced him to seven years imprisonment on December 16, 2019. The sentence is not yet final, but remand has been ordered.

Did Christian B. shoot the film for himself as a trophy of the crime or for a "wider audience" that "enjoys" such or similar acts on commercial sites on the internet?

Was the disappearance of Maddie filmed by the second man whom witnesses claim to have seen on the night of the crime according to the Portuguese media?

Presumably, Christian B. burgled into the McCann's holiday apartment on the night of the crime, to search it for something valuable, but then decided to change his mind and "stole" Maddie. The case led to a vast worldwide media response within weeks in 2007. Witness statements from that night are consistent with what the police have painstakingly collected across all borders.

But what happened after Maddie McCann was abducted?

A witness had allegedly seen the girl get into the vehicle of a man with German license plates a few weeks after her mysterious disappearance. Whether she did so willingly or unwillingly, the witness was unable to say more. According to the Daily Mail, these incidents are described in the investigation file of the police in Portugal. As another witness saw, Maddie allegedly left a restaurant in the Spanish coastal town of Alcossebre before getting into a man's van. How did the girl get from the Algarve to the seaside village near Castellón de la Plana, almost 800 km away? The statement is now considered very credible.

What happened after the kidnapping, which was re-enacted by Rudi Cerne, was shown on the German Police File programme on June 3,2020 and caused an incredible media response?

Did Christian B. have international connections in the child molester scene? Or is he part of such a network.

That's a good point:

The latest leads lead to a crime in Belgium, but so far, the police, in this case, had no points.

As reported by the Belga news agency, it is about the violent death of Carola Titze from Vechta, Germany, who was raped and murdered in 1996, when she was 16 years old. Her body was found in the Belgian seaside resort close to De Haan in July 1996. The girl was on holiday with her parents. She went missing after taking a walk on the beach—the night before she had met a young German who had bragged about his intense criminal activities. The two had spent the night before together. According to Belga, the public prosecutor in Bruges wants to reopen the investigation. In this context, Dutroux and even Fourniret had been investigated as perpetrators without results. Now the 1996 phantom picture of the Belgian Rikswacht shows considerable similarity to Christian B.. Marines had found the horribly mutilated body of the young woman in Duinbossen, only 200 metres from the holiday resort where she was on holiday, 14 days after her disappearance.

Rijkswacht Belgium, 1996

If you know anything what can be useful to the public prosecutor, you are asked to contact the numbers behind this link

Tristan Bruebach

Published in Cold Case
Written by Mfasi
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Wednesday, 01 April 2020 07:57

Incredible brutality of a mentally disturbed perpetrator

The murder case to the detriment of the then 13-year-old Tristan Bruebach, who was found dead on Thursday, March 26, 1998, in the now-closed Liederbach Tunnel in Frankfurt-Hoechst, built-in 1937, is still one of the most brutal murders in German post-war history and, above all, one of the most mysterious crimes ever committed in Germany. Tristan came from a difficult childhood. His mother had died sometime earlier and was reported to have committed suicide. Tristan lived with his father, who was the sole breadwinner.

For 22 years, the Frankfurt homicide squad in charge of the case, and since 2007 the Special group Tristan has been trying to arrest the perpetrator(s). The crime shook the entire Rhine-Main area at the time.

Tristan Bruebach had gone to school that day with back pain and wanted to see a doctor afterwards.

The execution of the crime was marked by indescribable brutality and by mutilations and the "trophy hunt" of the unknown perpetrator.

What took place on the day of the crime is still not evident to this day. It can only be reconstructed with significant difficulty. It is also challenging to reconstruct whether Tristan knew his murderer fleetingly or whether he knew him closer when he probably met him in the Liederbach tunnel below the Hoechst station He was sitting there at about 1:45 p.m., smoking a cigarette. Cameras recorded this.

What he did in the next two hours or so after calling his father from a telephone booth could only be reconstructed in fragments. Another student saw Tristan on his way home at about 2:15–2:25 p.m. in front of the Hoechst station, sitting alone on a bench there.

Many conceivable scenarios could have taken place on that day. The man in the sketch cannot have been a casual witness to the following events. The two men, who were repeatedly seen with the boy in connection with the park bench in the Bruno-Asch-park at around 3.20 p.m., before the crime, may have been drug addicts or men from the alcoholic scene that already existed at this time in the 1990s.

A witness observed Tristan before the crime in the company of an unknown man to whom the identikit picture later matched. The witness also revealed that the perpetrator knew his way around the area, as she believed that she had seen the perpetrator several times. The Czech road map of Germany, which was later found in the rucksack the perpetrator had initially taken with him, fits this picture perfectly. The map might have in possession of a person belonging to the homeless scene around the train station in Hoechst. Perhaps the two unknowns led Tristan to the perpetrator. A lot of rumours circulated about the victim after the crime. He had gone on for prostitution, dealt drugs, got into bad circles. None of this could be proven.

The witness, whose dog he had petted, probably only saw the unknown men from behind as she walked away with her dog and that Tristan was sitting in the middle between the two men. Whether he already felt threatened here was not revealed. Shortly afterwards, the murderer and his later victim met between 3:30 and 3:45 p.m. at the southern tunnel entrance about 400 meters from the park bench, he was seen by the lady with the dog earlier.

Like a slaughter

During autopsy no. 282/98, it became apparent that the boy had been severely beaten or kicked, and was strangled from behind as if in a headlock, before the perpetrator almost decapitated his victim with a cut through the neck of the boy. What happened in the minutes of the crime: Several youths, who also wanted to take the shortcut through the dark tunnel, observed someone standing bent over something, they could not see what and decided at that moment to take another route. Probably they found the perpetrator during the act of killing and did not realise this fact. This observation corresponded approximately with the time of the crime and the overall event, as the police were able to reconstruct based on forensic evaluations.

The perpetrator then dragged his victim into the almost 100-metre-long tunnel before continuing his ritualistic craft, always in danger of being surprised at any moment. In an exercise book, the perpetrator wiped the blade, leaving the negative of a kitchen knife he used for his cruel deed.

He placed Tristan's sneakers across the legs of the corpse as if he wanted to undo what he had done. He covered his face with the boy's jacket. Probably out of the rush and because he had been massively disturbed in the execution of the crime by something or someone, he made a mistake when he threw out the boy's backpack, which contained the school books. A fragment of a bloody fingerprint was left behind.

Then he disappeared unseen, probably in wet and bloodstained clothes.

Later, a youth worker informed the police after children told him about the discovery of a corpse at about 5 p.m.

It is undoubtedly clear that the perpetrator was a severely disturbed personality when he almost expertly removed the testicles from the corpse, which was then bled out in the Liederbach, and took pieces of muscle tissue and performed another draping of the body at the scene of the crime. According to the investigating inspector, the perpetrator took about 2 kg of the boy's meat with him, which may indicate cannibalism. The killer had pulled off Tristan's clothes and made an incision above the pubic bone. The killer took these pieces, which he had taken from Tristan. The mutilation and injury picture, which the forensic doctors then determined in an autopsy lasting several hours, is unique to date. Later research by the homicide squad in the USA and other countries did not reveal any "repetitive handwriting" of the perpetrator. An unprecedented investigation was set in motion by the responsible homicide squad. Thousands of men were summoned to give a fingerprint. But the perpetrator, probably a young blond man with a ponytail, remained unknown. The man, described by several witnesses, is said to have searched for other victims between the Liederbach tunnel and the allotment garden settlement adjacent to the railway line at the time.

A few days later, someone called the police. The telephone call was recorded and is in German language. If anybody may recognize the voice, it does not matter in which language the call was.

On April 2, 1998, a telephone call reached a Frankfurt law firm. There, the caller claimed that he had screwed something up. The secretary gave the caller a telephone number of a law firm specialising in criminal law, but the unknown person did not respond to the other law company.

The rucksack from the Fishbone company in black was found about a year later 35 km away in a wooded area near Niedernhausen. In it the already mentioned road map of Germany from the Czech Republic and a blue garbage bag, but no signs of body parts. A witness said that he had seen the backpack a long time before.

More than a year after Tristan's death, his grave was dug, very neatly, and the earth was shovelled onto a plastic sheet. Maybe it was done by Satanists, perhaps the perpetrator who was unable to perform his ritual when he was interrupted during he committed the original crime.

Manfred Seel, the later serial killer, who was only exposed as such after his death, when his daughter found body parts in barrels in a garage in her home town of Schwalbach in the Taunus Mountains, retired as Tristan's culprit in 2016. After an unsuccessful attempt to take Seel's fingerprints on his clarinet to compare them with those at the scene of the crime in the Liederbach tunnel, even the body of the alleged serial killer was again autopsied. The fingerprints did not match.

Manfred Seel, Police Hesse

Tristan's father died in 2015, but a community of interests has been formed to preserve the memory of Tristan. To the website (German)

Therefore the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Homicide Department in Frankfurt are asking:

Who made observations on the day of the crime and did not yet or not wholly inform the police?

Who knew Tristan or people from his environment?

Who suspected a particular person as the perpetrator?
It could be conspicuous, for example, that someone has changed his behaviour, expressed suspicion or left his usual living environment without any recognisable reason (escape).

One part of the crime probably took place in the Liederbach. The perpetrator's trousers and shoes could, therefore, have been at least partially soaked. Who noticed a person with soaked and/or bloodstained clothing on the day of the crime?

Description of offender according to identikit picture

approx. 175 cm tall

Around 1998 about 20 to 30 years old (today between 40 and 60 years old)

unkempt appearance

pale face

slender - even described as lean - figure

scar in the area of the upper lip, possibly
"Harelip.

Dark blond, greasy, long hair, which is or was worn as a plait or ponytail

The Frankfurt Criminal Investigation Department, therefore, asks persons who know the man depicted and described to report to the Specialist Commissariat for Homicide Offences (K 11), telephone number 069-75551108, or any other police station. (Jürgen Linker, 069-75582100)

The public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt/Main has suspended a reward of 15,000 euros for information leading to the investigation and capture of the perpetrator(s). The awarding of the reward is subject to the exclusion of legal recourse. The reward is not intended for officials whose professional duty includes the prosecution of criminal acts.

A further reward in the amount of 5.000,-- Euro has been offered by a private person and is valid for an unlimited period of time.

Notes to the Frankfurt Homicide Department:

Phone +49 (0) 69 - 755 51108 (office hours)
Phone +49 (0) 69 - 755 53111 (Criminal Records Service)
or any other police station

Who murdered Detlev Karsten Rohwedder?

Published in Cold Case
Written by Mfasi
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Friday, 06 March 2020 14:44

Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1990-0821-025,_Detlev_Rohwedder,_Präsident_der_Treuhandanstalt

Decades-old bans on thinking

When on April 1, 1991, Easter Sunday, two unidentified persons under cover of darkness and a colony of arbours in front of the house in Düsseldorf waited until the chief, Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, of the Treuhand went to his desk, it seemed to be the perfect RAF assassination.

Rohwedder was not only one of the most hated West Germans at the time but also one of the people in absolute danger. This circumstance was clear to the BKA (Federal Police) and Rohwedder himself. Rohwedder's wife had sensed something when, days before, she had alerted the police in Düsseldorf to a possible escalation.

It was probably that the Treuhand boss' habits had been spied out before the perpetrators committed the crime. His wife was injured in the assassination attempt. The Treuhand boss died at the scene of the crime.

An immediate search for the assassins yielded nothing. The phantoms of the night had escaped. Already hours after the death of Rohwedder, it was clear in investigative circles that it was perpetrators of the Red Army Fraction. A letter of confession that was completely bizarre even for the RAF was found not far from the crime scene.

Excerpts from the letter of the alleged command Ulrich Wessel: "THOSE WHO DO NOT FIGHT WILL DIE IN GUESSING. FREEDOM IS ONLY POSSIBLE IN THE FIGHT FOR LIBERATION. on April 1, 1991, we shot and killed the head of the berliner treuhandanstalt detlev karsten rohwedder with the KOMMANDO ULRICH WESSEL... rohwedder had held key political and economic positions for 20 years."

Days later, another letter of justification was to be received by the DPA (German Press Agency), which was idiotic, even for the RAF, not a letter of confession, but a letter of justification.

Someone had excellently falsified it but had not understood the historical context of the RAF's declaration. At the time of the Stasi-RAF connection, it had not been challenging to learn the background and the characteristics of the letters of confession. The hair of Wolfgang Grams on the towel that was spread out over the garden chair when the perpetrators fired could also have been caught during one of the Grams' visits to the GDR. The cigarette butts left behind did not lead to the target, only to blood group A.

Only one thing became evident quickly, but was hushed up: None of the RAF terrorists was able to shoot at that distance, 63 metres. The escape route, the police also confirmed, ran through the neighbouring colony of arcades. It must not be forgotten that there were no snipers in the RAF who were able to shoot through bushes, upwards, through a window at night, then escape the security forces, dives through the Rhine and then disappear undetected on the other side of the river. That sounded and still sounds too absurd. The story of the murder of Rohwedder and Herrhausen began years earlier, when employees from politics and business, the Stasi and state reserves realised that the GDR was a socialist phase-out model. The most obscure figures of the GDR, HVA, full-time agents and saboteurs of State Security, who later advised just VEB Kombinat Robotron, were still involved. The trail of the old new roped parties, which Rohwedder had also identified, led to Thuringia and the Vogtland.

Sly profit and the golden handshake

Millions were moved from the GDR to the West into accounts. This shifting began already in 1987, according to contemporary witnesses. Arms of the NVA and the Soviet West troops were still being moved even after the collapse of the Honecker regime. Rohwedder knew about all these cronies of the collapsed Stasi apparatus.

Was there a connection between former Stasi people who saw themselves as hosts to RAF dropouts and the 3rd generation of the RAF?

Or was the 3rd generation of the RAF only a facade for activities of the MfS-Stasi?

Was the cooperation between the Stasi and the RAF revived again when the GDR and the RAF were already dead or were the hair found on a towel of the terrorist who later, in 1993, died by suicide in Bad Kleinen, placed there?

It seems so. The Stasi was finished on October 3 1990. Insignificant parts remained in their loose structure. The octopus was smashed to pieces, although guys like Werner Großmann refused to believe it. The Stasi knew this years before.

Everything revolved in these days of the wild turnaround against Rohwedder and around the VEB Robotron, around the countless businesses that were simply too dilapidated for any economic process to have been able to continue at all.

Rohwedder had offered the companies that still had to be restructured to foreign investors. Countless assets of former Stasi companies were hidden in businesses or real estate holdings that the system's operators wanted to sell off as soon as an opportunity arose. Robotron was a sinister representative of the GDR. Already in GDR times, innumerable companies in the West circumvented the CoCom embargo regulations. The business with embargoed goods promised high profits. There were also illegal figures in the 1980s—Robotron - the Eastern high-tech corporation that was able to copy everything from the West. Many of the embargoed goods were then shipped via Greece to Bulgaria and from there to Dresden with the VEB Deutrans- forwarder. So whole high-performance computers from the West, which were then fitted into Robotron cabinets and sold as an achievement of completely ailing socialism.

By Xaar, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

What became of the members of the RAF who have been missing for years, or maybe they are even dead? Is there or was there a connection with the murder of Alfred Herrhausen, whose booby trap worked in a highly professional way against the rather simple actions of the RAF?

Were the light barriers at Robotron forged, which later killed Alfred Herrhausen shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall?

At some point in the mid/end of the 1990s, the Rohwedder investigation commission was dissolved. They had only been following the RAF trail. The other leads seemed too absurd even to consider. To this day it is still not clear who the 3rd generation of the RAF was or is. Especially since the RAF pensioners, despite being disbanded in 1998, have been earning their pensions for years by robbing armoured car companies. Only a few people still talk about the Stasi. The young generation no longer knows the effects of German division. Well, who were the murderers who assassinated the then head of the Treuhand? It seems that Rohwedder was the pawn victim of the young, reunified republic.

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Tristan Bruebach - more than 20 years after at the crime scene

Update: Case Maddie McCann: Friedrich Fuelscher and Johann Schwenn take over the defense for Christian B.

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