Operation Bute

One of the most mysterious missing person cases after the war in the Federal Republic of Germany is the disappearance of 2-year-old Katrice Lee, who disappeared with her parents in an English supermarket on 28 November 1981,

"NAAFI Shopping Center", went to Paderborn-Schloß Neuhaus and vanished without a trace in the checkout area.

The girl, who had a severe visual defect in her left eye, had already undergone surgery and might have been noticed. What happened can only be guessed. It must have been fractions of a second that caused the girl to disappear. Katrice Lee was never seen again.

What initially looked like an accident- has turned out to be one of the most mysterious missing person cases in Germany over the decades. After Katrice they even dug in the river Alme. Nothing. Eyewitnesses from 1981 saw a man carrying a little girl to a green limousine at the time of Katrice's disappearance.

The girl's parents are firmly convinced that the now 40-year-old is still alive, under a different name.

 Unknown offender sketch - Royal Military Police HIA Bulford

Whether the crime was connected to an incident two years earlier, in 1979, in front of a fast-food restaurant attached to a restaurant on the former school grounds of Eringerfeld Castle is still not clear. At that time, the local Steinhauser Strasse was observed for days from two vehicles in which British people were sitting and people, mainly young schoolgirls, were photographed. Before the police could intervene, the unidentified persons had disappeared. During this time, they had changed places more often and had retreated to the parking lot of an adjacent wooded area.

Castle Eringerfeld was 30 km away from Paderborn.

During this period the IRA was particularly active. Sources say that Katrice was taken hostage for the IRA because her father served with the British, "British Forces Germany".

In this context, there were several attacks in the Federal Republic of Germany, including in Münster, Mönchengladbach, Unna, Hanover, Osnabrück, Bielefeld and Dortmund. All the acts have taken place since the early 1980s.

Kidnappings were a speciality of the IRA, which at the time was waging unrestricted war against the British. There were countless examples, such as the case of the mother of ten, Jean McConville, who was abducted in 1972 and only became known decades later. Or the case of Thomas Niedermayer, the Grundig representative in Belfast and then German honorary consul, who was abducted in 1973 and only found in 1980 in a wild dump near Belfast.

In connection with the kidnapping of Katrice Lee, the Royal Military Police - HIA Bulford telephone 0800 / 723 5229 requests relevant information.