Dieter Zlof

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dieter Zlof (born December 4, 1942 in Cilli , CdZ area Lower Styria , German occupied territory , today Slovenia ) is the kidnapper of the industrial heir Richard Oetker .

Life

Dieter Zlof came to Munich shortly after his birth . In 1976 he lived in a row house at Blumenauer Strasse 65 in the Pasing district of Munich . The business economist and operator of a Munich car workshop kidnapped Richard Oetker on December 14, 1976, extorted DM 21 million  from Rudolf-August Oetker , which was handed over the day after next. Zlof then released the seriously injured Oetker on the same day. The police assume that Zlof had kept his kidnap victim in a corrugated iron hut in the Pasing district, which Zlof otherwise used as a car repair shop. Zlof forced Richard Oetker to lie down in a coffin-like box in the hold of a VW van and handcuff himself. The box was later connected to a circuit when the car was parked in a garage after a short stopover (probably in Zlof's corrugated iron workshop). When the kidnapper touched the tin roof of the van when opening the garage door in the morning, this device was triggered, with Oetker suffering severe nerve damage and broken bones. Despite several special treatments, Oetker was permanently severely handicapped.

At that time, the DM 21 million was the highest ransom demand in the history of Germany. This sum also misled the police. Because the number 21 is divisible by 3, the investigators assumed a three-man gang, which later turned out to be a fallacy. Immediately after the victim was released, an extensive search campaign by the criminal police began. Zlof was arrested as a suspect only after two years . He denied the act, but was sentenced in a sensational circumstantial trial on June 9, 1980 to a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. After his release from prison on January 26, 1994, he initially presented himself in the media as a victim of justice and only admitted his perpetration in his biography , which was published in 1997. This was written by Nicole Amelung, the wife of his lawyer Martin Amelung .

Before his arrest, Zlof had only used a few bills from the ransom, whose serial numbers were registered. So he exchanged six thousand DM notes in Austria and finally tried unsuccessfully to deposit another, the serial number of which had been published incorrectly, into his bank in Munich.

The ransom consisted of DM notes of the third series that were in circulation in the 1970s. These notes were replaced by new fourth series notes from 1990 . The old 1000 DM notes were suspended before Dieter Zlof's release and could therefore only be exchanged at the Bundesbank and the state central banks.

After his release from prison, Zlof worked under a false identity ( code name "Ehrlich" ) in marketing and at the same time received unemployment benefits. In May 1997 he tried in London to exchange a larger part of the ransom. He was arrested and about 12.4 million DM from the ransom that he had with him could be secured by Scotland Yard . Most of the bills had rotted away. The remainder of the ransom was wrapped in plastic film in a hideout in the forest while Zlof was in custody, and the remainder had been burned by Zlof together with an accomplice. The hiding place, in which the captured DM 21 million were buried from January 1979 to the end of 1995, was located in a tree-lined mud pit near the Ayinger district of Rauchberg, around 30 km southeast of Munich. It was a 85 centimeter deep, moist hole that was discovered in the spring of 1997. After his arrest in 1997, due to the different legal situation in England , Zlof was sentenced to another two years imprisonment for attempted money laundering and committed fraud .

Dieter Zlof is heavily indebted due to the obligation to repay the ransom and ran a snack bar in Munich after the turn of the millennium .

See also

literature

  • Nicole Amelung: The Oetker kidnapping . 2nd Edition. Hilchner & Lesani, Neuss 1997, ISBN 3-9805045-5-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Rolf Henkel: What then, Oetker again? In: Die Zeit , No. 7/1979.
  2. ↑ Chronicle of a kidnapping. Mirror TV.
  3. ^ Ransom: Hiding place found . Focus , April 7, 1997; accessed on December 13, 2017
  4. ^ Hans-Dieter Götz: Ransom: Hiding place found . Focus 15/1997, April 7, 1997, pp. 40-43.
  5. ↑ Oetker mourns the friend of the police officer . In: tz Munich , October 26, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Zlof, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German criminal, Oetker kidnapper
DATE OF BIRTH December 4, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Celje