Dieter Zurwehme

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Dieter Zurwehme (born July 2, 1942 in Bochum ) is a German serial killer . In the first half of 1999 he caused a stir in the media throughout Germany by escaping from prison for several months.

Life

Zurwehme grew up with adoptive parents in Ottbergen , a district of Höxter in the Weser Uplands , and already committed a crime at the age of twelve when he tried to rob a 15-year-old. At the age of 16 he received a first prison sentence for theft and embezzlement. In November 1972, Zurwehme killed an employee by stabbing a woman in the neck during a robbery on a real estate office in Düren . As a result of this act, he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Aachen regional court in 1974 for murder and, in the majority of cases, sexual and robbery offenses and vehicle theft .

During imprisonment in the Bielefeld-Brackwede correctional facility , psychologists saw an apparent change in personality; Zurwehme learned Latin and French in prison and received regular leave from prison from 1988 onwards because of good conduct . In 1997 it was moved to open prison .

Escape

On December 2, 1998, Zurwehme did not return from his 166th release. His trail was quickly lost and the police investigations were unsuccessful. On his escape, he killed four elderly people in Remagen on March 21, 1999 : He stabbed a 71-year-old who recognized him in his villa, which was under renovation, where Zurwehme had stayed. When the victim's cell phone rang, Zurwehme answered and told the calling wife of his victim that something had happened to her husband and that he would tell her everything else in a personal conversation. After the shocked wife gave him her address, he went to her house and killed her, her brother and her sister-in-law in the same way. Then he continued his escape, on which he kept himself afloat with money from robberies and various temporary jobs. He also committed rape while escaping via Bochum , Remagen, Lindau , Dessau , Frankfurt am Main , Calw , Baden-Baden , Freiburg im Breisgau and Cuxhaven . Zurwehme managed to escape the investigators again and again in the course of his escape. For example, he managed to escape from corn fields that had already been surrounded, or to flee just a few minutes before the police arrived. The search was made even more difficult by several police mishaps.

Friedhelm Beate dies

On June 27, 1999, the MDR broadcast a search for Dieter Zurwehme, who was traveling with a walking stick and rucksack , in the program Kripo live . After the broadcast, a waitress from the Thuringian town of Heldrungen reported to the police from numerous callers and said that a guest with a walking stick and backpack was staying in the hotel where she worked. This was the retiree and hobby hiker Friedhelm Beate (born July 29, 1936 in Cologne ), who was also a member of the German Alpine Club and manager of the Adler Cologne cycling club . However, the police officers who arrived at the hotel three hours later did not have a picture of Zurwehmes with them, so that the identity of the suspect could not be verified. When the plainclothes policemen tried to gain access to Beates' room, Beates tried to shut the door, apparently believing it was a robbery. The officers then fired two shots. One shot hit Beate in the heart, the other grazed his ribs. The officers did not open the door, but waited for the special task force to arrive , which took half an hour. Thereupon Friedhelm Beate was found lying dead on the floor of the room. A preliminary investigation for negligent homicide was initiated against the police officers. In the investigation report, the police argued that they had assumed that the man in the room was the felon Zurwehme. The gunshots from the police officers' weapons were unintentionally released, according to the final report, which summarized the reports of the Bavarian chief criminal Petra Sandles and the Federal Criminal Police Office . The case is closed. Ten years after his death, Beate's widow had a bench set up in his memory at the Adenauer-Weiher in Cologne-Müngersdorf . The wanted mishap was picked up in the Thuringian state election campaign , was the subject of a radio play on Deutschlandradio and serves as an example of unsuccessful public searches and police operations.

Another arrest and conviction

On August 19, 1999, a car driver in Greifswald who had seen Zurwehmes picture in a television report just a few days earlier, accidentally became aware of it. The police officers summoned were able to locate and arrest the criminal. When he was asked for his ID and disgusted with the hopelessness of the situation, he is said to have surrendered with the words "I am the one you are looking for". For four counts of murder, aggravated robbery, rape, coercion and false imprisonment condemned the district court Koblenz Zurwehme in June 2000 to life imprisonment with subsequent preventive detention . He is imprisoned in the Bochum correctional facility . On February 15, 2001, Zurwehme married a waitress from the Berlin district of Spandau and is now a widower .

Another quadruple murder committed on Dutch holidaymakers in a country house in southern France during Zurweehle's escape on May 22, 1999, was originally also linked to him. This suspicion later turned out to be false.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerhard Starke, Christoph Kloft: I had to kill them. The crimes of Dieter Zurwehme and other authentic cases . Militzke, Leipzig 2014, ISBN 978-3-86189-865-8 .
  2. ↑ a b Anja Wunsch: "Murderer Zurwehme: 'I am the one you are looking for'" ( Memento from December 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) in rp-online.de ( Rheinische Post ). Retrieved on November 19, 2009 (German)
  3. ↑ a b “False and real traces” in spiegel.de ( Spiegel Online ). Retrieved on November 19, 2009 (German)
  4. ↑ "Flucht ins Maisfeld" in spiegel.de ( Spiegel Online ). Retrieved on February 20, 2010 (German)
  5. ↑ a b c Bo Adam: Kripo live . A vacationer was shot dead in Thuringia in the summer because the police thought he was a murderer - will a charge be brought or not? In: Berliner Zeitung . December 10, 1999, ISSN  0947-174X ( online [accessed January 21, 2020]).
  6. ↑ Landolf Scherzer : The Last. Structure Verlag, 2000 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  7. ^ Report in Stern, 1999 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  8. ↑ Felix Kurz: Bad Crime . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1999, p. 37 ( Online - July 5, 1999 ).
  9. ↑ http://www.thueringen.de/imperia/md/content/thgsta/pm2009/pm1999-10-08.pdf
  10. ↑ http://www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/stress-schutzt-vor-strafe
  11. ↑ http://www.taz.de/1/archiv/print-archiv/printressorts/digi-artikel/?ressort=in&dig=2001%2F07%2F20%2Fa0074&cHash=8c77a790a1
  12. ↑ http://www.bild.de/regional/koeln/polizei/erinnert-an-friedhelm-beate-9156986.bild.html
  13. ^ Peter Riesbeck: Sluggish investigations. Before the state elections, Thuringia is silent about the mishaps in the Friedhelm Beate case. In: Berliner Zeitung . September 2, 1999, accessed January 21, 2020 .
  14. ↑ http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendung/hoerspiel/177281/
  15. ↑ A case for Commissioner Bürger. In: Der Spiegel . March 29, 2012, accessed January 21, 2020 .
  16. ↑ https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Gegenwehr-288266.html
  17. ↑ https://swrmediathek.de/player.htm?show=29e276e0-6d78-11e7-bcc9-005056a10824
personal data
SURNAME Gladly, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German serial killer
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Bochum