Abduction of the Schlecker children

The hut near Griesingen where Meike and Lars Schlecker were held.

Lars Schlecker (* 1971) and his younger sister Meike Schlecker (* 1973), the children of the then drugstore entrepreneur Anton Schlecker , were kidnapped in 1987 at the age of 16 and 14 by Herbert Franz Jacoby , Wilhelm Hudelmaier and Dieter Hudelmaier. They were released the next day. The kidnappers, whoextorted a ransom of 9.6 millionDeutschmarks, were sentenced in 1999 to long prison terms.

kidnapping

On December 22, 1987, Christa and Anton Schlecker's children were kidnapped. The family was at a Christmas party that evening and drove home around 11 p.m. The family's residence was then at Rothäuleweg 13 in Ehingen, Baden-Württemberg . The three masked men attacked the mother, Christa Schlecker, and the children in the house. The perpetrators then took their son and daughter hostage. Initially, the kidnappers demanded a ransom of 18 million Deutschmarks. The siblings were tied up in a fisherman's hut just five kilometers away near Griesingen .

A war of nerves began with negotiations lasting for hours. The father, Anton Schlecker, negotiated the claims down to 9.6 million D-Marks, the sum for which Schlecker was insured. On December 23, 1987, the day after the deed, a Schleckers authorized signatory set out from Ulm with the agreed amount on the way to Ehingen, where the money was handed over. The blackmailers disappeared in the employee's car and drove in the direction of Ulm. The authorized signatory's vehicle was later found in the Deutschhaus multi-storey car park at Ulm Central Station. Lars and Meike Schlecker were able to free themselves from the handcuffs and escape from the fisherman's hut.

The case was cinematically reconstructed on November 4, 1988 in the program Aktenzeichen XY ... unsolved .

In the summer of 1998, the hostage-takers were arrested two weeks after their last bank robbery in Ehingen. They attacked the then director of Volksbank Ehingen in his house. Curiously, he also lived in Ehingen in Rothäuleweg, i.e. in Schlecker's former immediate neighborhood. On March 22, 1999, the two main defendants, Herbert Franz Jacoby (60 years old) and Wilhelm Hudelmaier (64), were sentenced by the Ulm Regional Court to thirteen and a half years' imprisonment for both extortion and extortion . Wilhelm Hudelmaier died in prison in 2000. The third defendant, Dieter Hudelmaier (57), received seven and a half years in prison for his involvement in two crimes. In seven other cases, the criminals captured a total of almost 16 million Deutschmarks.

literature

• Roland May: The Schlecker kidnappers. In: Helfried Spitra (ed.): The great criminal cases. Volume 2: The St. Pauli Killer, the Escape King and nine other famous crimes (= Piper 4477). Piper Verlag GmbH, Munich et al. 2005, ISBN 3-492-24477-7 , pp. 164-179.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ARD contribution: The great criminal cases - Die Schlecker kidnappers, film by Roland May, 2004