Abduction of Ursula Herrmann

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The kidnapping of Ursula Herrmann took place on September 15, 1981 near the Ammersee in Bavaria . The ten-year-old kidnapping victim was found lifeless on October 4, 1981 in a box buried in the ground in a forest between Schondorf am Ammersee and Eching am Ammersee . A man arrested in 2008 was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2010 in a circumstantial trial. His revision was unsuccessful.

The crime is one of the most sensational criminal cases in German post-war history.

Sequence of events

Ten-year-old student Ursula Herrmann from Eching am Ammersee was on the way home from her uncle in Schondorf am Ammersee on September 15, 1981 at around 7:35 pm when she was kidnapped. She was likely drugged and then taken to a prepared hiding place. It was a box buried in the forest floor in a piece of forest called "Weingarten" (between Schondorf and Eching) with a base area of ​​72 × 60 cm and a height of 139 cm. The box was equipped with a small bench and lighting, as well as food supplies, a toilet bucket, a radio, and comics and western novels. A pipe system should be used for ventilation. A jogging suit, wrapped in foil, was placed on the lap of the girl sitting on the bench, then the box was closed and covered with earth. To camouflage the hiding place, five small spruce trees were planted in the forest floor.

However, the pipe system was unsuitable for allowing air to be exchanged, so that the girl might suffocate after half an hour, or at the latest after a few hours. According to coroner Wolfgang Eisenmenger , the girl lost consciousness due to the increasing lack of oxygen and died at the latest an hour and a half after being locked in the box.

On September 17th, Ursula Hermann's parents received seven calls in which the caller did not speak a word and only played the traffic news jingle from the radio station Bayern 3 . Four more such calls followed on September 18. On the last of the calls, the mother asked for a sign of life. On the same day a letter arrived with a ransom demand for two million DM . Another letter arrived on September 21, 1981 with instructions on how to hand over the money. Then the contact broke off. Probably the kidnapper (s) had gone to the hiding place in the forest to ask for a sign of life and discovered that the girl was no longer alive.

Ursula Herrmann's father was a teacher, the mother looked after the four children as a housewife. It was puzzling why the Herrmann family of all people was blackmailed into paying the enormous sum of two million DM.

Police investigation

The box containing the child's body was found on October 4, 1981, 19 days after the kidnapping. The shrink-wrapped jogging suit was still on Ursula's lap; she had apparently not got up. The food had not been touched. Ursula may have remained unconscious after being anesthetized until she died.

By 2008, police checked nearly 20,000 fingerprints, 15,000 people, 11,000 vehicles, and followed more than 40,000 leads. During this period of 27 years, more than 300 files were filled for the investigation. Since, from a legal point of view, the act did not necessarily constitute murder , but possibly extortionate kidnapping with death, the statute of limitations was threatened after 30 years.

From the beginning it was rumored that Ursula Herrmann might have been mistaken for another girl during the kidnapping. In fact, there was a girl in the Herrmann family's neighborhood who looked a lot like Ursula Herrmann and whose father was wealthy. In 2004/2005 investigations began in this direction. Two men were suspected of having had contact with the father several times. They had committed multiple offenses and were in heavy debt in the year of the kidnapping. In 2006 the trail led to a German who had emigrated to Asia. He was detained in Taiwan in 2002 for drug trafficking and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2008. He denied any involvement in the act and voluntarily submitted a saliva sample . When his DNA was compared with traces of genes from the Ursula Herrmann case, no matches were found.

In 2005, several hairs that had been found in the box at the time and that did not come from Ursula Herrmann were examined using DNA analysis . However, the genetic print belonged to a forensic scientist who had been involved in the case.

At the beginning of 2007, a new DNA trace was secured on a wooden screw in the box. In May 2007 it became known that she matched two DNA traces from the crime scene of the Charlotte Böhringer murder . When comparing the new DNA trace with the DNA of around 30 people from among the suspects in the Ursula Herrmann case, including Werner M., who was later convicted, there was no hit. How the two criminal cases could be related remained unclear and the subject of speculation. It is also possible that there is no connection at all, because accidental or intentional contamination of sample material can also be considered as the cause of the match between the DNA traces.

Legal processing

The trial against Werner M. before the Augsburg jury court

In May 2008, a 58-year-old man was arrested in Kappeln . He also lived in Eching in the early 1980s and ran a radio and television shop in a neighboring town. The investigators thought he was heavily in debt. It had been investigated against him shortly after the crime. At that time, however, witnesses provided an alibi . The accused still denies the act to this day. In his apartment, one in 2007, tape recorder Brand Grundig Model TK seized 248, for a complex in April 2008 Phonetics report was created. According to the report, the tape recorder had technical abnormalities that made it possible to prepare telephone calls whose characteristic features were similar to those recorded by the police at Herrmann's house. In October 2008, the 58-year-old television technician and his wife were charged.

The main hearing against the main suspect Werner M. and his wife began in February 2009. A suspected helper Klaus P. had died in the meantime. Forensic doctor Wolfgang Eisenmenger was questioned as an expert in the proceedings. After 55 days of the trial, the Augsburg public prosecutor's office demanded life imprisonment for the accused for extortionate kidnapping resulting in death. The criminal court believed a confession of Klaus P., who wanted to have dug the hole in the forest on behalf of Werner M., although he had revoked his confession. According to the court, Klaus P. had knowledge of the perpetrators . The expert opinion on the tape recorder convinced the court because of the respected experts. On March 25, 2010 Werner M. was sentenced to life imprisonment for extortionate kidnapping resulting in death. The Augsburg Regional Court followed the prosecution's request. His wife was acquitted. When the Federal Court of Justice upheld the judgment on January 25, 2011, it became final .

Civil case Michael Herrmann against Werner M.

Michael Herrmann, the brother of the kidnapped Ursula Herrmann, filed a lawsuit for damages with the Augsburg Regional Court in December 2013. He sued the convicted Werner M. for 20,000 euros in compensation for pain and suffering because he had suffered lasting damage to his health as a result of the nerve-wracking criminal process. Michael Herrmann had strong doubts about the guilt of the convicted Werner M. His complaint for pain and suffering had the background that he wanted to obtain new evidence about the kidnapping of his sister. This gave Werner M. the unexpected chance that his conviction would be re-examined.

The questioning of witnesses did not begin until September 7, 2017. Word had got around that an expert opinion on an old tape recorder, which has since been attacked, was the most important piece of evidence in the criminal case in 2009. It was generally unknown that, in addition to the expert opinion, the conviction was based on a confession: the confession of Klaus P., who died in 1992 and who, according to his testimony, dug the hole for Ursula Herrmann's dungeon on behalf of the convicted M. Therefore, the two-hour trial was devoted solely to interrogating a retired detective who was involved in the investigation at the time. However, there was no interrogation protocol of the confession with the signature of Klaus P. There was only a memory protocol of the officer, which he said he made on the day of the interrogation. Before that, however, Klaus P. had revoked his confession after he had not been able to show the police the spot in the forest off the lake path along the Ammersee where he said he had dug. There is also a suspicion that the memory log was actually written two months later. Only then did it appear under pressure from the head of the special commission. Afterwards P. described the content of his confession several times with further details, but always with the indication that it was his invention. The criminal court believed this admission, which weighed heavily on Werner M. According to the court, it contained perpetrator knowledge, i.e. details that only the perpetrator or accomplice could know. The criminal court did not consider Klaus P's revocation.

The current questioning of the former official concerned the credibility of the confession and, above all, the perpetrator knowledge on which the criminal court had relied at the time. Gradually it became clear that Klaus P., who was interrogated at the time, did not really have any knowledge of the perpetrators. The details described by P. could be found in almost all press reports. A faulty crime scene sketch that P. had made at the time could be traced back to a faulty press release from the criminal police. Ultimately, the witness was accused of having stated during his interrogation by the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office in October 2008 that after the unsuccessful search, P. had shown the actual burial site himself.

On the second day of the hearing, November 23, 2017, the retired first clerk of the special commission that was set up after the kidnapping of Ursula Herrmann was questioned. The credibility of the statements made by Klaus P., who died in 1992, was still at issue. The official stated that he considered Klaus P. to be a psychopathic alcoholic who should not be believed.

During the civil trial, the officer was unable to make plausible how Klaus P. could obtain the perpetrator knowledge on which the criminal court had relied. He insisted that it was impossible for Klaus P. to have obtained it from anyone other than himself. Werner M's lawyer submitted a press release from the criminal police in October 1981, which contained almost all the details that Klaus P. mentioned several times during his interrogations up until the spring of 1982. The first clerk even marked this declaration as read with his note. Although this document already existed in the extensive investigation files during the criminal trial, it was apparently not taken into account at the time.

At the end of the second day of the hearing, the court announced that it endorsed the existing report on the tape recorder of April 14, 2008 and did not consider any further information to be necessary. On February 8, 2018, the court wanted to announce its decision. After the second day of the hearing, both parties requested that the experts who had prepared the report on the Grundig TK 248 tape recorder in 2008 and 2009 be invited to give an oral explanation of the report. The court then ordered the experts to be heard. The parties were instructed to submit their questions to the experts to the court in advance. During the survey on June 21, 2018, the expert changed her opinion on some important points that the parties had targeted.

On July 25, 2018 Michael Herrmann published an open letter "to the Justice of the Free State of Bavaria and the media". In it he accused the civil court of not even believing the expert he had appointed himself on the question of his health impairment. The court only dragged out the proceedings, which had been going on for five years, in order to gain time. He also wrote: “There are many indications that an innocent man has been in prison for 10 years. [...] I don't want to put up with that. For me there are more and more indications of another group of perpetrators that has so far only been poorly investigated. "

On August 2, 2018, the court sentenced Werner M. to pay Michael Herrmann € 7,000. 35% of the costs of the proceedings were imposed on the defendant and 65% on the plaintiff. The compensation for pain and suffering awarded to Michael Herrmann was lower than the originally requested 20,000 euros and significantly lower than the litigation costs incurred by Michael Herrmann.

At the appeal hearing in March 2020, the Munich Higher Regional Court decided that the brother would not receive any compensation for pain and suffering from the legally convicted perpetrator and thus overturned the judgment of the Augsburg Regional Court.

New evidence since 2019

In May 2019, Michael Herrmann, the victim's brother, submitted new information to the judicial authorities. On the back of a ransom note it was possible to decipher what had been written on a sheet of paper that was previously open. The "print marks" were already noticed in 1981, but could not be interpreted at the time. They came from sketches for a mathematical problem in the field of stochastics , as taught at the upper school level. Other evidence also indicated that the perpetrators were among the students at a boarding school near the crime scene. The Landheim Ammersee school home is in close proximity to the small forest area where Ursula Herrmann died.

On August 20, 2019, the Augsburg public prosecutor announced that the new information submitted by Michael Herrmann did not change anything about the fact that the act could not be assessed as murder. The crime is therefore statute barred. The references are also not suitable to fundamentally question the final judgment of March 2010. For these reasons it is not possible to reopen the proceedings. This decision was the final step in the legal processing of the crime. However, in early February 2021, the public prosecutor's office published information on a letter of confession that an unknown person had sent to various companies and authorities in November 2020. The author of the letter describes himself as a high school student at the time.

reception

The crime is one of the most sensational criminal cases in German post-war history.

The case was the subject of the ZDF television series Aktenzeichen XY… unsolved in 1982, 1986 and 2002 and resolved in 2020 in the special broadcast Aktenzeichen XY… . Gunther Scholz attacked the case in the documentary It wasn't me! Two judgments and many doubts (2016). In 2019, Bayerischer Rundfunk produced the six-part radio documentary The Murder Case Ursula Hermann.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Kidnapped, buried in a box, suffocated - the gruesome fate of little Ursula stern.de, February 5, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b Article on the testimony of forensic doctor Wolfgang Eisenmenger merkur.de, March 26, 2009.
  3. ^ A b Julia Jüttner: Abduction of Ursula Herrmann: Open wound. Spiegel Online, May 2, 2020.
  4. ↑ The Chronicle of Cold Blood Crime news.bayern, May 30, 2008.
  5. ↑ The trail leads to Taiwan merkur.de, April 27, 2009.
  6. ↑ Ursula's abduction: Was it all a tragic mix-up? Augsburger Allgemeine , April 29, 2009.
  7. ^ Evening newspaper of November 8, 2005, cover and page 7: Suspicion of murder drove police officers to their deaths .
  8. ↑ Murder cases Ursula Herrmann and Charlotte Böhringer: The secret of trace J73.03.3 sueddeutsche.de, May 17, 2010.
  9. ↑ Herrmann murder case: start of the trial. Traces of an almost forgotten act sueddeutsche.de, February 19, 2009.
  10. ↑ a b Ursula Herrmann Trial One last doubt remains sueddeutsche.de, March 25, 2010.
  11. ^ Herrmann trial: the defendant insists on his innocence Augsburger Allgemeine, March 18, 2010.
  12. ↑ Spectacular murder solved after 27 years Spiegel Online, May 30, 2008.
  13. ^ Judgment against the kidnappers of Ursula Herrmann becomes final Augsburger Allgemeine, January 25, 2011.
  14. ↑ a b Open letter from Michael Herrmann , July 25, 2018.
  15. ↑ Brother of Ursula Herrmann sued the convicted Augsburger Allgemeine, February 21, 2015.
  16. ↑ The case is reopened: Who kidnapped Ursula Herrmann? Augsburger Allgemeine, February 17, 2017.
  17. ↑ Information on the kidnapping of Ursula Herrmann Private website from Bernd Haider, Windach.
  18. ↑ New questions in the case of Ursula Herrmann Augsburger Allgemeine, September 8, 2017.
  19. ↑ Hans Holzhaider : The doubts in the Herrmann case persist sueddeutsche.de, August 2, 2018.
  20. ↑ a b Case Ursula Herrmann: court rejects compensation for pain and suffering for brother. Spiegel Online, March 31, 2020.
  21. ↑ The murder case Ursula Herrmann BR Fernsehen, June 26, 2019 (video, 16:57 min.), Here 14:18 to 14:32.
  22. ↑ New evidence in the Ursula Herrmann case sueddeutsche.de, March 19, 2019.
  23. ↑ After almost 40 years: Was the wrong person convicted for the death of Ursula Herrmann? sterntv.de, April 10, 2019, see section “Evidence suggests different perpetrator profile”.
  24. ^ Public Prosecutor's Office: No new investigations into the Ursula Herrmann Augsburger Allgemeine case, August 20, 2019.
  25. ↑ The Ursula Herrmann file will probably remain closed forever Augsburger Allgemeine, August 20, 2019.
  26. ↑ Mysterious letter of confession in the case of Ursula Herrmann. Article of February 3, 2021 on the website of Bayerischer Rundfunk , accessed on February 3, 2021.
  27. ^ The Ursula Hermann murder case , six-part radio documentary in the ARD Audiothek.