Frauke Liebs murder case

The Frauke Liebs murder case is an unsolved criminal case from the Paderborn area in North Rhine-Westphalia . Frauke Liebs (* February 21, 1985 ; † on or after June 27, 2006) was the victim of a capital crime .

Reconstruction of the events on the night of the disappearance

On Tuesday, June 20, 2006, Frauke Liebs disappeared in an unexplained manner. That afternoon, she met her mother and roommate for dinner in a restaurant. Meanwhile, Liebs received a text message from a friend. She arranged to meet her in an Irish pub in downtown Paderborn to watch a game of the 2006 World Cup with other friends . After dinner, Liebs had her mother and roommate drive her to the Irish Pub, which she reached around 9 p.m.

During the game between Sweden and England, Liebs wrote several text messages to a friend. When the battery of her cell phone was empty, she borrowed a full one from her friend, but gave it back before leaving the pub, according to the friend.

At around 11 p.m., Liebs said goodbye to her friends and went home alone. It is considered likely that she started this on foot, as she should only have had a maximum of 5 euros with her. Which path Liebs had taken could not be clarified due to the lack of witnesses. Her apartment was about a mile from the pub. According to her roommate, she never got there.

SMS and calls

At 12:49 a.m., the roommate received a text message from Liebs' cell phone, which announced their late return. The police determined that this message had been sent from the Nieheim-Entrup radio area in the Höxter district . The next day, Liebs didn't show up for work. After she was not found in her apartment, Liebs' mother reported her daughter as missing on the same day.

In the following days, Frauke Liebs called her roommate five times from her cell phone. Most of the short calls came in the evening from various Paderborn industrial areas and hardly gave any explanation of their situation. At first Liebs indicated that she would soon be returning home, but she answered further questions vaguely or evasively and in some cases also puzzling or absurd.

The last phone call followed in the late evening of June 27, 2006 in the presence of Frauke's sister. During this conversation, Liebs is said to have answered the question of whether she was being held against her will initially with a quiet “yes”, but immediately revised this statement with a loud “no”. After this phone call, contact with Liebs was broken.

Corpse discovery and commemoration

On October 4th, 2006, Frauke Liebs' body was found by a hunter near Lichtenau on the L817 between Asseln and Herbram-Wald in the Paderborn district . It lay heavily decayed and skeletonized in a forest, about 20 meters from the road, in a hollow behind a tree trunk under fir thickets ( approximate location ). Forensic investigations suggested that the location was not the crime scene . No tire tracks, fingerprints or DNA traces could be secured. 51.666555555556 8.9573055555556

Liebs' body was discovered with the clothes (blue jeans, red top and white sneakers) from the day she disappeared. Her cell phone and black handbag, wallet and watch were not found. Due to the advanced skeletonization of the corpse, neither the exact time of death nor the cause of death could be conclusively determined.

Frauke Liebs was buried on October 27, 2006 in the Lübbeck cemetery. At the place where it was found there is now a small unofficial memorial; a wooden cross on the roadside reminds of her with her first name.

Manhunt

As part of a special commission, over 700 reports were checked and more than 1000 people questioned. An operative case analysis by the State Criminal Police Office in North Rhine-Westphalia came to the conclusion in 2007 that Liebs was probably being held in the Nieheim area and that the perpetrator, who was probably familiar with the area, was only brought to Paderborn for calls that he monitored and which could have served as a distraction. A specific motive could not be narrowed down.

The case was the subject of numerous newspaper articles and several television programs, including file number XY ... unsolved , unsolved murders - on the trail of the perpetrator , crime report (WDR) and witnesses wanted (SAT1).

In mid-2016, according to press reports, the criminal police checked a possible connection to the Höxter criminal case , in which a couple detained and abused several women in their house in the Bosseborn district . Two victims died in the process. However, the police later announced that no possible connections could be found.