Goehrde murders

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The Göhrde murders in the Göhrde state forest in Lower Saxony are two double murders that caused a sensation in the whole of West Germany in the summer of 1989 and are now regarded as spectacular crimes . Within a few weeks, two couples were murdered by the same perpetrator in the same forest area of ​​the Göhrde. The second double homicide took place while the criminal police were securing traces of the first crime about 800 meters away . The forest area was then avoided for a long time by walkers and day trippers, and the criminal case remained unresolved for almost 30 years.

At the end of December 2017, the Lower Saxony police announced that they had identified the cemetery gardener Kurt-Werner Wichmann, who died in 1993 as a result of suicide , with a high degree of probability as the perpetrator, who was also probably a serial killer with further murders. This would have shown DNA analyzes of two hairs. The investigators suspected another previously unknown person to have been an accomplice in the murders (and possibly other acts). In May 2019, it was announced that the police had resumed the investigation. After a suspect of complicity refused to testify, the police went public.

Location and weather

Location of the Göhrde state forest and the crime scene in the Lüchow-Dannenberg district

Location of the Göhrde and the crime scene

The Göhrde is a state forest of around 75 square kilometers in the Lüchow-Dannenberg district and, to a lesser extent, in the Lüneburg district . Both districts are located in the northeastern region of the federal state of Lower Saxony, about 60 kilometers from Hamburg , 30 kilometers from Lüneburg and 20 kilometers from Uelzen . The Göhrde forms the largest mixed forest in northern Germany and is almost uninhabited. It used to be the preferred hunting area of the Dukes of Braunschweig and Lüneburg , who built the Göhrde hunting lodge in the area at the beginning of the 18th century . Later, the kings of Hanover and the German emperor hunted in the forest . In 1989 the Göhrde was still in the structurally underdeveloped border area .

The two crime scenes (first and second double murder) are not far from the B 216 in the forest sections Jagen 138 ( location coordinates: 53 ° 8 ′ 12 ″  N , 10 ° 47 ′ 21 ″  E ) and Jagen 147 ( location ).

Weather and temperatures

In the summer of 1989 there was a prolonged heat wave - as it had not for years . It was dry for weeks, so that traces of the weather such as rain, hail or storms were not destroyed. On the other hand, it was exceptionally hot for a long time, which significantly accelerated the mummification process of the corpses.

Murders

First double murder

The crime scene is marked in green. The first victims came from Hamburg-Bergedorf, their car was found in Winsen. The second couple came from Hanover and Uelzen; his vehicle was found in Bad Bevensen.
Parking lot near the forester's house Röthen
Forest path from the parking lot to hunt 147 and 138

On May 21, 1989, the couple Ursula and Peter Reinold from Hamburg-Bergedorf drove to the Göhrde to go for a walk. It is believed that the 45-year-old woman and her 51-year-old husband went to a clearing in Hunting 147 to sunbathe or picnic . The couple were killed there, but not left at the scene . The perpetrator took his victims to a nearby valley and hid them there. The victims were undressed. It remained unclear whether they had undressed themselves before the murder or were undressed by the perpetrator. The perpetrator stole a picnic basket from the victims and took the couple's car keys. With their Honda Civic he fled the Göhrde and left the car 300 meters from the train station in Winsen an der Luhe , a small town in the " Hamburg bacon belt ". The couple had meanwhile been reported missing. It was only seven weeks later, on July 12, 1989, that three blueberry collectors discovered the bodies of the victims. Due to the high temperatures at the time, they were considerably decayed, mummified and largely skeletonized by animal damage .

After the berry pickers discovered the bodies, they went to the district ranger to notify the police. On the way there they met a brown-haired, heavily built man about 40 years old with a bag in his hand. The criminal police assume that this was the perpetrator who was looking for further victims in the Göhrde on that day and at this time.

Due to the condition of the two bodies, the exact cause of death could neither be clarified at the scene of the crime nor through the later autopsy . What was certain, however, was that suicide or accident had been eliminated and that the death had occurred as a result of a crime . Due to the traces , shooting , strangling and killing were possible causes in the room. The husband had an injury to his larynx . However, it could not be determined whether it was a question of strangulation traits or injuries caused by foraging, trampling wild boars .

Second double murder

On July 12, 1989, the day the first double murder was discovered, the 46-year-old housewife Ingrid Warmbier from Uelzen and a 43-year-old district manager of the Toto-Lotto company , Bernd-Michael Köpping from Hanover , drove to Göhrde together. It was a couple of lovers who came from nearby Bad Bevensen after lunch and was apparently going on a trip. Both were otherwise married. They had met during a cure , their respective spouses knew nothing about their relationship. They parked on a small side street near the Röthen forester's house and walked more than two kilometers into the forest. There, in the forest section Jagen 138, they met the perpetrator, who apparently threatened them with a firearm and partly tied their hands and feet with leukoplastic tape. Both had to lie down face down. The perpetrator strangled the male victim and killed him from behind by shooting in the head with a small-caliber weapon 5.6 millimeters. The perpetrator smashed the woman's skull and inflicted severe injuries in the chest area. The blouse was pulled up level with the bra and the bra was cut through. Both victims were shot in the head. He then stole a Polaroid instant camera from the male victim and the car keys of his Toyota Tercel , with which he escaped from the Göhrde. Further investigations revealed that the perpetrator had driven around with this vehicle for about a week before he parked it near the health clinic in Bad Bevensen.

Two weeks later, on July 27, 1989, police officers of the requested deployment hundred units accidentally discovered the two victims of the second double murder as part of a comprehensive search for evidence of the first double murder. The time of death could safely be dated to July 12, 1989, the day on which the police began their investigation into the location of the first murdered couple. The scene of the crime was about 800 meters from where the victims of the first double murder were found. According to the investigators' reconstructions, the perpetrator committed the second double murder at a time when the criminal police were at the location of the first two victims and were starting their investigations. Later tests showed that despite the short distance, gunfire could not have been heard because both the location of the bodies of the first double murder and the crime scene of the second double murder were in sinks.

Parallels

The parallels between the two crimes lay in the fact that a middle-aged couple was murdered and that the crime scenes were in the same wooded area of ​​the huge forest. In addition, the perpetrator stole conspicuous technical objects from the victims in both cases, although the investigations showed that they were not classic robberies . The perpetrator took the car keys from both pairs of victims in order to escape from the Göhrde with the vehicles. In both cases, he left the vehicles in nearby small towns with rail connections. Both cities are on the Hanover – Hamburg railway line . These parallels led the investigators to believe that the perpetrators were the same. He is believed to have disposed of the items he had seized in both cases after the two double homicides attracted extraordinary media attention.

consequences

The two double murders also had major consequences for the Göhrde, as they terrified the entire region. Both in the press and on television, the state forest was given the name "Dead Forest". Walkers and day trippers avoided the forest for years.

Investigations

Phantom drawing of the alleged perpetrator from 1989

activities

Immediately after discovering the first crime, the Lower Saxony police formed a 40-strong special commission with detectives from the region and Lüneburg. The special commission created 1,911 trace files and questioned nearly 10,000 people. A phantom image was created and published and a reward of 50,000 D-Marks was offered. In December 1989 and again in January 1990, the case was broadcast unsolved on the wanted television program Aktenzeichen XY ... The wanted mails did not lead to success.

As a result of further investigations by police psychologists, the perpetrator was characterized as brutal, aggressive, cold-hearted, loner, sexually disturbed, mentally ill, choleric , over-correct and introverted . The investigators assumed that he was a non-smoker, that he was able to organize his time himself and that he would not be missed when he was absent from work.

The reviews of a number of people, for example the patients in the closed psychiatry who had an exit at the time of the crime, as well as the guests of pensions, hotels and health resorts in nearby Bad Bevensen did not continue. The examination of all vehicle owners for vehicle registration numbers that had been noted by the authorities in any way at the time of the crime was also unsuccessful. Kurt-Werner Wichmann, who was later identified as the perpetrator, was also checked. He was suspect because of his criminal record and was on sick leave at the time of the second double homicide (at the time of the first murder on a Sunday, he was also out of work). But one saw him as relieved because he was wearing glasses, which did not correspond to the phantom image.

The victim's husband, a baker, was also suspected in the second double homicide. Then he hired a contract killer to kill his unfaithful wife and lover, and the killer accidentally first caught the wrong couple.

First "hot track"

After a short time there was a “ hot lead ”. A similar double homicide had occurred in Wales in June 1989: the Dixons were shot dead at close range during a camping trip on the Pembrokeshire Coast Path near Little Haven. The bodies were found hidden away from the road, with the husband's hands cuffed behind his back. One day before the double murders, witnesses noticed a man around 40 years old, his description was similar to that of the alleged Göhrde murderer. The witnesses also reported from a companion about 20 years old with a German or Dutch accent. In the Göhrde, the police found a Dutch coin near the first crime scene. Both the crime scenes in Germany and Wales were close to a training area for British troops. The investigation in Wales initially remained inconclusive until, in May 2009, the 64-year-old John Cooper was taken into custody, whose DNA pattern matches the evidence found at the crime scene near Little Haven. Cooper, who was also charged with another double homicide in 1985 and rape in 1996, pleaded "not guilty". The main hearing in Swansea Crown Court ended after two months on May 26, 2011 with a guilty verdict on all counts and the sentencing of Cooper to life imprisonment. His appeal against this judgment was rejected on November 1, 2012 in the last instance. A connection between Cooper and the Göhrde murders did not ultimately emerge.

Second "hot track"

In 1993 a witness had heard how a man had threatened his wife in a dispute that she should not forget the Göhrde murders, and that she could feel the same if she continued to cheat on him with another man. The witness reported her observations to the police. The first, cursory, check was promising, as the suspect had a gun ownership card for a small-caliber weapon 5.6 millimeters. The male victim of the second double murder was shot with such a weapon. In addition, the suspect's external appearance , such as brown hair and size, matched the phantom image made. Finally, the suspect came from the area and, as a forester, had local knowledge. The local knowledge had been important for the act in such a remote area. After a few months of further investigations, the public prosecutor successfully applied for a search warrant to the competent local court . The thorough search of the forester's house, whose weapons were confiscated, as well as the hour-long interrogation of the suspect and his wife were unsuccessful, as there were no onerous circumstances. On the contrary: the suspect was able to produce an alibi for the second double murder , which means that this trace also did not lead to the investigation. The fact that the investigation into him was not closed until 1995, however, weighed heavily on him, in 2005 he shot himself.

Further development

The special commission was later disbanded. She hadn't been able to find the culprit. The head of the then special commission retired in 1997. After that, two detectives from the then special commission were still working sporadically on the case, an investigator from Lüchow and an investigator from Lüneburg. In 2009, only the detective from Lüneburg was entrusted with the case in such a way as to investigate any clues that might still arise.

In July 2009 there was another, possibly final, investigation: After the crime, two hairs were found in the vehicle of one of the victim pairs (the Reinolds) that could not be assigned to either the victims or their surroundings. The criminal police wanted to isolate DNA samples from the two hairs with the help of the now advanced DNA analysis method and compare them with the data stored at the Federal Criminal Police Office . The problem with DNA analysis was that the DNA pattern of old, fallen hair without roots can only be completely isolated with a probability of 60 percent. The criminal police nevertheless assumed that the two hairs were suitable to determine the perpetrator. In 2014, however, she stated that the case would not be reopened for capacity reasons. In June 2017 it became known that there was a DNA trace from the scene of the murder of the 49-year-old entrepreneur Andrea K. from May 2015 in Hanover's Zooviertel. According to the police, the genetic traces on a wine bottle in Andrea K.'s apartment should match those of the hair that was seized in the Reinolds' car at the time. For the murder of Andrea K., a then 27-year-old lover of the victim was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 2015. Because of his age, the convicted murderer himself cannot be considered as a participant in the Göhrde murders that occurred decades ago. The police do not know who the genetic traces came from (they do not come from Wichmann).

Connections to the murder of Birgit Meier

Crucial clues for identifying the perpetrator of the Göhrde murders emerged from the case of the missing 41-year-old Birgit Meier from Lüneburg. She disappeared without a trace in 1989, shortly after separating from her husband, and the police suspected a felony . On the day of her disappearance, May 15, 1989, she had an appointment with the notary to sell her lonely house in Brietlingen near Lüneburg and the day before she had spoken to her mother on the phone that she would be able to move soon. Initially it was suspected suicide or suspected the husband, who had a settlement of half a million DM agreed to the separation agreement with his wife, but later investigations on the Lüneburg Friedhofsgärtner focused Kurt-Werner Wichmann , which the disappearances previously predicted by the Ex- Had met her husband at a party. In addition, he had previously done gardening work for Birgit Meier's neighbors. There were suspicions against Kurt-Werner Wichmann in the Birgit Meier case as early as 1989 and he was interrogated, but his wife did not check his alleged alibi in more detail. He said nothing about the fact that he was on sick leave at the time Birgit Meier disappeared and the police did not ask for more details. Only with the appointment of a new public prosecutor in Lüneburg did further investigations begin. In 1993 the gardener was charged with suspected murder in the Birgit Meier case, and the police carried out a house search . The investigators found two small- bore rifles, a converted sharp alarm gun revolver, stun gun , silencer , handcuffs , tranquilizers and sleeping pills , torture tools in a secret room closed with a soundproof door, which only he and his brother were allowed to enter. A new, bright red Ford sports coupe was buried in the garden, and there was what appeared to be blood on the back seat. The body tracking dogs struck several times, but no bodies were found.

Kurt-Werner Wichmann had fled before the search. He was arrested near Heilbronn when he was involved in a traffic accident and weapons were found in his vehicle. His brother, ten years his junior, who had a close relationship with him and who was dominated by Kurt-Werner Wichmann, was also in the vehicle. Ten days after his arrest, the 43-year-old Wichmann hanged himself in custody. He had attempted suicide before. He left strange suicide notes in which, among other things, he asked his brother to clean the gutter. After his death, the series of murders ended in the forests around Lüneburg. The further investigations against him were stopped. His vehicle and the items found on him were disposed of by the police.

Private investigation

The fact that the investigation into the Göhrde murders was resumed was thanks to the initiative of the brother of the missing Birgit Meier, the retired former head of the Hamburg State Criminal Police Office , Wolfgang Sielaff . After his retirement in 2002, he continued his educational work on his own. To this end, he formed his own team with the head of forensic medicine in Hamburg, Klaus Püschel , the defense attorney Gerhard Strate and other specialists. In 2013, during a search in a former room of Kurt-Werner Wichmann, Sielaff found video cassettes of the file number XY broadcasts about the Göhrde murders and newspaper clippings. In 2015, Sielaff was also able to set up a new special commission for the police in Lüneburg to investigate the Birgit Meier case. In 2016, handcuffs that had been found in Kurt-Werner Wichmann's house and that were still stored at the Hannover Medical School and thus escaped destruction by the public prosecutor's office were examined. There was a trace of blood on them, which showed a DNA match with the missing person. Sielaff received permission from the new owner of Kurt-Werner Wichmann's former garage in Vrestorf in the Lüneburg district to carry out excavations there. On September 27, 2017, the excavation team discovered human bones under the unusually shallow assembly pit of the garage, and a DNA analysis showed that they were the remains of the missing Birgit Meier. Kurt-Werner Wichmann's house had been searched several times in vain by the Lüneburg police in 1993, once even with body tracking dogs.

Identification of the perpetrator

In December 2017, 28 years after the murders, the Lower Saxony police announced that they considered the former cemetery gardener Kurt-Werner Wichmann to be an urgent suspect for the Göhrde murders and that an investigation team had been set up. A DNA trace found in one of the victims' stolen vehicles could be assigned to Wichmann. According to the police, it was a new trace and not the hair that has been examined over the years. The police believe that there is an accomplice who may have committed other crimes. The main clue for a second person involved in the case derives from the fact that Kurt-Werner Wichmann had driven his own motor vehicle into the Göhrde, but returned in the vehicle of the murdered person. It is unclear who brought Wichmann's own car back. According to Sielaff's findings, there were 21 so far unexplained murder cases in Lüneburg and the surrounding area, which could possibly be assigned to Kurt-Werner Wichmann based on the perpetrator profile and location. According to the assessment of the police, who created a movement profile of Wichmann, murder cases in other areas can also be attributed to him. After his first release from prison in 1975, Wichmann stayed in Karlsruhe for three years , where he lived with an older woman whom he had met through a personal ad while in prison. During this time, several unsolved murders of hitchhikers occurred in the Karlsruhe area . Wichmann was very mobile and owned five cars.

On January 19, 2018, it became known that, according to the autopsy report of the Hannover Medical School, the victim Birgit M. was shot. The Lüneburg police chief Robert Kruse announced that the perpetrator is believed to be a serial killer who may have struck beyond Germany. He announced a thorough review of old cases for which Wichmann could be the perpetrator. Analysts from the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office then filtered out 24 unexplained acts, mainly homicides and missing persons. In February 2018, the case was again presented on television in the program Aktenzeichen XY ... unsolved , as the investigators assume an accomplice, helper or at least confidante .

In 2018, the police with 30 officers, including the Dutch police with geophysical equipment and the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation, searched Kurt-Werner Wichmann's former home and property for more than two weeks. Before the work began, the property was evaluated for abnormalities using aerial photographs and lidar scans. Among other things, corpse-tracking dogs and metal detectors were used . Around 400 items, including 200 items with DNA traces, were seized, which are being examined by the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office for links to other murders. These include a Polaroid camera and binoculars. The items may have belonged to the murdered Reinold couple and had disappeared.

In autumn 2018, a suitcase appeared that had been lying in an attic in an industrial area in Lüneburg for years and contained two firearms with ammunition and a driver's license from Wichmann issued in Karlsruhe in 1976. The suitcase was brought to the Landeszeitung für die Lüneburg Heath by a Lüneburg used car dealer , which in turn handed it over to the police.

filming

The subject of the Göhrde murders was filmed by NDR in the three-part series The Secret of the Dead Forest .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lüneburg: Göhrde double murders after 28 years cleared up in Spiegel Online on December 27, 2017
  2. ↑ Press release of the Lüneburg Police Department of December 27, 2017
  3. ↑ ksta.de
  4. ↑ pd-lg.polizei-nds.de
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g The fall of his life. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . February 28, 2009.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Michael Jürgs: The phantom of Göhrde . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1996, pp. 133 ( online - Sept. 9, 1996 ).
  7. ↑ a b Two hairs should lead to the Göhrde murderer. In: The world . July 14, 2009.
  8. ↑ Anne Kunze, Felix Rohrbeck: On the clearing. In: Die Zeit Online, October 31, 2016.
  9. ↑ Anne Kunze, Felix Rohrbeck, Auf der Lichtung, Zeit Online, November 3, 2016
  10. ↑ Göhrde murderer: The trail leads to Wales. ( Memento from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) In: Hamburger Abendblatt . March 9, 1991.
  11. ^ "Don't judge me" shouts grandfather charged with two double murders dating back to 1980s. In: Daily Mail . May 16, 2009.
  12. ^ Letterston man pleads not guilty to coast path and Scoveston Manor murders. In: Western Telegraph. October 28, 2009.
  13. ^ John Cooper Found Guilty of Pembrokeshire Double Murders. In: Walesonline. May 26, 2011.
  14. ↑ John Pope and John Cooper lose murder legal challenges. In: BBC News Wales. November 12, 2012.
  15. ↑ Anne Kunze, Felix Rohrbeck, Auf der Lichtung, Zeit Online, November 7, 2016
  16. ↑ Police are chasing quadruple murderers in northern Germany. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. July 14, 2009.
  17. ↑ Police continue to search for the perpetrator 25 years after Göhrde murders. In: Focus Online . May 20, 2014.
  18. ↑ Göhrde murders are not reopened. In: Elbe-Jeetzel-Zeitung. November 21, 2014.
  19. ↑ Zoo Quarter murder could be related to further murders , Neue Presse, June 17, 2017, accessed August 3, 2019.
  20. ↑ Tobias Morchner: Is there a turning point in the Göhrde murders? In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. June 14, 2017.
  21. ^ Finds in the serial killer's garden , LZ Online, May 9, 2019
  22. ↑ This is how serial killer Kurt W lived: A visit to the horror house This is how serial killer Kurt W. lived , Berliner Kurier, May 30, 2016
  23. ↑ Anne Kunze, Felix Rohrbeck: Serial murder: Why did Birgit Meier die? In: The time. October 20, 2016, accessed December 28, 2017 .
  24. ↑ Ice-cold trace: The Göhrde murders and Birgit Meier | True Crime | NDR documentary. Accessed October 4, 2019 (German).
  25. ↑ Thomas Hirschbiegel, Anastasia Iksanov: Unmasked after 23 years: The worst serial killer of the post-war period? May 27, 2016, accessed on May 8, 2019 (German).
  26. ↑ Anne Kunze, Felix Rohrbeck: On the clearing. In: Die Zeit Online, November 3, 2016.
  27. ^ Carlo Eggeling, Gabriele Schulte: Finally certainty for families. In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. December 29, 2007, p. 8.
  28. ↑ Kunze, Rohrbeck: Why did Birgit Meier die? Zeit Online, October 25, 2016.
  29. ^ The corpse in the house of the cemetery gardener spiegel.de, September 29, 2018, accessed April 24, 2020.
  30. ↑ a b Certainty: dead Birgit M. identified. ndr.de, October 24, 2017, accessed December 29, 2017 .
  31. ↑ a b Matthias Rebaschus: Kurt-Werner Wichmann: Was he a serial killer? In: The time. December 28, 2017. Retrieved December 28, 2017 .
  32. ↑ Sebastian Eder: Göhrde murders cleared up, it was the gardener. In: FAZ. December 28, 2017.
  33. ↑ Göhrde murders are about to be investigated . In: Landeszeitung für die Lüneburg Heath online . December 27, 2017 ( landeszeitung.de [accessed December 27, 2017]).
  34. ^ "Göhrde murders": perpetrators identified, questions remain. NDR, accessed December 28, 2017 .
  35. ^ Anne Kunze, Felix Rohrbeck, Mörderischer Liebling, Zeit Online, October 27, 2016
  36. ↑ Expert opinion of the MHH: Birgit M. was shot dead on ndr.de on January 19, 2018
  37. ↑ Focus Online according to DPA press release, January 19, 2018
  38. ↑ Police are still looking for people who know about the Göhrde murders at ndr.de on March 2, 2018
  39. ↑ "Göhrde-Morde": Police are checking new leads on ndr.de from June 11, 2018
  40. ↑ Mario Pahlow : The Göhrde murders. Archaeological support in "cold case" investigations by the police. in: Reports on the preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony 1/2019, pp. 55–57.
  41. ↑ "Göhrde-Morde": 400 finds secured at ndr.de from April 20, 2018
  42. ↑ Police find new leads to Göhrde murders at ndr.de from June 11, 2018
  43. ↑ Der Spiegel, No. 24, 2018, p. 21, section Germany: Göhrde-Morde. New lead to the perpetrator
  44. ↑ "Göhrde murders": Has new evidence emerged? , NDR.de, October 18, 2018
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on November 11, 2009 .