Gutberlet kidnapping
The crime known as Gutberlet kidnapping is the deprivation of liberty of the Fulda entrepreneur Wolfgang Gutberlet in 1976. After the payment of 2 million DM, the kidnapping victim was released. A few hours later the three perpetrators were arrested and later sentenced to long prison terms. After the fact, there were several other kidnappings in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Perpetrator and course of events
The then 37-year-old master butcher Horst H. started his own business in 1966. In 1970 he built a house with a butcher's shop and an attached shop in Grebenau in the Vogelsberg district of Hesse . While the business results were rather fluctuating in the first few years, from 1974 Horst H. had considerable liquidity problems. After a bad check for 55,000 DM was not cashed, a cattle dealer and another butcher had founded a company with him with which they redeclared boar meat and sold it as normal pork . Since he was also betrayed in this company by the cattle dealer, his economic situation deteriorated further and he was close to bankruptcy and a foreclosure sale . At the end of 1976 he had a debt of at least 350,000 DM and, after his hopes that a partner would participate in his business were not fulfilled, there was no longer any way out of saving his economic and civil existence.
In the run-up to the kidnapping, he had arranged several meetings with Wolfgang Gutberlet under a false name, in which he wanted to inform him about alleged thefts in his company and also to show him the hiding place with the stolen goods. At the eighth appointment on October 8, 1976, he and his brother-in-law Reinhard M. (then 34 years old), a floor layer also from Grebenau, threatened Gutberlet, who was lured to a gas station, with a pistol. They covered his eyes with adhesive tape and took him in a wooden box to the apartment of Hans-Karl W. (then 26 years old) in Frankfurt-Oberrad . This was also a brother-in-law of the main culprit.
Immediately afterwards, they sent a ransom demand for 2 million DM to Gutberlet's wife at the time. She contacted the police two hours after the kidnapping and worked with them. Gutberlet himself had drawn the kidnappers' attention to the fact that he had a pistol with him after they had taken him out of the wooden box. In the apartment he was then chained to a radiator.
After eight days, Gutberlet's wife at the time handed over the ransom at the Wetterau service station on the A5 near Ober-Mörlen , and shortly afterwards the kidnappers released Gutberlet in Frankfurt-Nied without first checking whether there was money in the parcel.
Investigations, arrests and convictions
The kidnappers had made things a lot easier for the police. Due to the fact that as long as the kidnapping victim was under their control, the press did not report, they were of the opinion that only they and the Gutberlet family knew about the kidnapping. Due to the frequent phone calls to the handover of the ransom, the police knew by grabber know that the calls came from Frankfurt. During the handover of the ransom, the kidnappers sent the deliverer several times to various rest stops and parking lots, where the police noted all the arriving vehicles. All that remained as a potential vehicle for the kidnappers was a rental car with a Munich number plate, which they continued to use.
Wolfgang Gutberlet memorized all the impressions around his hiding place relatively well, including a nearby company sign, so that the apartment in which he had been held could be located very quickly. The apartment owner was arrested there around six hours after the money was handed over. The other two perpetrators had brought the entire ransom to Grebenau with the aforementioned rental car and then drove back to Frankfurt. There they were arrested while leaving a massage parlor in Frankfurt's Bahnhofsviertel .
The perpetrators confessed in full and in January 1977, after only a few days of trial, the Fulda Regional Court of Fulda was sentenced to imprisonment of 10 years for Horst H., 9 years for Reinhard M. and 7 years for Hans-Karl W. condemned.
Although after the kidnapping of Richard Oetker , which he had survived seriously injured, and the fatal kidnapping of Eustachius Hell, some had previously questioned a fair trial for the perpetrators, observers attested that the prosecutor in particular was conducting the proceedings tough but properly . Other observers spoke of a relatively harsh judgment, although the presiding judge himself had ruled out that the kidnappings of Oetker, Hendrik Snoek and Gernot Egolf were copycat acts.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Hamburger Abendblatt : Gutberlet kidnappers had high debts , January 12, 1977
- ↑ a b Der Spiegel : No pig with the pig , January 17, 1977
- ↑ a b Der Spiegel : The kidnappers outwitted us , December 27, 1976
- ↑ a b c d e Der Spiegel : Escape to the front , December 27, 1976
- ↑ a b Hamburger Abendblatt: judgment without compromise for the kidnappers , January 15, 1977
- ↑ Der Spiegel : Distance from Personal Attacks , April 11, 1977