Canal murders

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Screw conveyor of a sewage treatment plant

The canal murders or "sewage treatment plant murders " are an unexplained series of murders of male adolescents in the Rhine-Main area in the 1980s.

Victim

The victims are seven children or young people aged between 11 and 18 who are from the Frankfurt (and the nearby Basel space around the game room "Tivoli") or Offenbach station milieu came and probably as male prostitutes worked. There they probably got to know the perpetrator. The boys were handcuffed behind their backs with a rope or parcel string and then killed. For some, however, death probably began when they drowned in the sewage system . Due to the long stay in the sewage system and the sometimes severe mechanical damage to the corpses in the system's snails, the dead could only be identified relatively late. The killings took place between 1976 and 1983. Due to the long idle times in the sewer system, it could only be clearly established that one victim was killed by a "blow of blunt force" on the head.

Corpse finds

  • September 7, 1976: male corpse, identity unknown (15–18 years) Stangenrod in the district of Gießen . The naked body was found near a footpath in a wooded area between Atzenhain and Lehnheim during the "Gordian Shield" military maneuver. After lying in bed for four to six weeks, the deceased was severely mummified and partially skeletonized. A violent skull fracture was assumed to be the likely cause of death. Since the identity of the deceased could not be clarified for a long time, the police assume that it may be a foreigner who was passing through in the Federal Republic of Germany .
  • May 23, 1982: Erik (17) Dreieich , Offenbach district . The body was found lying on its back behind the inflow of the snail. It showed significant injuries, such as the right thigh was torn off, the pelvis shattered, the bones of the right thigh exposed and the skull also shattered. According to the autopsy report, the body was in an advanced state of putrefaction with extensive fat wax formation . The lay time was probably over six months. The cause of death could no longer be clearly verified.
  • September 19, 1982: Bernd Michel (17-18 years old) Darmstadt - Erzhausen . The collecting rake of the sewage treatment plant was blocked by a clothed corpse. Michel was probably still alive when he was thrown into a manhole. Drowning was assumed to be the cause of death. The identification of the almost unrecognizable body proved difficult. The young man was around 17 years old and was characterized by a significant overbite. He came from the Frankfurt male line.
  • July 2, 1983: Markus Hildebrandt (17 years old) Darmstadt-Erzhausen. His tattooed body was discovered in the sump of the Dreieich- Buchschlag sewage treatment plant . According to the Offenbach police, the dead man was washed ashore through a sewer pipe. His hands were handcuffed. Otherwise there were no externally visible injuries. The tattoos on the upper arms showed different motifs and the word "Fuck". Markus Hildebrandt came from the Hanau area and had been in the Frankfurt heroin scene since 1981. Hildebrandt, who had spent a large part of his youth in correctional institutions, was doing an apprenticeship at the time of death and led an "unsteady life" in Frankfurt. There were suspicions that he should have prostituted himself on occasion. He was last seen in January 1983 in the company of three men and is said to have stated that he wanted to go to Saarbrücken .
  • September 9, 1983: Fuad Rahou (14 years old). Frankfurt-Niederrad . The body of a 14-year-old Moroccan boy was found in the Niederrad sewage treatment plant. At first, the police assumed an accident caused by drowning in the sewer system or inhalation of foul gases . Only later did it become clear that it had to be murder. The boy was reported missing by his parents on September 1, 1983.
  • October 11, 1983: Oliver Tupikas (11 years old) Frankfurt-Niederrad. Another victim, who the perpetrator had made disappear under a manhole cover, was also found in the Niederrad sewage treatment plant. There were traces of ankle shackles on the body. Oliver had previously run away from home and was not seen alive since.
  • June 21, 1989: Daniel Schaub (14 years). Offenbach-Rosenhöhe . The bones and clothing of the last dead man in the series were found in a side channel of the drainage network. The youth had been missing since 1983.

Possible motive

The criminal psychologist Rudolf Egg suspected that the perpetrator could have been a single person aged around 50 without family ties or friends. It is possible that the perpetrator himself had become a victim of sexual abuse and could therefore have had a disturbed relationship with his own homosexuality or developed a kind of “love-hate relationship” towards same-sex people from the sex scene. His inclinations apparently included sadistic bondage games, among other things. The perpetrator probably moved from Gießen to Frankfurt am Main at the end of the 1970s and lived out his inclinations in the local milieu. He must also have been knowledgeable about the area and highly mobile. The fact that he let his victims, some of whom still alive after the use of violence, die in cold blood in the sewer system suggests a deeply rooted hatred of people.

Modus operandi

The first murder probably takes place at the place where the body was found. Only then could the perpetrator have discovered that it is relatively easy to pry up a manhole cover and throw the corpse, or the dying victim, into the sewer system, where it perishes. The rapid disappearance of the corpses allows these acts to occur even in the densely populated Frankfurt metropolitan area without running an incalculably high risk of being discovered. The victims are tied up. Then the sex offender assaults them, abuses them and “disposes of them like garbage after use”. The corpses lie in the sewer system for weeks or months, where they begin to decompose. The dead usually remain undetected in the sewage network for a long time until they are at some point flushed into the sewage treatment works, where they often block the screw pumps to separate the solid particles. The well-advanced corpse putrefaction made both the identification of the victims and the clarification of the circumstances of the crime in the investigation very difficult. The first victim can only be identified 2.5 years after the body was found.

Investigations

A Soko around Horst Kropp and the "Working Group (AG) 229" was commissioned to investigate the sexually motivated murders of the young people. For some time, a 40-year-old warehouse clerk from Offenbach with multiple criminal records was suspected of the crime, as the police believed he was supposed to have lured homeless young people to his gazebo in Frankfurt-Riederwald to carry out sadistic sex games with them. He is said to have acted very brutally, but on the other hand he bought the silence of his victims through good pay. The investigators found out that the suspect and the victim Markus Hildebrandt are said to have visited the same gay bars in Frankfurt. However, this was by no means sufficient for a sufficient suspicion of a crime. The traces of blood in the gazebo did not match Hildebrandt's serological blood test. A gas pistol, several knives, including a butcher's knife, and handcuffs were found in the home of the suspect, who had known three of the victims. However, due to a lack of evidence, no charges were brought.

Remarks

  1. ↑ possibly even longer
  2. ↑ mainly because of sexual acts against minors and sexual coercion
  3. ↑ Splashes that may have occurred from striking bleeding wounds or from cleaning blood-stained stabbing weapons

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ REFORGER maneuvers in East Hesse
  2. ^ Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung , September 8, 1976
  3. ↑ In the maneuver. Soldier discovers corpse, rotting and wearing only socks. Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung, December 9, 1976
  4. ^ Police report Kripo Frankfurt in Harbort: Murderous profile: the serial killer phenomenon
  5. ^ Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung, May 25, 1982
  6. ↑ Langener Zeitung May 25, 1982
  7. ↑ Langener Zeitung June 2, 1982
  8. ↑ Harbort: Murderous Profile: The Serial Killer Phenomenon
  9. ^ Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung, September 13, 1983
  10. ^ Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung, November 17, 1984
  11. ^ Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung, August 19, 1989
  12. ↑ Film contribution, Criminal Report Hessen. Disgusting series of murders in the Rhine-Main area