List of kidnappings in Germany

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The following list includes a selection of the deprivation of liberty by kidnapping in Germany. For information on hijacking aircraft with German participants or on German soil, see the list of aircraft hijackings . Hostage-taking and abductions are not taken into account.

The approximately 400 kidnapping victims who were abducted by the Stasi from West Germany to the GDR are also not listed .

The table can be sorted alphabetically according to the names of the victims, the year of the crime and the type of kidnapping. A distinction is made here between ransom extortion from adults or children and kidnappings with a terrorist background.

Kidnapping case date Art Duration Explanation
Richard Oetker Dec 14, 1976 Ransom note 47h Richard Oetker was released 47 hours after he had been kidnapped against payment of DM 21 million in ransom with very serious injuries sustained in the wooden box in which he was being held. The kidnapper Dieter Zlof was convicted and arrested after two years and sentenced to the maximum sentence of 15 years imprisonment in the subsequent trial.
Johannes Erlemann 06th Mar 1981 Child abduction 14d The 11-year-old Johannes Erlemann was released fourteen days after the kidnapping for a ransom payment of 3 million DM. Even after the perpetrators were arrested, almost half of the ransom remained undetectable. The perpetrators received prison sentences of between 3 and 10 years.
Jakub Fiszman † 0Oct. 1, 1996 Ransom note dead The victim was overwhelmed by two perpetrators (a multiple criminal record father with his son) on the premises of his export company and then kidnapped. He suffered injuries in the process. Even after his death, the kidnappers continued to demand a ransom. 19 days after the act, DM 4 million was paid. The trial against the perpetrators began almost exactly one year after the crime and ended with a 12-year prison sentence for the son and life imprisonment and subsequent preventive detention for the father.
Nina von Gallwitz Dec 18, 1981 Child abduction 149d 8-year-old Nina von Gallwitz was kidnapped on her way home from school and then held captive for 149 days. In 1982 she was released after paying a ransom of 1.5 million DM. The crime has not yet been resolved.
Joachim Göhner † Apr 15, 1958 Child abduction dead Joachim Göhner was the first child to be kidnapped in the Federal Republic of Germany. After the delivery of 15,000 DM had failed several times, he was found dead in a forest seven days later. As a result, the voice of an offender was broadcast publicly on the radio for the first time. He was then caught and committed suicide before the trial began.
Wolfgang Gutberlet 0Oct 8, 1976 Ransom note 8d Wolfgang Gutberlet was kidnapped during a bogus meeting at a petrol station and released after eight days against payment of 2 million Deutschmarks. The perpetrators were arrested a few hours after their release and later sentenced to long prison terms.
Jakob von Metzler † 27 Sep 2002 Child abduction dead The 11-year-old banker's son Jakob von Metzler was kidnapped by Magnus Gäfgen and murdered on the same day. The perpetrator, known to the victim, confessed to the crime after interrogation under threat of torture and led the police to the child's body. In 2004 he received a life sentence, which was confirmed in the last instance, with a determination of the particular gravity of the guilt.
Maria Bögerl † May 12, 2010 Ransom note dead The banker's wife Maria Bögerl was kidnapped on the morning of May 12, 2010. The handover of the requested ransom of € 400,000 failed shortly afterwards. The victim was found dead in a forest on June 3, 2010. The case has not yet been resolved, with the police being criticized by the family of the murdered.
Eustachius Hell † Dec 20, 1976 Child abduction dead Six-year-old Eustachius Hell from the Kühbach district of Paar was kidnapped on the way home from school. According to the kidnapper himself, this happened spontaneously because he did not dare to rob a bank. On the same day, the kidnapper murdered the boy for fear of discovery. He then asked for a ransom of DM 200,000 without answering again after this call. Since a witness had noted the license plate number of the car with which he abducted the child, he was arrested after a few days. In the criminal process, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Donaukurier reported in 2006 that the murderer had been released from custody.
Renate Putz † 0Apr 5, 1971 Ransom note dead The 16-year-old millionaire daughter Renate Putz was kidnapped on Monday, April 5th, 1971. Her parents initially did not worry about her disappearance and drove to their holiday home in Tuscany the following Friday . When they came back on April 15, they found two letters without a return address in their mailbox with a demand for a ransom of DM 350,000. However, she was probably shot by 50-year-old Karl Dorfner on the second day after the kidnapping. After confessing to the crime, he committed suicide while in custody.
Silvia Mueller Feb 10, 1982 Sexual offense 454d The 16-year-old was kidnapped on February 10, 1982 and held by a couple until May 23, 1983. She was sexually abused, physically abused and raped while in detention. Her kidnappers let her escape after more than 15 months. The couple, who had earned millions as entrepreneurs, were sentenced to long prison terms. Shortly after the verdict, the husband committed suicide in his cell.
Hendrik Snoek 0Nov 3, 1976 Ransom note 3d The then successful show jumper was kidnapped from his apartment in Münster. A ransom of DM 5 million was paid. On November 6th, he was found and freed rather accidentally in his hiding place, which was 52 meters above the ground in the pillar of a motorway bridge. A short time later, one of the kidnappers involved was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Claudia Ruf † May 11, 1996 Sex crime child abduction dead The eleven-year-old had taken a neighbor's dog on May 11, 1996 and was kidnapped in the process. After the dog ran home without her, she was searched for and found dead on a dirt road two days later. She had been abused and tortured. The perpetrator set the body on fire. even after a mass genetic test in 2011, the perpetrator has not yet been found.
Axel Sven Springer Jan. 21, 1985 Ransom note 3d The son of Axel Springer jr. was kidnapped from the Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz at night and roped out of a window. He had to discuss tapes himself on which he had to demand a ransom of 15 million DM, which was then sent to his mother. After the case became public after three days, the perpetrators released him with the promise that he would give the police false information and give them 200,000 DM. When the money was handed over, the perpetrators were arrested. Two former students of the Lyceum were later sentenced to prison terms of 2 years and 9 months and four years, respectively, and the girlfriend of one was sentenced to prison terms of 2 years and 3 months.
Hanns Martin Schleyer † 05th Sep 1977 terrorism dead When Hanns Martin Schleyer was kidnapped by members of the RAF , his driver and three police officers were murdered. Since the federal government did not respond to the terrorists' demand to release several members of the organization from prison, they murdered Schleyer on October 19, 1977. Without the complete investigation of the course of the crime, some of the members involved became members of the Terrorist organization sentenced to prison terms.
Jan Philipp Reemtsma 25th Mar 1996 Ransom note 33d Jan Philipp Reemtsma was kidnapped on his own property and released on April 26, 1996 after paying 15 million DM and 12.5 million francs after 33 days of imprisonment. The perpetrators were later caught and sentenced to long prison terms. Much of the ransom has not yet been found.
Peter Lorenz Feb. 27, 1975 terrorism 1d Peter Lorenz was the CDU's mayoral candidate in the election for the Berlin House of Representatives in 1975 . He was kidnapped by June 2 terrorists three days before the election . They demanded the release of six detained terrorists. With the exception of Horst Mahler , who remained in prison at his own request, they were flown to the then People's Democratic Republic of Yemen . Lorenz was released a day later. Five criminals were later sentenced to prison terms for their involvement in the crime.
Lars and Meike Schlecker Dec 23, 1987 Ransom note 1d The children of the then drugstore entrepreneur Anton Schlecker , aged 14 and 16 at the time of the crime , were kidnapped in the presence of their parents in a hut only 5 km away and held captive there. Anton Schlecker negotiated the ransom amount from 20 to 9.6 million DM, which he had delivered the day after the kidnapping. The kidnapping victims were then able to free themselves. The three perpetrators could not be convicted until 1998 after another crime and were sentenced to long prison terms.
Theo Albrecht Nov 29, 1971 Ransom note 17d The founder of Aldi- Nord was overwhelmed and kidnapped in front of the corporate headquarters in Herten when he was the last to leave it in the evening. After a ransom of DM 7 million had been paid, he was released seventeen days later. The two perpetrators were sentenced in 1973 to 8 ½ years imprisonment each. Half of the ransom was never found.
Gernot Egolf † Oct. 19, 1976 Ransom note dead The victim, who was 32 at the time of the crime, was related to the heirs of the Karlsberg brewery . The then 21 and 22-year-old perpetrators lured him away from his job, overpowered him and chained him in a bunker only 1.50 m high in the former Westwall . In this, the water was at times 70 cm high after rainfall. Attempts to hand over a ransom of DM 2 million failed. After a belated tip from a friend of one of the perpetrators, Gernot Egolf was found dead by the police after seven weeks on December 9th. He had lost 15 kg in captivity and probably died of hypothermia. The perpetrators were arrested the same day. One committed suicide while in custody, and the second was sentenced to life imprisonment with a determination of the gravity of the guilt.
Evelyn Jahn Nov 13, 1973 Ransom note 2d The 21-year-old daughter of Friedrich Jahn (1973 franchisor of 400 Wienerwald fast food restaurants ) was held captive by her three kidnappers in an apartment in the Holiday Inn hotel in Augsburg . After paying a ransom of DM 3 million, she was released. The perpetrators were caught that same week and sentenced to long imprisonment.
Peter Fiszman and Lisa Abels Jan. 16, 1991 Child abduction 3d The nephew of Jakub Fiszman , who was later kidnapped and murdered, was kidnapped with a school friend by the same perpetrators five years before his uncle. Probably without paying the required 2.1 million DM ransom, the children were released after three days. The crime could only be cleared up after Jakub Fiszman's kidnapping.
Mathias Hintze † Sep 14 1997 Ransom note dead The 20-year-old was kidnapped by two Russians, 36 and 26 years old at the time of the crime, and locked in a hole in the ground, in which he suffocated after just one day. From his by no means wealthy parents, innkeepers by profession, a ransom of DM 1 million was demanded. The perpetrators were each sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. In 1999 they were sentenced to a total sentence of 15 years after the kidnapping of the Berlin computer dealer Alexander Galius, who had not yet been found, was proven. The individual sentence for the second kidnapping was ten years. The younger offender was released from custody in January 2013 and deported to Russia.
Bodo Janssen 0June 6, 1998 Ransom note 7d The 24-year-old millionaire's son was overwhelmed and held captive by several kidnappers, including an acquaintance of his. While he was in custody, the perpetrators were brutal and constantly threatened him with a gun. In Austria a ransom of DM 3 million was handed over. Regardless of this, he was freed almost simultaneously by the Hamburg Special Operations Command , and most of the kidnappers were arrested. The last perpetrator was caught two years later in Zagreb .
Sascha Buzmann Jan. 10, 1986 Sex crime child abduction 86d In the early evening of January 10, 1986, Buzmann was kidnapped on the way from the bus stop to his parents' house by Adam Geist, who dragged him several kilometers into his dwelling, a neglected caravan without running water and toilet in Mainz-Kastel . Sascha Buzmann was held captive for almost three months by his kidnapper and was regularly beaten and sexually abused. When the unemployed Adam Geist left the trailer, he locked the boy in a wooden box. The kidnapped child was only found by chance: on April 5, 1986, two plainclothes investigators came to him for bruising and discovered the boy in his caravan. The kidnapper, who was born in 1950 and was ill-treated as a child, was classified as having reduced criminal liability and sentenced to seven years in prison. After serving this sentence, he kidnapped another child and is now in preventive detention.
Anneli-Marie Riße † Aug 13, 2015 Ransom note dead The 17-year-old was kidnapped on her walk with her dog by Markus Beisser and Norbert Klein on the evening of August 13 near her place of residence Robschütz (district of Meißen). The two perpetrators locked Anneli Marie in the barn of the Dreiseithof, the former home of M. Beisser, and allegedly murdered them around noon the following day. This information comes from the police interrogation of N. Klein, which was very contradictory and incomplete. The responsible pathologist could no longer determine the exact time of death because the corpse had already decomposed too much. The family was supposed to pay 1.2 million euros in ransom, but the money was never handed over. The exact circumstances for this are not known. Markus Beisser had already tried to blackmail the Kaufland / Lidl company by phone on August 1, 2015. Here too he had asked for the same ransom. The LG Dresden sentenced Markus Beisser (40) to life imprisonment. The court also determined the particular gravity of his guilt. His accomplice Norbert Klein (62) was sentenced to eight years and six months (see Anneli-Marie Riße ).
Stephanie Rudolph Jan. 11, 2006 Sexual offense 36d On the morning of January 11, 2006, Stephanie was kidnapped by Mario Mederake on the way to school (Dresden) and held in his apartment for 36 days. In these 36 days, Mario M. abused her more than 100 times, as Stephanie testified in court. He worked off a list inspired by hardcore porn, checking her box after box, the positions, the disguises, with pubic hair, without pubic hair. He showed her fishnet gloves and a black eye mask to wear. He made Stephanie smile for the video. It should look like she's having fun like the women in his porn. If it didn't look like it, he would get angry and yell: "Make an effort." The wrong investigative approaches and inadequate TAG values ​​in the police database had made Stephanie's ordeal last so long. She herself put the police on the right track with a handwritten note on a dumpster. Mederake became a maximum penalty of 15 years imprisonment and subsequent preventive detention condemned.
Markus Würth 17th June 2015 Ransom note 20h Markus Würth was kidnapped on June 17, 2015 in Schlitz, Hesse. The then 50-year-old man has been mentally disabled since childhood after a failed vaccination. He is the son of "King of Screws" Reinhold Würth, a million dollar entrepreneur from Baden-Württemberg. A blackmailer asked for a ransom of three million euros on the phone. The handover failed for reasons not known in detail. The kidnapping ended after about 20 hours. The blackmailer revealed the whereabouts of the then 50-year-old, who was chained naked to a tree and was found by the police in a forest near Würzburg in Bavaria. The 2018 trial against the alleged perpetrator ended in an acquittal.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Der Spiegel : Tell and the dead wild boar from February 14, 2015
  2. ↑ Augsburger Allgemeine: Taking hostages with a toy gun , May 21, 2009
  3. ↑ Der Spiegel : ... who received parole again and again , February 28, 1977
  4. ↑ Die Zeit : No fashion doll , April 30, 1971
  5. ↑ Der Spiegel: Spare my wife and children , February 22, 1982
  6. ↑ Der Spiegel: I did nothing but my duty , March 11, 1985
  7. ↑ Die Welt : "If necessary, this murder will retire with me" , March 11, 1998
  8. ↑ Express : The last saliva test was also negative , September 22, 2011
  9. ↑ Der Spiegel: Strange, Strange , January 28, 1985
  10. Jump up ↑ Der Spiegel: To make things easier , February 18, 1985
  11. ↑ Die Zeit: The Punishment That Sits , October 11, 1985
  12. ↑ Deutschlandfunk : Happy Ending of a Kidnapping , December 16, 2011
  13. ↑ Der Spiegel: Everything is clear to me today , December 19, 1977
  14. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt: The police were informed too late , December 1, 1977
  15. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt: "I just prayed that everything would go well" , February 20, 1975
  16. ↑ Der Spiegel: Notes in the Bra , February 17, 1975
  17. ↑ RP Online : Targeting Millionaires , July 29, 2000
  18. ↑ Berliner Zeitung : Hintze kidnappers released early , January 19, 2013
  19. ↑ Der Spiegel: Good cheer in the pit? , April 5, 1999
  20. ↑ Focus : The Supercops , June 22, 1998
  21. ↑ Die Welt: Head of the Bodo Janssen kidnappers captured , September 24, 2000
  22. ↑ n-tv .de: Offenders are mostly caught , September 30, 2002
  23. ↑ Die Welt: Stephanie. In: https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article151633/Stephanie-ueber-100-Mal-missbendung.html . Retrieved September 9, 2006 .
  24. ^ WORLD: Würth kidnapping case: surprising acquittal for the only defendant . In: THE WORLD . November 27, 2018 ( welt.de [accessed April 14, 2020]).