Manfred Seel

Manfred Adolf Seel (born October 30, 1946 in Königstein im Taunus ; † August 26, 2014 in Schwalbach am Taunus ), called Hessen-Ripper or Jack the Ripper von Schwalbach by the press , was an alleged German serial killer who killed his victims in the Rhine -Main area killed. Seels perpetration is currently assumed in five murders, in four other unresolved cases are still being investigated.

Life

Manfred Seel grew up as an only child in Kronberg im Taunus . In 1957 he switched to the secondary school in Oberursel . He then completed an apprenticeship as a cliché etcher at the traditional Frankfurt printing company and cliché establishment Georg Stritt & Co. in Mainzer Landstrasse 184 . 1967 began his two-year military service . From 1968 to 1969, Seel served in the rocket artillery battalion 52 in the Steuben barracks in Gießen .

From 1970 he worked in his learned profession in Frankfurt and began in 1973, after he had completed his Abitur on the second educational path , to study art and social history at the Goethe University in Frankfurt , which he broke off again a short time later. His place of work on Mainzer Landstrasse was close to the Johanna Kirchner monastery, where the two victims Gudrun Ebel and Hatice Erülkeroglu were employed in 1970. Together with his partner Werner Lederer, he ran a small clearing and gardening company in Schwalbach from 1986 . His wife, with whom he had been married since 1973 and had a daughter since 1979, died in 2013. In his spare time, Seel played clarinet and saxophone in the band Overall Jazz Gang from 1985 to 2014 . He was described by his neighbors as a friendly and inconspicuous man who, however, was occasionally prone to aggressive outbursts.

According to witness statements, Manfred Seel is said to have regularly visited the Frankfurt street prostitute in the early 1990s. A prostitute reported that he had abused her and reported the incident to the hotline of the Frankfurt street work and counseling project for sex workers in order to warn other women about his violent behavior. In 1996 he went on alcohol withdrawal treatment at the Sonnenberg withdrawal clinic in Erbach / Odenwald . Manfred Seel died in 2014 after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer the year before .

The investigations against Seel began a few weeks after his death: his daughter and her partner discovered body parts in a garage rented by Seel when his household was being liquidated and they informed the police. The LKA working group Alaska , which identified Manfred Seel as the main suspect of several murders, has been investigating these cases since September 2015 . Alaska was Manfred Seel's nickname, as he was known to wear fur clothing frequently even in the warm season and Alaska was one of his favorite travel destinations. Seel was previously considered an "innocent citizen". The trail leads to Frankfurt's red light district and to the rolling up of old and unresolved cases ( cold cases ) of prostitute murders.

Murders

The murders attributed to Seel were carried out with great brutality and destructiveness out of sexual sadism . The victims were killed by "sharp violence in sexually relevant areas". It is significant that the perpetrator took organs from his victims as a trophy , with the exception of one case post mortem , or cut off certain body parts such as genitals or arms and legs, which he later kept in hidden places. The perpetrator probably consciously sought a place of retreat in order to then incorporate the commission of the crime undisturbed into his sexual fantasies. Even cannibalism can not currently be excluded.

Different body parts were always removed from the victims and never the same. Investigator Frank Hermann said at a press conference: "Sometimes it's a right leg, sometimes a left arm - if you add that up, you could actually create a new body." The police admit that Manfred Seel may have had an accomplice in the performance of his acts. The reason for this is provided by the traces and the extreme injury pattern on a corpse, which may only have been made possible by the interaction of two people. The State Criminal Police Office is currently appealing to the population for further information about the perpetrator or perpetrators and their victims. One is also looking for surviving victims whose testimony could be used to draw conclusions about the perpetrator, his motive or the course of events.

“Yes, this case is definitely the most extraordinary of my professional life. The violence is so disgusting and incomprehensible, it goes beyond everything I've experienced so far. "

- Chief detective Holger Thomsen, Soko "Alaska"

motive

The police see Manfred Seel as a woman who hates people or who hates people . The investigators found 32,000 violent pornographic and violence-glorifying photos and films on the hard drives of several PCs in his basement . The pornographic material in the collection has grown to the order of five terabytes over time . It is assumed that Seel surfed the Darknet with the help of special software that leaves no traces. Possibly they served Seel as a graphic template for his deeds, which meant the fulfillment of his sexual fantasies. According to the investigative investigator Frank Herrmann, it is not a series of spontaneous and emotional sexual crimes, but rather very stringent acts in the series of killings, whereby the sexual component lies on another level.

In the Seel case, the investigators assume that the perpetrator must have led a double life behind his bourgeois facade for decades . According to the criminal psychologist Lydia Benecke , the perpetrator had no sympathy or guilt. He would see the victims as objects for the gratification of his instincts, which he throws away after use. The reasons for the murder are very likely to lie in his personality, which was shaped by sadistic fantasies, which were probably based on low self-esteem. The dehumanization of the victim, his humiliation, the infliction of pain, the limitless experience of power, a greatly reduced sense of empathy and control over the victim must have played a major role in the series of murders. The trophy hunt and the storage of body parts of the victims served possibly to further increase the pleasure after the actual act.

In the opinion of the criminal psychologist Helmut Kury, Seel felt a "desire to exercise violence and aggression" and it was very likely that he lacked the "ability to vibrate emotionally". He assumes that the “social side” of his personality and the structure of his bourgeois facade mainly served to hide his perverse inclinations. The obviously controllable perpetrator was able to act intelligently. He did not act spontaneously and emotionally, but planned his deeds (selection of victims and the course of events) meticulously beforehand. The causes of his sadistic crimes may have been in early childhood developments. According to the investigating police, Seel's killing instinct probably stopped between 1971 and 1991, as he had found himself in a psychologically stable phase due to changed living conditions such as marriage and starting a family.

Victim

The police believe that Seel murdered at least five women between 1971 and 2004. Above all, drug-addicted prostitutes from street prostitutes, who are classified as a high-risk group because they can be easily approached and their disappearance is usually not noticed immediately, apparently belonged to the preferred prey scheme of the serial offender. The investigated murder cases show great behavioral similarities, so a “ personal handwriting of the perpetrator ” is recognizable. The common feature of the series of ritual murders is that all victims were killed by strangulation or strangulation. In addition, the pubic area or breasts of women were disfigured. In addition, all parts of the body or organs were removed. The unsolved murders of the following people are currently linked to him:

• February 1971 - Gudrun Ebel (19), cleaner and elderly care assistant. She may have been Seel's first victim. Her body was discovered on February 6, 1971 in a garden shed near Bad Vilbel . According to the investigators, the dead woman showed signs of sadistic acts. The killer had opened her lower abdomen with a knife and removed her uterus . The police assume that the perpetrator lured her into a gazebo and assaulted her there.
• 04, 1971 - Hatice Erülkeroglu (23), Turkish geriatric nurse. She was a colleague of Gudrun Ebel. There may be a connection because Manfred Seel had his training and later workplace in the immediate vicinity of the Johanna-Kirchner-Stift retirement home at that time. The perpetrator and the victim could possibly have met in a neighboring “party location”, a disused railway wagon on a former wasteland, which was often used as a meeting place for young people. The act in which the victim was attacked on the Camberger Bridge and had massive injuries to the head (the face was smashed) and the genital area was probably committed by a perpetrator with a sexually sadistic personality structure.
• June 1991 - Gisela Singh (36), heroin addict, homeless and HIV- positive prostitute, mother of one daughter. Her body was discovered by mushroom pickers 14 days after she disappeared under a brush in a parking lot in the Hofheim forest. Singh worked on the line in Frankfurter Kaiserstrasse. She was last seen alive on June 14, 1991 at around 3 p.m. in Café Fix (a drug counseling center on Frankfurt's Moselstrasse). She had undergone medical treatment shortly before. It was found that her HIV disease was already in a very advanced state. Afterwards, according to unconfirmed witness statements on the street prostitute, she was said to have been spotted again in Westendstrasse (in the summer of 1991 the street prostitute had spread from the Frankfurt Bahnhofsviertel to Westendstrasse). In her handbag, in addition to pill tubes and disposable syringes, she found a ticket for the express train E3414 from Karlsruhe to Heidelberg , which had been stamped on the same day. At the time, the police assumed that the perpetrator could have been a truck driver. A trace was also examined which indicated a 40 to 50-year-old and approximately 1.80 meter tall suitor named “Hans” who was traveling with a blue Opel Rekord and Darmstadt license plate. It was later shown that Seel had definitely been a suitor from Singh. The woman was strangled or strangled. Several stab wounds were found on her abdomen and numerous scars were found on her thighs. At the time it was found, the corpse was already badly decayed and the head was partially skeletonized.
• December 1993 - Dominique Monrose, 32 , a drug addict, homeless and HIV positive prostitute from Martinique . She was last seen alive on December 3, 1993. The police believe that she was killed on the same day. Her torso was found in a garbage bag on Friedberger Landstrasse. The perpetrator had cut off her head with a knife. Her body parts, also stowed in plastic bags, were found in various places on the so-called spaghetti knot of the A661 (Taunusschnellweg) . It is believed that the killer kept her torso in a freezer for about ten days in order to be able to deal with it longer. Monrose is known to have come into conflict with the scene for undercutting market prices. She had undergone a methadone program and was living with a former suitor who reported her disappearance.
• July 1996 - Pia Isabel Heym (27), bank clerk. The severed head of the mentally ill woman, who had been reported missing since July 1996, was found in an allotment garden in Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen. According to police, Heym was taking pills to treat schizophrenic traits. Possibly she became another victim of Seels.
• July 1998 - Julie Anna Schröder (18), drug addict prostitute who worked on the street. She disappeared in July 1998 from the Frankfurt train station district. The woman is said to have been in poor health. The police assume a homicide, her body has not yet been found.
• September 1999 - Gabriele de Haas (32), drug addict prostitute who disappeared in 1999. It is possible that the perpetrator had previously exchanged ideas with her in an SM forum. The police assume a homicide, her body has not yet been found.
• April 2004 - A skeletonized woman's head wrapped in aluminum foil was found in the Offenbach barrage . Although the face could be reconstructed using computer-aided forensic technology , the identity of the victim has not yet been clarified.
• 2004 - Britta Simone Diallo (43). According to testimonies, Seel was apparently a regular Diallos and is said to have cleared the apartment for her. The prostitute, who had no permanent residence and was last seen alive in the fall of 2003 and not reported missing, had apparently been tortured before her death. Seel hid the remains of her corpse (feet and thighs in a badly decomposed state) in a blue plastic bin in the garage he rented on Schwalbacher Nordstrasse. The body parts were found by Seel's daughter on September 10, 2014 and led to Manfred Seel as a posthumous suspect of the series of murders. The injuries committed by Britta Diallo coincide to a very large extent with the pictures on Seel's computer. The police assume that in this case a manga comic that was in the possession of Seel may have served as a template for this act. It cannot be ruled out beyond any doubt that Diallo was still alive when the perpetrator cut off her arms and legs with a handsaw. Eight nails were found in the knee, pelvis, breasts and vaginal area. The body also had multiple stab wounds and cuts. LKA boss Sabine Thurau calls this act "the top of the exercise of his sexual preferences". Due to the cruel circumstances, the investigator Frank Herrmann almost ruled out an individual crime and had his team of DNA analysts, profilers and other specialists systematically investigate further victims.

At times, Seel's involvement in the Tristan murder case was not ruled out. The 13-year-old student was killed by an unknown person in an underpass of the Liederbach Canal near Frankfurt-Höchst in 1998 . Since the murder was committed near the Höchst train station, in a relatively busy location, the perpetrator had to act very quickly and functionally here. The police attributed the crime to Manfred Seel using the modus operandi (parallels to the Singh murder case: the shoes of the killed were arranged in pairs next to the corpse in a certain pattern). A dactyloscopic analysis of the fingerprints on the victim's exercise book showed negative results. In October 2017, the head of the press office of the Frankfurt police announced that Seel had been excluded as a perpetrator. The public search for Tristan's murderer will be resumed "soon".

Investigation status

After the examination of fingerprints on his clarinet did not reveal any traces, the investigations in 2017 focus, among other things, on possible locations of the corpses and the examination of DNA on the victim's clothing. Since these are old cases and the quality of the evidence is correspondingly poor, the analyzes will probably take longer to rule out traces of deception. A second perpetrator is still being investigated. This hypothesis could neither be verified nor excluded. According to the current state of knowledge, the police largely exclude a possible group of victims, the exact number of which is not known, outside the Rhine-Main area. So far, no concrete results have been achieved. So far, there are only indications for the actions of Manfred Seel. The latest findings (as of December 2017) of the investigative work indicate that Manfred Seel was probably only active in the Rhine-Main area and that there were no comparable cases in Germany or Europe during this period. The special commission and working group have now been dissolved, only the homicide commission continues to investigate.

Literary processing

Andreas Gößling's true crime thriller Wolfswut , which takes place in Berlin instead of in the Frankfurt environment, is based on the Seel case. The author Nele Neuhaus also announced that she was inspired by the deeds of the "Hessen-Ripper" Manfred Seel in one of her Taunus crime novels, which was published in November 2018 under the title Muttertag .

Web links

• Philipp Beng, Katharina Iskandar: Behind the facade. In: FAZ.net . May 23, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
• File number solved: The serial killer of Frankfurt ( Spiegel TV Magazin 23 May 2016)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Police asks: Who knows Manfred Adolf Seel? In: reservistenverband.de , from June 1, 2016
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Julia Jüttner: “The light is on again in the cellar” . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 2016 ( online ).
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o} Tristan Brübach case: file number resolved. In: Spiegel TV Magazin , broadcast on May 22, 2016 at 10:20 pm to 11:40 pm on RTL
4. ^ Georg Leppert: Schwalbach: family father as a serial killer. In: fr-online.de . May 19, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
5. ↑ Lederer & Seel. ( Memento from May 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Membership list of the Schwalbacher commercial database
6. ↑ Series of murders of prostitutes. The perfect victims, Hessenschau, June 26, 2016
7. ↑ Hotline street work and advice for women who pursue prostitution, idh, integrative Drogenhilfe eV
8. ↑ ots: LKA-HE: Hessisches Landeskriminalamt investigates serial murder in Hessen / PM in the aftermath of the press conference May 19, 2016. In: presseportal.de. May 19, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
9. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Maintower crime report Extra: The serial killer from Schwalbach. HR television from May 19, 2016, video on YouTube
10. ↑ Serial murders in Hessen: Cruel and sadistic approach. In: Spiegel Online . May 19, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
11. ↑ Sören Kittel: Investigators from Schwalbach look into human abysses. In: Abendblatt.de . May 19, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
12. ↑ Horrible details about the Schwalbach serial killer, Hessenschau, May 19, 2016
13. ↑ He liked to drink one beer too much, The double life of the serial killer, BILD newspaper, May 20, 2016
14. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Julia Jüttner: Profiler about Manfred Seel: "The perpetrator was consciously looking for a young person". In: Spiegel Online . May 21, 2016, accessed June 20, 2016 . 
15. ↑ Hessian State Criminal Police Office investigates serial murder in Hesse. Police Hesse, 19 May 2016
16. ↑ ^{a b c d} Alexander Jürgs: The pattern of the serial killer. In: welt.de . May 22, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
17. ^ ^{A b c} Julia Jüttner: Alleged serial offender Manfred Seel: Murders of a misanthropist. In: Spiegel Online . May 22, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
18. ^ ^{A b} Andrea Löbbecke / DPA: Serial killers in Hessen: Soko "Alaska" - on the cruel trail of Manfred Seel. In: stern.de . May 20, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
19. ↑ Katharina Iskandar: “You can't tell from people that they are criminals”. In: FAZ.net . May 20, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
20. ↑ Ira Schaible: Lust killers like Manfred Seel kill out of sadism and necrophilia. In: stern.de. May 21, 2016, accessed on May 21, 2016 : "Rudolf Egg, criminal psychologist:" He wanted to have that with him to prolong these feelings of happiness. "" 
21. ↑ ^{a b c} criminal psychologist on the serial killer Manfred Seel. In: Badische Zeitung. May 28, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
22. ↑ ^{a b c d} Are there surviving victims? First witnesses remember serial killers, Hessenschau, May 20, 2016
23. ↑ Alexander von Paleske: Femicide in Frankfurt - The traces led nowhere, now to Schwalbach? In: oraclesyndicate.twoday.net. May 19, 2016, accessed June 20, 2016 . 
24. ↑ Katharina Iskandar: After decades, the cases are brightening. In: FAZ.net . May 19, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
25. ↑ amt with agencies: serial killers in Hessen: Manfred S. and his possible victims. In: stern.de . May 19, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
26. ↑ ^{a b c d} Gisela S. murder case unsolved in file number XY. Broadcast on January 10, 1992
27. ^ Gisela Singh. In: sexindustry-kills.de. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
28. ↑ ^{a b} Niklaus Mehrfeld: A suitor was her murderer. (No longer available online.) In : kreisblatt.de. December 10, 2011, archived from the original on June 22, 2016 ; Retrieved June 20, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
29. ↑ Dominique Monrose. In: sexindustry-kills.de. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
30. Jump up , stabbed, strangled. These 75 feminicides were never resolved. BILD newspaper, March 13, 2015
31. ^ Dpa: Manfred S .: The perfect double life of the alleged serial killer from Schwalbach. (No longer available online.) In: msn.com. May 20, 2016, archived from the original on June 17, 2016 ; Retrieved June 20, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
32. ↑ BKA Unknown dead. (No longer available online.) In: bka.de. Archived from the original on January 12, 2016 ; Retrieved June 20, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
33. ^ POL-MTK: Joint press release by the Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor's office and the Main-Taunus police department. In: presseportal.de. October 10, 2014, accessed June 20, 2016 . 
34. ↑ ^{a b} Britta Simone Diallo. In: sexindustry-kills.de. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
35. ↑ Alexander Jürgs: A clarinet is supposed to expose serial killer Manfred S. In: welt.de . May 26, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
36. ↑ Case Tristan: Smashing the hot trail - Internet search continues at www.hessenschau.de. October 9, 2017 ( Memento of the original from August 6, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
37. ↑ Katharina Iskandar: Hope is called technology. In: FAZ.net . May 24, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016 . 
38. ↑ "This is not finished" How many people did Manfred S. kill? Höchst Kreisblatt, May 18, 2017
39. ↑ Interview to serial killer Manfred S. "You can find such victims in Frankfurt". Frankfurter Neue Presse, May 19, 2017
40. ↑ A year ago, the actions of Manfred Seel shocked. In the footsteps of the whore killer. BILD newspaper, May 18, 2017
41. ^ Chronicle: The history of the Frankfurt police. Frankfurter Rundschau, June 26, 2017
42. ^ Riddle about Manfred Seel still unsolved. Was the person who died in 2014 actually a serial killer? E110. The security portal. December 26, 2017 ( Memento of the original from December 26, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
43. ↑ Andreas Gößling: Wolfswut . True crime thriller. Knaur TB, 2018, ISBN 978-3-426-52132-8 .
44. ^ City of Gelnhausen. Realistic fiction about the book Wolfswut
45. ↑ Nele Neuhaus: The template for the next crime thriller is the case of the Hessen ripper Manfred Seel. Allgemeine Zeitung, June 29, 2018
46. ↑ bestselling author. New Taunus thriller: The Manfred Seel case inspired Nele Neuhaus Frankfurter Neue Presse, November 17, 2018
47. ^ Nele Neuhaus: Mother's Day : Kriminalroman (A Bodenstein-Kirchhoff-Krimi, Volume 9). Ullstein 2018. ISBN 978-355-008-103-3