Monsieur X

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"Monsieur X" was the pseudonym of a man who from 1975 to 1977 carried out more than a dozen attacks on the rail network of the German Federal Railroad in Baden-Württemberg along the Rhine Valley route between Bruchsal and Freiburg . The assassin tried to extort 250,000 DM from the Federal Railroad .

The attacks caused property damage totaling several million DM, in one case a passenger train derailed , with 19 people injured, some seriously. A tip finally led in February 1978 to the arrest of a man who was sentenced to life imprisonment in a complicated circumstantial trial.

The series of attacks on rail transport in Germany after the war , the most momentous up to that point , led to great uncertainty among passengers on the heavily frequented section of the route.

The case turned out to be one of the most spectacular blackmail attempts against the Deutsche Bundesbahn, not least because of the difficult evidence in the course of the trial.

Sequence of events

A total of thirteen attacks in the 1970s were attributable to Monsieur X, as the perpetrator described himself in his letters of confession. In doing so, he cut catenary wires, hung U-shaped brackets in the lines and unscrewed sleeper screws that held the rails in place.

First attacks

The perpetrator first appeared in October 1975. During two acts of sabotage, he set up hazard warning lights on the open road and triggered emergency brakes on the respective trains using wire traps. The incidents were preceded by a first attempt at blackmail, in which the perpetrator demanded 100,000 DM from the Federal Railroad and threatened train derailments and collisions as well as a doubling of the sum if the Federal Railroad did not respond to his request.

After these attacks, the Federal Railroad signaled with an advertisement that appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung with the code name "DB transport is taking place - Ziegler 134 399" that it was ready to respond to the blackmailer's demands. Two phone calls announced by the perpetrator, which were supposed to clarify the transfer modalities, did not materialize.

Train accident near Rastatt

After these first acts of sabotage, it was almost a year before the perpetrator became active again. On the night of August 25, 1976, he removed a total of 80 rail fastening screws on a section of the route near Rastatt, which was temporarily closed for construction work . A freight train that passed the section in the early morning hours derailed as a result. The property damage in this case alone amounted to one million DM. After this attack, the perpetrator increased his claim to 250,000 DM.

Series of attacks in spring 1977

After the train derailment at Rastatt, there were initially no further acts of sabotage until April 1977, but then a whole series of attacks followed.

In four cases, lowered power lines to electric locomotives and operating equipment resulted in damage amounting to more than DM 100,000. Previously, the perpetrator had cut wire ropes on which the concrete weights hung, which were used to tension the contact line system.

In another case, he unscrewed a mounting arm for the catenary.

In the event of a stop, he loosened a total of 84 rail fastening screws and then bent the track, presumably with the help of a crowbar . In this case, however, he gave a telephone warning in good time.

In several other attacks, he hung steel brackets in the contact line system, in which the pantographs of the electric locomotives then got caught and the power wires tore down several hundred meters. The police suspected that he was using a heavily insulated and telescopic extendable pole to latch the brackets into the catenary.

Italia-Express

On October 17, 1977, Monsieur X committed the most momentous attack to date. At Riegel am Kaiserstuhl , he loosened a total of 132 screws from the inner track in a curve on 33 sleepers and then bent it. The long-distance train Italia-Express Copenhagen – Rome derailed shortly after midnight at a speed of 140 km / h. Two of the twelve wagons overturned, 19 people were injured, some seriously. A fortunate circumstance prevented a major disaster: the train was delayed. Had he been on time, there would have been a collision with an oncoming train. In the vicinity of the accident site, the police found a letter of confession in which the perpetrator blamed the Karlsruhe Federal Railway Directorate for the accident. He commented on the amount of damage caused by the deeds he committed, which meanwhile amounted to three million DM, with the words: “Now it's going to be much cheaper!” .

Police investigation

By the beginning of October 1977, the investigating special commission of the Baden-Baden Criminal Investigation Department had already created 740 files on the case. During the investigation, she was primarily dependent on the traces the perpetrator had left behind at the crime scene, tools she had made herself and the letters confessing her written on a typewriter . Despite extensive research, 2,200 typeface samples have already been analyzed by typewriters, and the investigations proved to be very difficult. In addition to facts, the police had to rely on guesswork. It was based on a person with a strong stature, who had manual skills and was also familiar with railroad internals. 500 active and retired employees of the Federal Railroad had already been checked.

Meanwhile, the Baden-Baden public prosecutor's office is investigating attempted murder , robbery extortion and dangerous interference with rail traffic .

Once, the perpetrator purposefully spread disinformation in order to steer the police investigation work in the wrong direction. Research with chambers of industry and commerce , with bailiffs and house searches of four suspects remained inconclusive after the perpetrator had previously claimed that he owed 80,000 DM because his company had gone bankrupt .

Despite the increased police presence along the route between Mannheim and Basel and at the railway facilities, the series of attacks continued unhindered, and the perpetrator could not be caught. By October 1978, a total of 1,200 people and 3,000 typewriters had been checked.

Since the police investigation did not continue after the attack on the Italia-Express, the special commission turned to the ZDF , which on January 20, 1978 broadcast a search call on the television program Aktenzeichen XY ... unsolved . At this point at the latest, the criminal case received nationwide attention.

Blackmail and confession letters

His altogether eleven letters, which he sent to the Federal Railroad and which were always signed with "Greetings from Monsieur X" , sometimes contained sarcastic comments.

In the first extortion letter, which was received by the Federal Railway Directorate in Karlsruhe in October 1975 and headed with the word "extortion", he demanded 100,000 DM and gave his "word of honor to repay this sum with 7 percent interest within a year at the latest" .

After the attack on the Italia-Express, the police investigated evidence of a vehicle. Thereupon, at the beginning of November 1977, he wrote a letter to the Karlsruhe Federal Railway Directorate with the title “Last Warning!” . In it he emphasized:


“Even the dumbest should have noticed by now that it is serious. There is absolutely no point in looking for a car because Monsieur X uses the safest means of transport available today - the train. Because if he's inside, the train will definitely not derail. "

He underlined the demand he made for a sum of money of initially 100,000 DM, later 250,000 DM with the words:


"The quarter of a million will be a trifle compared to the otherwise feared damage ... I don't want more than 250,000 marks anyway, because money only spoils the character."

In another letter, which he wrote before the federal election in 1976 , it said: "Choose correctly, choose X, so that the Bundesbahn runs more safely again!"

Once he sent the Federal Railroad an expense allowance of 200 DM and added: "For the expenses of the handover" . He was referring to the handover of the extortion money demanded by him.

In some cases, he also confessed to the crimes by telephone.

arrest

The arrest of the perpetrator was preceded by a series of coincidences.

In November 1977 a boy had left a letter for a certain "Mr. Ziegler" in a Strasbourg hotel, an alias that all letters between the perpetrator and the Federal Railroad carried. Since the hotelier found no entry in the guest book for the name Ziegler and no registration was available, he became suspicious and informed the French police, who then opened the letter. When the man picked up the letter, the hotelier followed him and noted the license plate number of his car.

Since the wording was an attempt at blackmail, the French authorities suspected a possible connection between the letter and the kidnapping of the German employer president Hanns Martin Schleyer and passed the information on to the Baden-Württemberg Office for the Protection of the Constitution . Since large parts of the police were involved in the Schleyer kidnapping case at the time, the German authorities initially did not pay the appropriate attention to the information. It was only when an employee saw the search call on ZDF in January 1978 that the special commission of the Baden-Baden criminal investigation department received a notice on February 17, 1978, which ultimately led to the arrest and arrest of 52-year-old Hermann Kraft from Freiburg, owner of a store for aquarium accessories , led. Why Kraft picked up his own extortion letter remained unclear until the end.

There were no further attacks after Kraft was arrested.

process

Prelude

One year after Kraft's arrest, the trial of the accused was opened in the Rastatt Castle in February 1979 . Franz Isak, judge at the Baden-Baden regional court, chaired the meeting . The indictment was represented by Chief Public Prosecutor Reiner Haehling von Lanzenauer , the defense by lawyers Udo Kemptner and Jürgen Laubscher.

Hermann Kraft was charged with attempted murder in 25 cases, attempted extortion and dangerous interference in rail traffic.

Evidence

The trial against Monsieur X is considered to be one of the most spectacular of the German post-war period.

initial situation

The course of the process was characterized from the start by a complicated line of evidence, because there was no direct evidence that Hermann Kraft is the wanted Monsieur X. Serious evidence was contrasted with less credible witnesses, dubious reports and, in some cases, less reliable evidence.

Witnesses
A salesman in a Freiburg metal goods store, where the defendant is said to have bought screws, could not identify Kraft during an initial comparison; only weeks later did he believe he had recognized Kraft. A housewife from Karlsruhe, who claims to have seen Kraft leaving a telephone booth, admitted in court that she recognized the wrong person in two comparisons.
There were no witnesses who observed the defendant during the acts of sabotage.
Missing tool
Square iron that the police found during searches in Kraft's workshop were of the same quality as the brackets that the perpetrator used to manipulate the overhead lines, but tools that Kraft could clearly have transferred were found, as were the three typewriters with whom Kraft had created the letters.
A track construction key with which the assassin would have to have loosened sleeper screws, or a jack with which he possibly bent the rails, remained as untraceable as a bolt cutter with which the perpetrator cut tensioning wires. A pull-out rod with which the perpetrator could have anchored the U-shaped brackets in the overhead lines was also not discovered.
Blood group analysis
An analysis of the traces of saliva on envelopes and stamps of five blackmail letters showed that both Monsieur X and Hermann Kraft have blood group 0, but this occurs in about 37% of German citizens.
Sonagram analysis
The sonagram analysis, i.e. H. the voice print comparison of a total of seven tape recordings by the police of blackmail calls did not provide any certainty, as an important frequency range was missing. Hans Goydke from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig found that at least “in the evaluable area largely agreement” . On the other hand, the Israeli sonagram expert Eyal Shy of the forensic science department of the Jerusalem police found it impossible to draw a certain conclusion because of the poor sound quality of the tape material ".
Speech analysis
Edeltraud Knetschke from the Mannheim Institute for German Language compared tape recordings with Kraft's voice and recognized a mixture of four language directions in both. In addition to a basic Thuringian dialect, influences from the Mannheim / Saarbrücken and Freiburg / Switzerland areas and the standard language. Matches that matched the career of Hermann Kraft, who was born in Saalfeld in Thuringia and who came to Freiburg via detours in 1952, but ultimately could not be considered conclusive evidence.
The attack pause in spring 1976
In the spring of 1976 the police recorded no further attacks. This period seemed to coincide with an illness by Kraft, as he wrote in his sixth letter to the Bundesbahn himself on September 4th. A doctor who appeared as a witness at the trial confirmed that Kraft was suffering from the sciatic nerve at the time and was undergoing an operation.

accusation

The prosecution's evidence was based on the following evidence:

Passion for play as a motive
For the public prosecutor's office, a passion for gaming was the central motive that led Kraft, a passionate roulette player, to his actions. Kraft had previously claimed to have developed a winning system that, however, required high stakes.
Microscopic tracks
With the help of a special vacuum cleaner, employees of the scientific service of the Zurich City Police found tiny particles of blue paint on an oxide red primer, green-gray iron mica paints with a red lead, and lumps of algae on Kraft's clothes and in his car. Traces that were also found at two crime scenes. The police then took 108 paint samples, but the type of paint used by the perpetrator was not found in the samples. Senior Public Prosecutor von Lanzenauer saw the "pillar of the prosecution" in the evidence .
Orthographic peculiarities
A comparative style analysis carried out by the Mannheim professor for German studies , Dietrich Jöns , revealed no certainty, but a total of 14 matches between Kraft's writing and the ransom letters.
Kraft always wrote the word “computer” with “K” or “so that” in one word. Furthermore, he abbreviated the word “and” occasionally with “u.” And “or” either with “bezw.” Or “or”.

defense

The defense primarily questioned the evidential value of the reports and analyzes. Hermann Kraft argued against it that not himself, but a certain "Alfred Brockmann", whom he had met in the Baden-Badener Spielbank , was the wanted Monsieur X. Kraft said that he only acted as courier and intermediary for Brockmann, who pretended to be a private detective to him , but whose address he does not know. For a fee, he occasionally ran errands and made phone calls with a prefabricated text, although the meaning of these conversations would not have made sense to him. Occasionally, he also gave the man his vehicle and overalls and granted access to his workshop. In response to the motive of passion for gambling cited by the public prosecutor's office, the defense countered that Kraft had only wagered small sums of money in gambling. The defense noted that the phantom drawing made according to the information provided by the seller from the metal goods store showed no resemblance to the defendant. Kraft contradicted the advice that the attacks had stopped after his arrest with the irrefutable claim that the real perpetrator was now incriminating him by simple inaction.

judgment

Kraft, who denied all allegations to the end, was found guilty on all counts by the presiding judge Isak after twelve days of main hearing in March 1979 and sentenced to life imprisonment. In their plea, the public prosecutor's office had called for twice life imprisonment, the defense pleaded for acquittal .

Grounds for judgment

Although a total of 82 witnesses and 20 experts were heard in the trial, the court ultimately relied on circumstantial evidence to provide evidence and the verdict. The jury chamber of the regional court nevertheless saw it as proven that Hermann Kraft was identical with the assassin Monsieur X.

In the one-hour reasoning for the verdict, Isak listed all the indications that, in his opinion, spoke in favor of Hermann Kraft as the perpetrator. The court found that the voice on the tape was exactly the tone, manner of speaking and brief laugh of the defendant. The four experts had confirmed the court's view. In addition, the defendant had once "I will in the call tariff." I said, a mistake, as he also ran the blackmailer once. Isak referred to a total of 20 similarities and matches on the tape recordings and in the letters and emphasized that given this frequency one could no longer speak of coincidences. In addition, Isak referred to the evidence found on Kraft's clothing and in his car, and spoke of tough, incorruptible evidence. In addition, exactly the square steel for the bracket that Monsieur X had used during the sabotage on the overhead lines was found in Kraft's workshop.

Other evidence, such as the fact that the accused changed his appearance after the manhunt started and during the main hearing spoke of a rubber dinghy , which only he could know about if he knew the contents of the Strasbourg ransom note, almost played a role for Isak in the grounds of the verdict a subordinate role. The court did not believe the defendant's version that he had acted on behalf of the private detective, since a person by the name of Alfred Brockmann does not exist.

In view of the defendant's passion for gambling, who approvingly risked numerous lives in order to finance his “surefire” roulette system, Isak ruled out any kind of extenuating circumstances from the level of the sentence.

Revision

The defense appealed against the judgment objection one since evidence in their opinion would have left open by too many doubts. On August 30, 1979, the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe rejected the appeal of the defense and declared the judgment to be final.

Kraft was later granted a term of 18 years' imprisonment.

Open questions

Despite the burden of evidence, questions remained unanswered that defied the prosecution's logic:

  • The question as to why the defendant, who picked up the letter at the Strasbourg hotel, was at the risk of being exposed
  • The question of an accommodation receipt from a Yugoslav inn, which the police found during a search of the defendant's apartment and which was dated September 1977. Exactly on this day, the Federal Railway Directorate in Karlsruhe received a call to confess. Kraft claimed the receipt was issued for him at the start of a trip to Yugoslavia.

Imprisonment

Kraft was imprisoned in the penal institutions of Stuttgart-Stammheim , Bruchsal and Diez . While in custody, Kraft wrote a documentary entitled "The Always Successful Justice" and a novel entitled "The Moonlight Assassins" .

In June 1993, a higher regional court dismissed a complaint by Kraft in which he advocated a reduction in his prison term from 18 to 16.5 years.

On September 7, 1993, Hermann Kraft was able to flee from the Diez correctional facility . He used an open space in the nursery nursery to escape. A few days later he wrote under the sender “Hermann Kraft, prisoner a. D. von JVA Diez “wrote a letter to the institution in which he asserted that he was innocent. He had accepted sixteen and a half years in prison, but eighteen years was "too much" . Kraft later said that he did not flee, but "just ran away" . He had already worked in the institution gardening facility in a relaxed manner.

According to his own account, Kraft slept with friends and worked occasionally. He decided to surrender when he ran out of money.

At the beginning of February 1996, Kraft presented itself. He asked the Freiburg prison to be re-imprisoned.

Kraft was fired in the late 1990s.

After imprisonment

After his release, Kraft revised the manuscript for his book, which was not accepted by publishers.

At the end of 2007, Kraft lived in a small town in Breisgau. He protested his innocence in a conversation with a journalist. He ran errands for the actual perpetrator, a "private detective Alfred Brockmann" . Brockmann told him he was hunting criminals. Kraft died in 2015.

Others

  • The Strasbourg hotelier Fernand Anolde, who gave the decisive clue No. 2498 about the apprehension of the perpetrator, received a reward of 110,000 DM, whereby the Federal Railroad alone paid 100,000 DM, the rest of the amount went to the public prosecutor's office
  • A magazine offered Kraft a large sum of money for his life story on the condition that he had to confess beforehand that he was Monsieur X and that he had committed the crimes.
  • The series of attacks later served as a model for the railway bomber " Herbert the Säger ", who blackmailed the Federal Railroad with similar attacks in the 1990s.
  • Kraft is father of a son. According to himself, his marriage ended in divorce the year after his conviction.

literature

  • Reiner Haehling von Lanzenauer: The railway bomber Monsieur X: From the track to the evidence. Kriminalistik-Verlag, Heidelberg 1980, ISBN 3-7832-0680-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Still many riddles about Monsieur X. In: Die Zeit. February 16, 1979.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Sabotage: Now and then chunks. In: Der Spiegel. 40/1977, September 26, 1977.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Crime: Dark voice. In: Der Spiegel. 39/1978, September 25, 1978.
  4. ↑ a b c When the separator screeches. In: Der Spiegel. 14/1992, March 30, 1992.
  5. ↑ a b The ten most spectacular cases “Aktenzeichen XY”: Railway attacks by “Monsieur X”. on: Focus Online. December 6, 2012.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Processes: Mute witnesses. In: Der Spiegel. 9/1979, February 26, 1979.
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Rock-hard evidence. On the judgment against the railway bomber Monsieur X. In: Die Zeit. March 16, 1979.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h Patrick Müller: The moonlight assassin . In: Badische Zeitung . October 16, 2007, p. 15 .
  9. ↑ a b c d e Judgment: Hermann Kraft. In: Der Spiegel. 11/1979, March 12, 1979.
  10. ↑ a b c d Crime: piece by piece. In: Der Spiegel. 36/1980, September 1, 1980.
  11. ↑ a b c "Monsieur X" sends a letter . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 211 , September 11, 1993, ISSN  0174-4909 , pp. 8 .
  12. ^ "Monsieur X" escaped from prison . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 209 , September 9, 1993, ISSN  0174-4909 , p. 10 .
  13. ↑ Fled Bundesbahn blackmailer turns himself in to the police . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 31 , February 6, 1995, ISSN  0174-4909 , p. 8 .
  14. ↑ Patrick Müller: Ten years ago the train extortionist gave his last interview. In: badische-zeitung.de. October 16, 2017, accessed March 6, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Volker Lilienthal: Patina of yesterday . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 32 , February 7, 1997, ISSN  0174-4909 , p. 36 .
  16. ↑ Crimes That Made History. fernsehserien.de