Murder of Peter Falkenberg and Hildegard Wassing

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On February 7, 1956, the murder of Peter Falkenberg and Hildegard Wassing occurred near Düsseldorf . A suspect was quickly found and arrested. His pledges of innocence were not believed because, according to a blood group test, a trace of blood found in his car matched that of one of the victims. His assurances that this blood came from his girlfriend's dachshund were scientifically refuted by a forensic institute. Only further examinations of the traces of blood in another institute, against which the first resisted, proved his innocence. The case was never resolved.

Course of events and investigations

Hildegard Wassing (23) joined Peter Falkenberg (27) on February 7, 1956 in a Mercedes 170 S , which he drove as an employee of a ministry. On February 8th, Hildegard Wassing's mother reported her daughter as missing, and the ministerial official Dreyfuss reported his driver and his company car with the registration number R 209-448 as missing. Shortly afterwards, the Mercedes was found near Düsseldorf Central Station and traces of blood were found in it. At the time there were two more unsolved murders of lovers in motor vehicles, which is why the police were under great pressure to succeed in the search. On February 9th, the burned remains of Hildegard Wassing and Peter Falkenberg were found in a still burning straw stack in a field on the left Lower Rhine outside Lank-Ilverich . The autopsy of the bodies revealed that the man had been shot and then killed like the woman.

The police looked for a "weird" for the crimes and finally identified the 25-year-old travel agent Erich von der Leyen from Meerbusch-Büderich as a suspect. This was considered a loner and had no alibi for the time of the crime ; his logbook also showed manipulation . Traces of blood were found on the seat covers of his car, also on one of his jackets and a coat. His reasoning that this blood could come from poultry recently slaughtered and transported by him was dismissed as a protective claim . The Forensic Medicine Institute in Düsseldorf under the direction of Professor Kurt Böhmer declared blood to be human blood and determined the blood groups.

Erich von der Leyen was then arrested, but denied the act in countless interrogations. He later suspected that the blood came from his girlfriend's dachshund in heat . This confirmed the heat of her bitch at the time of the crime.

However, when asked, Böhmer expressly confirmed that the traces of blood found on the seat covers came from people and could be assigned to blood groups A and B. Von der Leyen himself had blood group A2 and was therefore ruled out as the culprit, but the victim Peter Falkenberg had blood group B. The traces of blood could have come from him. The blood groups determined also matched the victims of another couple murder in autumn of the previous year. Erich von der Leyen continued to deny any involvement in the crime.

At this point, the investigating criminal director Wehner procured dachshund blood and had it examined by the Forensic Institute. This reported back that the supposedly human blood sample was probably contaminated and that another should be taken for the examination. In this way, Wehner recognized the susceptibility of the examination procedure to errors, with which it was apparently not possible to differentiate between dachshund and human blood, and requested the institute to return all samples immediately, which the institute refused. It was only published after a long legal tug-of-war. The biological department of the Federal Criminal Police Office in Wiesbaden under the direction of Otto Martin , charged with the renewed examination, declared the blood to be menstrual blood based on the obvious glycogen-containing epithelial cells . Further examinations very quickly showed that it was dog blood. That this also has blood groups is true, but completely irrelevant in this case.

Erich von der Leyen was released. However, the Böhmer Institute reacted extremely angry. As in the calf trick case , all responsibility was rejected and the professors' review of forensic decisions was strictly refused. Böhmer even had a written statement regarding the review of the analysis of his institute: “If you admit this, then you have to admit from the outset that a professor of forensic medicine can make mistakes that could be accessible to verification. But I am of the opinion that this cannot be the case with us and that one should therefore reject the request to prove to a professor of forensic medicine that he was wrong ”.

Ultimately, the case was never resolved, as the police were initially certain that they had identified the perpetrator and had stopped further investigations into other possible perpetrators when he was arrested. When his innocence was proven, all other traces were cold. A short time later, perpetrators of one of the lovers ' murders were identified and convicted. However, it was not possible to prove the murder of Hildegard Wassing and Peter Falkenberg.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The hour of the detectives . tape 1 : Bloody secret. Droemer Knaur, Zurich, ISBN 3-426-00210-8 , p. 147 .
  2. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald : The hour of the detectives. Becomes and worlds of criminology. Droemer Knaur, Zurich and Munich 1966, p. 160 f.
  3. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The hour of the detectives . tape 1 : Bloody secret. Droemer Knaur, Zurich, ISBN 3-426-00210-8 , p. 150 .
  4. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The hour of the detectives . tape 1 : Bloody secret. Droemer Knaur, Zurich, ISBN 3-426-00210-8 , p. 160 .
  5. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald : Bloody error . In: Der Spiegel . No.  37 , 1966, pp. 77/78 ( online ).
  6. ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: The hour of the detectives . tape 1 : Bloody secret. Droemer Knaur, Zurich, ISBN 3-426-00210-8 , p. 163 .