Carmen Kampa murder case

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The murder of Carmen Kampa in Bremen in 1971 , the subsequent investigations and a remarkable misjudgment against an innocent suspect preoccupied the German public in the 1970s. This case remained unsolved for around 40 years and was finally resolved as a cold case in August 2011.

Acts and investigations

Carmen Kampa, who was 17 at the time of the crime, was assaulted on May 1, 1971 at around 11:25 p.m. on her way home from the Miramichi discotheque in Bremen- Oslebshausen near the Oslebshausen train station, raped and then strangled to the point of unconsciousness or death. Some of these acts could be observed by a young witness who was traveling on train 4498, which at the time of the crime was continuing its journey in the direction of Bremen-Nord. The police, notified by the train passengers and by another witness who had heard the screams of women, arrived at the Oslebshausen station at 11.35 p.m., but were unable to make any determinations despite an extensive search.

At noon on Tuesday, May 4, 1971, the body of Carmen Kampa was found near the crime scene indicated by the witnesses. The body had four knife stabs in the chest area that the girl could have been taught while she was dying or shortly after she died.

The subsequent investigations by the criminal police led to well over 1,000 traces. A large number of witnesses were heard, some of whom also contradicted each other. In 1973 the police finally identified the homosexual worker Otto Becker from Bremen as a suspect.

More than two and a half years after the crime on November 13, 1973, the Bremen District Court issued an arrest warrant against Otto Becker. Some time later, the public prosecutor brought charges against Becker for the murder of Carmen Kampa.

Miscarriage of justice

On November 12, 1974 the main hearing against Becker began before the Bremen Regional Court, which sentenced him on January 14, 1975 to a total imprisonment of 12 years and 3 months.

In the course of the investigations of the criminal police at the time , trace file 59 was created , which dealt with Helmut Harynek. Harynek had already come into contact with the police and the judiciary over various offenses. At the time, Harynek made statements to various people that he had had contact with Carmen Kampa on May 1, 1971. According to various witnesses, Harynek is said to have confessed to the murder of Carmen Kampa. Harynek himself, however, did not admit the act to the investigating authorities. Compared to Otto Becker, who was accused of the murder of Carmen Kampa, “the man from the trace file 59” was at least as suspicious, if not more suspicious, than the defendant Otto Becker at the time. His defense attorney Heinrich Hannover , to whom the contents of the trace file 59 had been leaked shortly after the conviction of his client Becker via a young public prosecutor, later made use of this important content of the trace file 59 .

The Federal Court of Justice overturned the first judgment of the Bremen Regional Court against Becker on October 30, 1975, because the chamber was incorrectly filled in the person of a lay judge. On November 4, 1976, another main hearing against Becker for the murder of Carmen Kampa took place before the Bremen Regional Court. In this main hearing, the court heard, along with many other witnesses, Harynek, who was finally questioned in detail by the Hanover defense attorney. The defense attorney managed to work out that Harynek was at least as suspicious of the murder of Carmen Kampa as Becker.

On November 28, 1976, the Bremen Regional Court acquitted Becker of the allegation of the murder of Carmen Kampa.

Clarification of the cold case

At the end of April 2011, the Bremen public prosecutor's office and officers from the Bremen criminal police reconstructed some of the then suspected events at Oslebshausen station under weather and lighting conditions similar to those on May 1, 1971. This included that several officers of the Bremen police in original footwear from the 1970s were to cross the tracks on the gravel that were closed to train traffic that night. The reason for this was that Carmen Kampa's shoes showed no damage in the area of ​​their heels. Furthermore, the public prosecutor had rented a complete train from Deutsche Bahn AG for the same night to check with the detectives and the lawyer of Carmen Kampa's mother what the witnesses on the train at the time had probably been able to observe on the embankment . At the same time, the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Mainz was busy examining hair that had been secured on Carmen Kampa's clothing in May 1971 for DNA features; this hair had been kept at the Federal Criminal Police Office in Wiesbaden since 1971 and was therefore able to avoid the destruction of evidence in these proceedings, which another public prosecutor had ordered at the beginning of the 1990s with regard to the evidence in the Carmen Kampa murder case.

The public prosecutor's office and the detectives sifted through the main files and the trace files over several months. The trace file 135 , which had already been created on the day of the act by a security guard from Bremen, was out of the ordinary. On the night of the crime, at the time of the crime, he should have set a watch at a company on the embankment, which he had not done the entire night from May 1st to May 2nd, 1971. He had properly operated other clocks near the crime scene around the time of the crime. A handkerchief had also been found on the embankment, which the guard's wife said belonged to her husband. The investigation team, consisting of the public prosecutor and two detectives, succeeded in refuting the security guard's alleged alibi for the night of May 1 to May 2, 1971, by analyzing the old investigations into the security guard and new interrogations in 2011. As further evidence that the security guard raped and killed Carmen Kampa, the result of the DNA analysis of the hair found on Carmen Kampa's clothes was added. After a sister of the security guard voluntarily submitted a saliva sample for DNA analysis, the investigators were able to determine that the DNA characteristics of a hair from Carmen Kampa's clothing matched those of the security guard's relatives. Taking into account the many evidence and clues that would otherwise speak against the security guard, it is therefore clear that the security guard is the murderer of Carmen Kampa. Since he had died in 2003, he could no longer be held responsible.

The results of the investigation were announced on August 19, 2011 in a joint press release by the Bremen public prosecutor and the Bremen police. On the evening of the same day, Radio Bremen reported in a very detailed television report by journalist Dirk Blumenthal, who had dealt with the Carmen Kampa murder case for over a decade, in the regional magazine buten un within about the investigation of the Carmen Kampa murder. The Weser-Kurier and a district newspaper reported the success of the investigation in large reports on August 20, 2011.

Public prosecutors and detectives, together with a lawyer, had informed Carmen Kampa's relatives about the results of the investigation a few days earlier.

miscellaneous

In the 42nd episode of file number XY ... unsolved on December 10, 1971, Eduard Zimmermann reported on the Carmen Kampa murder case and asked the audience for assistance.

The case was the subject of the 2005 television film “Murder on the Railway Embankment” from the NDR series Justizirrtum! Directed by Dirk Blumenthal.

In the episode “Tanz in den Tod” from the NDR series Morddeutschland (director: Björn Platz), which was first broadcast in 2017 , the investigation into the murder case was carried out in the first few years after the crime and the resumption 40 years later, which ultimately led to the conviction of the perpetrator , described in a documentary way.

literature

  • The witness drove by on the train. In: Stern , No. 46, November 7, 1974, pp. 70-71.
  • Jörg Kunkel, Thomas Schuhbauer: Miscarriage of justice! Germany in the mirror of spectacular misjudgments. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York, 2004, ISBN 3-593-37542-7 , pp. 173-205.
  • Heinrich Hannover : The republic in court 1954-1975. Memories of an uncomfortable lawyer. Construction Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-351-02480-0 , pp. 431-463.
  • Heinrich Hannover: speeches in court. Pleading in text and tone. PapyRossa Verlag , Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-89438-438-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "No indication of sexual willingness to act". In: Der Spiegel . 1/1977, January 2, 1977, accessed May 1, 2021 .
  2. ↑ Michael Glöckner: Television: Justice scandals death on the railway embankment. Monday, January 24th, 2005. In: Radio Bremen . January 17, 2005, archived from the original on December 30, 2019 ; accessed on May 1, 2021 .
  3. ^ Morddeutschland: Tanz in den Tod. In: ndr.de . Archived from the original on November 27, 2019 ; accessed on May 1, 2021 .
  4. ↑ Gisela Diewald-Kerkmann : Review of: Hannover, Heinrich: Speeches in front of the court. Pleading in text and tone. Cologne 2010. In: H-Soz-Kult . December 8, 2010, accessed May 1, 2021 .