Murder case Lydia Schürmann
The murder case of Lydia Schürmann is the murder of 13-year-old Lydia Schürmann from St. Vit in North Rhine-Westphalia , whose body was only found in August 1962 by a mushroom picker about 20 km from her home near Bielefeld , months after her disappearance . The crime has not yet been solved. The case caused a stir after several anonymous letters from the alleged perpetrator emerged from July 2006 in which he confessed to the murder of Schürmann and later another act in order to alleviate his conscience. After an intensive search for the letter writer for more than two years - among other things, in the summer of 2007 the television series Aktenzeichen XY ... was searched unsolved for the man - it turned out at the end of 2008 that the author of the letters was a 34-year-old man from the Saarland , which had nothing to do with the murders and, due to its age, could not have.
prehistory
Lydia Schürmann lived in St. Vit, now part of Rheda-Wiedenbrück in North Rhine-Westphalia, and disappeared on April 26, 1962. The 13-year-old girl had received house arrest that day after an argument with her mother and was out of her window Climbed up the room to run away from home. According to a Belgian truck driver who hitchhiked her, she wanted to travel to France. The driver had taken her to the Dutch border in Elmpt , where she got homesick and decided to hitchhike back.
In Moenchengladbach , the trace of the girl lost until a few months later, on 19 August 1962 Schürmanns corpse with Würgemalen on a secluded dirt road near the motorway A 2 at Bielefeld was found by a mushroom pickers. Although the girl's murderer was searched intensively in the following time and the public was finally asked for help with Eduard Zimmermann in 1968 in the television program Aktenzeichen XY ... unsolved , the perpetrator has not yet been identified.
The letters
The police's search for the perpetrator remained fruitless years after the crime. Hopes of solving the murder case nonetheless arose in July 2006 when the police in Kaiserslautern received a letter in which the author confessed to having taken a girl with his car in the early 1960s and later killed her. He stated that he was afraid of the prison, that he would die there and that he still wanted to calm his conscience because of his age.
Because of the details given in the letter, the investigators assumed that the letter was genuine. In January 2007, a second anonymous letter appeared to the police, this time in Bielefeld, in which the author stated that he could help clarify the Lydia Schürmann murder case. The DNA traces found on both letters turned out to be identical.
Shortly afterwards, investigators from Nuremberg contacted their colleagues from Bielefeld, since in November 2005 they had also received letters in which the author stated that he was aware of a murder. He claimed that a friend who had since passed away had killed 29-year-old Heiderose Berchner in February 1970, a homeless prostitute from Nuremberg who was found burned near Ulm. For this, too, an unsolved search was made in 1970 in file number XY… . In the course of this, the investigators announced that the murderer of Heiderose Berchner could also be responsible for four other so far unsolved murders in which the victims also came from Nuremberg and corresponded to the scheme of the first victims. This notification was later followed by another letter in which the alleged perpetrator denied having anything to do with the four additional murders.
At this time, investigative commissions, which at times consisted of up to 30 officials, were looking for a man who was estimated to be older than 64 years. It was suspected that he lived in Saarland, as all letters were posted there, previously worked in the forwarding business and could therefore have been in North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria. In addition, tire marks on an Opel Diplomat were found near the Nuremberg crime scene , which is why it was suspected that the perpetrator had driven a car of this type at the time. In the summer of 2007 it was clear to the investigators that he must come from near Weiskirchen in Saarland . In July 2007 the Weiskirchen municipal administration was asked in a letter to cancel a concert by the singer DJ Ötzi , otherwise he would be killed. The letter was accompanied by a newspaper clipping advertising the concert, which had only been published in a partial edition published in Weiskirchen. With a fingerprint and DNA traces on the letter, the author could be identified as the one who had previously sent the letters to the police authorities. However, it was no longer assumed that the man had a remorse to write the letters. He did not express a word of regret in the letters and showed no sympathy for the victims and their families. Nevertheless, the search for an old man from Weiskirchen continued. In November 2008, around 5000 male seniors from the vicinity of the Saarland community were asked to do a saliva test ( DNA screening ).
Identification of the letter writer
In November 2008, two weeks after the saliva tests began, a postman from Weiskirchen recognized the letter writer's handwriting on a postcard. It came from a 34-year-old man from Weiskirchen, who had sent his parents a postcard from a psychiatric clinic on Lake Chiemsee . He had previously voluntarily been admitted to the clinic after the police had started the mass genetic test. The man's handwriting and DNA matched all letters he wrote. During interrogation by the police, the perpetrator confessed to having written the letters. He was later attested to having an extreme need for recognition. A search of his apartment found an extensive media archive with newspaper clippings from the 1960s and 1970s as well as a huge archive of videos and DVDs, including recordings of news and crime programs such as file number XY ... unsolved . From this the perpetrator had obtained his knowledge of the deeds.
After the origin of the letters had been clarified, the police announced in a press release that the perpetrator had sent a total of seven letters in which he not only claimed that he could solve the murders of Schürmann and Berchner, but also stated that he had eleven other murders in the To have committed period from 1961 to 1992. However, because of his age, among other things, he could not have committed these murders. He was subsequently investigated because of the threat to the detriment of the singer DJ Ötzi, because of attempted thwarting of punishment and faking a criminal offense . The genetic test was canceled.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Cordula Schmitz: Police are looking for murderers after 45 years ; Welt Online from August 3, 2007.
- ↑ a b c d Jürgen Potthoff: Lydia case: Schürmann noose around child murderer is getting tighter ; Westfälische Rundschau from November 15, 2008
- ^ Radio Bielefeld: New letter in the murder case Lydia Schürmann ; ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. dated October 30, 2008.
- ↑ a b Arno Heissmeyer: Four letters and two deaths ; Focus.de on May 28, 2008.
- ↑ a b Jörg Völkerling: Germany is hunting the scary serial killer ; Welt Online from May 29, 2008.
- ↑ a b POL-MFR: (2129) Joint press release of the Bielefeld Police Headquarters, the Nuremberg Police Headquarters and the Saarland State Police Directorate from November 19, 2008.
- ↑ Simone Kaiser, Andreas Ulrich: Crime: One letter too much ; Der Spiegel 45/2008 from November 3, 2008
- ↑ Police are pursuing a new lead in the Lydia Schürmann case ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Article on Mittelbayerische.de from October 13, 2008.
- ↑ Mysterious letter writer exposed! Article on tz-online.de from November 22, 2008.
- ↑ Wrong letters of confession: The would-be murderer from Saarland ( Memento from January 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ); dpa / ap article on Netzeitung.de from November 20, 2008
