Peter Strüdinger

Peter Strüdinger (born January 18, 1957 in Quernheim ) is a German criminal and prisoner who was best known for his two escapes from the high-security wing of the Celle prison .

Early life and first offenses

Peter Strüdinger was born in Lower Saxony as the first child of a nurse . He never got to know his birth father. In 1966 his half-brother Dieter was born; at that time truant he already often from school and tore several times from home. His mother therefore took him to a youth psychiatric clinic in Wunstorf , where a doctor advised her to take Peter out of school. After several stays at home, he was sentenced to four years' youth imprisonment by the Nordenham District Court in 1973 for theft, attempted robbery and resistance to law enforcement officers , and in 1974 to another four years for attempted robbery and theft in eight cases. In 1976, while on leave, he broke into private homes again and was sentenced to an additional three years and three months.

Escape and hostage-taking

He was transferred to the closed department of the Göttingen State Hospital for treatment . There he made a knife out of radio parts, stabbed two orderlies on January 14, 1978 and fled. After two days, however, he surrendered voluntarily, and after being convicted of attempted manslaughter again, he was returned to normal prison. During a prison vacation there, he met 18-year-old Gudrun and fell in love with her. However, her mother forbade her to meet with a criminal. Desperate about it, he took a railway employee hostage with a firearm while on another leave of absence in 1982. During the rescue attempt by a special task force there was an exchange of fire in which Strüdinger and two police officers were seriously injured. After being sentenced to 15 years in prison with preventive detention , he was in the high security wing of the prison Celle transferred.

First escape

On Monday, May 21, 1984 around 9:15 am, Strüdinger took a prison officer hostage with a four-barreled shooting device he had made from the tubular steel posts of his bed. Together with his fellow inmate Norman Kowollik, he then attached a detonator to the officer’s carotid artery. The two hostage-takers threatened with a dead man's circuit , in which a button has to be kept pressed, otherwise the charge will detonate. To demonstrate the functionality of his weapon, Strüdinger fired two shots at a cupboard and a window. The two perpetrators then demanded a BMW 745i as an escape vehicle and a ransom of 300,000 marks, which was made available to them. At around 11:30 p.m., the perpetrators, with their hostage as the driver, began to flee via Hanover and Bremen to Osnabrück , but were constantly followed by the police due to a tracking device installed in the escape vehicle. At around 1 a.m. they went to the apparently agreed meeting with their accomplice Werner Winter and to swap cars in the emergency room of the Osnabrück hospital. They wanted to make a phone call there first and accepted the apparently coincidental winter's offer to drive them on in his car. In his BMW 323i, they went on to Diepholz , where they released their hostage and Strüdinger left his weapon behind. In the vicinity of Bad Iburg , the police lost sight of the red BMW in a storm front in thick fog. A police officer who was driving to work accidentally saw the BMW he was looking for on the side of the road in Bremen. Police officers lurked there until the car owner Werner Winter showed up and arrested him for complicity : he still had several 10,000 marks of the ransom with him. Strüdinger and Kowollik were soon located in Bremen's entertainment district at the Ostertor and were overwhelmed by civil investigators while they were waiting in front of a pedestrian traffic light at "Rot". In the meantime, both of them had armed themselves with a blank gun and Strüdinger also had a live revolver . The entire escape had taken almost 24 hours. After being sentenced again to seven years in prison, Strüdinger was transferred back to the Celle prison. There he intentionally became infected with the HIV virus during his detention .

Second escape

On Sunday, May 21, 1995 at around 8:15 am, Strüdinger and his fellow inmate Günther Finneisen again overpowered a prison officer with a self-made gun and a dummy bomb. This time he asked for a Porsche 928 , with which the two of them flee with their hostage and a ransom of 200,000 marks around 8:50 p.m. At around 7:00 p.m., Strüdinger had called Lower Saxony's Minister of Justice Heidrun Merk . The whole next day they drove across Lower Saxony, followed by the police. a they passed Soltau , Fallingbostel , Diepholz , Nienburg , Hanover , Braunschweig and Seesen , stopping several times to go shopping. Near Lemförde finally bought themselves pistols , in Rotenburg (Wümme) they fueled their vehicles in new. Finneisen contacted the news broadcaster n-tv by cell phone and asked for the police to stop. On Tuesday at around 3 a.m. they sped through Osnabrück at excessive speed, ran over red lights and threw bundles of banknotes out of the window. After they had exchanged their getaway car for a VW Golf GTI, they were stopped by three civilian police vehicles shortly after 11:00 a.m. at a crossroads in Osnabrück and Strüdinger and Finneisen were overwhelmed by a special task force. This time the escape had taken 51 hours.

Term since last conviction

After another conviction, he met Angelina W. through correspondence, married her in the JVA Celle and took her last name. His wife died in 1998.

Crime forecast

As early as his last conviction (1996), Peter W. was certified that he had changed internally since his marriage: “In view of the convincing, coherent appearance of the defendant in the main hearing, another preventive detention was not to be considered. The defendant W. is no longer dangerous ”(Regional Court of Celle, judgment of November 12, 1996 - Az. 17 KLs 4300 / 95-2 / 96). In the previous psychiatric report, which was prepared on behalf of the Hanover prison, it says: "Overall, from a forensic-psychiatric point of view, the risk of Ws has decreased compared to 1997" (report by Dr. Bernd Wieneke of April 13, 2000).

Accommodation on security stations

Despite this favorable assessment by the court and appraiser, Peter W. is still housed in security wards of various penal institutions (Hamburg, Werl, Hanover, Sehnde, Rosdorf) due to the fact that he is still assumed to be dangerous. The only easing thing over the years was that he was taken to the grave of his late wife three times. Totally isolated for many years, he has recently been allowed to work with another prisoner, take his free time and play sports.

Therapeutic offers

In the years 1998 to 2001 a psychology counselor in the Hanover prison carried out psychotherapeutic treatment (48 individual interviews) with W. After six preparatory meetings in the presence of prison staff, these discussions took place unsupervised. A number of “significant changes” are highlighted in the final report; At the same time it is emphasized that in the medium term it is indispensable to “try out what has been worked out therapeutically in everyday situations”, which naturally quickly reaches its limits under the conditions of the security station (note of March 29, 2002).

Enforcement planning

In the penultimate update of the execution plan (from January 26, 2009) of the JVA Sehnde he is certified that his behavior is "unchanged, adapted, friendly and polite towards the employees involved with him". Placement in the normal prison is out of the question, however, since it cannot yet be ruled out with sufficient certainty that he "might consider the possibility of another hostage-taking". Regarding psychological measures, it says: “Psychological discussions are held if required on individual request. The last conversation took place on August 18, 2008 ”. The end of the penalty is noted on December 4, 2012. This is to be followed by the introduction to preventive detention, which was imposed on him in 1983. Before the end of the sentence and the commencement of preventive detention, however, the competent penal enforcement chamber must check “whether the purpose of the measure still requires the detention” (Section 67 c (2) sentence 1 StGB). The last update (January 11, 2010) states: “Mr S. is of the firm opinion that on the one hand an assessment is not necessary, on the other hand he wants to determine the choice of the assessor himself - if an assessment has to be carried out. This request cannot be met, as the choice of the expert falls within the primary responsibility of the institution. Should Mr S. stick to his position, the report will have to be drawn up according to the files ”. “Mr S. is working in the security station together with fellow prisoner X. The work performed above average ... One other employee readiness is not given. "2013 went Strüdinger in 1983 established preventive detention on. The first preventive detention lasts a maximum of ten years.

Web links

• Peter Strüdinger - Germany's most dangerous hostage gangster speaks about his criminal career, at Focus.de
• Celle hostage drama ended bloodlessly at Welt.de
• Chase through Lower Saxony, at Welt.de