Police murders in Dortmund and Waltrop
In the murders of the police officers in Dortmund and Waltrop , the 31-year-old neo-Nazi Michael Berger (born January 16, 1969 , † June 14, 2000 in Olfen ) shot three police officers and then killed himself.
Sequence of events
On June 14, 2000, Berger was out and about in his BMW in the city of Dortmund . Since he was not buckled up, he was noticed by police officers Thomas Goretzky and Nicole Hartmann, who asked him to stop from the patrol car . Berger tried to flee, was arrested on Unteren Graffweg in Dortmund-Brackel and opened fire on the officials. Goretzky was fatally injured, the seriously injured Nicole Hartmann alerted the headquarters, which set off a large manhunt. In Waltrop , the fleeing mountain man stopped next to a patrol car and fired three targeted shots at the police officers Yvonne Hachtkemper and Matthias Larisch von Woitowitz who were inside; both succumbed to the headshots they had suffered immediately. In the late afternoon, the escape vehicle was discovered on a dirt road in an Olfen forest. Michael Berger was found dead in the car, he had killed himself with a shot in the head.
Perpetrator
Berger grew up in Selm-Bork and acquired the secondary school leaving certificate . In the mid to late 1980s, he completed a commercial apprenticeship in Dortmund. He did military service as a tank grenadier and then worked as a taxi driver, agent for fire extinguishers and in a car dealership. Most recently he lived in the Dortmund district of Körne .
Berger was firmly integrated into the North Rhine-Westphalian neo-Nazi scene and was friends with the Dortmund leader of the Borussian front , Siegfried Borchardt , among others . The camaraderie Dortmund spread to Bergers murders publicly sticker labeled "Berger was a friend of ours. 3: 1 for Germany. KS Dortmund ". There were also contacts with the neo-Nazi organization Sauerland Action Front .
Investigations
During the search of Berger's apartment in Körne, a fragmented hand grenade , hunting rifles , revolvers and a Hungarian pistol were found. A hidden AK-47 assault rifle was discovered in his parents' house in Selm . Berger did not have a gun license and had not appeared before the police. However, in April 2000, his driver's license was revoked.
In Berger's wallet, a picture of Adolf Hitler , a membership card of the NPD , a business card each of the neo-Nazi and informant Sebastian Seemann and the later banned National Resistance Dortmund (NWDO) were found. In his apartment there were also membership cards of the DVU and Republicans .
Nevertheless, the investigative authorities saw no evidence of a political motivation for the crime: there were no indications of “politically motivated crime”, although Dortmund neo-Nazis publicly described Berger as one of their own and celebrated the crime. Suspicions in the media about a connection between the crime and evidence of Berger's activities in the neo-Nazi scene have not been verified. The case was dropped because of his death.
In the course of the investigation into the murders of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), Berger's crime was also re-examined, as references to Berger were found in the NSU's propaganda material. Berger was recorded in the intelligence service information system of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and had verifiably contacts with V-people. The suspicion was expressed that Berger himself had worked with the protection of the constitution . The NSU's first murder took place just a few months after Berger's crime.
In 2014, the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia decided to include the murders in the work of the NSU investigative committee, which is supposed to deal with possible misconduct and omissions. The chairwoman of the committee, Nadja Lüders , resigned from the chair in March 2015 after it became known that she had legally represented Michael Berger as a lawyer, at that time still under her maiden name Nadja Warmer, because of the termination without notice by his employer. Her business card was also found at Berger's in 2000.
Commemoration and Consequences
At the central memorial service for the victims on July 19, 2000, over 8,000 police officers from all over Germany marched through the center of Dortmund in a silent march. Prime Minister Wolfgang Clement expressed "deeply felt helplessness in view of the terrible fact of the death of three young police officers". NRW Interior Minister Fritz Behrens said that efforts would be made to offer officers optimal protection and the best possible equipment. As a result of the murders, the police in North Rhine-Westphalia equipped all officers with bulletproof vests and adapted the training of officers on self-protection to the findings.
A memorial plaque for the killed Thomas Goretzky was erected at the crime scene in Unteren Graffweg.
A street was named after Thomas Goretzky in a new development in Dortmund's city center east .
literature
- State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia , 16th electoral period, printed matter 16/14400: Final report of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry III , March 27, 2017, Chapter CI: "Michael Berger's Police Murder", pp. 518-549 (PDF) .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Commemoration of police officers murdered by neo-Nazis . Die Zeit, malfunction report, May 22, 2015
- ^ A b Olaf Sundermeyer: Right-wing terror in Germany: A history of violence . CH Beck, 2012, p. 34ff
- ↑ a b c d Evidence speaks for a political act: What is behind the police murder 15 years ago? . Ruhrnachrichten, June 15, 2015
- ↑ a b c d Police murders in NRW: The eternal suspicion . Spiegel, November 21, 2011
- ↑ Police murderer Berger had contact with neo-Nazis from the Sauerland . The West, June 25, 2015
- ↑ Three-time police murder: suspect found dead . Spiegel, June 14, 2000
- ↑ Police are checking the terror cell's relation to the murder of the police in Dortmund . The West, November 18, 2011
- ↑ News . Notification of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia on the decision of November 5, 2014
- ↑ Michael Zielasko: bewildered after insane murders . German police, 7/2000
- ↑ Three police officers executed in cold blood . The West, June 11, 2010
- ^ Renamed streets in North Rhine-Westphalia: Bottrop to Herford , February 3, 2017, accessed on April 9, 2020.