Thomas Wolf (bank robber)

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Thomas Wolf (alias David van Dijk and David Schult , born February 11, 1953 in Düsseldorf ) is a German bank robber. Several bank robberies in various cities, including Groß-Gerau , Hamburg and Eindhoven , are charged with him.

Life

Thomas Wolf's criminal career began at the age of 15 with bicycle and shoplifting. Robbery , fraud , severe extortion by robbery , hostage-taking appointments and prison mutiny were added later . Thomas Wolf was in various prisons in North Rhine-Westphalia between 1981 and 2000 . In 1982 he fled a prison clinic, in 1988 he sawed up the bars of the Gütersloh prison and escaped. In 1989 he fled after the prison system in Geldern was relaxed. Every escape was followed by an arrest.

Wolf sat in the Moers-Kapellen prison until the turn of the year 2000, where he served a six-year residual sentence for bank robbery as part of a total of 21 years' imprisonment. From a prison leave , he did not return.

For years Wolf lived under a false identity with the name David van Dijk, mostly in Frankfurt am Main . On April 20, 2000, he attacked Commerzbank at Paul-Nevermann-Platz in Hamburg's Altona district and stole 500,000 DM . During his long flight, Wolf has committed or attempted other similar crimes in the Netherlands and Belgium .

Wolf is said to have kidnapped the wife of a senior bank employee in Wiesbaden on March 27, 2009 , who was able to free herself after paying a ransom of 1.8 million euros. Wolf had been on the run ever since. A reward of 100,000 euros was offered for his capture. In May 2009, he narrowly escaped the police. His getaway car was found in a forest near Delmenhorst .

On May 28, 2009, Wolf was arrested by the police in front of the Lehmitz pub on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg . He made no resistance.

In April 2010 it became known that Wolf had borreliosis . He may have contracted the disease when he was hiding in the woods the previous year while on the run and was bitten by a tick . In the criminal case for the kidnapping and three bank robberies, which began in March 2011 before the Wiesbaden district court , his ability to stand trial was restricted by the illness. Wolf has announced that he will sue the prison doctors because they initially failed to recognize his illness. In December 2011, after nine months of negotiations, Wolf was sentenced to a total imprisonment of 13 years and 6 months for the 2009 kidnapping and two previous bank robberies. The prosecutor refrained from preventive detention to apply. Thomas Wolf speaks English and Dutch fluently and without an accent. In 2013 he published his autobiography , which he wrote in prison.

Publications

  • Thomas Wolf - Outside In - The autobiography of Germany's most famous bank robber. Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86265-159-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ bild.de of April 5, 2009: "The Invisible Man with the Seven Faces"
  2. ^ Wanted page of the Hesse police
  3. ↑ Article on www.spiegel.de
  4. ↑ Press release from the Hamburg Police ( Memento from June 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ fr-online.de: Thomas Wolf has borreliosis ( Memento from June 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ FAZ of March 22, 2011: "The defendant wants to sit differently."
  7. ↑ FAZ of July 21, 2010 Thomas Wolf "not negotiable" according to the lawyer
  8. ↑ bild.de of April 7, 2010: Thomas Wolf sued prison doctors
  9. ^ Kidnapper Thomas Wolf has been imprisoned for over 13 years . Spiegel online, December 13, 2011.
  10. ^ "Kidnapper Thomas Wolf - The Man with Many Faces", FAZ, [1]
personal data
SURNAME Wolf, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES van Dijk, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German bank robbers and kidnappers
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf