Walter Storm

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Walter Niklaus Stürm (born August 4, 1942 in Goldach , canton St. Gallen ; † September 13, 1999 in Frauenfeld , canton Thurgau ) was known in Switzerland as the escape king in the 1970s and 1980s .

Life

The professional criminal Walter Stürm caused a sensation between 1974 and 1995 not only with eight successful escapes from penitentiaries and prisons, but also with his mischievous actions, which made him popular with parts of the population as a kind of Robin Hood . Nationwide amusement prevailed when Stürm broke out of the Regensdorf prison on Easter 1981 and left a note with the words "I'm looking for Easter eggs, Stürm".

The son of an industrialist from eastern Switzerland first committed a criminal offense at the age of 20 for selling stolen cars. He later committed break-ins, gang robbery, theft and a bank robbery. He served in penal institutions in Switzerland, Italy , France and on the Canary Island Gomera .

Part of the left-wing alternative scene and the Zurich youth movement of 1980 admired Stürm for his fight against solitary confinement, which culminated in a 110-day hunger strike in 1987 , and saw in him a gentleman gangster who allegedly carried out his repeated robberies without violence. Helpers from the youth movement probably played a decisive role in the outbreak of 1981. Stürm was largely defended by defense attorney Barbara Hug, a former substitute (trainee lawyer) in the office of the later Federal Councilor Moritz Leuenberger .

In 1998, Stürm was conditionally released. After a failed hostage-taking together with Hugo Portmann , he was arrested again six months later. By then, it had long since passed the peak of its popularity: while there were rallies and manifestations for Stürm in the 1980s, hardly anyone took any notice of it in the 1990s. In 1999 he took his own life in solitary confinement in the Frauenfeld cantonal prison with a garbage bag . Storm had already made two suicide attempts.

Quote

“At the latest with the legendary Easter coup on April 13, 1981 (...) he became a kind of pop star. To someone who challenged the repressive state by virtue of its criminal intelligence. The youth movement rebelled in Zurich - someone like Stürm fit perfectly into the subversive zeitgeist. ”(From the St. Galler Tagblatt of February 14, 2005)

literature

  • Reto Kohler: Storm: The face of the escape king . Zytglogge, Oberhofen 2004, ISBN 3-7296-0673-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Search for Walter Stürm in the program Aktenzeichen XY ... unsolved in studio case 2 of April 24, 1981. In: wikixy.de. Retrieved November 11, 2019 .
  2. ↑ srf.ch: Walter Stürm is dead SRF Tagesschau from September 13, 1999
personal data
SURNAME Storm, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stürm, Walter Niklaus (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss escape king (1970s to 1990s)
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Goldach SG
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 1999
Place of death Frauenfeld