Dig Deeper: The Disappearance of Birgit Meier (2021) s01e02 Episode Script

1
[man] It was still downstairs in block B.
The first commissioner's office was
in the basement.
OCTOBER 1989
LÜNEBURG POLICE DEPARTMEN
The typist, Mr. Döhnert,
was sitting there.
I no longer remember
my reason for being there.
Then the door opened, and he came in.
He had a light-brown leather coat on,
which literally glowed.
When he came into the room,
it felt like a freezer door opening.
He exuded something icy,
something completely cold.
He exuded it.
That's what I felt at the time.
I never forgot it.
For the record,
today is October 26th, 1989.
Please state your full name.
He was definitely tall.
He wasn't bad-looking.
I don't remember
if he wore glasses or not.
He had medium-blond hair,
and I suppose he behaved
politely.
Mr. Wichmann,
where did you meet Birgit Meier?
A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY SERIES
[eerie music playing]
[static buzzing]
AUDIO BASED ON TRANSCRIP
OF KURT-WERNER WICHMANN'S INTERROGATION
[Wichmann on tape]
Regarding Mrs. Hinrichsen's party
in the spring of 1989,
I can provide the following information.
While in attendance,
we drank wine and champagne.
I would describe Mrs. Meier's state
as intoxicated.
Later that evening,
I brought Mrs. Meier back to her house.
I can't remember
whether I carried or supported Mrs. Meier.
He got to know Birgit at parties.
BIRGIT MEIER'S HUSBAND
Once he even carried her home.
And he tucked her into bed.
WITNESS INTERVIEW
That was in the interrogation records.
MRS. MEYER WAS SO INTOXICATED THAT SHE
WAS UNABLE TO RETURN HOME WITHOUT HELP.
Even if I take myself
BIRGIT MEIER'S BROTHER
back to October 1989
and put myself in the detectives' shoes,
there were various signs back then
that should have led them
to take a closer look at Wichmann.
You can assume they definitely knew
who they were dealing with.
This is someone
who's already committed serious crimes,
who's done time in prison and so on.
I mean, if that doesn't just grab
your attention, then
FORMER INVESTIGATOR - LÜNEBURG POLICE
At the moment,
I can't think of any previous convictions
he might have had. I don't know.
[interviewer] Mr. Wichmann,
where were you on August 14th, 1989?
They asked him for an alibi,
and he said he was walking his dog.
What kind of alibi is that?
"I was walking my dog,
and my wife can confirm it."
That's no alibi.
When there's
no concrete reason to suspect someone,
it's difficult to interrogate them
if they are not a suspect yet.
You're just questioning a witness.
You're also limited in what you can do.
Vague suspicions.
"It could have, might have,
should have been like this."
That doesn't move us forward.
[Wolfgang] And now, the next one,
he comes in with gloves on.
Supposedly has a skin allergy.
In reality, it's a fungal infection.
He didn't want to waive
his doctor's confidentiality agreement.
It's also another sign,
on the flip side of the coin,
that they only focused on the husband.
Even if the alarm bells
should have been going off,
there were so many clues suggesting
he had something to do
with my sister's disappearance
that they couldn't ignore it.
[Wichmann on tape] I never sought
a closer relationship with Mrs. Meier.
We always spoke formally to each other.
On no occasion
did we ever express any sort of affection.
[Harald] The only thing I remember is
that this matter was treated as an MP,
a missing person case.
But the intensive work
on this case ceased, in my opinion,
because we had
no indication at all of a violent crime.
We didn't find anything
of any sort
to lead us to that conclusion.
[inhales]
Yeah, well I don't know.
[spluttering] You start to lose faith.
[door clacks]
[Wolfgang] They let him go
and waited for his doctor
to waive patient confidentiality,
but it never happened.
The case was then set aside
for the time being.
Then, after a good while,
the file was handed over
to the DA's office.
Then the file gets
a case number from the DA,
and unless some evidence just happens
to show up to suggest the case be pursued,
then it's just left alone.
[man] I was handed the case
sometime in the early '90s.
It was the very beginning of the '90s,
I believe.
But because, at the time,
the Göhrde murders were in the news,
everything else kind of took
a back seat, of course.
Let me put it this way,
no one who takes over someone else's case
FORMER CHIEF INSPECTOR - LÜNEBURG POLICE
is happy.
MISSING
FEAR FOR THE POLICE CHIEF'S SISTER
Because whatever did or did not happen
THE SECRET OF BIRGIT MEIER
can only be made right
to a very minor degree.
WHAT HAPPENED
WITH THE POLICE CHIEF'S SISTER?
So I went there
and read through everything
VICTIM OF A CRIME?
from start to finish.
I looked at the exhibits.
I spoke again with Mrs. Meier's daughter,
with Mr. Meier.
I even spoke to the cats' veterinarian,
who I knew because I used to have a dog.
We talked about the cats,
the cats' behavior,
how they behaved afterward
and everything else too.
[Klaus] The fact of the matter was
that Mr. Meier had divorced his wife
and that what he had agreed
1. MRS. BIRGIT MEIER BORN SIELAFF
2. THE BUSINESSMAN, MR. HARALD MEIER
to give his wife
MRS. MEIER SHALL RECEIVE
490,000 DM IN CASH
after the divorce was about the same
as his "tax rebate" for that year.
And that
seems like
a relatively weak motive for a murder.
[Wolfgang] There was one police officer
who went against the grain
because all his colleagues said,
"If we assume a crime was committed,
it's obvious
that it could've only been the husband."
"And that's that."
This colleague,
and I give him lots of credit for this,
was basically the only one who said,
"Wait, stop."
"Don't forget Mr. Wichmann."
"In my view,
the evidence points more to Wichmann
than to the husband."
[Klaus] It's like this,
everything that's at all possible
might've happened.
It's my job to determine
which of these possibilities is probable.
[shovel scraping]
[Klaus] To me,
it simply seemed improbable
that anyone other than Wichmann
could be in question
because, as I mentioned,
they knew what kind of criminal career
he had in his past.
This was something that was
not all that common.
I then spoke to the DA
in charge at the time
and presented the whole case to her,
which then led
to her submitting an application to court
and the court issuing a search warrant.
So two levels, the DA's office
and the court, followed his argument,
then a warrant was issued.
WARRANT IN THE INVESTIGATION
PROBABLE CAUSE MURDER
We're talking about 1993.
APARTMENT AND OTHER ROOMS
IN PARTICULAR THE CAR AND TRAILER
This is four years
after my sister had gone missing.
The search warrant read,
"Apartment, house,
property, cars, and workplace."
"Warrant for Kurt-Werner Wichmann,
suspect in the murder of Birgit Meier."
[Klaus] I had a search warrant
and rang the doorbell.
Mrs. Wichmann opened the door
and politely told us
her husband wasn't home,
but he'd be back any time now.
Something like that.
In any case, I said,
"We'll wait a moment."
Then they called him.
I mean, that's insane!
Of course, he said
on the phone that he was coming.
They waited a while until it became clear
that he wasn't coming.
In other words,
the murder suspect, Kurt-Werner Wichmann,
had fled.
DAY 1 - WICHMANN'S FLIGH
FEBRUARY 24TH, 1993
[Wolfgang] February 24th, 1993.
First search. Focus, the Wichmanns' house.
When Kurt-Werner Wichmann
heard about the planned search,
he fled and disappeared.
He called his employer from his car phone
and claimed he had hit a deer
and would be late for his appointment.
His wife, Alice, got a doctor's note
for him valid until March 10th, 1993.
This is Criminal Investigation 101.
When you carry out a search,
and it's a suspect accused of murder,
and you want to search his home for proof
to support your case that he did it,
you obviously have
to maintain control of the murderer,
the suspected murderer.
In other words [chuckles]
if one of my detectives acted
like they did in Lüneburg,
I would've fired him immediately.
But, as the saying goes,
"You can't get blood out of a stone."
Faced with this decision,
I said, "That's too risky for me."
"If he really knows what he's doing,
then he'll be familiar with the police
and know how we act."
If he finds out about our plan,
he'll get rid of any evidence.
And, on the other hand,
if I'm there and he's not,
and I get hold of him
and ask him to come, but he won't,
then he will have given us another sign
he has some sort
of skeleton in his closet.
[eerie music playing]
[Klaus] We split up,
and I went upstairs to find a door
that was locked.
This door had a high-security lock on it
ATTIC "SECRET ROOM"
GUEST ROOM - BEDROOM
but Mrs. Wichmann
didn't have the key to it.
She said her husband
was the only one with the key.
[door cracking]
Then I went into his [exhales]
room.
ATTIC
This is the room
we later called "the secret room"
because it really was his secret room.
Except for his brother,
no one was allowed in.
WORLD WAR II
PART 2, 1940-1945
It's what one can vividly call
"a pharaoh's tomb."
[Klaus] I then searched this room
and found quite a few objects and things,
including some sort
of stash in a secret compartment.
Among them were things
that I could assume might be
connected to Mrs. Meier's disappearance
and possible death.
There were handcuffs
and a small-caliber rifle.
There was a modified revolver,
lots of ammunition
and bondage equipment,
handcuffs, chains,
silencers, knives,
and something very suspicious in my view,
a so-called shooting vest.
[inhale] Uh
This shooting vest,
which resembled a fishing vest,
had handcuffs with blood on them.
[Klaus] Equipment for injections,
anesthesia,
and many other things that I've forgotten.
In that moment, I felt like
I didn't have
to worry about the next five years
in terms of work.
I had plenty to do with this one case.
[Wolfgang] This was all serious evidence
that put him under so much suspicion
that it became obvious
it was time to actively look for this man.
[dramatic music playing]
[buttons beeping]
[phone line ringing]
- [receiver clicks]
- [receptionist] Please, wait a moment.
[Wolfgang] When I got back to my office,
I was told that someone had called.
So instead of saying,
"Here, we wrote something down,"
they told me about it.
They said he wanted me to know
he had nothing to do
with her disappearance.
You have the wrong man.
It was Wichmann on the run.
Why was he fleeing then?
What I found
was very dismaying.
They neither started a manhunt,
nor was there an arrest warrant.
He could travel across Germany,
and the police could check his ID,
but no one would know
he was a murder suspect.
In the police force,
we had the possibility,
given the right stipulations,
of putting someone
on a wanted list without arresting,
just to know where they are,
what they're doing,
and who they're traveling with.
That's what I mean.
I initiated this measure at the time.
[Wolfgang] We also know
that he went into hiding
in Wilhelmshaven for a while.
We know he repeatedly visited home
while he was on the run.
DAY 9 - WICHMANN'S FLIGH
MARCH 5TH, 1993
[Wolfgang] Another one of Wichmann's cars,
namely a Golf
with the license plate LG-AS442,
was found in Adendorf
one kilometer away from the house.
Of course, they hoped he'd be close by
and didn't touch another car
but instead waited at a distance
and observed the car,
hoping that Wichmann would return.
But he didn't.
There were items in his car
that were also very suspicious,
an army sleeping bag, a leather jacket,
night-vision goggles,
street maps covering all of Germany,
and on top of all that, supplies.
You got the impression
that Wichmann was using his car,
even at night
or in the dark at least,
to hunt people, let's say.
All of this led the police to ask the FCID
to send over a crime-scene unit.
So they sent a request to Wiesbaden.
They then sent their crime-scene unit
to come search the property again
and the house
even more thoroughly than before.
The job was to find
a corpse and ammunition.
[barking]
The Federal Criminal Police
arrived with metal detectors
to look for weapons.
They had cadaver dogs too.
Then they searched the whole property
by sticking poles in the ground.
In other words,
they loosened the soil up a bit
so the cadaver dogs would bark
because they'd immediately catch a scent
if there were a dead body buried there.
[dog barking]
All of a sudden,
the metal detector went crazy.
[dogs barking, whimpering]
They found a buried car.
[camera shutter clicking]
You don't see that every day.
Once they had dug out the car enough
and got the dirt and everything off,
they put the cadaver dogs back on the job,
and one barked at the trunk.
So they obviously suspected
a corpse might be in the trunk.
They then found stains
in the back seat of the car,
which seemed like
they might be traces of blood.
The important thing was
that this car was leased.
Not even a year old.
It had only been registered
in spring the year before.
It had been imported from the US.
Not a common car to see in Germany.
A sports car, a red one.
When I ask myself now,
"Why would someone bury a car
with a trunk
that a cadaver dog barked at?"
And it was a leased car too.
In other words, it wasn't buried
to commit insurance fraud.
It was clearly used
as an instrument of crime, as we say,
and it was buried
because it would've provided
deeply incriminating evidence.
["Tango-Max" by Friedel Hensch
& Die Cyprys playing on radio]
[music continues]
[music stops]
There was even a traffic stop
in Lüneburg while he was on the run,
when the police noticed a car
that had been reported as stolen.
They pulled him over,
and it was Wichmann in a Mercedes,
in a car he himself had reported stolen.
They asked, "What's going on?
You reported the car stolen."
He said, "Yeah, I did.
I needed to hide something
and needed an excuse to tell my wife."
So they wrote up a report,
and he went on his way.
[suspenseful music playing]
[radio presenter]
The Lüneburg homicide division
has investigated 1,620 pieces of evidence,
but they have yet to find a suspect
who might be the Göhrde murderer.
The search for clues
has remained unsuccessful since 1989.
The head of Criminal Investigations
Lüneburg, Hans-Dieter Rollert,
says the files are not yet closed.
The public is being asked
to report any information
DAY 24 - WICHMANN'S FLIGH
MARCH 20TH, 1993
[buttons beeping]
[phone line ringing]
I remember it perfectly.
Around 9:00 a.m., the company receptionist
interrupted our meeting.
It was our daily morning meeting.
It starts every morning at 8:45
and lasts as long as it needs to,
depending on what is going on.
I was present that day,
when there was a knock at the door.
The department heads,
the heads of production,
about 10 to 12 people were there.
Then the receptionist said,
"Mr. Meier, I need you for a moment."
I said, "Sorry, not now. You know that."
This meeting was almost sacred.
It was very important.
You can't interrupt it.
She said,
"Sorry, Mr. Meier. I really need you."
That got my attention
because the fact that she asked twice
meant it was very important.
So I left and went to the phone.
And she said, "He won't leave me alone."
I picked up the phone
and heard Wichmann on the line.
"So, this is what I get," he said,
"and I have you
and your brother-in-law to thank for it."
"You'll hear from me again."
So, I said, "And who is this, please?
Tell me your name,"
to draw him into a conversation.
He said, "You know exactly who I am."
I said, "I don't know you."
And he hung up.
My guess is that,
if the conversation went how I heard,
and there's no doubt in my mind,
he wanted to get some sort of revenge
for everything
that had fallen apart in his life.
DAY 46 - WICHMANN'S FLIGH
APRIL 11TH, 1993
[Wolfgang] Easter 1993,
Wichmann is at home.
During his wife's questioning,
she said he left home around 9:00 p.m.
To her question
of what he was planning to do,
he said, "It's better you don't know."
[eerie music playing]
[Wolfgang] All I know
is what's in the files.
Then there was a car accident
on a country road near Bad Wimpfen.
DAY 50 - WICHMANN'S FLIGH
APRIL 15TH, 1993
Bad Wimpfen is near Heilbronn.
I don't know how many cars were involved
or if he grazed another car
while passing them or whatever.
I have no idea.
In any case, the police were called,
and they, as you can read in the reports,
they recorded the accident, as we say,
and while doing this,
they used this opportunity to take
a better look at his car.
Here's a quote from the files,
"Because of the machine gun parts
and ammunition
found in various hiding places in his car,
along with large sums of money
and a number of checks,
he was temporarily detained
and turned over to the local police
who took his prints and mug shot."
"An arrest warrant was issued that day."
"Wichmann has been placed in custody."
If the perpetrator's identity is known,
if he isn't wanted for a serious crime
and has a permanent address,
the police won't arrest him.
Normally, he'd be deemed
a murder suspect on the run.
We didn't know.
He wasn't on a wanted list.
But, in this case,
there was the War Weapons Control Act,
which is obviously taken seriously.
The first questions asked were,
"Where did he get the weapons?
Where was he headed?"
To answer the second question,
"Where was he headed?"
there's no doubt in my mind.
He may have ultimately been planning
to use his weapon against me.
Because he announced
in such a way on the phone
that I'd be hearing from him.
He wasn't sending love letters.
CORRECTIONAL FACILITY
HEIMSHEIM
[Wolfgang] On April 20th,
so five days later,
he was moved from Heilbronn
to the correctional facility in Heimsheim.
Detectives from Lüneburg
drove to the detention center
in Heimsheim in Baden-Württemberg
and got a blood sample.
So I don't know what happened
with the blood sample.
[Wichmann groans]
Once they saw
what had been found in his house,
they immediately said,
"We have to take more decisive action."
"We have to set up an investigative team
because it's possible
he could have committed
other serious crimes."
Plus, this question remained unanswered,
"Where's my sister,
and what happened to her?"
But just as the group
had set up its work space
and before they could do a single thing,
they were suddenly told,
"Stop! That's it. Put it all back."
"The suspect killed himself."
As a result,
all investigations had to be stopped
because you can't investigate the dead.
You're not allowed to.
[Wolfgang] In light of all the proof
found in Wichmann's apartment
Damn it! There was so much evidence
that he was clearly involved
in criminal acts.
A car was buried.
That's a case in itself! Name another case
like this in German history.
It's literally screaming
at me to use my power
and lead an investigation and so on.
Not, "He's dead. Nothing we can do."
Where will that get us?
"We may not be 100% sure
why Sielaff's sister disappeared,
but one thing is for sure,
if we assume a crime was committed,
it was her husband."
[solemn music playing]
13 YEARS LATER
[Wolfgang] We always treated
this topic very, very
cautiously. My mother had gone quiet.
She didn't want to talk about it anymore.
It caused her a lot of pain,
and she couldn't get over
Birgit's disappearance.
My father had also died a year before,
which was a double burden.
It also led her
to try and take her life twice.
One time, a lady in the nursing home
where she lived found her just in time,
and I did the other time.
But until the day she died
she hoped the door would open,
and Birgit would walk in.
[slides clicking]
My wife, for instance,
was also very close to my sister.
They got along really well.
At any rate, she once said at breakfast,
"Not a day goes by
that I don't think about Birgit."
It made me
swallow hard, and I suddenly realized,
"I hadn't even thought about her."
I felt really guilty, you know?
I was, you could say, lucky
to be
so incredibly involved professionally.
Meaning I was distracted
and obviously had the advantage
of knowing
how criminal investigations are conducted.
I was also able to understand
many things in an objective manner.
[camera shutter clicking]
There were two major influences
that convinced me
that a job like a criminal investigator,
a detective would be a good fit for me.
- The first was the TV show Stahlnetz.
- Robbery!
[Wolfgang] This was a show
that dramatized real criminal cases.
The second was Sir Conan Doyle's books
about Sherlock Holmes,
because they were more
about working as a detective.
About thinking and forming theories.
Those were the things
that drew me closer to this work
and led me to this job.
I was the head of the narcotics division
at the DA's office
then the organized crime office.
Then I led SCID but also represented
the state police directorate.
I was in charge of all
of Hamburg police operations.
At the organized crime office,
I was in charge of 45 people,
then I was suddenly in charge of 8,000.
And 10,000
as vice president of the police.
My job was full of action.
It was never boring.
But suddenly,
you know when it's time to quit.
Since I was somewhat famous in the city,
several members of the media came to me.
"You're retiring, so could you
tell me what you'll be doing now?"
"What was the best part?"
His closest colleagues
respectfully call him "Don,"
Wolfgang Sielaff,
vice president of Hamburg police.
Under his direction,
drug rings were shut down,
pimp gangs broken up,
and arms smugglers uncovered.
The Don has retired today
at the age of 60,
the departure of an exceptional officer.
I'm definitely a bit sad
because the police shaped my life.
I spent over two-thirds of my life there.
But I'm looking forward to the future
because I've been told
there's life after work.
[crowd applauding]
POLICE - THE SIELAFF ERA COMES TO AN END
HAMBURG'S BEST POLICEMAN SAYS "BYE"
DEPARTURE OF THE MAFIA HUNTER
[Wolfgang] Looking back,
my sister disappeared
in the summer of 1989,
and 13 years later,
I retired from the police force.
In the time between,
I was obviously
in contact with the Lüneburg CID,
and they said, "Unless we tell you,
you can assume we don't have any news."
But I felt increasingly uneasy
and thought,
"Actually, I know far too little
about what exactly happened."
At some point, it became clear to me
that, once I retired,
I would have the time that I needed
to take these steps with precision
and find out what happened to my sister.
You can only view files
with the help of a lawyer.
We had a kind of gentlemen's agreement
that I'd be given the files to read.
At this point, the important thing
was to start by determining
what had been done
and what the current status was.
That was it.
I always said it was
like going from one shock to the next,
because I suddenly realized
that certain steps were taken in a way
that didn't make sense forensically.
In the end, I had a general overview
that led me to one conclusion, which was,
"There are lots of unanswered questions,
and I have to do something."
I have to sit down with my colleagues
and discuss the matter
because some of my questions
were so far outside my field
that I thought,
"I have to tell others about this to see
if they reach the same conclusion
and if they see things the same way."
And then, the second step was to ask,
"What do we do now?"
Now I needed
a high-level criminal investigator,
then I needed a legal expert.
And then, of course, to top it all off,
I needed a psychologist who could help us
to understand
criminal personality profiles
and the participants
in a criminal case and so on.
The first person
I went to was Reinhard Chedor.
I knew him well and trusted him,
and I knew
he was a good criminal investigator.
Above all, he's creative
and also unconventional.
[camera shutter clicking]
We weren't on a first-name basis yet.
In 2003,
I got a call from Wolfgang Sielaff.
FORMER CHIEF OF HAMBURG SCID
"Let's meet up."
Or rather, "Could we meet, Mr. Chedor?"
as we spoke at the time.
The Hedgehog.
Why was that his nickname?
Because he had a hedgehog haircut then.
At the SCID,
they called Wolfgang "the Don,"
and the Don is always
It's connected to the fact
[sighs]
that he worked very hard
to fight organized crime.
So, then we met.
We talked things over,
and it soon became clear,
"Man, we still have"
"A lot of these questions
have a psychological element to them."
[inhales deeply]
Then, we decided to have
Claudia Brockmann join our team.
[Reinhard] The criminological part
wasn't the issue.
It was what might lie behind it.
How to create arguments,
how to recognize emotions,
how to deal with feelings,
and how to recognize needs.
That's very much a different world.
In particular, I think
changing one's perspective
WE WILL RECLAIM THE INNER CITY
seeing something
and empathizing with others
CHIEF INVESTIGATOR:
I CALLED MY DAUGHTERS
MURDER IS HER JOB
I think that was her greatest strength.
Well, now, they call me "Mom"
POLICE PSYCHOLOGIS
because now I fill this maternal role
or whatever you call it,
but some of them also decided
to call me the "Psycho Lady,"
but playfully, of course.
PL. Yeah. That's how we were.
Of course, the group also needed a lawyer
and for the very simple reason
LAWYER
not only that I had a certain amount
of experience with murder cases
but also because they needed
a lawyer to gain access to the files.
While the district attorney's office
did provide Wolfgang Sielaff
with some of the files,
he didn't get all of them.
What really helped in our case
was that I was surrounded
by people, by friends
from various disciplines
who formed a team with me
that was basically unbeatable
because we had competent people
from every discipline,
and I also knew them personally.
Could you possibly ask for a better team?
[Brockmann] The main point
was the question or fact
that his sister, Birgit Meier, was gone.
We have to find her.
The other main point was
that the husband is a suspect
despite a lack of evidence against him.
Therefore, the second question is,
where is Birgit Meier, and who killed her?
Is it the murder suspect
because they said that he had a motive,
namely money,
or could it be someone else?
I knew that his sister went missing
and also that she never turned up.
Now that he had read the files,
he was visibly shaken by what he had read.
[Brockmann] He was outraged
about what had happened.
And if you know Wolfgang Sielaff,
outrage can be expressed in many ways,
but you really felt his outrage.
They always said they did everything,
but they actually did nothing.
Their work wasn't professional at all.
They did the crime scene wrong and so on.
[Brockmann] Based on what I read,
they filtered things out to find leads.
There are so many other things still open
and that can be done.
Given that fact,
I was appalled on one hand,
"Why is this still open?
What kind of conclusion is that?"
But on the other hand,
if I felt that they did all they could do,
there'd have been no hope.
[Reinhard] It became clear pretty quickly,
at least based on what was in the files,
that Birgit Meier took her life
because of the situation she was in.
Then someone made this curious statement,
"Wait for the cornfields to be harvested,
then we'll find her."
When such an attitude takes hold
at a point
when basically nothing is known,
just because of someone's gut feeling,
then a lot
of important steps will be omitted.
[phone line calling]
SOUTH VIEW
Anything you find
that isn't "normal" or doesn't fit
[phone line calling]
is first and foremost a lead.
The upper part
of the crime scene, the bedroom,
with its door open
and the footprint in the flower box,
could suggest a crime
where someone had broken into the bedroom.
[Wolfgang] Why was the patio door open?
Because it was warm outside?
BIRGIT'S ROOM - NORTH VIEW
Even at night?
But she was sleeping on the second floor,
and with an open door down there,
the house is open!
[Brockmann] Her nightgown
and clothes were missing.
The new ones she had bought,
the ones Harald Meier had also seen,
they weren't there.
Her key ring was also missing.
FRONT SIDE OF THE HOUSE KEY NO. 20 34 30
Her handbag,
her watch too, and her glasses.
So a number of items were missing.
And there was an ashtray
with two brands of cigarettes.
One of the brands stuck with me.
It was Benson & Hedges.
But she didn't smoke Benson & Hedges.
Looking back,
and you always know more in hindsight,
there were a few question marks
because
For example, it was later determined
that there was a crumpled tissue
on the floor in the bedroom.
WEST VIEW
My sister could have been drugged
and then the tissue left on the floor.
But these are all things that
couldn't be determined
with absolute certainty
because this tissue wasn't secured.
[Brockmann] As recorded in the files,
they later questioned the neighbors,
which they didn't do initially,
and one woman said she'd heard
a motor running at 1:30 a.m.
She lived right across
from my sister's house.
And the motor ran and ran,
and she couldn't fall asleep.
This led to the theory
that someone was sitting
in the car with the motor running
while someone else
grabbed her from the bedroom.
If Birgit was taken
from her house against her will,
I would certainly imagine
there were two perpetrators
because they had to overpower a woman
who is really trying to defend herself.
[Wolfgang] Detective work
is often also about brainstorming.
It means you have to discuss things
with others.
You come up
with arguments and counterarguments.
You have to think outside the box.
[Brockmann] We're talking about a case
where we're all outsiders.
But we have someone here
who is the brother.
It's different
when you're talking about a victim
and discussing everything
that could've happened
with a relative
who wants to protect his sister
and who may also not want
to discuss it publicly
because he finds it embarrassing,
or he may just not want to accept reality.
Discussing every theory
down to the smallest detail
requires some self-censorship
to say, "I'll talk about this,
but I'll sugarcoat it."
To investigate whether a relative
might be the perpetrator,
that's totally standard.
It's a normal theory,
just like it could've been
a crime or a suicide.
The question is always, "Is there
a perpetrator-victim relationship?"
"And does someone
in their family circle have a motive,
and are there more signs
that they could be the perpetrator?"
Initially, they always talked about
how Birgit Meier had a plastic bag.
A plastic bag with documents
that incriminated Harald Meier.
She always said,
"I have a plastic bag here
that can destroy Harald."
That was also part of it.
"Don't forget about Harald Meier.
He had a motive."
Maybe she wanted to blackmail him.
[Claudia] Birgit took this bag with her,
and maybe it was
the bag in question, even on vacation.
And it was always
at the bottom of her bed.
My mother said
she could've easily looked in it
BIRGIT MEIER'S NIECES
but she didn't.
"She must have her reasons
for carrying this weird bag around."
- Strange
- She just told me that.
I clearly remember riding
to Wolfgang's 25th anniversary party
BIRGIT MEIER'S DAUGHTER
and she had an ominous bag in the trunk.
I think it must've been this bag,
especially if no one could
or should see what was in it.
Must've been a reason.
I'm not sure anymore.
It was March or April 1989.
She called me and said,
"You have to come get me."
I could tell that she was probably
under the influence of alcohol,
and I drove there to meet my sister
in a pretty desperate state,
crying and intoxicated.
Totally plastered to put it bluntly.
She lived with us for a few days
because we took care of her.
She was in such a desolate state
that she couldn't be left alone.
In this context
uh, I think it was me
or maybe my wife who asked,
"What are you carrying around
in that bag?"
She said, "Well, there's a lot in there,
including quite a few things
that could put Harald away."
Well, as I always say
I think this is all, in some way,
if that's what happened,
it's all due to the fact
that Birgit may have been drinking,
which is why she came up with these ideas.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing
that I could have held against her.
Even if she drank that much.
There wasn't anything
that was or could have been a liability,
that could have put pressure on me.
[sirens wailing]
DECEMBER 19TH, 1988
DATACOLOR FACTORY
8 MONTHS BEFORE BIRGIT'S DISAPPEARANCE
[indistinct chattering over radio]
Of course, the fire played a role.
I read about it.
I said, "Yes, this looks
like it could be a motive,
but you have to think it
all the way through."
If Birgit knew
that her husband had burned down the hall
PRINTING PRESS IN FLAMES
maybe she wanted to report him
and thus had to be killed.
That sounds pretty logical.
[Harald] The rollers
that carry the paper through the printer
are wraparound rollers.
They roll the paper over itself.
It looks great.
They need cleaning every now and then.
The printer's cleaning cloth
slipped out of his hand.
They use a cleanser
that has a similar effect to gasoline.
Right?
And this doesn't normally happen,
but it did this time,
and the kiln blew up.
The building was damaged.
The machinery was damaged.
Some people said, "It was arson,
insurance fraud or something like that."
FIRE IN OPERATION HALL
[Wolfgang] The total cost of damages
was 9 million marks.
The key word is insurance fraud.
It's fine to pursue all of this.
But at some point, if you can't prove it,
you have no evidence and can't find any
that points in this direction,
then you have to stop.
Years later, you can still say,
"Unfortunately, I couldn't prove it,
but I'm still convinced."
[Brockmann] The key topic for me is always
when there's a suspect
but no proof, and people still say,
"Okay, he's the suspect.
We don't have any proof."
"But we know he did it."
There's always the risk
that the suspicion is false.
If there's this risk,
then it always means
the real killer is on the loose.
It was the same here
because the question was,
"Where is Birgit?
And was it Harald Meier?"
But if it wasn't him,
it had to be someone else.
The first thing we focused on was
to fully clarify
Kurt-Werner Wichmann's role
because of how obvious it was.
[Reinhard] Well, our goal was to get
the police responsible
for this case to start looking.
That meant collecting evidence,
leads, proof, clues, and indications
and presenting them to the team,
hoping they'd say,
"Man, we missed that. Let's look into it."
That was our intention.
The more we looked
into Wichmann's character,
the more clearly
he showed himself to be a person
who was not only responsible
for my sister's disappearance
SISTER OF POLICE CHIEF
but other crimes too.
THE DISCO MURDERER STRUCK NINE TIMES
[Wolfgang] We also looked to see
if there were other homicides
involving girls
and women in the Lüneburg area
which had not been solved
and where, based on the modus operandi,
in our assessment, Wichmann could not
be ruled out as the possible perpetrator.
[man] We got him! Werner Wichmann,
born on July 8th, 1949, 15 Streitmoor.
That's him, right?
[car door closes]
[eerie music playing]