Dig Deeper: The Disappearance of Birgit Meier (2021) s01e03 Episode Script
Episode 3
1
[Wolfgang] If a team of detectives
knows their trade,
and I use the word "trade"
very consciously,
they first see if the suspect,
Mr. Wichmann in this case,
has any kind of criminal record
and if there is
any information in his past
that might be of criminological interest.
And if they had done this,
they would've definitely seen
that from the age of 14,
he repeatedly committed crimes.
This can only lead us to one conclusion,
to take a closer look at him.
[Reinhard] We had a lot of questions
about Wichmann's background.
Things like,
"Who did he go to school with?"
"Which school was it?" and so on.
I thought it would all be in the files.
Because we thought
we could gather
a lot more information this way.
[Brockmann] Not only should we
interview people who knew Birgit Meier
but also people who knew Wichmann.
This way, we can create a timeline
and better understand them.
Why do people do what they do?
Why do they feel compelled
or what compels them
to take someone else's life?
A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY SERIES
[eerie music playing]
[Brockmann]
Thanks to the Lüneburg city archive,
we had very good information
about how he grew up.
Namely, in temporary housing
without sewage or heating
and socially isolated in a small family.
YOUTH
Meaning he grew up
mainly relying on himself.
[man] Got him. Werner Wichmann,
born 7/8/1949, lives at 15 Streitmoor.
That's him, right?
- So, he moved there in 1949.
- Yes.
- With his family.
- Yes.
Then moved to 52 Ginsterweg in 1950.
And that's the so-called refugee center.
It's a settlement
for people with low income
who need help
and can't pay their rent anymore,
who weren't connected
to the sewage system.
You get an idea
of how bad it was back then.
[Reinhard] Kurt-Werner grew up
in a very problematic family
with a violent father
and a mother who was anything but caring.
Kurt-Werner
certainly didn't experience love.
[Brockmann] He was absent
from school a lot.
KURT WERNER MISSED 102 DAYS OF SCHOOL
Up to 102 days in one school year.
What's striking is
that he often had headaches, stomachaches,
so possible signs
of psychosomatic disorders
but injuries too.
The school records said
that his parents were
too unsophisticated to encourage him
and that the parents were a lost cause,
as they put it,
and that it made sense
to put him in a foster home
for him to receive more care.
But something he really enjoyed
as an eight, nine, ten-year-old
was walking in the forest.
The forest didn't expect anything of him.
It didn't scare him,
and he could pretend
that he was the king of this forest.
- [man 1] In front of the goal.
- [man 2] Well-played.
- [man 3] Yeah, good.
- [man 4] Come on, get it. Keep going!
- [man 5] Get the ball.
- [man 3] Come on, run!
- [indistinct chattering]
- [clapping]
[man 6] Yes, Kurt-Werner [hesitates]
always wanted to stand out.
From a modern perspective,
I'd say he really needed validation.
FORMER CLASSMATE OF WICHMANN
I'd almost call it
an attention-seeking complex.
He knew a lot about nature.
He knew where things were,
where the marshland was.
He knew where good hiding places were.
Everything that was
important to him as a child.
But, like I said,
he didn't have many friends.
His mother was always very happy
when he had friends over to play.
He always had
something secretive about him,
even as a child.
He'd have things buried
in different places,
and he'd always have
kind of strange ideas.
The thing that ended our friendship was
his cruelty toward animals.
He tortured them.
He'd stomp frogs to death.
Inflating frogs was
another one of his specialties,
which is plain horrible, of course.
And then, on top of that,
he suddenly vanished into thin air.
[Brockmann] His classmate,
Wilfried Wernicke, reported
that they often roamed through the forest
as young schoolboys
and that he would shoot at birds
with his slingshot.
So he was already hunting at this age,
and what's notable
about what was reported to us
is that he would
bury these birds.
Why did he bury them?
That sort of thing
really grabs your attention.
POLICE PSYCHOLOGIS
Did the burying have something
to do with him, with his personality?
To do something forbidden
then undo it or, I mean, to hide it
instead of undoing it.
Of course, this fits with what we learned
from the search reports.
CAR FORD, RED, MODEL T 22,
LICENSE NUMBER LG-K 4
Why would he bury a car in his garden?
He didn't just bury it in his garden.
He built a rock garden on top of it.
And he was the only one
who knew something was hidden beneath it.
I think that's something
that distinguished him.
JANUARY 2, 1964
[glass squeaking]
This was our first apartment.
Our first one.
We didn't know back then they had a son
who had been in a foster home.
And this home specifically,
the behavioral one in Delmenhorst.
FORMER SUBTENANTS OF THE WICHMANNS
[Günther]
We'd basically only been living there
about six weeks when it happened.
The incident with Wichmann.
[Bärbel] Right before Christmas
[Günther] That's when we first met him.
We were on Christmas vacation,
and suddenly he was home
walking around in the yard.
He was only 14.
He was always playing around
with sanding tools and sharpening things.
He always kept his distance.
Uh, he had this strange look,
and he would watch us
whenever he could.
[Bärbel] And when he was inside,
and we left,
whether by foot or in the car
He'd always pull back
the curtain and watch us.
Around 6:00 a.m.,
I drove to the train station
to go to Hamburg,
and an hour later, it happened.
[chair creaking]
[huffs]
A strange feeling on my neck.
I open my eyes, and there he was,
kneeling on the bed
with his hands around my neck.
I managed to break free.
Maybe I screamed too. I don't remember.
Frank started to cry at this moment.
- [baby crying]
- [Günther] We had the crib in our room.
[Bärbel] We had the crib in our room.
[baby continues crying]
[Bärbel] Then he let go of me,
got off the bed,
went to the crib and bent over it.
- I got out of bed.
- I think he thought, "Oh man!"
Maybe he wanted to silence him.
I guess he hadn't expected me
to come after him so quickly
or to be in such good shape.
I said, "What do you want from me?
What did I do to you?"
[whispers wickedly] "Be quiet! Be quiet!"
And then he was gone.
[Günther] It's possible
that Frank saved his mother's life
Yes.
[Günther] by drawing attention
to himself.
He stopped strangling her.
He admitted nothing in court.
He basically didn't speak at all.
His father spoke.
He only said he wanted to steal money.
Yes.
- And they believed him.
- They believed it.
CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS
AGAINST THE CONCERNED PARTY
ATTEMPTED GRAND THEFT AND COERCION
What's clear about this act is
that when he entered their house,
it didn't happen on the spur of the moment
because of an open door.
This was planned. He had a glass cutter
and cut a hole.
The act clearly shows that he had a plan
and wanted to carry it out.
He took a knife and knelt on the bed.
He needed the victim to be asleep
so he could get close
to see what it's like to strangle someone.
3 YEARS LATER
JULY 12, 1967
[Reinhard] "Three police officers
approached W's parents' home,"
"W" stands for Wichmann,
"who was due to be moved
to a juvenile detention center."
"Wichmann, who was standing
at the window with a low-caliber rifle,
saw them and fled."
[rifle cocks]
- [man in distance] Stop! Stay still!
- [panting]
[Reinhard] "He threatened
the officers with the rifle
[gunshot echoes]
so they fired a warning shot
and told him to surrender."
"They then shot at him,
and one bullet grazed Wichmann's leg."
[gun fires]
"Still, he ultimately managed to flee."
"He was sentenced in Lüneburg
to one year in juvenile detention."
[engine revving]
3 YEARS LATER
NOVEMBER 21, 1970
[suspenseful music playing]
[car door shuts]
[Wolfgang] This all reached its peak
when he picked up a young hitchhiker
then raped and tried to kill her.
[suspenseful music continues]
[Brockmann] What's interesting
is that he let the victim go this time,
and then later,
after reading about it in the newspaper,
he went to the police
to try to correct the reports
and downplay what he had done.
17-YEAR-OLD HITCHHIKER
ATTACKED ON THE WAY HOME
And he was later sentenced,
and as far as I know
DISTRICT ATTORNEY ASKS FOR TWELVE YEARS
the district attorney
asked for a 12-year sentence.
At the time, he was 21 years old
BIRGIT MEIER'S BROTHER
but was sentenced as a juvenile
VICTIM FEARS FOR LIFE IN TRUNK OF CAR
to five-and-a-half years in prison.
FIVE YEARS IN PRISON
PUNISHMENT FOR A SERIOUS CRIME
RAPE, BODILY HARM
WITH DEPRIVATION OF LIBERTY
I don't think he served
the whole sentence.
I imagine he served two-thirds
and then was released.
[Reinhard] Up to that point,
this all is somewhat normal.
There's this guy, Wichmann
FORMER HEAD OF SCID HAMBURG
who then, as you know,
was in contact with Birgit Meier
in whatever form it was.
Then you look into who he was.
What kind of criminal past
might he have had?
Then we discover the rape case from 1970
and learn something about his background.
Then you look in the files
and see almost 19 years of nothing.
You could take this to mean,
"Well, then nothing else happened."
"He was rehabilitated."
"He found his way in life."
Or you could also say,
"We've missed something."
We don't know
what happened in these years,
whether he really
did nothing for 19 years.
We'll know once we look into
who this person is.
The real trick now is gathering everything
about where Kurt-Werner Wichmann
was all these years
and then comparing it to the crimes,
capital offenses, and murders of women.
That's the key word,
"murder of hitchhikers."
Those were the criteria
they should have used,
especially if the crimes
were committed in a series.
It doesn't take long to stumble upon
the "disco murders" in Cuxhaven,
a series of murders
that took place between 1977 and 1986.
Each year, a young woman went missing.
When they searched his house in 1993,
they found street maps
THE DISCO-KILLER STRUCK NINE TIMES
including one with Cuxhaven on it.
MISSING MERTENS
MISSING SCHNEEFUß
In the files, it says it was "marked,"
whatever "marked" meant.
I don't know.
But there's clearly a connection
between Wichmann and Cuxhaven.
[ominous music playing]
[music fades]
[Brockmann] The interesting thing
about Wichmann's life is,
on one hand,
we have the cruelty toward animals
and even his violence toward people.
On the other hand,
the sadist in him stays hidden.
On one hand,
he's presented as a cemetery gardener,
but he often changed employers,
lied a lot,
and also faked facts, forged diplomas,
and created a résumé
that didn't reflect his actual life.
CERTIFICATE
GARDENER
[Wolfgang] It means he created
excellent diplomas for himself
for jobs he supposedly had, even in Spain.
BORN 7/8/1949 IN LÜNEBURG
1966-1969 GARDENING APPRENTICESHIP
He claimed he worked
at a company, getting glowing references.
ACCOUNTING: BOOKKEEPING - GOOD
BUSINESS AND LAW - GOOD
Later the company realized,
"Uh-oh, our employee is a murder suspect."
They took a closer look
and noticed it had all been faked.
Part of this facade
included his status symbols,
like having lots of cars
or a certain look with his leather coat.
He just wanted to be
unique and extravagant.
He wanted to flaunt a little.
And he also used his women
to maintain this facade.
His life with his wife gave him a facade.
It gave him normalcy that he could use
to not give his secret away
while still getting
to live his second life.
- [fire crackling]
- [eerie music playing]
[man] In general,
this kind of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde character
is part of many of these personalities.
They often come across
as very friendly in public.
LAWYER
You're completely unaware
that there's a criminal hiding underneath.
People can definitely,
despite the improvements in our society,
shed this veneer and suddenly be
a totally different kind of person
PSYCHIATRIC ASSESSMENT 1992
ORIGINAL SKETCH WICHMANN
an evil one.
And I have had this experience repeatedly
and also repeatedly seen
how a person can shed this facade
and suddenly become a whole new person.
- [upbeat dance music playing]
- Please don't treat me like a stranger ♪
You know that I am no, no danger ♪
It hurts me so bad
It seems like a sin ♪
[Brockmann] He wasn't
the happily married kind of guy.
We know this from his wife,
who complained to her neighbor
that he had relationships
with other women.
This means he was pretending
to be in a relationship
because leading
a totally normal, conventional life meant
no one would ever believe him capable
of doing what he was actually doing.
This is also what we heard
when he was questioned
about the extent
of his relationship with Birgit Meier.
He said he had met her sporadically,
but they had no contact otherwise
because he was a happily married man.
When you only hear that, you think,
"Yes, of course,
if he's happily married,
why have a relationship with Birgit?"
But, since no one knows
what actually happened to Birgit
or why she went missing.
One theory is
[sighs deeply]
that there was a sexual element.
That's one of many theories.
We also knew
that Kurt-Werner Wichmann had ideas
about persuading women
he knew to play along
when he'd suggest things like,
"Hey, let's fake an abduction."
"We'll go on a vacation,
and they'll pay."
[Brockmann] Why did Birgit Meier
tell Mrs. Möwes,
on the day of her disappearance,
"I think I've inherited
my neighbor's housemate"?
That's why I still wonder
if they arranged to meet that evening.
Because Harald Meier also said,
and I think this statement is documented,
that she was dressed
particularly nice that evening
and that she had a new top that evening.
Harald Meier wasn't quite sure
if she got all dressed up for him,
but it didn't really make sense.
He even asked her,
to which she must've replied coyly,
"Are you expecting a visitor?"
Well, let's say she was coyly silent.
We know that Kurt-Werner,
despite various sources of income
like his job and sale of some of his land,
was always strapped for cash.
He needed money,
and this was actually a kidnapping.
[Brockmann] Maybe his plan was to use
Birgit Meier to blackmail Harald Meier
because he was a millionaire,
and Wichmann always wanted money.
Maybe he made her an offer,
and she said, "Are you out of your mind?"
"I'd never do that,
and my brother works for the police."
The other theory is
that he actually broke into her bedroom
to kidnap her
with the intent
of blackmailing her husband,
and that's when something went wrong.
And I also wonder,
in the case of blackmail gone wrong,
who knows what may have happened?
I wonder if he acted alone,
or did he need
someone he trusted to work with?
Because then the victim,
who needed to be kept hidden,
would also need to have been watched
and taken care of.
I have no idea.
[soft piano music playing on radio]
Langsam neigt sich der winter ♪
[electric razor buzzing]
Wie der Frühling erwacht mein Herz ♪
Nur der kleinste Blick
Von dir bringt mich ♪
[Wolfgang] At the time when he fled,
he had six cars.
Well, six were registered in his name.
Still to this day, we wonder
why he needed so many cars,
but we know he was very mobile
and that he traveled all over
Germany.
[Reinhard] We also noticed
he'd covered a crazy amount of kilometers.
Tens of thousands of kilometers, and we
[Wolfgang] At least 30,000 a year.
[Reinhard] And we couldn't explain
how he racked up so many kilometers,
considering he had multiple cars
at the same time in different places.
I found Claudia's profile very helpful,
which evaluated him,
based on his personality,
as someone who was on the road a lot,
looking, searching for women.
He was a sort of hunter of humans.
He was a man lying in wait,
watching, and he had
really dangerous nonsense in his head.
[Brockmann]
What he actually wanted to do is
to be alone and to be a hunter.
So the question is,
is he just driving around?
Or is he thinking,
"I'm constantly looking for prey"?
[Jens] "Tanned, buff,
and very attractive 30-year-old
AMATEUR CRIMINOLOGIS
seeks cock-hungry woman, up to 40,
for a sensual,
loving, and dirty relationship."
"Intimate affection as a couple
and GS fun, meaning group sex,
and nights
at the club should be included."
"Long-term relationship possible."
"Immediate response
to photo and phone number."
His haircut definitely stands out.
In the later pictures,
if you look carefully,
the body is almost identical,
so you can always tell
that they show the same person.
One more important thing is,
when his age was listed in any of the ads,
it always matched the current ad.
How did I even get
the idea to check personals ads
to look for Kurt-Werner Wichmann?
Of course,
I had certain information from the start,
like that he had had a lot
of romantic relationships,
and he possibly worked as a call boy.
So I thought to myself,
"I have to imagine the era."
It's 2020 now,
and so much is online these days.
YOUNG BIG-COCKED BI GUY,
LOVES ANAL AND LEATHER
It's very different from 1989.
They didn't have Internet.
You couldn't look things up
on a smartphone.
They still had pay phones.
I thought it through and asked myself,
"Okay, how might he have been active?"
He needed to be easy to find
if he was a call boy.
[eerie music playing]
This ad is special
because it has a running text
that was basically in another magazine,
where he said he was 37
and looking for someone in Hamburg.
The key word is "forest."
It now comes into play.
MALE, 37, BI, SEEKS COUPLE
OR SINGLE PERSON. ANAL, CINEMA, FOREST.
There's a second ad,
which has similar wording,
"Looking for two people
to have sex with in the woods,"
which, interestingly enough,
appeared just before the Göhrde murders.
BRUTAL MURDERS OF THE GÖHRDE KILLER
1,620 LEADS
BUT NONE LEAD TO THE GÖHRDE KILLER
THEIR KILLER STILL HASN'T BEEN FOUND
MYSTERY KILLER LEAVES BEHIND NO CLUES
JUST FEAR
[Jens] There's been a lot of speculation
about whether he may have driven
hundreds of thousands of kilometers
to various villages
where he committed murders.
I would argue
and think it's much more likely
that these long journeys were
the result of him pursuing sexual contacts
that he was looking for there.
Although, both are possible.
You have to consider
the personal ads may not have only served
to create sexual contacts
but also to establish sexual contacts
to later turn them into victims.
That's conceivable too.
Or maybe just to find victims.
[eerie music playing]
[Wolfgang] That was still a point
where we had already considered
whether there would be further crimes
in the area that could be related.
It was a process
that took a certain amount of our time.
It was clear to us that the point
of our activities was to gather
information and facts in order to convince
the Lüneburg district attorney's office
and the police,
who had no interest in conducting
further investigations at that point,
that a new investigation
was, in fact, necessary.
"Could we sit down together?"
I'm specifically talking to Lüneburg.
"Could we update each other?
Exchange information?"
"We're not the investigators,
but we've found new things."
"You're caught up in day-to-day business."
POLICE CHIEF'S SISTER MURDERED?
"You're more than welcome
to check our information."
"But do something with it!"
So many objections!
Man, what's going on?
Murder has no statute of limitations.
You can't stop looking.
[Brockmann] I find it difficult
when someone disappears, and bureaucracy
MISSING
CONCERN FOR POLICE CHIEF'S SISTER
leads to it being called "fate,"
and then it becomes a case,
then it becomes a number.
It becomes case number "whatever."
Then it's a file number.
And when a person becomes a number,
it's pretty dehumanizing.
And I think this has to be fought against.
NOT A TRACE OF BIRGIT MEIER
It's my job to fight it.
It's no way to do things.
To clear this up, Lüneburg always told us,
"We'd like to,
but the DA's office has our hands tied
because you can't investigate the dead."
Of course,
the question for the DA's office was,
"How can that be?"
[Gerhard] It's true
that the dead can't be investigated
because you can't take
legal action against them.
You can't indict them.
But, of course, it's also used
to prevent
complete clarifications of past events.
And that is, of course, unacceptable.
The phrase,
"You can't investigate a dead person,"
is an excuse for laziness.
There was a second suspect,
my brother-in-law,
who they had their sights on,
and above all, there were things,
let's call it "solid evidence,"
that suggested possible accomplices.
The case still has to be solved
FORMER HEAD OF THE HAMBURG DA OFFICE
before it can be closed
with the classic line,
"The case is closed."
That would mean it's clear beyond doubt
that the deceased person
was the perpetrator,
beyond all doubt,
and that it's also certain
that the person acted alone.
No accomplices,
no one who ordered the job,
and no one who helped.
If the case
hasn't been solved beyond all doubt,
then the investigation has to go on.
His house was searched
on February 24, 1993, the day he fled.
[sighs]
We also know that, after he fled Adendorf
or, rather, Lüneburg,
he traveled north towards Wilhelmshaven,
where his relatives lived,
and based on what we know,
he stayed there for several days.
The strange thing is, if I may interrupt,
that we have Wilhelmshaven here.
- Yes.
- Cuxhaven over here.
- Right.
- The missing girl here.
From between '77 and '86.
It's just dawned on me
that, while he was on the run,
he was also
in a camper of an acquaintance.
- Exactly.
- Wasn't it somewhere on the Elbe?
Yes, that's right.
- So, you know?
- [Wolfgang] Yes.
[Reinhard] You see this arch?
It follows the coast.
I mean, purely in terms
of the places he went.
It's very likely
that he was familiar with this region
if he was living down in Lüneburg,
especially with his connection
to the North, in Cuxhaven.
[Reinhard] He contacted
a whole lot of women
[Wolfgang] That's right.
[Reinhard] through regular personal ads
and in sex magazines.
There must be more people
who remember him.
They must've met up with him.
It'd be interesting
to know where he slept,
where they met, where their dates were.
[woman] I was at odds
with my husband at the time.
We had moved.
He was out and about a lot
with other women.
I had the Hamburg Evening Paper
and saw this personal ad
ONE OF WICHMANN'S LOVERS
and I replied to it.
He wrote something about
"businessman, free time during the day."
I thought, "I just want to flirt."
"I'm married." And I thought,
"I just want to have a little fun."
I was already thinking,
"Well, he's a wonderful, interesting man."
"He's funny too."
"He was so nice to talk to,
and his voice, he had a lovely voice."
I always teased him
about his John Wayne eye.
ANJA, YOU ARE MY NUMBER 1
One of his eyes looked
a bit different, a bit mean.
Kind of like a "cool guy's eye."
The other eye looked more friendly.
[young woman speaking indistinctly]
[woman] We often drove into the woodland.
He found a chair,
and he threw it up into a tree
- because he was so happy to meet me.
- [shouts in German]
[young woman giggles]
[woman] For some reason,
I thought it was very sweet.
But there was also this one time
when he grabbed me by the neck.
We went for a walk,
then he grabbed me
and put his hands around my neck.
And I said,
"Hey, cut it out!" or something.
It was as if he wanted
to test it to see if it was okay.
I was at Werner's place once too,
and he wanted
to handcuff me to the radiator.
I ran around the table
and said, "No, not with me!"
I always treated it like a bit of a joke.
There were a few things
when I think back,
I think, "Man, I lucked out."
One day, he came wearing shorts
to where I lived at the time.
He was completely different
from how he normally was.
He was really angry
and insisted I had to come with him.
"We can team up. We can fake a kidnapping.
Then your husband will pay the ransom."
I said, "I won't do that to my kids."
We had a huge argument in the car,
then I drove home.
I would've had no problem going with him
if he had
But, well, not with the children.
It was borderline, you know? Truly crazy.
After that,
he didn't come back for a while.
He didn't want to have
anything more to do with me.
He was very cold toward me.
In any case,
I knew I'd never see him again.
[male voice]
"My dearest, I'm immensely sad
AUDIO BASED ON
KURT-WERNER WICHMANN'S SUICIDE NOTE
sad that I ruined our life together."
"But, be honest,
isn't what I'm planning better for you
than me going to jail for years?"
[Brockmann] You can always read
suicide notes in different ways.
SUICIDE NOTE
LAST WILL
Does the person want
to put their affairs in order?
Or for clarity?
Do you see regret?
Guilt? Shame?
We saw none of that.
We saw no regret, no guilt, no shame.
That's why I think
these farewell letters were meant to
maintain the facade.
[male voice] "I hope and expect peace
from those I leave behind."
"Better yet, help each other
as much as you can,
and, dear Ali, always remember,
he's my brother.
I've caused him great pain too."
"I worry tremendously
when I think about our house,
our property
and everything connected to it."
"Please join forces together
to keep our house, our home."
"I assume the DA's office
will open this letter."
"So there are a few things
I won't mention."
[chuckles softly]
Of course, I then realized
that no one had looked into this letter.
Well, at least,
no one wrote about it in the files.
I assume they discussed it,
but there was nothing in the files
about how it was to be interpreted.
Criminologically, it's all
extremely significant and interesting.
There is so much evidence
that gives us a perfect picture
of his crime against my sister.
Even though he doesn't mention
that he killed anyone,
he does express this directly
when he tells his wife,
"What I'm doing now,
that is, checking out of life
is to spare me from years in jail."
He wouldn't have gone to jail for years
for having ammunition
and gun parts in his trunk.
He'd go to jail for something much worse,
for murder.
Basically, Wichmann took his life
because he thought
the police would do their job right.
Had he known
how they were actually doing the job,
he wouldn't have had to kill himself.
He could've lived on for years.
DIED SUDDENLY AND UNEXPECTEDLY
ON APRIL 25, 1993
MY DEAR HUSBAND, A GOOD BROTHER
AND SON-IN-LAW - KURT-WERNER WICHMANN
"Keep my house and family together."
He absolutely wanted the family
to hold onto ownership of it
because, as long as
it stayed in the family,
the property wouldn't be renovated,
and no one would find anything.
I always described it as a desperate plea
to keep the house and property intact.
In other words, "Never sell it.
It has to stay in the family's ownership."
How could Wichmann be so dumb
to leave everything on his property?
If anyone found it, it would be obvious
that he was the perpetrator.
It's because he was a control freak
and had to have control of everything.
He had to have control of the house.
He had to have control of the car.
He had to have control over
his brother and over his wife.
[dogs barking in distance]
[Brockmann] His brother was
nine years younger than him.
They had a special relationship,
and it was characterized by affection,
from his younger brother
toward him at least.
And I think his brother
had been let in on his secret world,
and he had thereby
incriminated his brother
and possibly exploited
his brother in this way.
[Wolfgang] We considered
whether I should approach his brother
under the guise of, "Do me a favor."
"I assume you know
where I should look for my sister."
But in the end, he won't tell us anything.
He won't speak to us anymore.
But what was fairly clear to us
from the suicide note
and other events was that, ultimately,
there was a lot of evidence suggesting
Birgit Meier
was to be found on the grounds
or in the house at 15 Streitmoor.
[Wolfgang] In 2012, since the police
and the DA's office stopped investigating,
it was my turn again.
That's why
I kept wondering
if there was a way to maybe buy the house.
Since my brother-in-law
was wealthier than me,
and I wasn't in a position to do so,
I said, "Look,
buy the house. Buy the property."
Wolfgang said, "This is somehow"
BIRGIT MEIER'S HUSBAND
"This house is significant somehow."
I said to him, "Wolfgang, you know what?
This has all been such a strain on me
that buying it now
and doing anything else with it"
"No, we're not doing that."
[keyboard clacking]
I FIND THIS
COMPLETELY UNDOABLE AND MACABRE.
IT'D KEEP THE AWFUL MEMORIES ALIVE
DON'T OVERLOOK THE FAC
THAT THESE AWFUL EVENTS AFFECTED ME TOO
[Wolfgang] I can totally understand
his reaction,
but if we're going to find her anywhere,
we would find her
on Wichmann's property or house.
Even so, I felt the urge to get
a sense of the property and the house,
knowing that, in the meantime,
the property was now
under the ownership of Mr. Rudloff,
the subsequent husband
of Wichmann's widow.
Mrs. Wichmann had died in 2006,
and so I already knew
Mr. Rudloff was living alone
in the house on the property.
So I just called him.
Mr. Rudloff was very, very cooperative.
We searched everywhere,
the basement, the ground floor.
We also wanted to see
the secret room, of course.
All we knew about it from the files
was how much they had found there.
[Reinhard] We went into the house
and entered the
Let's stick with "secret room."
It actually had a normal door,
but it was also noise-insulated
and also had a chain with a padlock.
That was an unusual sight.
[Wolfgang] Of course, I expected
to open the door and find an empty room.
I was totally astonished
that there were many items in there,
which made me realize immediately
there may be a connection to Wichmann.
So I asked, "Mr. Rudloff,
did all of this belong to Wichmann?"
"Yes, of course."
"I didn't clear it out back then."
"We never used the room anyway,
and I just used it as a storage room."
ATTIC
"We took out some stuff,
but everything you see here
DRAFT CARD
the bookshelves,
the books, the video cassettes,
and the photo albums and so on,
the technical devices, all Wichmann's."
INSURANCE CARD "NECKERMANN"
ON THE D&W CATALOG
And I must admit, uh,
we were very, very surprised.
The walls weren't straight.
They came down to the floor at an angle.
You know? Like this.
You could sort of
By breaking down the paneling,
you could sort of enter
the empty space behind it.
And that's where we discovered,
if I remember correctly,
it was around here,
the listening device
which went down to the basement
into the tenants' basement apartment,
into their bedroom.
It was still fully operational,
and you can imagine
that, when people lived there,
he was up there
listening in on the people down there.
He clearly took
great pleasure in doing so.
Otherwise, there'd be
no listening device there,
even if he just had audio, no video.
[Reinhard] I still remember
that it led outside from this room.
I'd imagined
it would go more toward the garage,
which is where the rope led down to.
It was right across from here,
and when you opened it,
there was no floor,
and you fell into the garage.
[eerie music playing]
[Wolfgang] The question was,
what does this all mean?
One theory is, if the police
rang the doorbell downstairs,
he could use the rope
to make his way down there,
reach the garage, then get out.
That's the first theory.
The second theory discussed
was that it was a noose
so he could hang himself if he wanted to.
But the decisive discovery
among the things seen at first glance
was the videotapes.
My estimate is
that there were about 70 or 80 tapes.
There were actually
only three categories of videotapes.
The first one was
all these Nazi-related videos,
marches during the Third Reich
and reports about the army on tape.
The others were pornographic films,
then there were some recordings.
We looked at the backs and the boxes
then realized,
"Wait, some of these are written in code.
What could they mean?"
They had combinations of letters,
and so we took those first.
And astonishingly, they were videotapes
CRIME SHOW - COMPLETE BROADCAS
BIRGIT MEIER / GÖHRDE-MURDERS
of crime shows covering
the Göhrde murders and my sister's case.
[anchorman] For evidence
that might help solve the suspected crime
[Wolfgang] The obvious question was,
"How did we just find these?
Were they not kept in a safe place?"
In other words,
"Did they overlook these back in 1993?"
"Or what's going on here?"
The most interesting part was
that after the crime show ended,
there was a video afterwards
with viewers' reactions.
This segment was recorded as well.
And that was a clear sign
that he was extremely interested
in these murder cases.
I think there was another videotape
with a report from this show
about the two female hitchhikers
murdered in Ludwigshafen.
This was at a time
when Wichmann
was probably staying in the area.
[phone line clicking]
[phone line crackling]
- [phone line clicking]
- [handset clicks]
[device beeps]
[Wolfgang] He had a small computer
at the time, probably a Commodore,
which was one of the first computers.
And even in the '80s,
starting around the mid-'80s,
you could use a so-called BTX system
which was the predecessor
of a computer program
that you could pay to use
to access
certain publicly available information.
BTX SCREEN TEX
[computerized music playing]
[ad narrator] BTX is
an abbreviation for "Bildschirmtext"
and is a communications service
of the postal service.
Using an enhanced remote control,
you can retrieve all BTX has to offer.
But by using an alphanumeric keyboard,
you have many more options.
You could see that he had researched
the Köpping family's house with his PC.
Köpping, Göhrde murders.
It's quite incredible that in this room
Immediately after the murder,
in this room.
We found evidence of
There's the videotape
about the Göhrde murders,
and suddenly we discovered
Wichmann had looked up the Köpping family.
It was clear [chuckles]
that this wouldn't be
our last time in this room.
[Reinhard] There's more information
to be had. This is a chance.
That's a great source of motivation.
It riles you up
when everything you present
"Hey, could you please take a look?
We found something else."
When they dismiss you,
it really makes you mad.
As retired detectives, there was
a whole bunch of motivating factors.
POLICE
[Reinhard] Shortly thereafter, we heard
there was
a new chief of police in Lüneburg,
Kruse, a colleague who used to work
at the Department of the Interior
and who had talked to Wolfgang Sielaff
about Göhrde and his sister's fate.
He had been very open.
We thought, "This is great."
"We'd like to talk to him now."
[Wolfgang] In the end, he signaled that he
would have my sister's case reopened.
It wasn't
about a perpetrator-oriented approach
to get Wichmann.
It was about Birgit Meier's case.
Richard Kaufmann's cold-case team,
Iterum, was deployed.
Iterum.
It's a Latin word.
It more or less means "once again"
or "a second time" or "another time."
Of course, I was interested in,
if we have another chance to investigate,
which will probably be our last,
then the investigation
is to be carried out
by people who were unbiased.
Please choose detectives who had
nothing to do with the case previously.
And please don't pick any from precincts
that were involved in the case,
and please choose people
who are committed.
He thought,
"Yes, you can count on that happening."
[crowd chattering indistinctly]
[Wolfgang] There was a kind of uncertainty
about what kind of guy he was.
What has he done so far?
What is his background?
I already knew from the very beginning
he had lots of experience
with homicides, which is important
because we assumed
that my sister was no longer alive
and was the victim of a crime.
Since it's been 25 years, more or less
CHIEF SUPERINTENDEN
"TEAM ITERUM" LÜNEBURG POLICE
since he started
following his sister's case
and also actively working on it,
um, he was obviously skeptical at first.
"Great, two more new people."
The important thing is
to look at things once more,
with a fresh pair of eyes.
He said, "Let's start
by looking at the physical evidence."
"Because in order
to solve such an old case,
then we'll need the help
of any evidence that we might still have."
[Richard] The difficult thing
about this case was
that after evaluating the files,
we realized a lot of the things
that we wanted were missing
that should've been in a murder file.
Parts of files were missing,
missing exhibits justified by the fact
that Birgit Meier's case
hadn't been opened as a capital crime,
homicide case, or a violent crime,
but instead as a missing persons case.
[inhales] It had also been treated
as such for a very long time.
Their literal answer to my question,
"Where are the files and the exhibits?"
was, "They no longer exist."
So I asked, "Were they destroyed?"
"Yes."
[groans]
To be blunt,
this really sucked.
You can't say,
"The dead can't be investigated,"
when you have all this evidence.
The stuff they found there,
as one could clearly assume,
wasn't there because he was a collector.
No, he'd used it for his crimes.
You don't get rid of things like that.
You keep them.
No statute of limitations on murder.
We tried to find
the missing items and exhibits.
Might there be exhibits
lying somewhere in other files?
We went to all our colleagues
and all the DAs
who were involved over the years.
Most of them were retired.
We asked if they knew anything
beyond what was in the files.
"Do you still have any documents?"
"Do you happen to have
any notes that might help us?"
We had a haystack now
and were looking for a needle.
Except that 80% of the haystack
had already been removed,
so we had to try to find
the needle in that part of the haystack.
We tried to find all the details
that were missing from the files.
We discovered things,
found the tiniest details about
where something might be, and searched.
"Does this still exist?"
At some point
while searching the files, we came across
a list of items seized in 1993.
It contained a huge number of items
A GREEN SHOOTING AND FISHING VES
CONTAINING:
including a shooting vest,
the kind hunters have.
1. TWO KEYS
2. TWO PACKS OF AMMO
They found handcuffs,
steel handcuffs in there.
CONFISCATION OF THE FOLLOWING ITEMS
2 PAIRS OF HANDCUFFS (IN A BAG)
Many of the items were examined,
many were not.
But, regarding these handcuffs,
I noticed one page
out of all the thousands in the files.
The handcuffs were sent
to the medical school
in Hannover to be examined
A PAIR OF HANDCUFFS WITH TRACES OF BLOOD
because a tiny speck
that might have been blood could be seen.
It was mentioned
in this examination report.
I tried to find the results in the files,
but they weren't there.
[birds cawing]
[Richard] So I asked Dr. Rothämel,
and he said he had
a vague memory of them and would check.
Then he called back and said
he still had the steel handcuffs
in the evidence room in the basement.
It was 22 years later.
Finding the handcuffs
was a huge breakthrough
because we could assume
that this speck of blood
And we assumed
from the start that it was blood
and that it could've been
a victim's blood.
This was extremely exciting.
"What's this here now?"
The situation was
that Wichmann was the only one
who had a key
to this secret room in his house.
He was the only one
who had used the shooting vest.
And given that the handcuffs
were in the upper-left breast pocket,
then we can be very certain
that they belonged to him.
[Wolfgang] It was a huge surprise,
and it brought with it
great expectations and the hope
that the speck
on the handcuffs could be identified.
We were still wondering,
"Is that my sister's blood?"
Do they even have anything to do with her?
It could just be that it's human blood
but from a totally different person.
[suspenseful music playing]
[music intensifies, stops]
[eerie music playing]
[Wolfgang] If a team of detectives
knows their trade,
and I use the word "trade"
very consciously,
they first see if the suspect,
Mr. Wichmann in this case,
has any kind of criminal record
and if there is
any information in his past
that might be of criminological interest.
And if they had done this,
they would've definitely seen
that from the age of 14,
he repeatedly committed crimes.
This can only lead us to one conclusion,
to take a closer look at him.
[Reinhard] We had a lot of questions
about Wichmann's background.
Things like,
"Who did he go to school with?"
"Which school was it?" and so on.
I thought it would all be in the files.
Because we thought
we could gather
a lot more information this way.
[Brockmann] Not only should we
interview people who knew Birgit Meier
but also people who knew Wichmann.
This way, we can create a timeline
and better understand them.
Why do people do what they do?
Why do they feel compelled
or what compels them
to take someone else's life?
A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY SERIES
[eerie music playing]
[Brockmann]
Thanks to the Lüneburg city archive,
we had very good information
about how he grew up.
Namely, in temporary housing
without sewage or heating
and socially isolated in a small family.
YOUTH
Meaning he grew up
mainly relying on himself.
[man] Got him. Werner Wichmann,
born 7/8/1949, lives at 15 Streitmoor.
That's him, right?
- So, he moved there in 1949.
- Yes.
- With his family.
- Yes.
Then moved to 52 Ginsterweg in 1950.
And that's the so-called refugee center.
It's a settlement
for people with low income
who need help
and can't pay their rent anymore,
who weren't connected
to the sewage system.
You get an idea
of how bad it was back then.
[Reinhard] Kurt-Werner grew up
in a very problematic family
with a violent father
and a mother who was anything but caring.
Kurt-Werner
certainly didn't experience love.
[Brockmann] He was absent
from school a lot.
KURT WERNER MISSED 102 DAYS OF SCHOOL
Up to 102 days in one school year.
What's striking is
that he often had headaches, stomachaches,
so possible signs
of psychosomatic disorders
but injuries too.
The school records said
that his parents were
too unsophisticated to encourage him
and that the parents were a lost cause,
as they put it,
and that it made sense
to put him in a foster home
for him to receive more care.
But something he really enjoyed
as an eight, nine, ten-year-old
was walking in the forest.
The forest didn't expect anything of him.
It didn't scare him,
and he could pretend
that he was the king of this forest.
- [man 1] In front of the goal.
- [man 2] Well-played.
- [man 3] Yeah, good.
- [man 4] Come on, get it. Keep going!
- [man 5] Get the ball.
- [man 3] Come on, run!
- [indistinct chattering]
- [clapping]
[man 6] Yes, Kurt-Werner [hesitates]
always wanted to stand out.
From a modern perspective,
I'd say he really needed validation.
FORMER CLASSMATE OF WICHMANN
I'd almost call it
an attention-seeking complex.
He knew a lot about nature.
He knew where things were,
where the marshland was.
He knew where good hiding places were.
Everything that was
important to him as a child.
But, like I said,
he didn't have many friends.
His mother was always very happy
when he had friends over to play.
He always had
something secretive about him,
even as a child.
He'd have things buried
in different places,
and he'd always have
kind of strange ideas.
The thing that ended our friendship was
his cruelty toward animals.
He tortured them.
He'd stomp frogs to death.
Inflating frogs was
another one of his specialties,
which is plain horrible, of course.
And then, on top of that,
he suddenly vanished into thin air.
[Brockmann] His classmate,
Wilfried Wernicke, reported
that they often roamed through the forest
as young schoolboys
and that he would shoot at birds
with his slingshot.
So he was already hunting at this age,
and what's notable
about what was reported to us
is that he would
bury these birds.
Why did he bury them?
That sort of thing
really grabs your attention.
POLICE PSYCHOLOGIS
Did the burying have something
to do with him, with his personality?
To do something forbidden
then undo it or, I mean, to hide it
instead of undoing it.
Of course, this fits with what we learned
from the search reports.
CAR FORD, RED, MODEL T 22,
LICENSE NUMBER LG-K 4
Why would he bury a car in his garden?
He didn't just bury it in his garden.
He built a rock garden on top of it.
And he was the only one
who knew something was hidden beneath it.
I think that's something
that distinguished him.
JANUARY 2, 1964
[glass squeaking]
This was our first apartment.
Our first one.
We didn't know back then they had a son
who had been in a foster home.
And this home specifically,
the behavioral one in Delmenhorst.
FORMER SUBTENANTS OF THE WICHMANNS
[Günther]
We'd basically only been living there
about six weeks when it happened.
The incident with Wichmann.
[Bärbel] Right before Christmas
[Günther] That's when we first met him.
We were on Christmas vacation,
and suddenly he was home
walking around in the yard.
He was only 14.
He was always playing around
with sanding tools and sharpening things.
He always kept his distance.
Uh, he had this strange look,
and he would watch us
whenever he could.
[Bärbel] And when he was inside,
and we left,
whether by foot or in the car
He'd always pull back
the curtain and watch us.
Around 6:00 a.m.,
I drove to the train station
to go to Hamburg,
and an hour later, it happened.
[chair creaking]
[huffs]
A strange feeling on my neck.
I open my eyes, and there he was,
kneeling on the bed
with his hands around my neck.
I managed to break free.
Maybe I screamed too. I don't remember.
Frank started to cry at this moment.
- [baby crying]
- [Günther] We had the crib in our room.
[Bärbel] We had the crib in our room.
[baby continues crying]
[Bärbel] Then he let go of me,
got off the bed,
went to the crib and bent over it.
- I got out of bed.
- I think he thought, "Oh man!"
Maybe he wanted to silence him.
I guess he hadn't expected me
to come after him so quickly
or to be in such good shape.
I said, "What do you want from me?
What did I do to you?"
[whispers wickedly] "Be quiet! Be quiet!"
And then he was gone.
[Günther] It's possible
that Frank saved his mother's life
Yes.
[Günther] by drawing attention
to himself.
He stopped strangling her.
He admitted nothing in court.
He basically didn't speak at all.
His father spoke.
He only said he wanted to steal money.
Yes.
- And they believed him.
- They believed it.
CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS
AGAINST THE CONCERNED PARTY
ATTEMPTED GRAND THEFT AND COERCION
What's clear about this act is
that when he entered their house,
it didn't happen on the spur of the moment
because of an open door.
This was planned. He had a glass cutter
and cut a hole.
The act clearly shows that he had a plan
and wanted to carry it out.
He took a knife and knelt on the bed.
He needed the victim to be asleep
so he could get close
to see what it's like to strangle someone.
3 YEARS LATER
JULY 12, 1967
[Reinhard] "Three police officers
approached W's parents' home,"
"W" stands for Wichmann,
"who was due to be moved
to a juvenile detention center."
"Wichmann, who was standing
at the window with a low-caliber rifle,
saw them and fled."
[rifle cocks]
- [man in distance] Stop! Stay still!
- [panting]
[Reinhard] "He threatened
the officers with the rifle
[gunshot echoes]
so they fired a warning shot
and told him to surrender."
"They then shot at him,
and one bullet grazed Wichmann's leg."
[gun fires]
"Still, he ultimately managed to flee."
"He was sentenced in Lüneburg
to one year in juvenile detention."
[engine revving]
3 YEARS LATER
NOVEMBER 21, 1970
[suspenseful music playing]
[car door shuts]
[Wolfgang] This all reached its peak
when he picked up a young hitchhiker
then raped and tried to kill her.
[suspenseful music continues]
[Brockmann] What's interesting
is that he let the victim go this time,
and then later,
after reading about it in the newspaper,
he went to the police
to try to correct the reports
and downplay what he had done.
17-YEAR-OLD HITCHHIKER
ATTACKED ON THE WAY HOME
And he was later sentenced,
and as far as I know
DISTRICT ATTORNEY ASKS FOR TWELVE YEARS
the district attorney
asked for a 12-year sentence.
At the time, he was 21 years old
BIRGIT MEIER'S BROTHER
but was sentenced as a juvenile
VICTIM FEARS FOR LIFE IN TRUNK OF CAR
to five-and-a-half years in prison.
FIVE YEARS IN PRISON
PUNISHMENT FOR A SERIOUS CRIME
RAPE, BODILY HARM
WITH DEPRIVATION OF LIBERTY
I don't think he served
the whole sentence.
I imagine he served two-thirds
and then was released.
[Reinhard] Up to that point,
this all is somewhat normal.
There's this guy, Wichmann
FORMER HEAD OF SCID HAMBURG
who then, as you know,
was in contact with Birgit Meier
in whatever form it was.
Then you look into who he was.
What kind of criminal past
might he have had?
Then we discover the rape case from 1970
and learn something about his background.
Then you look in the files
and see almost 19 years of nothing.
You could take this to mean,
"Well, then nothing else happened."
"He was rehabilitated."
"He found his way in life."
Or you could also say,
"We've missed something."
We don't know
what happened in these years,
whether he really
did nothing for 19 years.
We'll know once we look into
who this person is.
The real trick now is gathering everything
about where Kurt-Werner Wichmann
was all these years
and then comparing it to the crimes,
capital offenses, and murders of women.
That's the key word,
"murder of hitchhikers."
Those were the criteria
they should have used,
especially if the crimes
were committed in a series.
It doesn't take long to stumble upon
the "disco murders" in Cuxhaven,
a series of murders
that took place between 1977 and 1986.
Each year, a young woman went missing.
When they searched his house in 1993,
they found street maps
THE DISCO-KILLER STRUCK NINE TIMES
including one with Cuxhaven on it.
MISSING MERTENS
MISSING SCHNEEFUß
In the files, it says it was "marked,"
whatever "marked" meant.
I don't know.
But there's clearly a connection
between Wichmann and Cuxhaven.
[ominous music playing]
[music fades]
[Brockmann] The interesting thing
about Wichmann's life is,
on one hand,
we have the cruelty toward animals
and even his violence toward people.
On the other hand,
the sadist in him stays hidden.
On one hand,
he's presented as a cemetery gardener,
but he often changed employers,
lied a lot,
and also faked facts, forged diplomas,
and created a résumé
that didn't reflect his actual life.
CERTIFICATE
GARDENER
[Wolfgang] It means he created
excellent diplomas for himself
for jobs he supposedly had, even in Spain.
BORN 7/8/1949 IN LÜNEBURG
1966-1969 GARDENING APPRENTICESHIP
He claimed he worked
at a company, getting glowing references.
ACCOUNTING: BOOKKEEPING - GOOD
BUSINESS AND LAW - GOOD
Later the company realized,
"Uh-oh, our employee is a murder suspect."
They took a closer look
and noticed it had all been faked.
Part of this facade
included his status symbols,
like having lots of cars
or a certain look with his leather coat.
He just wanted to be
unique and extravagant.
He wanted to flaunt a little.
And he also used his women
to maintain this facade.
His life with his wife gave him a facade.
It gave him normalcy that he could use
to not give his secret away
while still getting
to live his second life.
- [fire crackling]
- [eerie music playing]
[man] In general,
this kind of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde character
is part of many of these personalities.
They often come across
as very friendly in public.
LAWYER
You're completely unaware
that there's a criminal hiding underneath.
People can definitely,
despite the improvements in our society,
shed this veneer and suddenly be
a totally different kind of person
PSYCHIATRIC ASSESSMENT 1992
ORIGINAL SKETCH WICHMANN
an evil one.
And I have had this experience repeatedly
and also repeatedly seen
how a person can shed this facade
and suddenly become a whole new person.
- [upbeat dance music playing]
- Please don't treat me like a stranger ♪
You know that I am no, no danger ♪
It hurts me so bad
It seems like a sin ♪
[Brockmann] He wasn't
the happily married kind of guy.
We know this from his wife,
who complained to her neighbor
that he had relationships
with other women.
This means he was pretending
to be in a relationship
because leading
a totally normal, conventional life meant
no one would ever believe him capable
of doing what he was actually doing.
This is also what we heard
when he was questioned
about the extent
of his relationship with Birgit Meier.
He said he had met her sporadically,
but they had no contact otherwise
because he was a happily married man.
When you only hear that, you think,
"Yes, of course,
if he's happily married,
why have a relationship with Birgit?"
But, since no one knows
what actually happened to Birgit
or why she went missing.
One theory is
[sighs deeply]
that there was a sexual element.
That's one of many theories.
We also knew
that Kurt-Werner Wichmann had ideas
about persuading women
he knew to play along
when he'd suggest things like,
"Hey, let's fake an abduction."
"We'll go on a vacation,
and they'll pay."
[Brockmann] Why did Birgit Meier
tell Mrs. Möwes,
on the day of her disappearance,
"I think I've inherited
my neighbor's housemate"?
That's why I still wonder
if they arranged to meet that evening.
Because Harald Meier also said,
and I think this statement is documented,
that she was dressed
particularly nice that evening
and that she had a new top that evening.
Harald Meier wasn't quite sure
if she got all dressed up for him,
but it didn't really make sense.
He even asked her,
to which she must've replied coyly,
"Are you expecting a visitor?"
Well, let's say she was coyly silent.
We know that Kurt-Werner,
despite various sources of income
like his job and sale of some of his land,
was always strapped for cash.
He needed money,
and this was actually a kidnapping.
[Brockmann] Maybe his plan was to use
Birgit Meier to blackmail Harald Meier
because he was a millionaire,
and Wichmann always wanted money.
Maybe he made her an offer,
and she said, "Are you out of your mind?"
"I'd never do that,
and my brother works for the police."
The other theory is
that he actually broke into her bedroom
to kidnap her
with the intent
of blackmailing her husband,
and that's when something went wrong.
And I also wonder,
in the case of blackmail gone wrong,
who knows what may have happened?
I wonder if he acted alone,
or did he need
someone he trusted to work with?
Because then the victim,
who needed to be kept hidden,
would also need to have been watched
and taken care of.
I have no idea.
[soft piano music playing on radio]
Langsam neigt sich der winter ♪
[electric razor buzzing]
Wie der Frühling erwacht mein Herz ♪
Nur der kleinste Blick
Von dir bringt mich ♪
[Wolfgang] At the time when he fled,
he had six cars.
Well, six were registered in his name.
Still to this day, we wonder
why he needed so many cars,
but we know he was very mobile
and that he traveled all over
Germany.
[Reinhard] We also noticed
he'd covered a crazy amount of kilometers.
Tens of thousands of kilometers, and we
[Wolfgang] At least 30,000 a year.
[Reinhard] And we couldn't explain
how he racked up so many kilometers,
considering he had multiple cars
at the same time in different places.
I found Claudia's profile very helpful,
which evaluated him,
based on his personality,
as someone who was on the road a lot,
looking, searching for women.
He was a sort of hunter of humans.
He was a man lying in wait,
watching, and he had
really dangerous nonsense in his head.
[Brockmann]
What he actually wanted to do is
to be alone and to be a hunter.
So the question is,
is he just driving around?
Or is he thinking,
"I'm constantly looking for prey"?
[Jens] "Tanned, buff,
and very attractive 30-year-old
AMATEUR CRIMINOLOGIS
seeks cock-hungry woman, up to 40,
for a sensual,
loving, and dirty relationship."
"Intimate affection as a couple
and GS fun, meaning group sex,
and nights
at the club should be included."
"Long-term relationship possible."
"Immediate response
to photo and phone number."
His haircut definitely stands out.
In the later pictures,
if you look carefully,
the body is almost identical,
so you can always tell
that they show the same person.
One more important thing is,
when his age was listed in any of the ads,
it always matched the current ad.
How did I even get
the idea to check personals ads
to look for Kurt-Werner Wichmann?
Of course,
I had certain information from the start,
like that he had had a lot
of romantic relationships,
and he possibly worked as a call boy.
So I thought to myself,
"I have to imagine the era."
It's 2020 now,
and so much is online these days.
YOUNG BIG-COCKED BI GUY,
LOVES ANAL AND LEATHER
It's very different from 1989.
They didn't have Internet.
You couldn't look things up
on a smartphone.
They still had pay phones.
I thought it through and asked myself,
"Okay, how might he have been active?"
He needed to be easy to find
if he was a call boy.
[eerie music playing]
This ad is special
because it has a running text
that was basically in another magazine,
where he said he was 37
and looking for someone in Hamburg.
The key word is "forest."
It now comes into play.
MALE, 37, BI, SEEKS COUPLE
OR SINGLE PERSON. ANAL, CINEMA, FOREST.
There's a second ad,
which has similar wording,
"Looking for two people
to have sex with in the woods,"
which, interestingly enough,
appeared just before the Göhrde murders.
BRUTAL MURDERS OF THE GÖHRDE KILLER
1,620 LEADS
BUT NONE LEAD TO THE GÖHRDE KILLER
THEIR KILLER STILL HASN'T BEEN FOUND
MYSTERY KILLER LEAVES BEHIND NO CLUES
JUST FEAR
[Jens] There's been a lot of speculation
about whether he may have driven
hundreds of thousands of kilometers
to various villages
where he committed murders.
I would argue
and think it's much more likely
that these long journeys were
the result of him pursuing sexual contacts
that he was looking for there.
Although, both are possible.
You have to consider
the personal ads may not have only served
to create sexual contacts
but also to establish sexual contacts
to later turn them into victims.
That's conceivable too.
Or maybe just to find victims.
[eerie music playing]
[Wolfgang] That was still a point
where we had already considered
whether there would be further crimes
in the area that could be related.
It was a process
that took a certain amount of our time.
It was clear to us that the point
of our activities was to gather
information and facts in order to convince
the Lüneburg district attorney's office
and the police,
who had no interest in conducting
further investigations at that point,
that a new investigation
was, in fact, necessary.
"Could we sit down together?"
I'm specifically talking to Lüneburg.
"Could we update each other?
Exchange information?"
"We're not the investigators,
but we've found new things."
"You're caught up in day-to-day business."
POLICE CHIEF'S SISTER MURDERED?
"You're more than welcome
to check our information."
"But do something with it!"
So many objections!
Man, what's going on?
Murder has no statute of limitations.
You can't stop looking.
[Brockmann] I find it difficult
when someone disappears, and bureaucracy
MISSING
CONCERN FOR POLICE CHIEF'S SISTER
leads to it being called "fate,"
and then it becomes a case,
then it becomes a number.
It becomes case number "whatever."
Then it's a file number.
And when a person becomes a number,
it's pretty dehumanizing.
And I think this has to be fought against.
NOT A TRACE OF BIRGIT MEIER
It's my job to fight it.
It's no way to do things.
To clear this up, Lüneburg always told us,
"We'd like to,
but the DA's office has our hands tied
because you can't investigate the dead."
Of course,
the question for the DA's office was,
"How can that be?"
[Gerhard] It's true
that the dead can't be investigated
because you can't take
legal action against them.
You can't indict them.
But, of course, it's also used
to prevent
complete clarifications of past events.
And that is, of course, unacceptable.
The phrase,
"You can't investigate a dead person,"
is an excuse for laziness.
There was a second suspect,
my brother-in-law,
who they had their sights on,
and above all, there were things,
let's call it "solid evidence,"
that suggested possible accomplices.
The case still has to be solved
FORMER HEAD OF THE HAMBURG DA OFFICE
before it can be closed
with the classic line,
"The case is closed."
That would mean it's clear beyond doubt
that the deceased person
was the perpetrator,
beyond all doubt,
and that it's also certain
that the person acted alone.
No accomplices,
no one who ordered the job,
and no one who helped.
If the case
hasn't been solved beyond all doubt,
then the investigation has to go on.
His house was searched
on February 24, 1993, the day he fled.
[sighs]
We also know that, after he fled Adendorf
or, rather, Lüneburg,
he traveled north towards Wilhelmshaven,
where his relatives lived,
and based on what we know,
he stayed there for several days.
The strange thing is, if I may interrupt,
that we have Wilhelmshaven here.
- Yes.
- Cuxhaven over here.
- Right.
- The missing girl here.
From between '77 and '86.
It's just dawned on me
that, while he was on the run,
he was also
in a camper of an acquaintance.
- Exactly.
- Wasn't it somewhere on the Elbe?
Yes, that's right.
- So, you know?
- [Wolfgang] Yes.
[Reinhard] You see this arch?
It follows the coast.
I mean, purely in terms
of the places he went.
It's very likely
that he was familiar with this region
if he was living down in Lüneburg,
especially with his connection
to the North, in Cuxhaven.
[Reinhard] He contacted
a whole lot of women
[Wolfgang] That's right.
[Reinhard] through regular personal ads
and in sex magazines.
There must be more people
who remember him.
They must've met up with him.
It'd be interesting
to know where he slept,
where they met, where their dates were.
[woman] I was at odds
with my husband at the time.
We had moved.
He was out and about a lot
with other women.
I had the Hamburg Evening Paper
and saw this personal ad
ONE OF WICHMANN'S LOVERS
and I replied to it.
He wrote something about
"businessman, free time during the day."
I thought, "I just want to flirt."
"I'm married." And I thought,
"I just want to have a little fun."
I was already thinking,
"Well, he's a wonderful, interesting man."
"He's funny too."
"He was so nice to talk to,
and his voice, he had a lovely voice."
I always teased him
about his John Wayne eye.
ANJA, YOU ARE MY NUMBER 1
One of his eyes looked
a bit different, a bit mean.
Kind of like a "cool guy's eye."
The other eye looked more friendly.
[young woman speaking indistinctly]
[woman] We often drove into the woodland.
He found a chair,
and he threw it up into a tree
- because he was so happy to meet me.
- [shouts in German]
[young woman giggles]
[woman] For some reason,
I thought it was very sweet.
But there was also this one time
when he grabbed me by the neck.
We went for a walk,
then he grabbed me
and put his hands around my neck.
And I said,
"Hey, cut it out!" or something.
It was as if he wanted
to test it to see if it was okay.
I was at Werner's place once too,
and he wanted
to handcuff me to the radiator.
I ran around the table
and said, "No, not with me!"
I always treated it like a bit of a joke.
There were a few things
when I think back,
I think, "Man, I lucked out."
One day, he came wearing shorts
to where I lived at the time.
He was completely different
from how he normally was.
He was really angry
and insisted I had to come with him.
"We can team up. We can fake a kidnapping.
Then your husband will pay the ransom."
I said, "I won't do that to my kids."
We had a huge argument in the car,
then I drove home.
I would've had no problem going with him
if he had
But, well, not with the children.
It was borderline, you know? Truly crazy.
After that,
he didn't come back for a while.
He didn't want to have
anything more to do with me.
He was very cold toward me.
In any case,
I knew I'd never see him again.
[male voice]
"My dearest, I'm immensely sad
AUDIO BASED ON
KURT-WERNER WICHMANN'S SUICIDE NOTE
sad that I ruined our life together."
"But, be honest,
isn't what I'm planning better for you
than me going to jail for years?"
[Brockmann] You can always read
suicide notes in different ways.
SUICIDE NOTE
LAST WILL
Does the person want
to put their affairs in order?
Or for clarity?
Do you see regret?
Guilt? Shame?
We saw none of that.
We saw no regret, no guilt, no shame.
That's why I think
these farewell letters were meant to
maintain the facade.
[male voice] "I hope and expect peace
from those I leave behind."
"Better yet, help each other
as much as you can,
and, dear Ali, always remember,
he's my brother.
I've caused him great pain too."
"I worry tremendously
when I think about our house,
our property
and everything connected to it."
"Please join forces together
to keep our house, our home."
"I assume the DA's office
will open this letter."
"So there are a few things
I won't mention."
[chuckles softly]
Of course, I then realized
that no one had looked into this letter.
Well, at least,
no one wrote about it in the files.
I assume they discussed it,
but there was nothing in the files
about how it was to be interpreted.
Criminologically, it's all
extremely significant and interesting.
There is so much evidence
that gives us a perfect picture
of his crime against my sister.
Even though he doesn't mention
that he killed anyone,
he does express this directly
when he tells his wife,
"What I'm doing now,
that is, checking out of life
is to spare me from years in jail."
He wouldn't have gone to jail for years
for having ammunition
and gun parts in his trunk.
He'd go to jail for something much worse,
for murder.
Basically, Wichmann took his life
because he thought
the police would do their job right.
Had he known
how they were actually doing the job,
he wouldn't have had to kill himself.
He could've lived on for years.
DIED SUDDENLY AND UNEXPECTEDLY
ON APRIL 25, 1993
MY DEAR HUSBAND, A GOOD BROTHER
AND SON-IN-LAW - KURT-WERNER WICHMANN
"Keep my house and family together."
He absolutely wanted the family
to hold onto ownership of it
because, as long as
it stayed in the family,
the property wouldn't be renovated,
and no one would find anything.
I always described it as a desperate plea
to keep the house and property intact.
In other words, "Never sell it.
It has to stay in the family's ownership."
How could Wichmann be so dumb
to leave everything on his property?
If anyone found it, it would be obvious
that he was the perpetrator.
It's because he was a control freak
and had to have control of everything.
He had to have control of the house.
He had to have control of the car.
He had to have control over
his brother and over his wife.
[dogs barking in distance]
[Brockmann] His brother was
nine years younger than him.
They had a special relationship,
and it was characterized by affection,
from his younger brother
toward him at least.
And I think his brother
had been let in on his secret world,
and he had thereby
incriminated his brother
and possibly exploited
his brother in this way.
[Wolfgang] We considered
whether I should approach his brother
under the guise of, "Do me a favor."
"I assume you know
where I should look for my sister."
But in the end, he won't tell us anything.
He won't speak to us anymore.
But what was fairly clear to us
from the suicide note
and other events was that, ultimately,
there was a lot of evidence suggesting
Birgit Meier
was to be found on the grounds
or in the house at 15 Streitmoor.
[Wolfgang] In 2012, since the police
and the DA's office stopped investigating,
it was my turn again.
That's why
I kept wondering
if there was a way to maybe buy the house.
Since my brother-in-law
was wealthier than me,
and I wasn't in a position to do so,
I said, "Look,
buy the house. Buy the property."
Wolfgang said, "This is somehow"
BIRGIT MEIER'S HUSBAND
"This house is significant somehow."
I said to him, "Wolfgang, you know what?
This has all been such a strain on me
that buying it now
and doing anything else with it"
"No, we're not doing that."
[keyboard clacking]
I FIND THIS
COMPLETELY UNDOABLE AND MACABRE.
IT'D KEEP THE AWFUL MEMORIES ALIVE
DON'T OVERLOOK THE FAC
THAT THESE AWFUL EVENTS AFFECTED ME TOO
[Wolfgang] I can totally understand
his reaction,
but if we're going to find her anywhere,
we would find her
on Wichmann's property or house.
Even so, I felt the urge to get
a sense of the property and the house,
knowing that, in the meantime,
the property was now
under the ownership of Mr. Rudloff,
the subsequent husband
of Wichmann's widow.
Mrs. Wichmann had died in 2006,
and so I already knew
Mr. Rudloff was living alone
in the house on the property.
So I just called him.
Mr. Rudloff was very, very cooperative.
We searched everywhere,
the basement, the ground floor.
We also wanted to see
the secret room, of course.
All we knew about it from the files
was how much they had found there.
[Reinhard] We went into the house
and entered the
Let's stick with "secret room."
It actually had a normal door,
but it was also noise-insulated
and also had a chain with a padlock.
That was an unusual sight.
[Wolfgang] Of course, I expected
to open the door and find an empty room.
I was totally astonished
that there were many items in there,
which made me realize immediately
there may be a connection to Wichmann.
So I asked, "Mr. Rudloff,
did all of this belong to Wichmann?"
"Yes, of course."
"I didn't clear it out back then."
"We never used the room anyway,
and I just used it as a storage room."
ATTIC
"We took out some stuff,
but everything you see here
DRAFT CARD
the bookshelves,
the books, the video cassettes,
and the photo albums and so on,
the technical devices, all Wichmann's."
INSURANCE CARD "NECKERMANN"
ON THE D&W CATALOG
And I must admit, uh,
we were very, very surprised.
The walls weren't straight.
They came down to the floor at an angle.
You know? Like this.
You could sort of
By breaking down the paneling,
you could sort of enter
the empty space behind it.
And that's where we discovered,
if I remember correctly,
it was around here,
the listening device
which went down to the basement
into the tenants' basement apartment,
into their bedroom.
It was still fully operational,
and you can imagine
that, when people lived there,
he was up there
listening in on the people down there.
He clearly took
great pleasure in doing so.
Otherwise, there'd be
no listening device there,
even if he just had audio, no video.
[Reinhard] I still remember
that it led outside from this room.
I'd imagined
it would go more toward the garage,
which is where the rope led down to.
It was right across from here,
and when you opened it,
there was no floor,
and you fell into the garage.
[eerie music playing]
[Wolfgang] The question was,
what does this all mean?
One theory is, if the police
rang the doorbell downstairs,
he could use the rope
to make his way down there,
reach the garage, then get out.
That's the first theory.
The second theory discussed
was that it was a noose
so he could hang himself if he wanted to.
But the decisive discovery
among the things seen at first glance
was the videotapes.
My estimate is
that there were about 70 or 80 tapes.
There were actually
only three categories of videotapes.
The first one was
all these Nazi-related videos,
marches during the Third Reich
and reports about the army on tape.
The others were pornographic films,
then there were some recordings.
We looked at the backs and the boxes
then realized,
"Wait, some of these are written in code.
What could they mean?"
They had combinations of letters,
and so we took those first.
And astonishingly, they were videotapes
CRIME SHOW - COMPLETE BROADCAS
BIRGIT MEIER / GÖHRDE-MURDERS
of crime shows covering
the Göhrde murders and my sister's case.
[anchorman] For evidence
that might help solve the suspected crime
[Wolfgang] The obvious question was,
"How did we just find these?
Were they not kept in a safe place?"
In other words,
"Did they overlook these back in 1993?"
"Or what's going on here?"
The most interesting part was
that after the crime show ended,
there was a video afterwards
with viewers' reactions.
This segment was recorded as well.
And that was a clear sign
that he was extremely interested
in these murder cases.
I think there was another videotape
with a report from this show
about the two female hitchhikers
murdered in Ludwigshafen.
This was at a time
when Wichmann
was probably staying in the area.
[phone line clicking]
[phone line crackling]
- [phone line clicking]
- [handset clicks]
[device beeps]
[Wolfgang] He had a small computer
at the time, probably a Commodore,
which was one of the first computers.
And even in the '80s,
starting around the mid-'80s,
you could use a so-called BTX system
which was the predecessor
of a computer program
that you could pay to use
to access
certain publicly available information.
BTX SCREEN TEX
[computerized music playing]
[ad narrator] BTX is
an abbreviation for "Bildschirmtext"
and is a communications service
of the postal service.
Using an enhanced remote control,
you can retrieve all BTX has to offer.
But by using an alphanumeric keyboard,
you have many more options.
You could see that he had researched
the Köpping family's house with his PC.
Köpping, Göhrde murders.
It's quite incredible that in this room
Immediately after the murder,
in this room.
We found evidence of
There's the videotape
about the Göhrde murders,
and suddenly we discovered
Wichmann had looked up the Köpping family.
It was clear [chuckles]
that this wouldn't be
our last time in this room.
[Reinhard] There's more information
to be had. This is a chance.
That's a great source of motivation.
It riles you up
when everything you present
"Hey, could you please take a look?
We found something else."
When they dismiss you,
it really makes you mad.
As retired detectives, there was
a whole bunch of motivating factors.
POLICE
[Reinhard] Shortly thereafter, we heard
there was
a new chief of police in Lüneburg,
Kruse, a colleague who used to work
at the Department of the Interior
and who had talked to Wolfgang Sielaff
about Göhrde and his sister's fate.
He had been very open.
We thought, "This is great."
"We'd like to talk to him now."
[Wolfgang] In the end, he signaled that he
would have my sister's case reopened.
It wasn't
about a perpetrator-oriented approach
to get Wichmann.
It was about Birgit Meier's case.
Richard Kaufmann's cold-case team,
Iterum, was deployed.
Iterum.
It's a Latin word.
It more or less means "once again"
or "a second time" or "another time."
Of course, I was interested in,
if we have another chance to investigate,
which will probably be our last,
then the investigation
is to be carried out
by people who were unbiased.
Please choose detectives who had
nothing to do with the case previously.
And please don't pick any from precincts
that were involved in the case,
and please choose people
who are committed.
He thought,
"Yes, you can count on that happening."
[crowd chattering indistinctly]
[Wolfgang] There was a kind of uncertainty
about what kind of guy he was.
What has he done so far?
What is his background?
I already knew from the very beginning
he had lots of experience
with homicides, which is important
because we assumed
that my sister was no longer alive
and was the victim of a crime.
Since it's been 25 years, more or less
CHIEF SUPERINTENDEN
"TEAM ITERUM" LÜNEBURG POLICE
since he started
following his sister's case
and also actively working on it,
um, he was obviously skeptical at first.
"Great, two more new people."
The important thing is
to look at things once more,
with a fresh pair of eyes.
He said, "Let's start
by looking at the physical evidence."
"Because in order
to solve such an old case,
then we'll need the help
of any evidence that we might still have."
[Richard] The difficult thing
about this case was
that after evaluating the files,
we realized a lot of the things
that we wanted were missing
that should've been in a murder file.
Parts of files were missing,
missing exhibits justified by the fact
that Birgit Meier's case
hadn't been opened as a capital crime,
homicide case, or a violent crime,
but instead as a missing persons case.
[inhales] It had also been treated
as such for a very long time.
Their literal answer to my question,
"Where are the files and the exhibits?"
was, "They no longer exist."
So I asked, "Were they destroyed?"
"Yes."
[groans]
To be blunt,
this really sucked.
You can't say,
"The dead can't be investigated,"
when you have all this evidence.
The stuff they found there,
as one could clearly assume,
wasn't there because he was a collector.
No, he'd used it for his crimes.
You don't get rid of things like that.
You keep them.
No statute of limitations on murder.
We tried to find
the missing items and exhibits.
Might there be exhibits
lying somewhere in other files?
We went to all our colleagues
and all the DAs
who were involved over the years.
Most of them were retired.
We asked if they knew anything
beyond what was in the files.
"Do you still have any documents?"
"Do you happen to have
any notes that might help us?"
We had a haystack now
and were looking for a needle.
Except that 80% of the haystack
had already been removed,
so we had to try to find
the needle in that part of the haystack.
We tried to find all the details
that were missing from the files.
We discovered things,
found the tiniest details about
where something might be, and searched.
"Does this still exist?"
At some point
while searching the files, we came across
a list of items seized in 1993.
It contained a huge number of items
A GREEN SHOOTING AND FISHING VES
CONTAINING:
including a shooting vest,
the kind hunters have.
1. TWO KEYS
2. TWO PACKS OF AMMO
They found handcuffs,
steel handcuffs in there.
CONFISCATION OF THE FOLLOWING ITEMS
2 PAIRS OF HANDCUFFS (IN A BAG)
Many of the items were examined,
many were not.
But, regarding these handcuffs,
I noticed one page
out of all the thousands in the files.
The handcuffs were sent
to the medical school
in Hannover to be examined
A PAIR OF HANDCUFFS WITH TRACES OF BLOOD
because a tiny speck
that might have been blood could be seen.
It was mentioned
in this examination report.
I tried to find the results in the files,
but they weren't there.
[birds cawing]
[Richard] So I asked Dr. Rothämel,
and he said he had
a vague memory of them and would check.
Then he called back and said
he still had the steel handcuffs
in the evidence room in the basement.
It was 22 years later.
Finding the handcuffs
was a huge breakthrough
because we could assume
that this speck of blood
And we assumed
from the start that it was blood
and that it could've been
a victim's blood.
This was extremely exciting.
"What's this here now?"
The situation was
that Wichmann was the only one
who had a key
to this secret room in his house.
He was the only one
who had used the shooting vest.
And given that the handcuffs
were in the upper-left breast pocket,
then we can be very certain
that they belonged to him.
[Wolfgang] It was a huge surprise,
and it brought with it
great expectations and the hope
that the speck
on the handcuffs could be identified.
We were still wondering,
"Is that my sister's blood?"
Do they even have anything to do with her?
It could just be that it's human blood
but from a totally different person.
[suspenseful music playing]
[music intensifies, stops]
[eerie music playing]