Dig Deeper: The Disappearance of Birgit Meier (2021) s01e04 Episode Script
Episode 4
1
[birds cawing]
[Richard] With the help
of her daughter, Yasmine,
and her husband, Harald,
we were able to generate DNA.
We also received a formula,
and we sent it to Dr. Rothämel
so it could be compared
to the traces of blood on the handcuffs.
[suspenseful music playing]
The way Mr. Kaufmann announced
the meeting caught me by surprise.
It sounded very formal.
"We have to meet up again.
There's new information."
I was sitting here.
Mr. Kaufmann sat across from me.
His colleague sat here,
and Reinhard Chedor sat here.
[music continues]
Then Kaufmann said,
"This is a meeting for family members."
"Huh?"
"For family members?"
"Yes." The next thing he said was,
"It's been solved."
[Richard] I'm very certain
that Kurt-Werner Wichmann
was the perpetrator
or that he at least committed
a crime against Sielaff's sister.
So, I said, "Handcuffs!"
And he nodded.
The likelihood
that the blood-like deposit,
the blood on the handcuffs,
belongs to Birgit Meier is 99.9998%.
[music intensifies and stops]
A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY SERIES
[eerie music playing]
We sat there, and no one said a word.
BIRGIT MEIER'S BROTHER
We looked at each other.
Obviously, thousands of thoughts
and images were racing through my mind.
I needed a moment to regain my composure.
Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.
It was Reinhard Chedor.
Or the other way around. [inhales sharply]
Because, just like me,
he also realized what this meant,
this discovery.
[Reinhard] To be honest,
this moment [exhales]
was really great,
but it hit home.
I still remember his reaction.
He was sitting to my left.
I put my hand on his shoulder
and said, "Wolfgang."
FORMER HEAD OF THE SCID
I think Wolfgang
swallowed hard really quickly.
It was the kind of moment that
just stays with you.
Later, we met with the rest of the team
and told them the news,
I mean, that we'd made
a major breakthrough.
It was actually clear
based on what Richard Kaufmann indicated.
"We're going to search
the property again now."
And we realized
that this would be the icing on the cake
because they would find Birgit.
DIE ZEIT - WEEKLY NEWSPAPER
HEADQUARTERS IN HAMBURG
[woman] The case was cold for 27 years.
Birgit Meier disappeared 27 years ago.
Once it was on our desk
and we read the files, it got hot.
INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIS
DIE ZEI
Unlike most cases, this meant
we could watch the investigation live.
MURDEROUS LOVER
Kaufmann reopened the entire case.
He noticed that, even as a child,
Wichmann tortured animals
and buried them in the woods.
His house is right next to the woods.
It's a huge property, 1,300 square meters.
So Kaufmann said,
"Okay, we'll search the woods again."
We were very certain
that the area around the house
CHIEF SUPERINTENDEN
"EG ITERUM" - LÜNEBURG POLICE
either the grounds, inside the house,
or the surrounding moorlands
would be where he disposed of the body.
PROPERTY: LÜNEBURG, STREITMOOR 15
The police officers stood 1.5 meters apart
with metal rods.
They went through the entire forest
and poked around
looking for Birgit Meier's body.
They scoured the whole forest floor.
We then reached the conclusion
that it made more sense
to search the slope
where he'd buried his car.
Birgit Meier's body could be buried there.
We had cadaver dogs
and an anthropologist
from the Hamburg forensics department.
Technical equipment from the riot police,
which helped us drill holes.
They found all sorts of things,
bottles, cans, shoes,
but no human remains.
I remember thinking, "Oh shit!"
We're back on the ground.
She has to be here, damn it!
[Richard] Unfortunately, we couldn't find
the body on the grounds,
so we decided to search other places too.
At the time
of Birgit Meier's disappearance,
Kurt-Werner Wichmann also had
a side job in the Lüneburg area
as a cemetery gardener
WHO'S TAKING CARE OF MY GRAVE?
GRAVE MAINTENANCE AND INSTALLATION
and when they found
his Ford Probe buried in the slope,
they found spades
and other tools from the cemetery.
[suspenseful music playing]
Where's the best place
to get rid of a body
for a cemetery worker
with access to the cemetery?
If you have access to it,
and there's a burial the next day,
and the grave is already dug,
they'll just put the coffin in there.
Then you have
what's called a "double-decker."
No one would know that not only the body
of the recently deceased
has been lowered into the ground
but that the victim of a crime
could also lie underneath.
So we had the DA's office
order the exhumation
of six graves
that had been opened at this time
to check if there was a second body
that wasn't supposed to be there.
COFFIN BEING RAISED
Once the graves had all been opened,
and we, along with the anthropologist,
had taken samples from the graves
to compare the DNA
with Birgit Meier's,
the DA's office declared
that we had exhausted
every single option with these exhumations
and closed the case.
And with that, our work
as the cold-case team EG Iterum was over.
[bell chiming]
There.
Iterum then announced their work was done.
"The house is clean.
We didn't find Birgit."
We felt a little down,
but we somehow said, "Guys and gals,"
we said, "We'll take a look."
Next came the famous house search
with criminological expertise.
In our spare time on Mother's Day.
Off to Streitmoor!
We also had specialists
who advised us privately.
[solemn music playing]
[Wolfgang] I didn't set out
as a lone wolf.
Chedor and Brockmann were with me.
We were the so-called "core team."
Then we had the former head
of the Hamburg DA's office, Martin Köhnke,
the head of Hamburg's
forensics department, Klaus Püschel,
the criminal lawyer, Gerhard Strate,
and the anthropologist,
Eilin Jopp-van Well.
That was basically our team.
It was a special day for me
because I picked up Gerhard Strate,
and he had a pretty fast car.
He said, "Feel free to drive."
So I raced off
to Lüneburg with Gerhard Strate.
[clock ticking rapidly]
[Wolfgang] We met there,
and since we were
all incredibly experienced
in our own respective fields,
it was totally obvious
that we would have different perspectives
and that we'd look at things
from a different angle
in terms of what we were seeing, and
There's a saying,
"You only see what you look at,
and you only look at
what you have in mind."
We each took another look
from our own perspectives
POLICE PSYCHOLOGIS
based on what we all thought
we knew about Wichmann.
"Where was the best place
to hide Birgit Meier?"
And to actually try to put ourselves
FORENSIC MEDICAL EXPER
in the shoes of a perpetrator.
"Where do I commit the crime?
How do I commit it?"
Then, of course, the question,
"What do I do with the body?"
"Hey, time to synchronize
our watches. It's 10:30."
"We're going to spread out now
and meet back here in two hours."
"Everyone can look around the house
and grounds as they please."
That's how it was.
SOUTH VIEW - EAST VIEW
[Wolfgang]
What did the property look like in 1993?
And what does it look like today?
The vegetation has definitely changed.
Trees have shot up
that weren't there at the time, etc.
WEST VIEW - SOUTH VIEW
[Brockmann] We could search
the entire house and look at everything.
We each had an image
of Wichmann in our heads
based on each of our professions,
what we knew,
which files each of us read,
and could then say,
"Look, this might also be of interest
and this too."
To put it a little more pointedly,
and because, of course
LAWYER
there were moments
where we didn't exactly stay
within the bounds of the law,
we went beyond them.
Um, but overall,
everything was done properly.
[Reinhard] Afterward, we met up again,
and everyone shared their impressions.
Wolfgang Sielaff then made a list
based on our assessments.
We all agreed on the order
to search the premises,
garage, car pit and other areas
of the basement, and then the grounds.
Then we actually did find
a pit in the first garage,
which also presented us
with a few conundrums.
An 80-centimeter-deep car pit?
That doesn't make sense.
When I think of a car pit,
I imagine one that's
at least 180 centimeters deep.
The question always arose,
especially in the garage with the car pit
FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGIS
which was so shallow,
so unusually shallow,
"What if it used to be deeper
and had a second floor where the body was
and had another layer dumped on top?"
That was what we thought.
On one side of the pit,
there was a hole
from which light-colored sand was pouring.
That same day,
I called Mr. Kaufmann and said, "Look."
"We've found a pit here
that is rather peculiar."
"You absolutely have to take a look."
A few days went by,
and then he came with more police officers
and also a dog handler with a cadaver dog.
We took another look
at the opening with the chamber behind it.
The cadaver dog took another sniff
but didn't pick up any scent.
Other than that [inhales sharply]
we all kind of looked at each other
and came to the conclusion
"There's nothing here."
They came, and the dog sniffed around
but didn't smell anything.
No surprise, dogs can't smell anything
with all that old oil and paint.
What frustrated me was this attitude,
"Nothing here."
"Based on our experience,
there can't be anything."
Then,
what affected me a lot personally was,
"These old geezers should leave us alone."
"They should worry about other things."
They weren't criminologists
CHIEF SUPERINTENDEN
"EG ITERUM" - LÜNEBURG POLICE
police officers, or detectives
who had ever investigated
any murder cases, you know?
That's important to say.
Of course, there were lawyers
and forensic experts there too.
It was kind of a
[exhales]
I don't know, a Sherlock Holmes crew.
Of course, we also wanted
to put the icing on the cake
by finding the body.
Unfortunately, we weren't able to.
[trumpet playing solemn music]
[trumpet playing in distance]
- [solemn music playing]
- [trumpet gently fades]
[Wolfgang] To me, it was totally clear.
It was also clear to Reinhard and Claudia
and everyone else who helped me
that we that I had to keep on going now.
I can't accept the police saying,
"That's all we've got."
So, we asked ourselves,
"Where should we start digging?"
What was clear was,
if we were digging in the garage,
which was the plan,
then we definitely needed
a company to help.
I was supposed to focus on
BIRGIT MEIER'S HUSBAND
trying to find
someone discrete for the job,
although I would've only ever hired
someone who was discrete anyway.
And then we agreed on September 29th.
SEPTEMBER 29, 2017
[Reinhard] The weather was spectacular.
There wasn't a cloud in the sky.
Then I remember
there was this moment of clarity.
"What do we do now?
We're going to find her."
Sometimes, my instincts are a bit off
when assessing the situation
but not this time! Today is the day.
We can't make any mistakes.
We can't afford to.
Because one thing was clear.
We can't come back several times.
Do it once, and do it right!
Of course, this also meant
there'd be natural limitations.
We won't be able to check everything
with this current option.
We can't tear everything up.
After I arrived, I was introduced
to the mason who was already there.
He was a developer
and was with his master bricklayer
who was supposed to help us.
We were standing
by the masonry pit talking,
and he wanted to tell me
what had to be done.
Then I told him
what I thought we should do.
He looked at me like, "Who are you?"
I said, "I'm in charge. End of story."
[drill whirring]
[Eilin] We agreed beforehand
to start with a few test holes.
We'd open the floor in a few areas
and see what was underneath.
That was the idea. What's under here?
Is there a double floor?
So we drilled down with a meter-long drill
and found nothing.
We then made a few more test holes
to the left and to the right,
opened them up
and looked to see if anything was there.
[scraping]
I actually declared the area clear
and said, "There's nothing here."
Then one of the workers
wanted to get out of the pit,
moved the ladder,
and his foot sank through the floor.
Of course,
that was so significant that we said,
"Before we continue searching
other areas of the property,
we need to examine this more closely."
And then I started digging.
[Reinhard] And then,
I still remember this,
Eilin started scooping away
small amounts of sand
with such patience using a small trowel.
She was working away using her tools
when it looked as if she'd found
what seemed to be a little stick,
and then she held the little stick up,
looked at it and said,
"A metatarsal bone."
"Definitely human."
"I can't believe it!"
[Eilin] And then I must have yelled
very loudly
that I'd found human bones
because suddenly everyone came running,
and everyone was standing at the pit.
[Wolfgang] When I came running in,
and she said, "I have a metatarsal,"
it was as though
a wave shot through my body.
A kind of I can't really describe it.
Seeing how he reacted to it was
It was actually what made it so special.
Then, I called Püschel,
and he said,
"I'll drop everything and come."
At the time, I was
at a traffic medicine symposium in Rostock
and noticed
my cell phone was vibrating in my bag.
I was already on standby
when I saw I had a message from Wolfgang.
It said,
"We've found bones."
[ominous music playing]
[Eilin] We kept digging,
a few centimeters at a time
and kept checking
the position of the body inside the grave.
You couldn't see it that easily.
How do I imagine the way
this person was lowered into the pit?
In the end, we managed to reconstruct
that she had been lowered in headfirst,
and then her legs had been bent,
literally pressed in inside the pit.
At any rate, when they found her hips,
Eilin, who had
very carefully, very meticulously,
um, dug it out
with a tiny spoon, she said,
"It's a female hip."
That was quite something.
[indistinct comment, whispering]
[Harald] It was all deathly silent.
She had laid out the bones in such a way
that you could see it was a person.
It was
It was really, really terrible.
And initially, out of respect,
I had actually planned
to take a picture of it,
but I didn't do it.
Yeah.
It was so
On the one hand, it was so real
and, on the other, so unreal.
And I kept thinking, "Everyone's here."
Her husband is here,
who was always the prime suspect.
He gets to see all this
instead of hearing it from someone else.
No! He's watching and slowly realizing,
"This is probably my wife
being uncovered."
We now had the entire skeleton.
That was certain.
But we didn't have any conclusive evidence
that it was
really Birgit Meier's skeleton.
Toward the end, all the way down,
there was a blue plastic bag
with a rope around it,
and the skull was inside.
We removed it,
and Mr. Püschel opened the bag
and took a look at the skull.
[Püschel] As I remember, I quickly noticed
an ear,
and this ear had a tiny ear stud on it.
I remember those earrings very well.
They were a gift from me.
And, in that moment,
without a doubt in my mind,
this had to be Birgit.
It was her.
It was
It was clear to me.
Well, you can imagine how he felt.
It was just like how I felt,
very moved
but composed,
uh, initially.
You have to pull yourself together, right?
Just so you won't scream.
You could see the deep dismay,
the emotion and
Wolfgang looked at the head
and the haircut again
and said, "Yes, it's Birgit."
[whispering] Go out of the light.
[exhales]
Then your thoughts really start racing.
This isn't something you just heard.
No, you see it here. It's Birgit.
These bones lying here. That is Birgit.
What did she have to go through?
Was it over quickly?
So
We had certainty,
but the sadness outweighed it because
[exhales]
I actually couldn't believe it.
What kind of person would do that?
What kind of bastard
would do that?
What happened to Birgit
on that day and in the days that followed?
What did the bastard do to her?
Yes.
It was a triumph.
A triumph over evil.
And, of course, a triumph over
the incompetence
that Wolfgang Sielaff had to fight
against for so long, 30 years,
the incompetence of those
who were actually meant
to help him solve this case.
It was clear to everyone
that we were pretty much on our own.
Everyone, including the forensic experts
who did this,
had provided their services privately.
But now, it was official.
This is really the duty of the state,
that is, Richard Kaufmann.
Wolfgang tried calling,
but no one picked up.
I called. I said, "I'm going to call him."
And he picked up
because he was so annoyed.
I had him on the line and said,
"You have to come here. We have her."
He said, "I don't have the time."
I said, "I think you do."
"Get your ass into gear.
Come here now. We found her."
On the one hand, of course, I was
It was Friday.
No one likes doing things
before the weekend because you have plans.
On the other hand, we were very curious
to see if it was true
and immediately drove there.
Then the Lüneburg Police arrived.
We met with them.
I'll never forget it.
They expressed no sympathy,
and maybe because of the whole situation,
it was so disturbing to me
to experience how callous
the police can be at a time like that.
We more or less took control of the scene.
We placed it under police control
and reopened it through the DA's office
to exhume the corpse.
[Brockmann] It was 9:00 p.m.
The sky was filled with stars, and then
I don't know. It started to rain.
The sky was crying.
- [eerie music playing]
- [rain pattering]
[Yasmine] Dad rang my doorbell like crazy.
"We know where Mom is."
From that moment on,
I was truly in a state of shock
because that was
the worst possible outcome.
At the same time,
it was somehow [inhales sharply]
[exhales]
a relief.
Almost 30 years had passed.
Actually, my greatest wish was
to someday be able to bury my mother.
It was the victim's brother
who kept tenaciously investigating.
Former head of the Hamburg SCID,
Wolfgang Sielaff.
[anchorman]
Hamburg's former chief detective
couldn't accept that his sister's body
had never been found.
He began his own investigations
and insisted, two years ago,
that the entire case be reopened.
The Lüneburg Police
have found the body of a woman
who disappeared
without a trace decades ago.
Suddenly, there's a terrible suspicion
that the businessman's wife
wasn't the only victim.
Detectives are now sifting through
Wichmann's former property
in Adendorf in Lüneburg County again.
[Eilin] With Birgit Meier,
my work was over,
but the story goes on.
There were reports
that many others were now being focused on
who might also have been victims of his.
For this reason, after finding the body,
we also searched the house in general.
Well, not on our own or anything,
because the FCID
and the Lüneburg Police were there.
And I also joined in for a week
and helped a little
and really turned over every stone
to see if there was more evidence
or maybe additional victims.
POLICE
When we planned this search, we decided
CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT "COLD CASES"
LÜNEBURG POLICE
that we would only leave the property
when we were absolutely certain,
and that meant that we,
to put it loosely, dug the whole thing up.
We didn't exclude the possibility
that the deceased suspect
might have murdered other people.
And he had an affinity
for burying things in the ground,
so he might have actually buried
other victims there too.
This applied to the property, the grounds,
but it also applied to driveways.
It also applied to the entire house.
We gutted the house
down to the roof tiles.
[Wolfgang] I've never witnessed
a search of this scale
that was so thorough
and carried out with such sophistication.
At the time, I was asked
to visit the grounds near the house
while they were being searched,
and I really was impressed
to see everything going on.
If I may put it this way,
they turned the grounds upside down.
[dog barking]
When we dug in the areas
that the cadaver dogs pointed out
and also those uncovered
by the so-called geo-radar,
it was sometimes so deep
that we ended up digging
as many as six meters in the ground.
Um, then we could say there was no body
where we were digging,
neither inside nor outside.
[unsettling music playing]
[Jürgen] We refer to objects as "exhibits"
when they are relevant to the case
in any way, shape, or form.
It could be a shoe. It could be a tissue.
It could be a trace, a letter, anything.
Anything that is of interest
to the case is called an "exhibit."
We found all sorts
of different things while searching.
Items ranging from clothing
to wallets
to glasses.
So, very personal objects
and not always just one
but sometimes three or even five.
We found 400 exhibits,
in other words, an incredible number,
which were all documented photographically
and uploaded online
with the request that people contact us.
These exhibits were then made public
on the Lüneburg
Police Department's website.
There were over 400.
BAGS
CAR PARTS
We were contacted,
in particular, about very personal items.
So, in one of the many cases,
a young woman said she was attacked
at a point in time that had become
relevant to our investigation.
That is before 1993.
And that her boots
had been missing since the attack.
And the boots,
in whatever picture it was,
looked like hers.
Sometimes perpetrators take an item
from the crime scene or the victim.
It satisfies an inner need
to keep the thought
of having had a victim alive.
And when you consider
that up to 400 exhibits
were found on his property,
you could reach the conclusion
that a crime lies behind each item
that he tried to cover up.
[Gerhard] I'm absolutely certain
that he committed other murders,
just based on all the road maps
we found at his house.
He deliberately looked to see
where he could find victims.
I'm absolutely sure of it.
And all the objects found
on his property were all trophies.
He collected trophies.
Maybe they weren't all murders,
but I have a really strong feeling
that more cases will come to light.
Speaking purely
for myself as a human being,
I have a right to reality.
I want to know what happened.
I don't know how I'd react
if I were actually in that situation.
I'd want to know.
As a detective, I say, I need to know.
If I have the theory
that Wichmann also committed more crimes,
then it's very important to know
what interaction took place
between the perpetrator and the victim
to assess other situations.
[clock ticking rapidly]
[Eilin] We later performed
an external autopsy of the skeleton.
We placed the skeleton on a table.
We looked to see what was there
and if there were any clues,
fractures, trauma, or anything else.
We could already tell from the X-rays
that there might be
a bullet-like object in the skull.
[Püschel] A bullet was found in the skull.
A misshapen bullet.
For that reason, we're all assuming
that Birgit Meier was shot.
3D-CT-RECONSTRUCTION BIRGIT MEIER
[Eilin] Maybe this plastic bag
also makes sense.
Evidently, he just put
the bag over her head and tied it shut
to prevent blood or anything
from going everywhere.
That's just a thought.
Right. When does someone
shoot another person in the head?
If you do that,
a lot of blood will pour out
because it's a head injury.
I'm not saying this
as a forensic examiner.
If I were the perpetrator,
I'd put the bag over her head first
then choke her. Or is the rope
just there to keep the bag in place?
I don't know.
But these are the kinds of scenarios
you have to run through.
[Püschel] We also performed DNA analyses
because we were wondering
if traces of the perpetrator
might still be found.
Theoretically,
she could've had traces of tissue
from the perpetrator
under her fingernails.
A lot of tests were carried out,
and based on our reconstructions,
Birgit Meier was kidnapped
and then held prisoner
in Wichmann's house
in his secret room in the attic.
She may have been there a few hours
but might have been there
several days or even weeks.
Whether she was shot
two hours after the kidnapping
or 20 days after the kidnapping
can't be determined based on the evidence.
There are no findings
from the police investigation.
The only thing we know
is that she was shot.
I have no doubt
that she was killed this way.
I cried a lot, of course.
Because I was under a lot of pressure.
I was
Sometimes, when I remember August 14th,
I was quite sad
and sometimes asked myself,
in all seriousness,
um, I'd also think
to myself time and again,
"I could have prevented it all."
I asked myself
whether I was at fault and said,
"I didn't need to do that."
I even went so far as to say
"If I could undo everything,
I wouldn't have left my wife,
because the price for leaving her
was ultimately her death."
And that's
that's
[inhales shakily]
[bells tolling]
[bells continue]
[bells continue]
[sad music playing]
[pastor] Apostle Paul once famously said,
"All things end,
other than these three things,
faith, hope, and love."
"But the greatest of these is love."
Amen.
[sad music continues]
FOR MOM
[Yasmine] Mom's funeral was
on November 20th, 2017.
It was very cold, really cold.
What can I say? On the one hand,
you're glad to know you were able
BIRGIT MEIER'S DAUGHTER
to give her a funeral,
but at the same time,
it was an extremely hard journey for me.
But I had my dad's arm to hold on to.
Fortunately, it went all right.
When I saw the urn,
it was really hard.
Honestly, I was glad when it was over.
That was the hardest part of it all.
I think it was the worst day of my life.
It was
[inhales]
horrible. [exhales]
During the eulogy, I remember thinking
I was sitting all the way in the back
by the wall in the church.
I thought, "This isn't even
the only crime Wichmann committed,
not the only person he killed."
And how many cases have there been
where people
haven't been able to say goodbye?
People have gone missing
without their bodies being found.
But there are countless unsolved cases,
and people don't know what happened.
When a family is hit by a crime,
and their whole world
falls apart as a result,
and nothing is ever the way it was,
anyone can understand that.
You don't have to be
a detective to imagine
what that means for those left behind,
who are the victims here.
It means grief. It means suffering.
It means expecting the police
and the DA to do something.
Because you obviously expect
the most serious crime in our penal code
to warrant them pulling out all the stops.
My trauma, you might say,
is that we now know
her case could've been solved
within six weeks of her disappearance.
A very important question
needs to be answered,
"Who was innocent?"
That's what we saw
in the case of Harald Meier.
"Who was innocent?"
Because the bereaved
also have their suspicions.
If it isn't resolved, they keep thinking,
"Maybe it was the neighbor?"
"Or maybe it was my husband?
Or her cousin? Or was it her grandson?"
That stays within familial structures.
[Wolfgang] My brother-in-law
wasn't exactly unknown.
He wasn't just a successful businessman
who had created many jobs.
For a quarter century,
the public thought he'd murdered his wife.
People gossiped about him
everywhere, at work, in the city.
[whispering] "Look, there's Harald Meier."
"He's the one
who buried his wife in a concrete block."
A lot of people in Lüneburg still believe
he paid Wichmann to kill my sister,
to this day.
[Jürgen] The name Kurt-Werner Wichmann
is known to us from the historical files.
The lead number
If I'm not mistaken,
it's lead number 15-86,
that refers to Kurt-Werner Wichmann.
So, even during his life,
there were investigations against him.
But once Mrs. Meier's mortal remains
were found,
buried and sealed under concrete
COLD CASES DEPARTMEN
GÖHRDE INVESTIGATIVE TEAM
the Lüneburg Police
set up an investigative team
whose task it was to resume
work on the double murder in Göhrde.
We gave ourselves the task
of going back through all the case files
created in 1989 and those created later.
We looked to see if there was
anything of interest in these old files
that may make it
possible to gather leads or evidence
or even question witnesses
who could help solve
these double murders, even after 31 years.
I don't envy the head
of the homicide squad at the time
because what happened back then
was not straightforward.
There was a double murder in Göhrde,
then a few weeks later,
very nearby, in almost the same place,
they found the next two bodies.
THE GÖHRDE MURDERER'S GRUESOME KILLINGS
The second couple's car wasn't found there
but, crazily enough, in another location.
After killing the Köppings,
the perpetrator ran almost two kilometers
and, using the keys
he had taken from them,
drove off in their car.
Apparently, he even drove around the area
for a few days with their car
and ended up parking it
near the train station in Winsen,
a small town, a suburb of Hamburg.
The forensics team in 1989
worked meticulously
to gather evidence from the victims' cars.
They covered the seats,
the car, and the steering wheel
with a special film
in order to collect evidence from it,
and all of this
was kept at the DA's office
and was reevaluated by us.
In 1993, the use of DNA evidence was,
of course, in its very early stages,
but later in the course
of the '90s and the 2000s,
it became more common.
I wonder why it took so long
to use it to compare
the evidence from this case.
All the forensic evidence, the fibers
The bodies were wrapped up,
meaning the Hanover SCID
must have had a ton of DNA.
Why, for heaven's sake,
wasn't this material examined?
Thirty-one years ago, DNA didn't exist.
Well, of course, DNA existed.
There was just no way to analyze DNA.
That's why it's unfair to say,
"Why didn't you secure this evidence?"
"Why didn't you do this?"
It wasn't an option.
It was only thanks to this new method
I'm not 100% sure,
but I think it wasn't until 2016
that it became possible to extract DNA.
And on one piece of evidence,
they found Kurt-Werner Wichmann's DNA.
This leads you to the conclusion
that Kurt-Werner Wichmann
might've been in one of the victim's cars.
This evidence proves definitively
that Kurt-Werner Wichmann sat in this car.
In all likelihood,
this means he was the one
who drove off in the car
using the victims' key.
And this is a clear indication
that he was involved
in this homicide himself.
Not just involved, he carried it out.
As I see it, he's not just
the kidnapper and perpetrator
in the case of Birgit Meier
but also the Göhrde murderer
or one of them.
This raises the question
as to how many murders there were.
Whether Kurt-Werner Wichmann
was the Göhrde murderer or not
could only be answered by one person based
on the current state of the investigation,
his living accomplice.
Evidently, Wichmann himself drove out
of the Göhrde forest
with the victims' cars.
But how did he get in?
There must've been a second person
who drove him into the forest.
- [upbeat music playing]
- [indistinct chattering]
[Wolfgang] How did the Göhrde murderer
get into the forest?
Did he hitchhike,
travel by taxi, by bus, or by train?
Or with an accomplice?
We always kept the possibility in mind
that Wichmann may have had an accessory
or even an accomplice
who helped him bury the car,
maybe even assisted in the Göhrde murders,
and who at least knew
that Kurt-Werner Wichmann
had killed Birgit Meier
and may even have helped him.
He's known to us. We know who he is.
We've even arrested him.
It was a provisional arrest.
The police can do that.
We used judicial means to bring him in,
but we didn't get
what we hoped for, namely, a statement.
In the meantime,
he had gotten a lawyer
to represent him, of course.
If he won't speak with us anymore,
since he isn't legally obligated to do so,
then that's just how it is.
And it means
we have to watch him even more closely
and look even more carefully
for clues that point to him
until we reach the point
where we don't even need a confession
that he was an accomplice or accessory
to convict him.
[Wolfgang] I wouldn't wish on anyone
that one of their loved ones
disappears without a trace
and cannot be found.
There have been many cases of families
who never find out what happened to them
because they themselves have died.
It was a long search,
though I can only repeat
that it wasn't my mission
to practically lead an investigation
and do everything the police
and DA's office are supposed to do.
That was a product of the circumstances
because nothing was happening,
and the family basically and I,
we had no alternative
other than to try
to clear things up ourselves.
Of course, we miss her.
Not just me, the whole family misses her.
You keep coming back to the thought,
especially in the middle of it all,
about all the things
that she wasn't able to experience.
For example,
how wonderful would it have been
if none of this had happened
and she had experienced this or that?
These are all things that cross your mind,
and of course, when there's a birthday
or a family gathering,
then Birgit's there.
I personally really hope
that it will be possible
to provide those waiting
for a loved one with answers.
Especially if our perpetrator,
Kurt-Werner Wichmann,
and his accomplice were involved.
My hope is
that these people will one day find peace
because they'll know
who killed their loved ones
and maybe even where they are buried.
If anyone has information
about Kurt-Werner Wichmann
or his accomplice
or the crimes in the Göhrde forest
or regarding Birgit Meier's disappearance,
I hope that after 31 years,
they have the courage today
to muster the strength and say,
"I will clear my conscience
and tell you what I know."
And I'm sure
that Kurt-Werner Wichmann
and his accomplice
aren't the only ones
who know about these crimes.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Reinhard] Behind each exhibit
lies a human being's fate.
Every slipper, every purse lying there
has a face,
a human being hidden behind it.
I think Wolfgang Sielaff,
just like all of us from the core team
and the extended team too,
still has a deep desire
to keep working on other cases.
This is the absolute worst crime
on the statute books.
It's about human life.
Even the Federal Constitutional Court
has looked at the issue
of the surviving spouse
following such serious crimes
and come to the conclusion that the state
and the law enforcement agencies
are obliged to do everything
to solve these crimes.
People have a right
to effective police work.
That says it all.
[solemn music playing]
[Yasmine] You opened the book of my life
"ALWAYS AND FOREVER"
POEM BY YASMINE MEIER, READ GRAVESIDE
and filled it with so many colorful days.
You wrote me the most beautiful stories.
For that,
I will love you, always and forever.
You raised my balloon up so high.
You helped me reach my greatest heights.
You pushed me further than anyone else.
For that,
I will love you, always and forever.
You made my time precious
and watched over me like your treasure.
You're still
the most important person to me.
I will love you, always and forever.
[music stops]
[eerie music playing]
[birds cawing]
[Richard] With the help
of her daughter, Yasmine,
and her husband, Harald,
we were able to generate DNA.
We also received a formula,
and we sent it to Dr. Rothämel
so it could be compared
to the traces of blood on the handcuffs.
[suspenseful music playing]
The way Mr. Kaufmann announced
the meeting caught me by surprise.
It sounded very formal.
"We have to meet up again.
There's new information."
I was sitting here.
Mr. Kaufmann sat across from me.
His colleague sat here,
and Reinhard Chedor sat here.
[music continues]
Then Kaufmann said,
"This is a meeting for family members."
"Huh?"
"For family members?"
"Yes." The next thing he said was,
"It's been solved."
[Richard] I'm very certain
that Kurt-Werner Wichmann
was the perpetrator
or that he at least committed
a crime against Sielaff's sister.
So, I said, "Handcuffs!"
And he nodded.
The likelihood
that the blood-like deposit,
the blood on the handcuffs,
belongs to Birgit Meier is 99.9998%.
[music intensifies and stops]
A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY SERIES
[eerie music playing]
We sat there, and no one said a word.
BIRGIT MEIER'S BROTHER
We looked at each other.
Obviously, thousands of thoughts
and images were racing through my mind.
I needed a moment to regain my composure.
Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.
It was Reinhard Chedor.
Or the other way around. [inhales sharply]
Because, just like me,
he also realized what this meant,
this discovery.
[Reinhard] To be honest,
this moment [exhales]
was really great,
but it hit home.
I still remember his reaction.
He was sitting to my left.
I put my hand on his shoulder
and said, "Wolfgang."
FORMER HEAD OF THE SCID
I think Wolfgang
swallowed hard really quickly.
It was the kind of moment that
just stays with you.
Later, we met with the rest of the team
and told them the news,
I mean, that we'd made
a major breakthrough.
It was actually clear
based on what Richard Kaufmann indicated.
"We're going to search
the property again now."
And we realized
that this would be the icing on the cake
because they would find Birgit.
DIE ZEIT - WEEKLY NEWSPAPER
HEADQUARTERS IN HAMBURG
[woman] The case was cold for 27 years.
Birgit Meier disappeared 27 years ago.
Once it was on our desk
and we read the files, it got hot.
INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIS
DIE ZEI
Unlike most cases, this meant
we could watch the investigation live.
MURDEROUS LOVER
Kaufmann reopened the entire case.
He noticed that, even as a child,
Wichmann tortured animals
and buried them in the woods.
His house is right next to the woods.
It's a huge property, 1,300 square meters.
So Kaufmann said,
"Okay, we'll search the woods again."
We were very certain
that the area around the house
CHIEF SUPERINTENDEN
"EG ITERUM" - LÜNEBURG POLICE
either the grounds, inside the house,
or the surrounding moorlands
would be where he disposed of the body.
PROPERTY: LÜNEBURG, STREITMOOR 15
The police officers stood 1.5 meters apart
with metal rods.
They went through the entire forest
and poked around
looking for Birgit Meier's body.
They scoured the whole forest floor.
We then reached the conclusion
that it made more sense
to search the slope
where he'd buried his car.
Birgit Meier's body could be buried there.
We had cadaver dogs
and an anthropologist
from the Hamburg forensics department.
Technical equipment from the riot police,
which helped us drill holes.
They found all sorts of things,
bottles, cans, shoes,
but no human remains.
I remember thinking, "Oh shit!"
We're back on the ground.
She has to be here, damn it!
[Richard] Unfortunately, we couldn't find
the body on the grounds,
so we decided to search other places too.
At the time
of Birgit Meier's disappearance,
Kurt-Werner Wichmann also had
a side job in the Lüneburg area
as a cemetery gardener
WHO'S TAKING CARE OF MY GRAVE?
GRAVE MAINTENANCE AND INSTALLATION
and when they found
his Ford Probe buried in the slope,
they found spades
and other tools from the cemetery.
[suspenseful music playing]
Where's the best place
to get rid of a body
for a cemetery worker
with access to the cemetery?
If you have access to it,
and there's a burial the next day,
and the grave is already dug,
they'll just put the coffin in there.
Then you have
what's called a "double-decker."
No one would know that not only the body
of the recently deceased
has been lowered into the ground
but that the victim of a crime
could also lie underneath.
So we had the DA's office
order the exhumation
of six graves
that had been opened at this time
to check if there was a second body
that wasn't supposed to be there.
COFFIN BEING RAISED
Once the graves had all been opened,
and we, along with the anthropologist,
had taken samples from the graves
to compare the DNA
with Birgit Meier's,
the DA's office declared
that we had exhausted
every single option with these exhumations
and closed the case.
And with that, our work
as the cold-case team EG Iterum was over.
[bell chiming]
There.
Iterum then announced their work was done.
"The house is clean.
We didn't find Birgit."
We felt a little down,
but we somehow said, "Guys and gals,"
we said, "We'll take a look."
Next came the famous house search
with criminological expertise.
In our spare time on Mother's Day.
Off to Streitmoor!
We also had specialists
who advised us privately.
[solemn music playing]
[Wolfgang] I didn't set out
as a lone wolf.
Chedor and Brockmann were with me.
We were the so-called "core team."
Then we had the former head
of the Hamburg DA's office, Martin Köhnke,
the head of Hamburg's
forensics department, Klaus Püschel,
the criminal lawyer, Gerhard Strate,
and the anthropologist,
Eilin Jopp-van Well.
That was basically our team.
It was a special day for me
because I picked up Gerhard Strate,
and he had a pretty fast car.
He said, "Feel free to drive."
So I raced off
to Lüneburg with Gerhard Strate.
[clock ticking rapidly]
[Wolfgang] We met there,
and since we were
all incredibly experienced
in our own respective fields,
it was totally obvious
that we would have different perspectives
and that we'd look at things
from a different angle
in terms of what we were seeing, and
There's a saying,
"You only see what you look at,
and you only look at
what you have in mind."
We each took another look
from our own perspectives
POLICE PSYCHOLOGIS
based on what we all thought
we knew about Wichmann.
"Where was the best place
to hide Birgit Meier?"
And to actually try to put ourselves
FORENSIC MEDICAL EXPER
in the shoes of a perpetrator.
"Where do I commit the crime?
How do I commit it?"
Then, of course, the question,
"What do I do with the body?"
"Hey, time to synchronize
our watches. It's 10:30."
"We're going to spread out now
and meet back here in two hours."
"Everyone can look around the house
and grounds as they please."
That's how it was.
SOUTH VIEW - EAST VIEW
[Wolfgang]
What did the property look like in 1993?
And what does it look like today?
The vegetation has definitely changed.
Trees have shot up
that weren't there at the time, etc.
WEST VIEW - SOUTH VIEW
[Brockmann] We could search
the entire house and look at everything.
We each had an image
of Wichmann in our heads
based on each of our professions,
what we knew,
which files each of us read,
and could then say,
"Look, this might also be of interest
and this too."
To put it a little more pointedly,
and because, of course
LAWYER
there were moments
where we didn't exactly stay
within the bounds of the law,
we went beyond them.
Um, but overall,
everything was done properly.
[Reinhard] Afterward, we met up again,
and everyone shared their impressions.
Wolfgang Sielaff then made a list
based on our assessments.
We all agreed on the order
to search the premises,
garage, car pit and other areas
of the basement, and then the grounds.
Then we actually did find
a pit in the first garage,
which also presented us
with a few conundrums.
An 80-centimeter-deep car pit?
That doesn't make sense.
When I think of a car pit,
I imagine one that's
at least 180 centimeters deep.
The question always arose,
especially in the garage with the car pit
FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGIS
which was so shallow,
so unusually shallow,
"What if it used to be deeper
and had a second floor where the body was
and had another layer dumped on top?"
That was what we thought.
On one side of the pit,
there was a hole
from which light-colored sand was pouring.
That same day,
I called Mr. Kaufmann and said, "Look."
"We've found a pit here
that is rather peculiar."
"You absolutely have to take a look."
A few days went by,
and then he came with more police officers
and also a dog handler with a cadaver dog.
We took another look
at the opening with the chamber behind it.
The cadaver dog took another sniff
but didn't pick up any scent.
Other than that [inhales sharply]
we all kind of looked at each other
and came to the conclusion
"There's nothing here."
They came, and the dog sniffed around
but didn't smell anything.
No surprise, dogs can't smell anything
with all that old oil and paint.
What frustrated me was this attitude,
"Nothing here."
"Based on our experience,
there can't be anything."
Then,
what affected me a lot personally was,
"These old geezers should leave us alone."
"They should worry about other things."
They weren't criminologists
CHIEF SUPERINTENDEN
"EG ITERUM" - LÜNEBURG POLICE
police officers, or detectives
who had ever investigated
any murder cases, you know?
That's important to say.
Of course, there were lawyers
and forensic experts there too.
It was kind of a
[exhales]
I don't know, a Sherlock Holmes crew.
Of course, we also wanted
to put the icing on the cake
by finding the body.
Unfortunately, we weren't able to.
[trumpet playing solemn music]
[trumpet playing in distance]
- [solemn music playing]
- [trumpet gently fades]
[Wolfgang] To me, it was totally clear.
It was also clear to Reinhard and Claudia
and everyone else who helped me
that we that I had to keep on going now.
I can't accept the police saying,
"That's all we've got."
So, we asked ourselves,
"Where should we start digging?"
What was clear was,
if we were digging in the garage,
which was the plan,
then we definitely needed
a company to help.
I was supposed to focus on
BIRGIT MEIER'S HUSBAND
trying to find
someone discrete for the job,
although I would've only ever hired
someone who was discrete anyway.
And then we agreed on September 29th.
SEPTEMBER 29, 2017
[Reinhard] The weather was spectacular.
There wasn't a cloud in the sky.
Then I remember
there was this moment of clarity.
"What do we do now?
We're going to find her."
Sometimes, my instincts are a bit off
when assessing the situation
but not this time! Today is the day.
We can't make any mistakes.
We can't afford to.
Because one thing was clear.
We can't come back several times.
Do it once, and do it right!
Of course, this also meant
there'd be natural limitations.
We won't be able to check everything
with this current option.
We can't tear everything up.
After I arrived, I was introduced
to the mason who was already there.
He was a developer
and was with his master bricklayer
who was supposed to help us.
We were standing
by the masonry pit talking,
and he wanted to tell me
what had to be done.
Then I told him
what I thought we should do.
He looked at me like, "Who are you?"
I said, "I'm in charge. End of story."
[drill whirring]
[Eilin] We agreed beforehand
to start with a few test holes.
We'd open the floor in a few areas
and see what was underneath.
That was the idea. What's under here?
Is there a double floor?
So we drilled down with a meter-long drill
and found nothing.
We then made a few more test holes
to the left and to the right,
opened them up
and looked to see if anything was there.
[scraping]
I actually declared the area clear
and said, "There's nothing here."
Then one of the workers
wanted to get out of the pit,
moved the ladder,
and his foot sank through the floor.
Of course,
that was so significant that we said,
"Before we continue searching
other areas of the property,
we need to examine this more closely."
And then I started digging.
[Reinhard] And then,
I still remember this,
Eilin started scooping away
small amounts of sand
with such patience using a small trowel.
She was working away using her tools
when it looked as if she'd found
what seemed to be a little stick,
and then she held the little stick up,
looked at it and said,
"A metatarsal bone."
"Definitely human."
"I can't believe it!"
[Eilin] And then I must have yelled
very loudly
that I'd found human bones
because suddenly everyone came running,
and everyone was standing at the pit.
[Wolfgang] When I came running in,
and she said, "I have a metatarsal,"
it was as though
a wave shot through my body.
A kind of I can't really describe it.
Seeing how he reacted to it was
It was actually what made it so special.
Then, I called Püschel,
and he said,
"I'll drop everything and come."
At the time, I was
at a traffic medicine symposium in Rostock
and noticed
my cell phone was vibrating in my bag.
I was already on standby
when I saw I had a message from Wolfgang.
It said,
"We've found bones."
[ominous music playing]
[Eilin] We kept digging,
a few centimeters at a time
and kept checking
the position of the body inside the grave.
You couldn't see it that easily.
How do I imagine the way
this person was lowered into the pit?
In the end, we managed to reconstruct
that she had been lowered in headfirst,
and then her legs had been bent,
literally pressed in inside the pit.
At any rate, when they found her hips,
Eilin, who had
very carefully, very meticulously,
um, dug it out
with a tiny spoon, she said,
"It's a female hip."
That was quite something.
[indistinct comment, whispering]
[Harald] It was all deathly silent.
She had laid out the bones in such a way
that you could see it was a person.
It was
It was really, really terrible.
And initially, out of respect,
I had actually planned
to take a picture of it,
but I didn't do it.
Yeah.
It was so
On the one hand, it was so real
and, on the other, so unreal.
And I kept thinking, "Everyone's here."
Her husband is here,
who was always the prime suspect.
He gets to see all this
instead of hearing it from someone else.
No! He's watching and slowly realizing,
"This is probably my wife
being uncovered."
We now had the entire skeleton.
That was certain.
But we didn't have any conclusive evidence
that it was
really Birgit Meier's skeleton.
Toward the end, all the way down,
there was a blue plastic bag
with a rope around it,
and the skull was inside.
We removed it,
and Mr. Püschel opened the bag
and took a look at the skull.
[Püschel] As I remember, I quickly noticed
an ear,
and this ear had a tiny ear stud on it.
I remember those earrings very well.
They were a gift from me.
And, in that moment,
without a doubt in my mind,
this had to be Birgit.
It was her.
It was
It was clear to me.
Well, you can imagine how he felt.
It was just like how I felt,
very moved
but composed,
uh, initially.
You have to pull yourself together, right?
Just so you won't scream.
You could see the deep dismay,
the emotion and
Wolfgang looked at the head
and the haircut again
and said, "Yes, it's Birgit."
[whispering] Go out of the light.
[exhales]
Then your thoughts really start racing.
This isn't something you just heard.
No, you see it here. It's Birgit.
These bones lying here. That is Birgit.
What did she have to go through?
Was it over quickly?
So
We had certainty,
but the sadness outweighed it because
[exhales]
I actually couldn't believe it.
What kind of person would do that?
What kind of bastard
would do that?
What happened to Birgit
on that day and in the days that followed?
What did the bastard do to her?
Yes.
It was a triumph.
A triumph over evil.
And, of course, a triumph over
the incompetence
that Wolfgang Sielaff had to fight
against for so long, 30 years,
the incompetence of those
who were actually meant
to help him solve this case.
It was clear to everyone
that we were pretty much on our own.
Everyone, including the forensic experts
who did this,
had provided their services privately.
But now, it was official.
This is really the duty of the state,
that is, Richard Kaufmann.
Wolfgang tried calling,
but no one picked up.
I called. I said, "I'm going to call him."
And he picked up
because he was so annoyed.
I had him on the line and said,
"You have to come here. We have her."
He said, "I don't have the time."
I said, "I think you do."
"Get your ass into gear.
Come here now. We found her."
On the one hand, of course, I was
It was Friday.
No one likes doing things
before the weekend because you have plans.
On the other hand, we were very curious
to see if it was true
and immediately drove there.
Then the Lüneburg Police arrived.
We met with them.
I'll never forget it.
They expressed no sympathy,
and maybe because of the whole situation,
it was so disturbing to me
to experience how callous
the police can be at a time like that.
We more or less took control of the scene.
We placed it under police control
and reopened it through the DA's office
to exhume the corpse.
[Brockmann] It was 9:00 p.m.
The sky was filled with stars, and then
I don't know. It started to rain.
The sky was crying.
- [eerie music playing]
- [rain pattering]
[Yasmine] Dad rang my doorbell like crazy.
"We know where Mom is."
From that moment on,
I was truly in a state of shock
because that was
the worst possible outcome.
At the same time,
it was somehow [inhales sharply]
[exhales]
a relief.
Almost 30 years had passed.
Actually, my greatest wish was
to someday be able to bury my mother.
It was the victim's brother
who kept tenaciously investigating.
Former head of the Hamburg SCID,
Wolfgang Sielaff.
[anchorman]
Hamburg's former chief detective
couldn't accept that his sister's body
had never been found.
He began his own investigations
and insisted, two years ago,
that the entire case be reopened.
The Lüneburg Police
have found the body of a woman
who disappeared
without a trace decades ago.
Suddenly, there's a terrible suspicion
that the businessman's wife
wasn't the only victim.
Detectives are now sifting through
Wichmann's former property
in Adendorf in Lüneburg County again.
[Eilin] With Birgit Meier,
my work was over,
but the story goes on.
There were reports
that many others were now being focused on
who might also have been victims of his.
For this reason, after finding the body,
we also searched the house in general.
Well, not on our own or anything,
because the FCID
and the Lüneburg Police were there.
And I also joined in for a week
and helped a little
and really turned over every stone
to see if there was more evidence
or maybe additional victims.
POLICE
When we planned this search, we decided
CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT "COLD CASES"
LÜNEBURG POLICE
that we would only leave the property
when we were absolutely certain,
and that meant that we,
to put it loosely, dug the whole thing up.
We didn't exclude the possibility
that the deceased suspect
might have murdered other people.
And he had an affinity
for burying things in the ground,
so he might have actually buried
other victims there too.
This applied to the property, the grounds,
but it also applied to driveways.
It also applied to the entire house.
We gutted the house
down to the roof tiles.
[Wolfgang] I've never witnessed
a search of this scale
that was so thorough
and carried out with such sophistication.
At the time, I was asked
to visit the grounds near the house
while they were being searched,
and I really was impressed
to see everything going on.
If I may put it this way,
they turned the grounds upside down.
[dog barking]
When we dug in the areas
that the cadaver dogs pointed out
and also those uncovered
by the so-called geo-radar,
it was sometimes so deep
that we ended up digging
as many as six meters in the ground.
Um, then we could say there was no body
where we were digging,
neither inside nor outside.
[unsettling music playing]
[Jürgen] We refer to objects as "exhibits"
when they are relevant to the case
in any way, shape, or form.
It could be a shoe. It could be a tissue.
It could be a trace, a letter, anything.
Anything that is of interest
to the case is called an "exhibit."
We found all sorts
of different things while searching.
Items ranging from clothing
to wallets
to glasses.
So, very personal objects
and not always just one
but sometimes three or even five.
We found 400 exhibits,
in other words, an incredible number,
which were all documented photographically
and uploaded online
with the request that people contact us.
These exhibits were then made public
on the Lüneburg
Police Department's website.
There were over 400.
BAGS
CAR PARTS
We were contacted,
in particular, about very personal items.
So, in one of the many cases,
a young woman said she was attacked
at a point in time that had become
relevant to our investigation.
That is before 1993.
And that her boots
had been missing since the attack.
And the boots,
in whatever picture it was,
looked like hers.
Sometimes perpetrators take an item
from the crime scene or the victim.
It satisfies an inner need
to keep the thought
of having had a victim alive.
And when you consider
that up to 400 exhibits
were found on his property,
you could reach the conclusion
that a crime lies behind each item
that he tried to cover up.
[Gerhard] I'm absolutely certain
that he committed other murders,
just based on all the road maps
we found at his house.
He deliberately looked to see
where he could find victims.
I'm absolutely sure of it.
And all the objects found
on his property were all trophies.
He collected trophies.
Maybe they weren't all murders,
but I have a really strong feeling
that more cases will come to light.
Speaking purely
for myself as a human being,
I have a right to reality.
I want to know what happened.
I don't know how I'd react
if I were actually in that situation.
I'd want to know.
As a detective, I say, I need to know.
If I have the theory
that Wichmann also committed more crimes,
then it's very important to know
what interaction took place
between the perpetrator and the victim
to assess other situations.
[clock ticking rapidly]
[Eilin] We later performed
an external autopsy of the skeleton.
We placed the skeleton on a table.
We looked to see what was there
and if there were any clues,
fractures, trauma, or anything else.
We could already tell from the X-rays
that there might be
a bullet-like object in the skull.
[Püschel] A bullet was found in the skull.
A misshapen bullet.
For that reason, we're all assuming
that Birgit Meier was shot.
3D-CT-RECONSTRUCTION BIRGIT MEIER
[Eilin] Maybe this plastic bag
also makes sense.
Evidently, he just put
the bag over her head and tied it shut
to prevent blood or anything
from going everywhere.
That's just a thought.
Right. When does someone
shoot another person in the head?
If you do that,
a lot of blood will pour out
because it's a head injury.
I'm not saying this
as a forensic examiner.
If I were the perpetrator,
I'd put the bag over her head first
then choke her. Or is the rope
just there to keep the bag in place?
I don't know.
But these are the kinds of scenarios
you have to run through.
[Püschel] We also performed DNA analyses
because we were wondering
if traces of the perpetrator
might still be found.
Theoretically,
she could've had traces of tissue
from the perpetrator
under her fingernails.
A lot of tests were carried out,
and based on our reconstructions,
Birgit Meier was kidnapped
and then held prisoner
in Wichmann's house
in his secret room in the attic.
She may have been there a few hours
but might have been there
several days or even weeks.
Whether she was shot
two hours after the kidnapping
or 20 days after the kidnapping
can't be determined based on the evidence.
There are no findings
from the police investigation.
The only thing we know
is that she was shot.
I have no doubt
that she was killed this way.
I cried a lot, of course.
Because I was under a lot of pressure.
I was
Sometimes, when I remember August 14th,
I was quite sad
and sometimes asked myself,
in all seriousness,
um, I'd also think
to myself time and again,
"I could have prevented it all."
I asked myself
whether I was at fault and said,
"I didn't need to do that."
I even went so far as to say
"If I could undo everything,
I wouldn't have left my wife,
because the price for leaving her
was ultimately her death."
And that's
that's
[inhales shakily]
[bells tolling]
[bells continue]
[bells continue]
[sad music playing]
[pastor] Apostle Paul once famously said,
"All things end,
other than these three things,
faith, hope, and love."
"But the greatest of these is love."
Amen.
[sad music continues]
FOR MOM
[Yasmine] Mom's funeral was
on November 20th, 2017.
It was very cold, really cold.
What can I say? On the one hand,
you're glad to know you were able
BIRGIT MEIER'S DAUGHTER
to give her a funeral,
but at the same time,
it was an extremely hard journey for me.
But I had my dad's arm to hold on to.
Fortunately, it went all right.
When I saw the urn,
it was really hard.
Honestly, I was glad when it was over.
That was the hardest part of it all.
I think it was the worst day of my life.
It was
[inhales]
horrible. [exhales]
During the eulogy, I remember thinking
I was sitting all the way in the back
by the wall in the church.
I thought, "This isn't even
the only crime Wichmann committed,
not the only person he killed."
And how many cases have there been
where people
haven't been able to say goodbye?
People have gone missing
without their bodies being found.
But there are countless unsolved cases,
and people don't know what happened.
When a family is hit by a crime,
and their whole world
falls apart as a result,
and nothing is ever the way it was,
anyone can understand that.
You don't have to be
a detective to imagine
what that means for those left behind,
who are the victims here.
It means grief. It means suffering.
It means expecting the police
and the DA to do something.
Because you obviously expect
the most serious crime in our penal code
to warrant them pulling out all the stops.
My trauma, you might say,
is that we now know
her case could've been solved
within six weeks of her disappearance.
A very important question
needs to be answered,
"Who was innocent?"
That's what we saw
in the case of Harald Meier.
"Who was innocent?"
Because the bereaved
also have their suspicions.
If it isn't resolved, they keep thinking,
"Maybe it was the neighbor?"
"Or maybe it was my husband?
Or her cousin? Or was it her grandson?"
That stays within familial structures.
[Wolfgang] My brother-in-law
wasn't exactly unknown.
He wasn't just a successful businessman
who had created many jobs.
For a quarter century,
the public thought he'd murdered his wife.
People gossiped about him
everywhere, at work, in the city.
[whispering] "Look, there's Harald Meier."
"He's the one
who buried his wife in a concrete block."
A lot of people in Lüneburg still believe
he paid Wichmann to kill my sister,
to this day.
[Jürgen] The name Kurt-Werner Wichmann
is known to us from the historical files.
The lead number
If I'm not mistaken,
it's lead number 15-86,
that refers to Kurt-Werner Wichmann.
So, even during his life,
there were investigations against him.
But once Mrs. Meier's mortal remains
were found,
buried and sealed under concrete
COLD CASES DEPARTMEN
GÖHRDE INVESTIGATIVE TEAM
the Lüneburg Police
set up an investigative team
whose task it was to resume
work on the double murder in Göhrde.
We gave ourselves the task
of going back through all the case files
created in 1989 and those created later.
We looked to see if there was
anything of interest in these old files
that may make it
possible to gather leads or evidence
or even question witnesses
who could help solve
these double murders, even after 31 years.
I don't envy the head
of the homicide squad at the time
because what happened back then
was not straightforward.
There was a double murder in Göhrde,
then a few weeks later,
very nearby, in almost the same place,
they found the next two bodies.
THE GÖHRDE MURDERER'S GRUESOME KILLINGS
The second couple's car wasn't found there
but, crazily enough, in another location.
After killing the Köppings,
the perpetrator ran almost two kilometers
and, using the keys
he had taken from them,
drove off in their car.
Apparently, he even drove around the area
for a few days with their car
and ended up parking it
near the train station in Winsen,
a small town, a suburb of Hamburg.
The forensics team in 1989
worked meticulously
to gather evidence from the victims' cars.
They covered the seats,
the car, and the steering wheel
with a special film
in order to collect evidence from it,
and all of this
was kept at the DA's office
and was reevaluated by us.
In 1993, the use of DNA evidence was,
of course, in its very early stages,
but later in the course
of the '90s and the 2000s,
it became more common.
I wonder why it took so long
to use it to compare
the evidence from this case.
All the forensic evidence, the fibers
The bodies were wrapped up,
meaning the Hanover SCID
must have had a ton of DNA.
Why, for heaven's sake,
wasn't this material examined?
Thirty-one years ago, DNA didn't exist.
Well, of course, DNA existed.
There was just no way to analyze DNA.
That's why it's unfair to say,
"Why didn't you secure this evidence?"
"Why didn't you do this?"
It wasn't an option.
It was only thanks to this new method
I'm not 100% sure,
but I think it wasn't until 2016
that it became possible to extract DNA.
And on one piece of evidence,
they found Kurt-Werner Wichmann's DNA.
This leads you to the conclusion
that Kurt-Werner Wichmann
might've been in one of the victim's cars.
This evidence proves definitively
that Kurt-Werner Wichmann sat in this car.
In all likelihood,
this means he was the one
who drove off in the car
using the victims' key.
And this is a clear indication
that he was involved
in this homicide himself.
Not just involved, he carried it out.
As I see it, he's not just
the kidnapper and perpetrator
in the case of Birgit Meier
but also the Göhrde murderer
or one of them.
This raises the question
as to how many murders there were.
Whether Kurt-Werner Wichmann
was the Göhrde murderer or not
could only be answered by one person based
on the current state of the investigation,
his living accomplice.
Evidently, Wichmann himself drove out
of the Göhrde forest
with the victims' cars.
But how did he get in?
There must've been a second person
who drove him into the forest.
- [upbeat music playing]
- [indistinct chattering]
[Wolfgang] How did the Göhrde murderer
get into the forest?
Did he hitchhike,
travel by taxi, by bus, or by train?
Or with an accomplice?
We always kept the possibility in mind
that Wichmann may have had an accessory
or even an accomplice
who helped him bury the car,
maybe even assisted in the Göhrde murders,
and who at least knew
that Kurt-Werner Wichmann
had killed Birgit Meier
and may even have helped him.
He's known to us. We know who he is.
We've even arrested him.
It was a provisional arrest.
The police can do that.
We used judicial means to bring him in,
but we didn't get
what we hoped for, namely, a statement.
In the meantime,
he had gotten a lawyer
to represent him, of course.
If he won't speak with us anymore,
since he isn't legally obligated to do so,
then that's just how it is.
And it means
we have to watch him even more closely
and look even more carefully
for clues that point to him
until we reach the point
where we don't even need a confession
that he was an accomplice or accessory
to convict him.
[Wolfgang] I wouldn't wish on anyone
that one of their loved ones
disappears without a trace
and cannot be found.
There have been many cases of families
who never find out what happened to them
because they themselves have died.
It was a long search,
though I can only repeat
that it wasn't my mission
to practically lead an investigation
and do everything the police
and DA's office are supposed to do.
That was a product of the circumstances
because nothing was happening,
and the family basically and I,
we had no alternative
other than to try
to clear things up ourselves.
Of course, we miss her.
Not just me, the whole family misses her.
You keep coming back to the thought,
especially in the middle of it all,
about all the things
that she wasn't able to experience.
For example,
how wonderful would it have been
if none of this had happened
and she had experienced this or that?
These are all things that cross your mind,
and of course, when there's a birthday
or a family gathering,
then Birgit's there.
I personally really hope
that it will be possible
to provide those waiting
for a loved one with answers.
Especially if our perpetrator,
Kurt-Werner Wichmann,
and his accomplice were involved.
My hope is
that these people will one day find peace
because they'll know
who killed their loved ones
and maybe even where they are buried.
If anyone has information
about Kurt-Werner Wichmann
or his accomplice
or the crimes in the Göhrde forest
or regarding Birgit Meier's disappearance,
I hope that after 31 years,
they have the courage today
to muster the strength and say,
"I will clear my conscience
and tell you what I know."
And I'm sure
that Kurt-Werner Wichmann
and his accomplice
aren't the only ones
who know about these crimes.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Reinhard] Behind each exhibit
lies a human being's fate.
Every slipper, every purse lying there
has a face,
a human being hidden behind it.
I think Wolfgang Sielaff,
just like all of us from the core team
and the extended team too,
still has a deep desire
to keep working on other cases.
This is the absolute worst crime
on the statute books.
It's about human life.
Even the Federal Constitutional Court
has looked at the issue
of the surviving spouse
following such serious crimes
and come to the conclusion that the state
and the law enforcement agencies
are obliged to do everything
to solve these crimes.
People have a right
to effective police work.
That says it all.
[solemn music playing]
[Yasmine] You opened the book of my life
"ALWAYS AND FOREVER"
POEM BY YASMINE MEIER, READ GRAVESIDE
and filled it with so many colorful days.
You wrote me the most beautiful stories.
For that,
I will love you, always and forever.
You raised my balloon up so high.
You helped me reach my greatest heights.
You pushed me further than anyone else.
For that,
I will love you, always and forever.
You made my time precious
and watched over me like your treasure.
You're still
the most important person to me.
I will love you, always and forever.
[music stops]
[eerie music playing]