01x04 - Episode 4

[bunniefuu]

[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 sh*t!"

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 m*rder 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 b*stard

would do that?

What happened to Birgit

on that day and in the days that followed?

What did the b*stard 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 a*s 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 m*rder*d 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 b*llet-like object in the skull.

[Püschel] A b*llet was found in the skull.

A misshapen b*llet.

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

sh**t 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 k*lled 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 k*lled."

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 m*rder*d 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 k*ll 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 m*rder 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 m*rder in Göhrde,

then a few weeks later,

very nearby, in almost the same place,

they found the next two bodies.

THE GÖHRDE m*rder*r'S GRUESOME KILLINGS

The second couple's car wasn't found there

but, crazily enough, in another location.

After k*lling 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 m*rder*r

or one of them.

This raises the question

as to how many murders there were.

Whether Kurt-Werner Wichmann

was the Göhrde m*rder*r 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 m*rder*r

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 k*lled 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 k*lled 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]