Kurt-Werner Wichmann

Wichmann was first sent to a young offenders' institution at the age of 14 after he had threatened a subletting tenant in his parents' house with a knife and had tried to strangle her. At that time, Wichmann did not live at home but at a care home in Wichernstift. He did not want to stay there any longer, and to this end stole money from his parents. His father was a violent man, and it is said that he mistreated his sons.[1] 

At 16, Wichmann attacked a cyclist and sexually abused her, for which he received six months' probation.

In 1967, he threatened police officers with a small-calibre weapon. He was sentenced to one year of juvenile detention.

In 1968, 38-year-old Ilse G. was hit in the back with four shots from a small-calibre rifle while riding a bicycle in a forest near Lüneburg. She died on the spot. Witnesses saw a youth fitting Wichmann's description fleeing the scene, and the police started a file on him. Although small-calibre rifles and newspaper clippings were found in his possession, Wichmann was not charged.

In 1970, he was sentenced to five-and-a-half years of juvenile punishment for the rape of a hitchhiker, whom he also tried to strangle. The hitchhiker managed to persuade him to let her go. When Wichmann read the news in the newspaper, he felt misrepresented and went to the police to correct this, which led to his arrest.

Wichmann was well known as a blond, down-to-earth man with a well-groomed appearance. A witness described him as a silent guy with cold, icy eyes eyeing everything.[1] Others described him as an arrogant and egotistical loner.

What was remarkable about him was that he always wore gloves and sunglasses. In one of his cars, an army sleeping bag for staying outdoors overnight was found as well as binoculars and maps. In addition, he often stayed in the forest.

He lived in a house in a cul-de-sac on the edge of Lüneberg directly at the forest at Streitmoor 15.[2] He grew up in that house, had a German shepherd, and leaned toward fascist political attitudes (on his property he occasionally hoisted the Reichskriegsflagge). In the course of time, he had also made several modifications to the house, including secret caches and a door which led to nothing (one looked through it from above the garage and behind it was an attached gallows rope).

At the time of the murder of Birgit Meier, he was married. (His widow of 13 years died in 2006.) He often needed money. At the time of his death, he was overindebted and advertised himself as a callboy for porn magazines.

The crime against Birgit Meier was enlightened only 28 years after the request of her brother, the policeman Wolfgang Sielaff. Previously, for unknown reasons, evidence that could have quickly led to Wichmann had not been tracked for years.

In 1989, a few weeks after the disappearance of Birgit Meier, connections between Wichmann and her became apparent. Initially, the investigators suspected her own suicide or that it was her husband, but later focused the investigation on the Lüneberg cemetery gardener Kurt-Werner Wichmann. Meier had previously met Wichmann at a party, according to statements from her husband. He had previously done gardening work at Meier's neighbors. Wichmann was interrogated, and despite the flimsy alibi of being with his wife and walking the dog, he was not checked closely. He also concealed the fact that he was on sick leave at the time of Meier's disappearance, but the police did not ask further.

Only with the establishment of a new prosecutor in Lüneberg did further investigations begin. In 1993, charges of suspected murder in Birgit Meier's case were brought against the gardener and the police searched his house. Investigators found two small-caliber rifles, a converted sharp gas pistol, stun guns, mufflers, handcuffs, sedatives and sleeping pills, as well as a secret torture room closed with a soundproof door, that only he and his brother were allowed to enter. There was a buried, bright red Ford sports coupe in the backyard, with blood clinging to its backseat. The body-tracking dogs were brought several times, but no bodies were found.

Kurt-Werner Wichmann had fled the search. He was arrested in Heilbronn when he was involved in a traffic accident, with weapons being found at his vehicle.[3] His ten years younger brother, with whom he had a close relationship, dominated by Kurt-Werner, sat in the seat next to him.[4] Ten days after his arrest, the 43-year-old man hanged himself in the Heimsheim Prison.[5] He had already attempted suicide beforehand. He left strange farewell letters in which he asked, among other things, his brother clean the gutter. After his death, the murder series in the woods around Lüneberg ceased, and further investigation was discontinued. His vehicle and the items found in it were disposed of by police.

Birgit Meier's remains were recovered in 2017 under the concrete floor of a garage of a house on the outskirts of Lüneburg that Kurt-Werner Wichmann occupied in the past.[6]

On 19 January 2018, it became known thanks to an autopsy report from the Hannover Medical School that Birgit Meier had been shot.[7] The Lüneberg Police President Robert Kruse stated that the perpetrator was a serial killer, who may have killed beyond Germany.[8] He announced a thorough review of old cases, with Wichmann being considered as a possible suspect. As a result, analysts from the State Criminal Police Office of Lower Saxony filtered out 24 unsolved cases, in particular homicides and missing persons. In February 2018, the case was featured again on Aktenzeichen XY... ungelöst on television, as the investigators suspected that there was a helper, accomplice or a confidant.[9]

The success of painstaking police investigation was thanks to policeman Wolfgang Sielaff, the brother of the murdered Birgit Meier, when he began with private research in 2002 and found his sister's body in 2017. In the same year, the police set up a new six-member investigative force, which investigated Wichmann's connections with 24 other murder victims.

In December 2017, 28 years after the murders in 1989, the Lower Saxony Police announced the former cemetery gardener Wichmann was a prime suspect in the Göhrde Murders, and an investigation team was set up.[1] DNA traces from one of the victim's stolen vehicles was linked to Wichmann.[10] The police assume that there is also an accomplice who may have committed other crimes. The essential clue for a second person involved in the case derives from the fact that Wichmann had driven his own motor vehicle into the Göhrde, but returned with that of the victim's. It is unknown if someone brought his car back. According to Sielaff's findings, there were 21 unresolved murder cases in Lüneberg and the surrounding area, which could possibly be assigned to Wichmann by the perpetrator file and respective whereabouts.[11][1]

After his release in 1975, Wichmann spent three years in Karlsruhe, where he lived with an elderly woman whom he had met through a personal ad during detention. During this time in the fall, several unsolved murders of hitchhikers occurred. Wichmann, who was very mobile and had five cars, could have been responsible. Police created a movement pattern for Wichmann, and murder cases in other areas could potentially be linked to him as well.

• List of German serial killers