Post by hi224 on Jul 17, 2019 4:10:27 GMT
Lydia Schürmann was a 13 year old girl living in the small town of St. Vit, West Germany. On April 26th 1962, she had an argument with her mother: Lydia wanted to visit her aunt in France over the easter holidays, but her mother would not allow it, and grounded her.
Lydia did not accept this; she climbed out of her room's window and decided to hitchhike to France. She walked to the nearby A2 autobahn where a Belgian truck driver picked her up. But when he found out she had no passport or ID card, he dropped her off in Elmpt, shortly before the Dutch border. He thought she had changed her mind and would try to hitchhike back home. This was the last time Lydia was seen alive.
Almost 4 months later, on August 19th 1962, her corpse was found in a shallow grave by a mushroom picker in a forest near the same A2 autobahn near Bielefeld, about 20km to the northeast of her home (i.e. the opposite direction of where she had hitchhiked to). There were strangulation marks on her neck, but no leads to the murderer. All attempts to find him (or her) failed in the following months and years, and the case was closed.
It was unexpectedly reopened in 2006, when a letter arrived at a police station in Kaiserslautern, in which the author confessed to murdering Lydia 44 years earlier, but despite a wish to lighten his conscience did not have the courage to turn himself in. The letter contained details that had the police convinced they were from the murderer.
Even more unexpectedly, a similar letter had in 2005 reached police in Nuremburg, confessing to the murder of a prostitute, Heiderose Berchner, in 1970 - and the two letters had matching DNA traces.
Still, there was little the police could to do find the sender of these letters - until July 2007, when another letter with matching DNA reached the municipal office of the small town of Weiskirchen - but instead of confessing a murder, this letter threatened one: Austrian entertainer DJ Ötzi would be killed unless his planned concert gets cancelled. The letter contained a snippet from a newspaper edition that was only distributed in Weiskirchen. This eventually prompted the police to conduct a (volountary) mass DNA test amont the male senior population of Weiskirchen and surroundings. However, while this was still ongoing, a postman recognized the letters' handwriting and led the police to the sender, a Weiskirchen local who had checked into a psychiatric hospital after the DNA tests started. His DNA matched the letters and he soon confessed to writing them.
But there was a problem: He was only 34 years old and could not have commited the murders. Instead, police found a large amount of books and videos about unsolved crime in his home. Apparently he had a pathological need for recognition, which drove him to confess to crimes he could not have committed, and his hobby supplied the details that made the confessions convicing enough to fool the police.
The DNA mass test was stopped, and the suspect cleared of the murders but charged with the murder threats against DJ Ötzi.
Open questions:
Who actually murdered Lydia, and is he still alive?
Would the suspect have been sentenced for the fake confession if he had chosen a more recent crime? Are there such cases, where the confession was freely fabricated rather than coerced?
Is the suspect a regular on this subreddit? All of this happened before /r/UnresolvedMysteries was created, but he may still have this interest.
www.thelocal.de/20081109/15411 (the best English-language source I could found, but mostly concerned with the DNA mass test)
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordfall_Lydia_Sch%C3%BCrmann (German language)
Lydia did not accept this; she climbed out of her room's window and decided to hitchhike to France. She walked to the nearby A2 autobahn where a Belgian truck driver picked her up. But when he found out she had no passport or ID card, he dropped her off in Elmpt, shortly before the Dutch border. He thought she had changed her mind and would try to hitchhike back home. This was the last time Lydia was seen alive.
Almost 4 months later, on August 19th 1962, her corpse was found in a shallow grave by a mushroom picker in a forest near the same A2 autobahn near Bielefeld, about 20km to the northeast of her home (i.e. the opposite direction of where she had hitchhiked to). There were strangulation marks on her neck, but no leads to the murderer. All attempts to find him (or her) failed in the following months and years, and the case was closed.
It was unexpectedly reopened in 2006, when a letter arrived at a police station in Kaiserslautern, in which the author confessed to murdering Lydia 44 years earlier, but despite a wish to lighten his conscience did not have the courage to turn himself in. The letter contained details that had the police convinced they were from the murderer.
Even more unexpectedly, a similar letter had in 2005 reached police in Nuremburg, confessing to the murder of a prostitute, Heiderose Berchner, in 1970 - and the two letters had matching DNA traces.
Still, there was little the police could to do find the sender of these letters - until July 2007, when another letter with matching DNA reached the municipal office of the small town of Weiskirchen - but instead of confessing a murder, this letter threatened one: Austrian entertainer DJ Ötzi would be killed unless his planned concert gets cancelled. The letter contained a snippet from a newspaper edition that was only distributed in Weiskirchen. This eventually prompted the police to conduct a (volountary) mass DNA test amont the male senior population of Weiskirchen and surroundings. However, while this was still ongoing, a postman recognized the letters' handwriting and led the police to the sender, a Weiskirchen local who had checked into a psychiatric hospital after the DNA tests started. His DNA matched the letters and he soon confessed to writing them.
But there was a problem: He was only 34 years old and could not have commited the murders. Instead, police found a large amount of books and videos about unsolved crime in his home. Apparently he had a pathological need for recognition, which drove him to confess to crimes he could not have committed, and his hobby supplied the details that made the confessions convicing enough to fool the police.
The DNA mass test was stopped, and the suspect cleared of the murders but charged with the murder threats against DJ Ötzi.
Open questions:
Who actually murdered Lydia, and is he still alive?
Would the suspect have been sentenced for the fake confession if he had chosen a more recent crime? Are there such cases, where the confession was freely fabricated rather than coerced?
Is the suspect a regular on this subreddit? All of this happened before /r/UnresolvedMysteries was created, but he may still have this interest.
www.thelocal.de/20081109/15411 (the best English-language source I could found, but mostly concerned with the DNA mass test)
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordfall_Lydia_Sch%C3%BCrmann (German language)
