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The Girl in The Box: The Mysterious Crime That Shocked Germany

He Put a 10-Year-Old Girl in a Box Under the Earth - Kidnapping of Ursula Herrmann

On 15 September 1981, 10-year-old Ursula Herrmann headed home by bike from her cousins’ house. She never arrived. So began one of Germanys’ most notorious postwar criminal cases, which remains contentious to this day

The Guardian 14 DEC 2023













A police sketch of the box in which Ursulas’ body was found





A model of the box on display at the district court in Augsburg.


In the Alpine foothills in the far south of Germany is a vast lake called the Ammersee. Its shores are dotted with centuries-old villages where wealthy families from Munich buy large second homes and tourists drink beer at waterfront restaurants.


At the north end of the lake is a pair of such villages, Eching am Ammersee and Schondorf, less than two miles apart. Separating them is a block of spruce forest that attracts hunters, joggers, mountain bikers and in the late summer 38 years ago, kidnappers preparing to commit what would become one of the countrys’ most notorious postwar crimes.





Ursulas’ brother Michael


After class on Tuesday 15 September 1981, the first day of the new school year, a 10-year-old girl named Ursula Herrmann returned to her house in Eching. Ursula, the youngest of four siblings, practised piano with her oldest brother Michael, and then headed off to her late afternoon gymnastics lesson in Schondorf, cycling through the forest along the lakeside path.

When the gym class was over, she went to her cousin’s house in Schondorf, where she ate dinner. At 7.20pm, Ursula’s mother phoned the aunt to say her daughter needed to come home. The shadows were lengthening but it was still light, and the cycle ride would only take 10 minutes.

Half an hour later, she was still not home. Her mother again called the aunt, who said Ursula had left 25 minutes before. Both of them immediately knew something was wrong. Ursula’s father rushed into the forest from Eching, and her uncle did the same from Schondorf. They met in the middle, along the path. Ursula’s name rang out through the darkening wood. But there was no reply.

Within an hour neighbours, police and firemen had joined the search, torch beams raking the water and struggling to penetrate the thick undergrowth. With midnight approaching, and rain falling, a sniffer dog led its handler away from the lake, into the brush. There, 20 metres from the path, was Ursula’s little red bike. But she was nowhere to be seen.

At noon the next day, the postman delivered an envelope addressed to Ursula’s father, marked urgent. Inside was a ransom note composed using letters and words cut out from tabloid newspapers. “We kidnapped your daughter,” the note began, in broken German. “If you ever want to see your daughter alive again, then pay 2m deutschmarks [£450,000] ransom.”

The kidnappers, expecting the letter to have arrived a day earlier – before the calls began – explained that they would phone the Herrmanns using a jingle as their call sign. “Just say if you will pay or not pay … if you call the police or do not pay we will kill your daughter.”

When the phone rang that afternoon, and the jingle sounded, Ursula’s mother agreed to pay the ransom. She also asked for proof of life: what were her daughter’s nicknames for her two stuffed toys? When the kidnappers did not reply, she became frantic. “Talk to me, say something, something from Ursula!”

That same evening, the kidnappers posted a second letter, which arrived on Monday 21 September, with curiously specific instructions regarding the ransom. The kidnappers wanted the money to be paid in used 100-deutschmark bills, packed in a suitcase. It was to be delivered to an as yet unnamed location by Ursula’s father, who was to drive alone in a yellow Fiat 600 going no faster than 90km/h.





One of letters sent by the kidnappers, composed of newspaper cuttings.


Unlike some other residents of Eching, and the parents of the pupils at the boarding school in Schondorf, the Herrmanns were not wealthy. They had only been able to build a home near the lake because Ursula’s great-grandfather had purchased some grazing land there decades earlier. A neighbour raised part of the ransom, and the state agreed to cover the rest.

The Herrmanns waited desperately for more instructions. But there were no more letters and no more calls. Nor did the police have any strong leads. Two weeks passed. The police decided to search the forest again. More than a hundred officers were assembled, with 10 sniffer dogs. The wood was divided into four parts, and each quarter into small grids. The teams began searching every grid, one by one, using metal rods to probe the ground.

By the fourth day of searching, a gloomy Sunday, they had covered most of the forest. Ursula had been missing for 19 days. At 9.30am, there was a loud shout. In a tiny glade about 800m away from the lake path, one of the officers had struck something solid when probing the soil. Another policeman rushed over and, after wiping away the leaves and scraping through a layer of clay, discovered a brown blanket covering a wooden board.

















He removed it only to find second board, which appeared to be the lid of a box. It was 72cm by 60cm – the size of a small coffee table – painted green and locked from the top with seven sliding bolts. Using a spade, he forced the lid open, and peered in. There was Ursula. Her body was cold, lifeless.




The officer wept when lifting her out





Detective Chief Superintendent Detlef Puchelt shows a picture of the tape recorder that was used as evidence.










FULL STORY HERE;

The girl in the box: the mysterious crime that shocked ...








The Killer -Werner Mazurek?



A former TV repairman named Werner Mazurek was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2010 for kidnapping and killing Ursula Herrmann, a conviction that was based on very little circumstantial evidence and which many continue to question.???


-Mordfall Ursula Hermann: Verurteilter Täter kommt aus dem Gefängnis (GERMAN)