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My sister's fate

has stayed with me for 40 years.

I carry it with me.

It's something that is a part of me. I'll carry it with me until I die.

I never really stop here.

This is in the immediate vicinity of the crime scene.

It is still unclear who was actually responsible

for the death of my little sister.

One of the most notorious

criminal cases in German history.

We know something so cruel

only from horror thrillers.

It was a particularly evil crime,

10-year-old Ursula is kidnapped,

weeks later the child is found suffocated,

in a wooden box buried in the woods.

Following my sister's death, we were in a state of trauma.

The death of Ursula Herrmann in 1981

has occupied the police, the judiciary

and the public for decades.

This crime was so inconceivably cruel.

How can someone do something like this?

Almost 30 years after the crime,

a man is convicted in a spectacular trial.

I think the trial wasn't designed to reveal the truth,

I think a lot went wrong there.

I think he was the right one,

I would have convicted him as well.

My name is Werner Mazurek.

I was sentenced to life imprisonment

for a crime I didn't commit.

My main motivation was to get closer to the truth.

I wouldn't know where to start.

Then I came across a chat forum

where they were also dealing with my sister's criminal case.

I looked at the investigation files again.

The perpetrators

left so many clues and that was the breakthrough.

If there are lies, I'd like to be there to expose them.

Lake Ammersee is located in

a Bavarian, idyllic, fairytale landscape.

On the north shore are the two villages

of Eching and Schondorf.

Picturesque villages with churches, onion domes, farms,

that have been around for centuries.

It's a romantic landscape.

You have the feeling you're in a small paradise.

It's absolutely typical of Bavaria.

It can't really be more Bavarian.

Definitely Catholic and very conservative.

It has just become a very rich area,

and a lot of Munich residents move there

because Lake Ammersee is beautiful.

But in this peaceful corner of Bavaria,

you wouldn't have expected it,

a child abduction nearby

was something

you couldn't imagine.

The case of Ursula Herrmann

was certainly a real shock

for this very peaceful area on Lake Ammersee.

Something so brutal, so cold,

you couldn't even imagine.

Who would do something like that?

The village is definitely shaped by this tragedy

even though it was so long ago.

Germany has been dealing with this case for over 40 years

because it's so unbelievable.

Ursula was just a normal girl.

She no longer played with dolls

but rather played with stuffed animals.

We had a shared interest in playing the piano,

and sometimes I helped her practice.

Ursula was, of course, the chick in the family.

This little girl was loved and pampered by everyone.

She had a sunny disposition,

I remember her as sunny and loving with all her heart.

She was just cheerful.

What happened to my sister changed my life,

I have never been able to fully come to terms with it.

September 15, 1981, was the first day of school.

In the afternoon, Ursula cycled through the forest

to Schondorf.

That's where she had her gym class.

And after gym class, she went to her cousin's.

My parents then called to say to come home.

Around 7:30 she left cycling

across the woods and along the lake.

That usually only takes a few minutes.

I was friends with the Herrmann family,

especially with Michael.

Michael came over in the evening

and we just practiced music.

We worked a bit and then I set the table

because we wanted to have dinner.

And then the phone rang.

The second I picked up the phone,

I realised that something was wrong.

It was Michael's mother,

I immediately noticed

there was a form of excitement

but an excitement

that cannot be slowed down, that comes from the very core.

I immediately handed the phone over to Michael.

His mother spoke relatively loudly,

you could hear her through the phone,

she said, 'Ursula didn't come home something's happened.'

As a rather unsuspecting older brother,

I thought to myself,

she probably stayed with her friend

and is now hiding.

That was the first thought.

We just wanted to calm her down:

'She will come, maybe she's still with a friend.'

'No, no, I can feel it, something happened.

Come back right away.'

There was something, maybe it's the deep bond

that connects parents, and mothers especially,

with their children.

She felt horror at that moment,

and I could feel it through the phone too.

And that changed everything.

I drove Michael home right away.

When we arrived at the Herrmann house

Michael and his father went into the woods to search.

Michael stayed home in case anyone called.

That was the hope.

Maybe someone would call and say, 'Ursula is here,'

and then everything would be okay.

About half an hour later, we called the police

to report a missing person.

Then the fire brigade was called in to search.

When the child went missing

the news spread quickly in the village

that Ursula from the Herrmann family had gone missing.

People didn't think too much of it.

'She'll come back home.'

But that changed very quickly

when the news came that Ursula's bicycle had been found.

I remember that the bike was found around 11pm,

and that was, of course, the alarm signal

because who pushes their bike into the forest and disappears?

Since 7:30pm yesterday evening,

10-year-old Ursula Herrmann has been missing,

the girl was cycling home from Schondorf.

She is slim and has short blond hair.

They looked for her intensely

with hundreds of police

and divers.

And suddenly you heard a helicopter.

It was an event for Eching.

Everyone was hoping that things would turn out well.

It was a mixture

of endless sadness and bewilderment

but then hope again.

As long as you don't know that someone is dead

you always hope.

The police were at our house on the first day,

and they were there during those calls.

There was no speech.

Once, you could hear a short scraping sound,

Most of these calls played this jingle,

Then a short break, and then again the same jingle.

People know it as the Bayern Radio 3 jingle.

My parents didn't know what it meant.

We received seven calls that day.

That was extremely strange.

The fact that this was really a kidnapping

was actually only clear three days after the event

because it was only on this third day

that we received the first ransom note.

We kidnapped your daughter

if you ever want to see your daughter alive again

pay a ransom of two million marks.

Where and how the money should be handed over

will be communicated at a later time in a letter or by telephone.

We will call you on Thursday.

We'll identify ourselves with a whistle.

Say only if will pay or not.

If you involve the police in the case,

or if you don't pay, we will kill the hostage.

That was, of course, a complete shock.

You'd think that this only happens in crime movies,

but this was just the reality,

and it's pretty crazy.

At that point, the police search was called off.

The police agreed with my parents

that they should say that they were willing

to pay the ransom.

No one could understand

why anybody would kidnap a child from this family

because the Herrmanns were not a rich family.

My father asked the neighbors.

There were a few people who had money around us.

We didn't have any ourselves,

It was a way of raising the money.

We definitely had hope,

that the situation could be resolved.

And then the second ransom note arrived.

You have communicated your readiness to pay over the telephone.

The money handover can only take place with a yellow Fiat 600.

Keep the money in a suitcase. We'll call you.

After our phone call,

set out in your car and the money immediately.

We will tell you over the phone

exactly where you should go.

We will be watching you from several places.

Again, no police.

There were no instructions on what exactly we should do now,

only that the ransom money should be handed over with a Fiat 600.

Which, of course, was strange for us,

why is a Fiat 600 important?

The blackmailers then broke off contact.

There was not a single attempt

to get in touch with us.

We sat at home and just waited.

The waiting was very hard.

We were in a traumatic situation.

The Weingarten is not a beautiful forest

where you can walk easily among the trees.

There are places where the terrain is rougher.

Of course, everyone tries to scan their area

to see if there's anything suspicious,

if anything can be found.

It's not easy,

but what can you do?

You just have to do your job.

I thought to myself, my God, this forest can't be that big!

They must have ploughed over every inch by now.

I was wondering, why is it all taking so long?

It was a pretty dense forest.

There was a small clearing in the undergrowth.

There was a sort of rag, and underneath it, a wooden lid.

When I got there, I didn't think anything of it.

I assumed it was a place for poachers to store their ammunition

because it was only a small lid.

I opened it.

There was the girl.

She was sat there.

I can still picture it.

We came back from the church service,

and then police officers came and told us

that my sister had passed away.

The moment we found out what had happened

that she was found dead there,

for me, I fell silent,

there was a speechlessness.

The family reacted differently to her death,

I thought the father seemed

more composed at first,

but I think that he was particularly affected by it.

The mother cried endlessly,

and Michael and his sister,

they fell silent.

Because it was utterly clear in that moment

that this family,

and this place

would never be,

could never be

what it once was.

KIDNAPPED

CHILD

BURIED

ALIVE

A helpless girl

buried alive in a wooden box,

the murder of Ursula Herrmann shakes the nation.

URSULA HERRMANN FOUND DEAD IN WOODEN BOX

It was a gigantic shock wave

because this crime was so inconceivably cruel.

For God's sake, what is this?

How can someone do something like this?

CHILD ABDUCTION - MURDER 30,000 DEUTSCHMARK REWARD

With help from the population,

the police hope to track down the perpetrators.

What kind of monster comes up with a plan like this?

Because it was clear that this was not a spontaneous act.

The kidnappers probably assumed

that their plan would work and that the girl could actually survive

in this hideout for a few days.

She was given books to read

and a light had been installed.

She had food and drink, including water.

However, the box's ventilation system,

clearly visible here, failed to work,

and the girls suffocated within five hours.

I am Axel Petermann, a murder investigator and profiler.

The case files are very revealing

as far as the motive is concerned.

I don't think it was the perpetrator's intention

for Ursula Herrmann to die.

The fact that the box contained food,

a track suit, two blankets, and even reading material

indicates that he thought of this affair as business:

'I get the money and you get the child back'.

I think that this was about money.

A few days, or maybe a week after the discovery

there was an anonymous tip

that Mazurek might have something to do with the crime

because he was in debt.

Werner Mazurek was just another villager,

and he was known around town

because he ran an electrical repair shop.

Prosecutor Franz Ammer] We have to assume

the perpetrators had access to a professional workshop

which is evident from the build quality of this box.

Mazurek was known to be very skilled at woodworking,

he was initially very hesitant with his alibi

and said that he didn't have one,

but later he came up with one which was possibly made up.

And something else was suspicious:

He denied knowing who Ursula was,

even though she played with his daughter,

and his wife worked as a house cleaner for the Herrmanns.

They turned his entire workshop upside down

and searched everywhere at his home too.

They were looking for fingerprints, naturally,

as well as dust and wood chips.

Despite a very intensive search, they found nothing,

not the slightest speck of evidence,

and therefore the investigation was dropped.

And that was it.

The question was, who else would fit as a suspect?

Some wire was found at the site of the abduction.

This kind of wire is called bell wire

because it can be used for telephone lines,

hence the name.

And this bell wire was initially ignored by the investigators.

It only came back into focus later,

actually a year and a half later.

The most obvious conclusion would be that this was an alarm system

used by lookouts to let them know

if someone was coming from either direction.

It became clear that those who did this

must have known the woods very well.

At the time there was a system of trails in the woods.

It seems that Ursula was carried along one of these trails,

from where she was snatched off the bike to the location of the box.

There is also evidence that some of these trails

had been cut a few weeks before.

This means it can only be someone who spends a lot of time in the woods

and considers it their territory.

Then in 1984, the police realised that

'there is still a suspect.'

He became the subject of the investigation

because he had a license to hunt in the woods.

Shortly after the girl had been found in the forest,

Harry, my old acquaintance and former colleague came to me

and told me that he often took care of a hunter's hide

near Ursula's burial site.

He was a former police officer

who had been badly injured on duty

and had to leave the police force. He was very bitter about this.

I thought it was likely

that he had something to do with the crime.

He met conditions

that match those of the criminal who committed this crime.

He behaved very suspiciously

when the police asked him to help with their investigation.

He had to march through the woods with them,

and at the grave,

he started shaking and sweating.

It was alleged that this was because he had committed the crime.

And then a witness stated

that he had seen his vehicle on the evening of the crime

on a drive leading into the woods.

In May 1984, a newspaper claimed

that a perpetrator had been arrested,

which wasn't true at all.

YESTERDAY POLICE ARREST ONE OF THEIR OWN

Horst Fischer became a suspect too

simply because he was a good friend of Harald's.

In the '70s, the two of them were colleagues in the police.

My world was turned upside down.

My telephone was tapped

for a year, continuously.

They checked everything.

Then they said that the bell wire

that had been found in the woods

was twisted in a very specific way.

The police claimed that this special way of twisting the wire

was only taught in the police radio unit

that Harald had worked for.

Just imagine, two police officers

who are familiar with walkie-talkies and other equipment

go into the woods and play with bell wire like children.

They were official suspects for a very long time,

until the late '80s.

There's only circumstantial evidence,

the knowledge of the woods and nothing else

and that's why I came to the conclusion

that this possibility is not very realistic.

Harald went from bad to worse,

and there was always the same question: 'Why?'

Harry didn't do anything.

He just sat at home

and drowned his sorrows

until his death.

Since the end of the '80s, we as a family have accepted

that it's possible that this crime will never be solved.

If you can blame someone, that helps a lot.

That wasn't possible for us.

Over the years and decades,

we learnt to live with that.

The knowledge of this death always accompanies us.

And that is perhaps

the most horrible thing,

that you never have closure.

DNA analysis opens up

technical possibilities nobody would have thought of 20 years ago.

At the Munich Criminal Police Office

there's now hope for a breakthrough in the investigation.

In 2005, DNA analysis had become very advanced,

so we re-examined the evidence

to try and find DNA traces.

I am Bernhard Egger,

department chief at the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office.

I was the department head

in charge of the overall investigation back then.

They went back and examined the box

that Ursula Herrmann was found in for traces,

and they did find DNA, on one of the screws.

It turned out

that this DNA was linked to another murder case in Munich.

In May 2006,

59-year-old Charlotte Böhringer

was murdered in her apartment above the Isar parking garage.

Charlotte Böhringer was the widow of a wealthy entrepreneur.

She was brutally beaten to death in the hallway of her apartment.

Her nephew was suspected

and then convicted of her murder,

but the whole case was based on circumstantial evidence.

There's a big question mark in this case.

The police found a glass in the dishwasher in her apartment

with DNA from an unknown man.

In the apartment of Charlotte Böhringer,

DNA traces have been discovered which can be linked to this box.

DNA identical to that found on a screw in the box

has now been found in the apartment of the murdered millionaire.

It was, of course, a big headline in the media:

'Is Ursula's killer also Charlotte's killer?'

That electrified me as a journalist.

We don't know who the man was who left his DNA there.

The DNA doesn't belong to the nephew.

Since DNA was found

in the Böhringer case

which is identical to the DNA in the Ursula Herrmann case

it must be concluded that the same person

played a role in both murder cases.

There was pressure on investigators and the judiciary.

BAVARIAN STATE CRIMINAL POLICE OFFICE

The Ursula Herrmann case

was treated as kidnapping with deadly consequences

and the statute of limitations would have expired in 2011,

30 years after the crime.

Nobody could have been convicted anymore,

and that drove the police investigators insane.

Initially, we worked through all the theories

about the crime and the perpetrator.

It was a huge amount of work.

It is extremely important

that you don't just tap into old ideas

but have a fresh approach.

That was very important to us.

And in the end we just kept getting closer and closer

to one suspect.

Then the whole investigation into Werner Mazurek got going again.

But the DNA that was found on the screw of the box

definitely didn't belong to Mazurek. That had been established.

Despite this, we were convinced

that we had the right suspect.

It's important to us that we work through everything

using all available methods to find the truth.

We used video surveillance, telephone surveillance

and audio surveillance

and eventually there was a house search.

Then something happened that we never could have dreamt of.

We found this tape deck.

Almost 27 years after the fatal kidnapping of Ursula Herrmann

this notorious crime is about to be solved.

The man who is suspected

of having abducted and killed Ursula 27 years ago

lived in this house in Schleswig-Holstein.

The 58-year-old had already been a suspect in 1981.

The search produced a tape deck

which is likely the device

used during the ransom calls

to the Herrmann family.

I was a court reporter at the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

My colleagues and I were completely flabbergasted.

Nobody had expected

that the investigation

would turn up anything useful.

In the course of the new investigations,

a tape deck with very specific features

was found in the home of the accused.

I am Walter Rubach.

I am Mr. Mazurek's defense lawyer.

The tape deck was the missing link for the prosecution.

Somehow, it fit the picture of what they were looking for.

They noticed that this tape deck had some anomalies,

which are possibly unique,

and that was one of the reasons why the case got going again.

Is this man the perpetrator?

Today begins the trial of 58-year-old Werner M.

in the Augsburg district court.

'I don't have anything to do with the crime'

he said in a long declaration.

Then came the day when the expert

who had examined the tape deck testified.

The expert established

that the tape deck exhibited peculiarities,

namely a misaligned recording head,

which could have led to the sequence of tones used by the kidnappers.

The expert witness then testified that it was 'probably' a device

used to record the sequence of tones used in the crime.

It was so well-founded and clear

that I wondered

what a strange coincidence it must have been,

that this exact device was found at this man's house.

From that day on, I really thought, 'Yes, it was Mazurek.'

The audio expert is definitely

a convincing person with a high level of expertise.

But I have to say very clearly,

it's impossible to draw the conclusion

that any particular device was used.

As an audio expert myself,

I knew that it's extremely difficult to trace audio signals

from so long ago.

It was decades ago and also across multiple devices.

The theory is that the jingle

is played on the Bavarian radio station, Bayern 3.

It's then recorded by the perpetrators

onto the tape deck

and is then transferred to a portable device

because it has to be played back in the phone box.

Finally, the jingle is recorded from the phone

onto the police tape deck.

There are so many recording processes

that it's no longer possible to draw conclusions

as to where the jingle came from

and which devices were used to record it.

The expert witness did not respond to my criticism.

It was surprising that Mr Herrmann, the joint plaintiff

stated his objections during the trial

and said 'this expert report is flawed.'

She was a Germany-wide, recognized expert in this field.

She had much more knowledge than Michael Herrmann.

Apart from the tape deck,

there was another very important piece of evidence.

In 1982, someone claimed

to have dug a hole in the forest at Mr. Mazurek's behest.

If there was anything that convinced me

that Mazurek committed this act

it was this story with Pfaffinger.

Pfaffinger's landlord reported him to the police.

He claimed he had regularly seen Pfaffinger

ride into the forest around the time of the crime,

in early September 1981 with a spade fixed to his moped.

Then it turned out

that Pfaffinger was friends with Mazurek

and that was a connection that electrified the police.

Pfaffinger was interrogated for many, many hours.

When the police had finished, he broke down in tears.

And then he told them

that at Mazurek's behest he had dug the hole

in which the box was later found.

The police officers drove him to the woods

and they told him,

'show us where the hole was,'

and he couldn't find the spot.

Then he recanted his confession

and said 'no, it's not true.'

And so the lead went cold.

These statements of Mr. Pfaffinger had to be read out in the court room

because he died a long time ago.

We concluded that his confession

which he later recanted, was actually believable.

There was also no reason why he should wrongly accuse Mazurek.

That's the heart of the matter,

why would he tell a false story?

We knew we were standing with our backs against the wall

because it was well known who Mr. Mazurek was

and that he had a difficult personality.

It's clear that people don't find Mazurek to be a likeable character.

He appears quite threatening to some people.

That's just what he's like.

He's a rather abrasive person.

People did think, what kind of guy is capable

of burying a 10-year-old girl in a box in the woods

and leaving her there?

And Mazurek was deemed capable of doing this.

His personality was described

as being very determined when it came to recovering debts,

even physically violent.

He was egotistical and lacking in empathy.

One shouldn't beat around the bush.

Mr. Mazurek is not a person trying to gain people's affection.

This story with the dog is the best example.

You cannot play this down.

The family dog must have knocked over the bin.

Mazurek, in a fit of anger, grabbed the dog,

opened the lid to the freezer and put the dog inside,

shut the lid and let it freeze to death.

When his wife discovered the dead dog,

he said, 'I banished him to Siberia.'

I know a lot of murderers and killers

but you don't see something like that very often.

A man who was capable of doing that to a dog,

could also do it to a child,

and that was a big problem.

There was further evidence that,

according to the prosecution,

was supposed to be suspicious.

The police back then

were listening in on a lot of telephone calls.

In 2007, Mazurek spoke to an acquaintance

about what had happened back then.

During this conversation, Mazurek remarked

that the death of Ursula Herrmann

was just a 'job related accident.'

And that captivated everyone involved in the trial.

'How can one speak about this crime in such a brutal way,

without empathy?'

One can say that this is a very brutal remark

when it comes to the death of a young girl.

In Germany, a trial based on circumstantial evidence

goes as follows:

The individual pieces of evidence are treated like pieces of a puzzle.

Each individual piece means nothing by itself

but taken as a whole, you can of course paint a picture.

Today, the Augsburg district court

sentenced a 59-year-old to life in prison.

The accused insisted on his innocence until the end.

The Augsburg district court followed the proposal of the prosecution

after 55 days of trial, with 197 witnesses and 11 experts.

I am strongly convinced

that we put the actual perpetrator behind bars for life.

If we had any doubts, we would have acquitted him.

The court's job is to find the truth.

We cannot expect the truth to flutter onto the judge's desk

in the form of a confession in a trial like this.

The family of the victim still has doubts.

The evidence is stacked against him

but there's also evidence that points strongly in another direction.

The fact that they had to solve the case at all costs

with these methods, greatly distressed us.

The trial was a real low-point

that showed the Bavarian justice system in a bad light.

I think he was the right one. I would have convicted him as well.

But there are still doubts to this day.

There is no actual, conclusive piece of evidence

proving that Mazurek was the perpetrator.

What am I thinking?

I think I'm in the wrong film.

To my mind, the verdict had been decided

before the trail had even begun.

My name is Werner Mazurek.

I was sentenced to life imprisonment in Augsburg in 2010

for a crime I didn't commit.

The trial rested on only two pillars of evidence.

There's the expert report about the tape deck

and there is Pfaffinger's statement.

Pfaffinger?

When you read all the evaluations of Pfaffinger's testimony,

it's all nonsense.

If Pfaffinger had dug the hole,

they would have found 25 empty beer bottles in it.

The idea that he would have dug such a hole is ludicrous.

He never would have done it.

I then went to Pfaffinger's house and I asked him,

'What is this crap you're telling people?'

He said, 'Well, they put such pressure on me,

and they promised me the reward and a new job.'

So it was complete rubbish.

And then there was the circus with the tape deck.

Mr. Mazurek had given a plausible explanation

as to where he had bought the tape deck:

At a flea market in Beverungen in 2007.

We heard from over 40 witnesses from this flea market

and they unanimously said that on this day

no tape deck was sold.

The Mazureks themselves gave significantly different accounts

as to when, where and under what circumstances

this tape deck had been acquired.

Why do I need a tape deck to record this Bayern 3 jingle?

They already had dictaphones back then.

It's on the radio every half hour.

If I take a dictaphone, hold it up, then I'll have it.

The tape deck theory is complete nonsense.

Mazurek wrote to me.

The first letters gave me the impression

that he wanted to be my ally.

'We will look for the real perpetrator together.'

I think I received the first letter while the trial was still ongoing.

'2 families, 1 goal.'

'To solve a crime, but how?'

'The fact is that it wasn't me. Period.'

This is a really weird person.

Someone who writes like that

has a screw loose somewhere.

I wanted to test how he would react.

Why shouldn't I have done that?

There was no good reason not to do it.

I have to admit that the tone of the letters seemed authentic,

and they didn't seem to be written by someone trying to hide his guilt.

In his first letter replying to me,

he said, 'if you did it, go to hell,

and if it wasn't you, then we'll bring this to a good end.'

So there was no animosity really.

The trial made me more self-aware.

Previously I'd been quite a trusting person

who would accept things quickly

who could be quite forgiving and would take a step back.

That has changed now.

Since 2018, I've gone back to studying the documents.

Mazurek as the perpetrator doesn't make sense to me.

The aim of studying the documents was to look for alternatives.

I wouldn't know where to start.

It's all...

Every speck of dust, every wooden splinter, every screw

has been turned over a thousand times in this case.

The first question that naturally arises is,

who is responsible for this?

I had the impression that the authorities

hadn't achieved anything for over 25 years.

How did the whole thing happen?

And what was the motive behind it?

It's all completely in the dark.

I was looking for alternative ways to gain knowledge

that would help me to move forward and gain closure.

I knew some of the police investigators from that time.

I was hoping that questions would be answered.

The investigators didn't want to comment on this

and aren't prepared to provide much information.

Then I came across a chat forum which deals with various criminal cases.

Lots and lots of different ones.

That's when I discovered there's a thread

that actually deals with my sister's case.

THE URSULA HERRMANN CASE, EARLY 1980s

I was quite surprised

that complete strangers were discussing our case.

And at some point I thought,

I could post there too and introduce myself.

I'm new to this forum, but I can imagine

that I could make helpful contributions to the discussion.

My name is Michael Herrmann, I am Ursula's brother.

In the beginning, I wasn't quite sure how to react to this,

whether I should express my condolences first?

She introduced herself as Barbara Zipser

and then presented herself as someone

who is very familiar with script and speech recognition.

But somehow he didn't believe me.

I am skeptical about everyone at first

because I often get mail from people who are completely insane.

So I sent him my CV, just to be professional about it.

My initial impression was

that this is a scientist.

She wants to help to get closer to the truth,

and I realised that's my intention too.

It is an absolute exception

that a member of a victim's family joins in such a chat.

Michael offered to answer any questions about the case.

Michael Mühlmann wrote to me,

'I am still convinced that the right person was convicted with Mazurek.

But let's assume it wasn't him.

Then who?'

I have always been interested in criminal cases.

While I was surfing the internet, I came across

the Ursula Herrmann case

which interested me more than the other cases

because it was so extraordinary.

A relationship of trust was established.

I thought that we could crack the case.

The only way to make progress in this case

is to do the research ourselves.

And that's when I decided

to send the ransom note

with all its details to Ms. Zipser.

I work at Royal Holloway, University of London.

I analyse text

and I'm good at it.

To my knowledge, no criminal profile was ever created

using the ransom notes, so far.

The fact that the author uses newspaper cut outs

is very naïve.

The reason he chose to do this is to say,

'This is a ransom note,

a real ransom note,

according to all the conventions found in crime thrillers.'

But it wasn't smart to write such long letters

and leave me so many clues.

Take for example the sentence,

'our instructions you must keep precisely.'

The word order is twisted.

The author changed the syntax to make it sound like a foreigner's,

someone who doesn't speak German very well.

and yet he used all the correct word forms.

The individual words used suggest that he had a large vocabulary

and was skilled at composing text.

That indicates a high level of education.

He was 30 years old at most.

More like 20, I'd say.

You can tell this from the way he writes.

I also sent her a scan of the back of one of the ransom notes

because there were some lines there.

It was well known back in the '80s that there were imprints there,

and no one could figure out what they meant or where they came from.

I looked at it from a distance.

I think the problem was that the police

were trying to recognise characters or symbols that weren't there.

I thought no, that's not kinks or dashes or a big symbol or letter.

That's a probability tree.

So, someone had used a writing pad

and the marks had pushed through to the underlying sheet.

That was amazing for me.

Probability trees are usually drawn by pupils in school.

Barbara Zipser's analysis revealed that Mazurek

is most likely not the author of the ransom notes.

And then of course you ask yourself, who else could it be,

if it wasn't him?

I thought we needed to start over.

We started at the abduction site.

There's evidence that several people

were involved in this crime.

For example the bell wire.

That's one of the most bizarre elements in the case.

The wire was discovered on the second day of the investigation

by a police officer.

The wire had a total length of 140 metres.

It was hung between two points through the forest

parallel to the lakeside path.

It was used to transmit signals from a lookout

down to the kidnapping site

where the second perpetrator was waiting to take the victim.

The bell wire proves that at least two people had to be involved.

But the police didn't follow up on this.

It was only six months later

that two students from a boarding school in Schondorf

discovered the wire, took it down and brought it to their school.

In January 1983, there was a search in the Landheim.

That's a boarding school

a few hundred meters from the crime scene.

And when it was announced there would be an investigation,

two pupils handed over the bell wire before being questioned.

I found that odd, so Michael and I had a closer look at the files.

The boys said that they had been in the woods, stalking an owl,

when they saw the wire in the trees.

They decided to take the wire with them.

One of the boys kept the wire in his room

inside a box to which only he had the key,

and he said that he had 'imprisoned' the wire.

This word choice is very strange

because you can only 'imprison' animals or people, not objects.

The two pupils were questioned about finding the wire

but were never suspected of having committed the crime.

I think it's highly problematic that those two were questioned together.

That's not how it should be done.

I then realised that this was one aspect of the case

which is occasionally mentioned in the files

but in the end, was never really investigated.

The questioning was very inconsistent.

Something was preventing them from getting to the bottom of this.

I'm a former pupil of the Landheim school.

The boarding school was for children from wealthy families.

It was a sort of microcosm.

We lived in a bubble.

In a microcosm like this, there are always people who don't quite fit in.

People who are strange,

not very socially competent, shy, not quick witted.

And they may sometimes come up with weird ideas.

The police did not apply the same standards

while investigating the school

that they applied to investigating other locals.

There are several reasons

why young people ought to be considered as suspects.

When I analysed the letters I came to the conclusion

that a young person was involved in the planning.

That would fit with the strange setup of this abduction and extortion.

There are a number of elements that point to young perpetrators.

The ransom letters were incredibly long and convoluted.

An adult would have written something far shorter.

'We have your daughter, we want 2 million, no police.' That's all.

Pupils often hung out in the forest

exactly where the child was abducted.

The perpetrators must have known the woods very well.

They used the trails to get around.

And these trails were created mainly by the pupils

from the boarding school.

They certainly knew their way around there.

Theoretically, the crime could have been prepared at the school

because there was a car and carpentry workshop there,

and the pupils had access to it.

There was a neighbour who told the police back then

that prior to the abduction,

the light was on in certain workshops, often until midnight.

That would indicate that something was built there over the holidays.

It's obvious that the people who came up with this

didn't have any clue about life.

For example, the demand that a yellow Fiat 600 be used

to hand over the ransom money.

Among the reading material in the box were comics.

I noticed an interesting connection.

In the ransom note, the kidnappers

demanded a Fiat 600 be used in the money exchange.

This model of car, which was very rare in Germany at the time

plays a role in the comic.

The possible conclusion, is that they were fixated on this car

because it appeared in this series of comic books.

Who reads such stuff? Probably young people.

They thought it was great and were inspired by it.

It's certainly a possibility.

I didn't know that, it's astonishing.

It reinforces the idea that whoever wrote the ransom letter

must have been either out of their minds

or perhaps they were teenagers.

Michael Hermann and I were chatting and we suddenly noticed

that two aspects of this crime fit together.

Some of the pupils and the lid of the box.

The lid of the box top had a varnish made of a special type of bitumen.

Bitumen repels moisture and that was arguably the purpose,

that no rain water or dirt could enter the box.

This varnish is so unique

that it could lead to the perpetrator.

The police contacted over a thousand companies

but not a single one used this mixture.

I then reviewed the interviews with the pupils,

and when I saw the surname of one of them, I had a realisation.

The father of this pupil owned companies

that developed special varnishes.

I found no evidence in the files that these were investigated.

That's really strange.

I can't really figure out why there was no further investigation.

The idea that some pupils had abducted this girl

and buried her in a box

seems far-fetched to me.

Just the logistics of it,

to build such a contraption and move it into the woods...

I don't believe it.

I don't really agree that it was teenagers.

To get money, they'd commit a crime like this?

It could have been done for the 'thrill,'

but I don't think that this was the motive here.

Michael Herrmann's theory,

I rule that out.

Too young, too dumb...

Little spoiled kids from rich families...

I can't imagine that.

One has to ask, wouldn't there be one of the young people

who stops playing along, who has a crisis of conscience

when it becomes apparent that the girl is dead

and says, 'I need to get this off my chest'?

This could be the spot where Ursula Herrmann was found.

The autopsy determined that Ursula died in the box

within five hours at the most,

and that the cause of death was hypoxia due to a lack of oxygen.

But when you think that through it doesn't really make sense.

Because the box was perfectly arranged,

and there were no signs of struggle.

Ursula didn't try to find out what was in the box.

She didn't try to open the lid by force.

Suffocation causes severe symptoms.

It makes you panic, and you think you're choking, which you are.

You try to escape.

None of that happened.

It became clear that my sister had been anesthetised.

Nitrous oxide would have been the only possible anaesthetic

because it's not traceable, as nitrous oxide is volatile.

It was clear that she was in a comatose state

even before she was put in the box

due to an overdose of nitrous oxide.

She had died, either before she was transferred to the box

from this overdose,

or she was already so unconscious

that she died very quickly in this box.

At some point, the kidnappers would have realised

that their victim was no longer alive.

She probably failed to respond to their knocking

and that's when the kidnappers blocked the two pipes

which were supplying air

with soil and spruce branches,

and as camouflage they planted several young spruce trees.

That's a pretty clear indication

that the kidnappers wanted to convert the box into a tomb.

The crime had not been thoroughly thought through at all.

So much went wrong that you have to assume

if it was adults who did it, they were either a bit stupid

or really crazy or hadn't planned at all.

That is something that fits young people.

An adult who wasn't crazy would simply have planned it better.

In October 2018, I sorted all the evidence that I'd collected

and handed it over to the Augsburg public prosecutor's office.

My hope was that the prosecution office would say,

'that's interesting, let's investigate this.'

The Prosecution Office in Augsburg will have to check

whether Hermann's circumstantial evidence is sufficient for a retrial.

The Bavarian Minister of Interior wants to take the evidence seriously.

This will need to be checked by the criminal police.

The chances of a retrial are slim, the legal hurdles are high.

Obviously there are a number of diverging theories of who did it,

otherwise we would have solved the case very quickly.

The longer a crime remains unsolved,

the more theories will arise ― even conspiracy theories.

Especially in trials based on circumstantial evidence.

In August 2019, the prosecution said that they would not investigate,

and that even though the evidence was remarkable,

it wasn't strong enough to call into question the original verdict.

I'm still convinced that my idea

that the pupils should have been investigated much more thoroughly

is very much justified.

Everything should have been done differently

in the investigation and the legal proceedings.

I think a lot went wrong there.

I always viewed the tape deck evidence as a weak point

because I realised that the expert's report that was produced back then

was not very solid.

The tape deck was the main hook for the prosecution

and from the judge's point of view

it was the main piece of evidence for the conviction.

We have always been of the opinion

that there was something wrong with the expert's report.

It's important to me that a renowned audio expert has been instructed

to re-evaluate the expert's report that had been produced back then.

My name is Volker Dellwo.

I'm a professor here at the University of Zurich's

Institute for Computer Linguistics.

My name is Peter French.

I'm professor of Forensic Speech Science

at the University of York in the UK.

I've known Peter French for many years.

He is one of the most renowned forensic phoneticians in the world.

I've worked on recordings for the International Criminal Court

in The Hague in relation to the war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

Over the years, I would have been involved

in close to 6,000 cases internationally.

The task of the audio expert is clear.

Is it possible to decide

if the tape deck found at Mazurek's home

was used in making the ransom calls?

It was obvious from the evidence in the sequence of tones

that the amplitude of the sixth tone was much diminished.

The German police expert had concluded

that the cause of that, was that there was a misaligned recording head

on the machine in question.

The experts then concluded that it was 'probable'

that this specific tape deck was used to create the recordings.

IT CAN BE ASSUMED THAT THE TAPE DECK IS PROBABLY ONE OF THE DEVICES USED

We went in there with a very neutral frame of mind

just to see where it took us.

The first task was to analyse if the lowering of the amplitude

of specific tones in the sequence

could also have been caused by other factors.

We placed a microphone in different positions.

We discovered that the diminished amplitude of the sixth tone

can be caused by many other factors.

For example, by the position of speakers in a room,

by the position of a microphone between two speakers

and we can see clearly here

that the sixth tone is strongly diminished.

We conclude that the diminished amplitude of the sixth tone

can be caused by an infinite number of factors.

It's possible it was this particular deck

but it could also equally have been one of any number

and we don't know what that number is,

of other decks that were around in the world at the time.

I have received a message that Mr. Rubach has news

regarding a new expert report.

If there's a new report with new results that's very exciting to me.

- Hello! - Mr. Rubach, hello.

- Please have a seat. - Thank you.

It's nice to see you again.

Yes.

We have some real news here.

We have a report by the University of Zurich

by the Phonetics and Speech Sciences Group.

That sounds good already.

It's about the expert report presented at the trial.

The expert concluded that it was a misaligned recording head

that caused the attenuation of the...

- The highest tone. - ...The highest tone.

Now, the University of Zurich has come to the conclusion

that we always suspected, but could never prove

despite all our efforts.

They say,

the testimony is incorrect.

With this position of the sound head on this device

the attenuation cannot be produced.

That's a sensational statement for me

because it actually says

that the report is junk.

Yes.

So, in principle, this report confirms

what we have always been saying.

That means

the probability that this device was used by the perpetrator

is one in five million.

Exactly, and without the tape deck there wouldn't have been a trial.

There was no other new evidence since the 1980s.

We always thought we were right.

We never found the right angle and this gives me the impetus

to try again to overturn the verdict.

Personally, I wouldn't say I'm touched, but I'm relieved

because the result confirms what was in our heads over the years.

What happens legally, that's your department. We'll see.

Yes.

Now I have to sit out another year,

then I have to get back in shape.

I can neither stand, nor walk.

Will you investigate the case yourself

when you get out of here?

I'll try.

In any case, I will search for the vendor from the flea market,

and I will find him.

What are you hoping to achieve?

I want to shame the judiciary, completely and utterly.

It would be unfair to say that this court was in any way biased.

But the Bavarian justice system is designed in such a way

that the defendant will often be convicted.

Had the trial taken place in, say, Schleswig-Holstein or Lower Saxony

then I'm pretty sure, he would not have been convicted.

What can we learn from this case?

There is not enough justice,

that's the lesson you learn. And I find that terrible.

If it is really the case

that the true murderer

is allowed to live his life undetected...

that's a situation that cannot stand.

Things that remain unsolved create uncertainty.

If you can assign guilt to someone and this person also confesses

that helps a lot,

but in our case that wasn't possible.

That means it stays undefinable

and everyone has to find their way of dealing with that.

The family still don't know what happened

to their daughter or sister.

That must be a very difficult situation, having to deal with that,

and that's why I would really wish

that the truth will emerge in the end.

It's a terrible crime

and it preoccupies Michael Herrmann to this day.

It's what drives him.

It's not about revenge for him.

He wants the case to be solved

and for it to be solved properly.

This longing for honesty, for justice,

I think that is what really drives Michael.

To keep thinking about the case

and bringing it into the light again and again

so that it doesn't end with a lie.

Michael Herrmann can sometimes put the case to one side

and do something else,

and that's probably why he hasn't gone crazy yet.

Otherwise, the case would completely overwhelm you.

My main reason for dealing with the case was to get closer to the truth.

But actually, I would not like to do that anymore.

I would like to draw a line.

The probability that it won't be solved is very high,

and I would like to be content with that.