![]() This evident pain, deep-rooted and inextricably tangled among the system’s make-up, is given a brief mention before the narrative rushes back to the more lurid aspects of the crime. Dig Deeper doesn’t dwell much on the sad reality that Meier’s death was only solved because her brother was a police officer who spent his retirement doing what his former colleagues would not. ![]() This isn’t something that each series dedicates much time to, however. How many times can you watch all these separate shows, each filled with details on botched investigations and police ineptitude, before you join the dots and reconsider the whitewashed image of altruistic justice? Whether it’s South Korea or Spain or Germany or America, these stories are all bound together in smothering fashion by these repeated instances of institutional failure. There’s something numbingly meta about binging so many of these series, week after week for your critical pleasure. It’s believed that Wichmann may have been involved in dozens of unsolved cases throughout Germany. Forensic reports revealed that she had been shot, and Wichmann was named as the likely perpetrator. Several days later, Kurt-Werner Wichmann died by suicide, hanging himself in his prison cell.īirgit Meier’s remains were recovered in 2017 under the concrete floor of a garage of a house previously occupied by Wichmann on the outskirts of Lüneburg. He was arrested in Heilbronn when he was involved in a traffic accident, with weapons, night vision goggles, and maps of Germany found in his car. Yet no warrant was issued for his arrest, and he fled the area. On his property, they found a buried car. Investigators found weapons, stun guns, handcuffs, sedatives, and a secret room with a soundproof door. In 1993, thanks to a new prosecutor, charges of the suspected murder of Birgit Meier were brought against him. In 1970, he was sentenced to five-and-a-half years of juvenile punishment for rape. He also had a history of physical and sexual abuse, as well as charges of threatening others with weapons. Wichmann had spent time in a young offenders’ institution after threatening a woman with a knife and trying to strangle her. Despite his prior criminal record and extremely flimsy alibi for the night of Meier’s disappearance, the police did not dig deeper into Wichmann’s claims. She had even mentioned him in a phone call to a friend mere hours before her disappearance. The main suspect was Kurt-Werner Wichmann, a cemetery gardener who Meier had met at a party. Wolfgang Sielaff never gave up and spent the majority of his retirement trying to close the increasingly cold case. Speculation was rife that the two cases were connected but the police ruled it out at first, a move that Meier’s brother would later declare to be highly irresponsible. That case could not help but overwhelm the authorities, and the Meier family felt that Birgit’s disappearance was not treated seriously enough as a result. In the summer of that year, two separate couples were found murdered in the Göhrde State Forest in Lower Saxony. The potential culprit lay hidden for years, despite the fact that they had already interviewed him.Īt that time, Lüneburg the picturesque town in Northern Germany where Meier lived, was in the grip of terror. ![]() ![]() As with most cases like this, the suspicion initially fell upon Meier’s ex-husband, but that ended quickly, and the case was all but abandoned for decades. There was no evidence of wrongdoing, but the authorities had no answers to explain Meier’s mysterious absence. Meier’s brother Wolfgang Sielaff, then the head of the criminal investigation department in Hamburg, immediately rang the alarm bells and began treating the disappearance as a potential crime. Her daughter Yasmine went to her house and found the place empty with her car still in the garage. That night, the 40-year-old photographer disappeared. On 14th August, 1989, Birgit Meier was supposed to meet her estranged husband to discuss the terms of their impending divorce. If Christmas romances and Black Fridays aren’t your post-turkey day entertainment preferences, then there’s always murder. You could set your watch to the regularity of these drops on the streaming service. Yup, it’s that time of month again: the new Netflix true-crime release-palooza.
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