From the Santa Rosa hitchhiker to Kai the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker, stories of people killed while traveling the open road have gripped us true crime fans for years. However, there is a much less known story of a killer who targeted young female hitchhikers in Germany in the 1980s and 1990s who had almost gotten away with his crimes.
Investigators in Germany during this time were not immediately surprised by a hitchhiking murderer when their first victim was discovered in a pond in an unspecified area of West Germany.
You see, there was a slew of unsolved hitchhiking murders in West Germany in the years leading up to this. For example, the Munsterland Murders, a series of unsolved murders committed in the Münster and Bentheim areas of West Germany from 1971 to 1974.
According to Wikipedia, The four known victims were all young, petite, dark-haired women in their 20s who had hitchhiked prior to their disappearances. They were later found strangled, without signs of sexual abuse, with their corpses posed in unnatural positions.
This case still remains unsolved.
Or there is The 'Heidelberg murders' - “an unexplained series of murders that occurred in Heidelberg in 1975. Like the Münsterland Killer, the Heidelberg murderer's victims were all young women who often hitchhiked; however, all of his known victims were blond and had visible traces of sexual assault.”
Still unsolved.
And only one year after these murders, young women’s bodies started appearing in the Rhine and Neckar rivers. Every victim was known to frequently hitchhike.
Yes, this one remains unsolved as well.
Which brings us back around to our first victim.
In July of 1983 near Alsdorf, a municipality of Aachen, 18-year-old Marion Gerecht was attacked while waiting at a bus stop late that night.
A man grabbed her from behind and dragged her into his car. Marion fought back, hard, breaking his windshield in the process. Although she had prevented him from raping her, the attacker still managed to strangle poor Marion. He then stripped her and dumped her in a nearby fishing pond.
Her murder appears to go cold from the minute she is pulled from the water.
The following year in February of 1984, 15-year-old Andrea Wernicke was killed after leaving the nightclub “Rockfabrik”(A music venue in Germany open from 1983 to 2019). She had a knack for hitchhiking after a night out, which should be safer than driving your drunk ass home. However, she was picked up by a monster that night who would rape her, strangle her, and dump her lifeless body in a nearby open field.
Again, her case was cold from the get-go. But this time we know that police obtained DNA from the attacker and kept it safe (It's assumed they found the same on Marion’s body as well).
On August 31st, 1984, 17-year-old Angelika Sehl was assaulted and murdered in a very similar fashion while hitchhiking late that night.
In December of 1985, 18-year-old Marion Lauven was abducted, raped, and killed in Aachen. She too had been standing at a bus stop. For an hour, the attacker drove across the country with her body in the trunk until he found a secluded area. He covered her bare body with leaves and left.
Investigators found DNA evidence on both of these girls’ bodies as well.
And finally, “On 16 June 1990, Sabine Neumann disappeared in Niederkrüchten on the way home from the "Inside" nightclub. The man had dragged the 31-year-old into his Mercedes, where he raped and strangled her. A year later, her skeletonized remains were found by passers-by in a forest near Wegberg. The body was identified based on dental records.”
Again, police found DNA evidence. But again, her case went cold.
Thankfully, unlike the 3 series of murders I briefly mentioned at the beginning, this is not the end of the story.
However, it is the alleged end of his murder spree. According to sources available, he didn’t kill again, but I find that hard to believe. Those people don’t just stop, right?
Years passed without movement in the case…17 years to be exact.
But then in 2007, everything changed.
Police arrested a man in mid-March for attempting to steal scrap metal in Heinsburg, another area of West ish Germany. His name was Egidius Schiffer, and up until that moment had a clean record. Whether or not he was required to, the man offered up a saliva sample—I assume in an act of good faith—to the investigators who of course processed it within the system.
In the meantime, Mr Schiffer was released after dealing with the theft charge and I bet he never thought about that day again.
Months went by and life went back to normal. But in August of 2007, police received a call from their lab. What came back shocked even the most hardened of detectives.
That man they caught stealing metal a few months ago, well turns out he was responsible for 5 unsolved murders over 17 years ago.
According to Wikipedia, He was arrested on 23 August for murder. During the interview, he confessed to the five murders but immediately recanted his confessions before the district court on the grounds that he had sadomasochistic tendencies. He only admitted to the murders because the thought of pre-trial detention and punishment had aroused him. Schiffer also alleged that he was forced to confess.
However, the court relied on the repeated confession of Schiffer which also had "disclosed perpetrator's knowledge", as well as the DNA traces present at the crime scenes. He was sentenced on 19 August 2008 to life imprisonment by the Aachen Regional Court for five counts of murder and two counts of rape.
And usually, this is where the story ends, but oh no! Mr. Schiffer made the papers again when he passed away in 2018, after serving only 10 years for 5 murders. But he hadn’t died under any normal circumstances.
You see, in addition to everything else this fucked up man did, he was also very much into autoerotic asphyxiation. All that’s interesting explains, “Schiffer, who has been kept in solitary confinement in Bochum, Germany for the past eight years, tied a cable from a lamp around his penis and nipples, according to police. The guards who unlocked Schiffer’s prison cell said that his body was still hooked up to live electricity when they entered.
A post-mortem revealed that the 62-year-old convict died of heart failure as a result of an electric current flowing through his chest.
“He removed a cable from his bedside table lamp. Then he wound it around his nipples and his penis and stuck the end in a power socket,” said prison spokeswoman, Candida Tunkel.
In performing this autoerotic sex act, it’s believed that Schiffer killed himself accidentally while masturbating while receiving electric shocks.”