The authors were professionally involved in solving the crimes described. They must not allow themselves to be guided by emotions. But the suffering of the victims makes pursuing the perpetrators a mission. After an hour-long autopsy of an abused and murdered child, evidence expert Ulrich describes the feelings of the officers involved as follows: "On the way back in the police car, no one says a single word. Everyone stares fixedly out of the window. But the same resolve burns in each of us: We have to find this perpetrator."
The Göhrde murderer
Püschel, who now has a professorship at the Medical School Hamburg, also doesn't leave his old cases alone. A series of murders particularly moves him. It's about the actions of the so-called Göhrde murderer. The cemetery gardener Kurt-Werner Wichmann from Lüneburg - Püschel calls him “KWW” - is said to have murdered two couples in the Göhrde forest area and another woman at another crime scene in the summer of 1989. Wichmann committed suicide while in custody in 1993 at the age of 43.
The investigation did not make any progress for a long time. Then the brother of the woman who was initially missing, the former Hamburg deputy police chief Werner Sielaff, conducted his own investigations together with a small team. Following a tip-off, the remains of Sielaff's sister Birgit Meier were found under a garage on Wichmann's former property in autumn 2017.
Evidence of further acts in the Schwerin area
Püschel is convinced that Wichmann has committed further murders, including in the Schwerin area. Even before the border was opened, he was up to mischief in the GDR. The forensic doctor reports that he received new information after true crime events in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The cases of four young women who were murdered between 1989 and 1991 were brought to his attention. A particularly important witness also came forward. Püschel is convinced that she was raped by Wichmann in 1991 but escaped from the serial killer. She recognized him from a police photograph.
Püschel and his colleagues claim to be able to do it better than the official investigators: "We know that public prosecutors and police departments are skeptical about private research. But the walls of silence, fear of revealing previous investigative errors or bureaucratic convenience must no longer stand between the victims and the truth." But like the detectives in a good crime story, they continually transmit their findings to the responsible police departments and public prosecutors.
Investigations against living suspects
The Lüneburg Police Department is investigating a living suspect in connection with the series of murders over 35 years ago. The investigators are currently waiting for the results of new investigations, says press spokesman Laurits Penske. Possible connections to other actions by the cemetery gardener are also being examined.
Püschel and Co. don't want to give up in the future either. “We stay on the trail, in the archives, in the dissecting room, in the laboratory and on the live stages of the “Blood Traces” tour,” they write at the end of their book. Further events have been announced until the end of next year. On his 50th professional anniversary, Püschel will report on his most spectacular cases on November 18th in Heide, Schleswig-Holstein.
