On Friday, October 7, 1977, Anja B. from Midlum drove to the “Moustache” in Bremerhaven with her friend to celebrate. The 18-year-old moves to another restaurant from time to time. When he comes back to the disco after half an hour, the 16-year-old has disappeared. The police believe that the high school student wanted to hitchhike home. But she never got there.
In several motorway service stations, the officials later found paper towels on which someone hastily scrawled: “I need help, Anja”. Is it the Anja B. you are looking for? Years later, a girl shows up in a “Beate Uhse” shop in Munich and shows the saleswoman Anja B.’s ID card to prove that she is of legal age. So is Anja B. still alive? Or just someone else using their papers?
When participants in a tour group from their hometown think they recognize them in a belly dance show in Morocco, nobody from the group reacts. The officers of the criminal police in Schiffdorf, a small town near Bremerhaven, follow the village gossip, get the list of participants and make phone calls until they have a photo of the belly dancer. “She looked very similar to Anja,” said the chief inspector at the time in an interview with the star. “Even her mother thought so.” They contact their colleagues from North Africa via Interpol – and they actually track down the belly dancer. But it’s not Anja B.
The student is gone. Til today. Is it possible that she fell victim to a serial killer? In the years that followed, six other young women who were hitchhiking disappeared from the region between Bremen and Cuxhaven alone. Only one of them is later found drowned in a ditch.
Was she the victim of a serial killer? Or is there another explanation? In the years that followed, five more young women disappeared in the region:
The Cuxhaven police presented these cases on Wednesday, October 12th, in the program “Aktenzeichen XY…unsolved”. “In all cases we work closely with the relatives. They also expressed the wish to go public again,” says Rainer Brenner, head of the Cold Case investigation group, in a press release. “We are now taking the time and trying to shed light on the darkness. The relatives want certainty and we would like to support the goal mentioned.”
Watch the video: Nahlah Saimeh is a forensic psychiatrist and gave detailed information about her profession in the STERN CRIME Masterclass. In part one of the recording, she deals with the question of whether anyone can become a murderer and what are the red flags for homicide in relationships.
Sources: stern archive, Cuxhaven police
