Dieter Zurwehme

Dieter Zurwehme (2 July 1942 – 2020) was a German criminal and spree killer. He was responsible for the murder of five people and numerous other serious crimes and gained nationwide attention in the first half of 1999 following a several-month escape from custody. The escapes were followed closely by the media and announced an arrest reward of 10,000 Deutsche Mark.

Biography

Early life

Zurwehme was born in Bochum, the son of a German woman and a Polish forced labourer. He was put up for adoption at four weeks old, after the woman's husband realised that the baby was the result of an affair. He grew up with adoptive parents in Ottbergen, a district of Höxter in the Weser Uplands. His father, a Reichsbahn conductor, was reportedly overly strict and forbade his son from playing with other children to keep it quiet in the house. He became a criminal when at the age of 12, when he tried to rob a 15-year-old. At 16, he was given his first juvenile sentence for theft and embezzlement, receiving six-to-thirty months to be served at a youth detention center. He escaped and evaded police by sleeping in caverns, gardens and empty vacation homes. Zurwehme was able to cross the border into France and while in Metz, he attempted to enlist in the French Foreign Legion with false documents stating he was 21, but was denied when the age discrepancy was discovered.

First murder and imprisonment

In November 1972, Zurwehme robbed a real estate agency in Düren, where he killed an employee by stabbing her five times in the neck after she screamed for help. Because of this, he was sentenced in 1974 to life imprisonment for murder. At the same trial, he was also convicted of the 1965 assault and rape of his girlfriend, several other sex and robbery offenses as well as vehicle thefts by the district court of Aachen.

During detention at the Bielefeld-Brackwede Prison, psychologists saw an apparent change of personality; for example, he learned Latin and French in prison and received prison leaves from 1988 onwards for his good leadership. In February 1990, Zurwehme was arrested while on his 14th furlough in Bergheim, after he attempted to abduct a woman with a gas pistol. A psychologist judged that this incident was simply "mystifying, as human actions occasionally are" and "not an expression of residual criminal energy", recommending no changes to furlough privileges. On 10 September 1996, prison leaves were temporarily revoked after Zurwehme made "concerning statements" during therapy, such as that he thought about raping "attractive women" he saw on the street and often considered not returning to prison. In 1997, he was transferred to an open prison and began working as a restaurant cook during furlough in Bielefeld. On 27 August 1998, Zurwehme's petition for an early release was denied by a judge, who stated that he believed that the defendant was "incapable of [...] recognising, dealing with, and resolving personal conflicts" and was likely to reoffend if released. Despite this, the higher court of Hamm overruled this decision in October and ordered another hearing to be held in December.

Escape, manhunt and mass murder

On 2 December 1998, Zurwehme did not return from his 166th clearance. His track was lost quickly and the police investigation was unsuccessful. After his escape on 21 March 1999 in Remagen, he killed four older people: one 71-year-old who recognized him was stabbed in his villa he lived in. When the victim's cellphone rang, Zurwehme answered and told his victim's wife that something had happened to her husband, and that he wanted to tell her everything else in a personal conversation. After the shocked wife had given him her address, he went to her house and killed her, her brother and sister-in-law the same way. Then he continued his escape, where he kept afloat with money from robberies and temporary jobs. In addition, he committed a rape, and fled to several places: Bochum, Remagen, Lindau, Dessau, Frankfurt, Calw, Baden-Baden, Freiburg im Breisgau and Cuxhaven. On 11 May 1999, police tracked down Zurwehme's last known location in Lindau after a young girl turned in a wallet with forged documents, but the target had left town by this point. Through several determining margins the police investigation was even more difficult. In the weekly program Kripo live on MDR Fernsehen, on the evening of 27 June 1999, the public was called upon to report pertinent observations about complicity, known to be travelling with a walking stick and a backpack.

Friedhelm Beate

Amongst the numerous callers was a waitress from Heldrungen, who stated that he stayed at a hotel where she worked at day and slept in overnight with a hiking stick and a backpack. During the same night, the hotel guest, 62-year-old Friedhelm Beate from Cologne, was shot dead in his hotel room by local police officers on the assumption that he was the fugitive.

Other crimes and sightings

On 30 June, a locally known street painter was arrested in Dresden after being mistaken for Zurwehme.

On 21 July in Stadthagen, Zurwehme attempted to rape a 15-year-old girl, but the victim kicked her assailant in the groin, causing severe bleeding. On 25 July, he attacked a 19-year-old woman with the same intention, but was scared off by a passerby.

On 27 July, he was tracked to a maize field in Hespe, but escaped a large-scale police operation. Two more high-effort searches, one held by local police between Wunstorf and Barsinghausen and another by state police in Berlin and large swaths of Westphalia, fail to locate any trace of the suspect. In the two following weeks, false reports of Zurwehme reached an all-time high, with reports on 31 July including Berlin, Bochum, Hanover, Cologne, Lehrte und even Mallorca.

On 1 August, another false arrest was made, this time a farmhand in Göttingen. Three days later, another innocent man was held on suspicion of being Zurwehme in Gersfeld. Two days of intense searching in Limburg-Weilburg district end on 4 August with no concrete leads.

On 7 August, multiple callers claimed to have seen Zurwehme in a line bus in Nienburg. On 16 August, a rape attempt in Cuxhaven was connected to Zurwehme, but a police search in nearby northern Hamburg yielded no results.

Capture

On 19 August 1999, a car driver in Greifswald, who only a few days earlier had seen his picture in a television report, saw Zurwehme. The summoned police officers were able to arrest and detain the criminal. When asked about his ID card, Zurwehme recognized his hopelessness and said that: "I am the one you seek". By virtue of four counts of murder, aggravated rape, robbery, rape, coercion and false imprisonment, the district court of Koblenz condemned Zurwehme in June 2000 to life imprisonment with subsequent preventative detention. He remains imprisoned at a prison in Bochum. On February 15, 2001, Zurwehme married a waitress from the Berlin district of Spandau.

Another fourfold murder of Dutch holidaymakers which occurred in a country house in Southern France during Zurwehme's escape on 22 May 1999, was also initially associated with him. However, a local farmer was arrested for the crime and this suspicion was later excluded.

In late 2020, Zurwehme died of natural causes at a prison hospital in Fröndenberg, aged 78.

Press articles

• Peter Brock: "The last process" in www.berliner-zeitung.de (Berliner Zeitung). Accessed on February 20, 2010 (in German)
• "The trace is lost and lost again" in spiegel.de (Spiegel Online). Accessed on February 20, 2010 (in German)
• "Zurwehme got married in prison" in www.berliner-zeitung.de (Berliner Zeitung). Accessed on February 20, 2010 (in German)
• Detlef Sieverdingbeck, Thomas van Zütphen: "Trust in a killer" in focus.de (Focus). Accessed on February 20, 2010 (in German)
• "Clearance despite warnings" in spiegel.de (Spiegel Online). Accessed on February 20, 2010 (in German)