After presenting the murder of a student from Chiemgau on ZDF, the investigators from Soko and the broadcaster received around 90 calls. The investigations of the coming days and weeks will have to show whether a decisive tip leads the police to the perpetrator.
In the case of the murder of 23-year-old student Hanna W. from Aschau im Chiemgau, whose body was discovered in the Prien River on October 3, the police have received numerous new tips. Soko head Hans-Peter Butz presented the case, which continues to move and unsettle many people in Chiemgau and beyond, on Wednesday evening in the ZDF program “Aktenzeichen XY… unsolved”. According to the police headquarters in Rosenheim, around 50 tips were then received on the station’s telephones. At the same time, 38 people called the Rosenheim detective telephone, which had been set up for a long time.
The vast majority of the new clues related to a wooden wristwatch made by “Holzkern”, which the investigators attach great importance to the case. The watch, which also had a wooden bracelet, was later found near the parking lot of the Kampenwand cable car in the little river Bärbach, just a few meters away from the ring that Hanna W. had worn on the night of her death.
That night on October 3rd, Hanna W. visited the well-known club “Eiskeller” in her hometown of Hohenaschau and left it at around 2.30 a.m. The spot on the Bärbach, which later flows into the Prien and flooded that night, is on the comparatively short path from the ice cellar to Hanna W’s parents’ house. The student, who was visiting at the time, had walked it many times.
According to the police, it is not yet known whether the person who killed her with apparently massive violence followed Hanna W. out of the ice cellar or only met her afterwards. So far, the police have questioned around 200 of the estimated 600 to 800 guests at the club, and around 140 more have reported since last Friday via the online police portal set up for the case. For the most part, they have yet to be questioned as to whether they noticed anything in or around the icehouse that might be significant.
The Soko hopes that more guests will report in the coming days and weeks. Many of them can be seen on recordings made by the surveillance cameras in the ice cellar and by special party photographers who go through the clubs at night and later publish their pictures on certain party portals on the Internet. The photo that the police published of Hanna W. early on and that shows her in the ice cellar and still with the ring on her finger that was later found in Bärbach was taken by one of these photographers.
Soko leader Butz presented the case in the “Aktenzeichen” program on Wednesday evening as a so-called studio case. It usually takes several months for the broadcaster to produce its own film about a case. In the Hanna W. case, the police did not want to wait that long to be able to rely on the freshest possible memories from the club guests and other possible witnesses. According to the Bureau, it will be a while before the officials have followed up the new information and heard the other club visitors, despite intensive investigations and a large number of staff.