The Munich criminal police are not keeping the Sonja Engelbrecht case on file. On the contrary: 29 years after the initially untraceable disappearance and – as we now know – the murder of the then 19-year-old Munich student, more than 80 men from the Kipfenberg area have once again been asked to voluntarily provide DNA samples. According to police, the series test and interviews will take place on Wednesday.
Two years ago, near Kipfenberg, the remains of the murdered Munich student were found in a rock crevice high above the Altmühltal. And there are also items that give investigators possible clues to the murderer’s identity: plastic wrap, garbage bags and adhesive strips that still had white paint stuck to them, and a blue and black synthetic fiber blanket that showed the motif of a couple in love.
The blanket in which the body had been wrapped.
(Photo: Police)
DNA that did not come from Sonja Engelbrecht was found on these relics. So the genetic fingerprint of the perpetrator. “Yes, we have DNA evidence,” confirmed Munich Chief Inspector Roland Baader a year ago in the ZDF program “Aktenzeichen XY … unsolved”.
As early as autumn 2022, saliva samples were taken from around 50 people in the Kipfenberg area and other people who had previously been questioned as witnesses were checked again. But there was no one decisive “track person hit” back then. Nor was it the case with another police typing campaign a year ago.
The investigations regularly spark heated discussions in the 6,000-resident community. There was even speculation about a “hot lead” and even about an alleged arrest. Both wrong. But Sonja Engelbrecht’s murderer must have been unusually familiar with the Altmühltal. The location where the body was dumped in a forest near Grösdorf is far too remote to have been chosen at random by someone unfamiliar with the area. Hair from a wild animal hung from the ceiling. Former hunters, foresters and forest owners from the Kipfenberg area were then checked without results.
The white wall paint on the plastic film could indicate construction or renovation work that the perpetrator carried out in the spring of 1995, either privately or professionally. In the days before Sonja Engelbrecht’s disappearance in the early morning of April 11, 1995, the “Bauma” construction fair took place on Munich’s Theresienwiese.
Investigators from the Freiburg area know of a comparable case. There is also the murder of a young girl there Woman still not solved – there seem to be parallels to the Engelbrecht case. It is completely unclear whether these are coincidences or whether there are actually connections. It cannot be ruled out that a serial perpetrator could be responsible for the sexual murder of the young Munich woman.
Now people who had a connection to Kipfenberg in 1995 and who often spent time in the surrounding forests were contacted again. It will be exciting for the investigators to see who of the 80 men voluntarily gives a saliva sample in Kipfenberg – and who doesn’t.