It is rare for a case to concern so many people for so long: in 2001, nine-year-old Peggy disappeared from Upper Franconia Lichtenberg on the way home from school. In 2004, Ulvi K. was convicted as a murderer, but after the case was reopened, the mentally retarded son of an innkeeper was acquitted ten years later and released from the psychiatric hospital in 2015. Then a mushroom picker found bones that came from Peggy in a forest in the Thuringian district of Saale-Orla-Kreis.
May 2001: Nine-year-old Peggy disappeared on May 7. At 12:50 p.m. she left the school building with a pink backpack on her back. According to the police, she was last seen near her parents’ house on Lichtenberg’s market square at 1:15 p.m. Hundreds of police officers searched for the girl for weeks. The German army even deployed Tornados.
August 2001: The mentally retarded son of an innkeeper couple, Ulvi K., is arrested. He admits to having sexually assaulted Peggy and other children.
February 2003: The Hof public prosecutor’s office charges Ulvi K with murder.
October 2003: The trial begins in the Hof regional court. The first case collapsed after a few days of negotiations due to incorrect composition of the court.
:Peggy case: The trauma of Lichtenberg
The investigation blunder is an embarrassing story. But it only briefly obscures the situation in the girl’s small hometown – people there have been suffering from the child’s disappearance and its consequences for 15 years.
November 2003: The process begins again.
April 2004: After 26 days of trial, Ulvi K. was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in a circumstantial trial. The Hof regional court believes that he abused Peggy and then killed her out of fear that she would betray him. It is based primarily on a confession that the defendant made during police interrogation but retracted in court. Doubts remain. For example, because his lawyer was not there for the confession and there is no audio recording. Ulvi K. has not yet started his life sentence. He is in the forensic psychiatric ward Bayreuth for sexual abuse of children.
September 2010: A witness retracts his statement and makes serious allegations against the investigating authorities. Ulvi K.’s fellow patient at the Bayreuth district hospital claimed that he had confessed the murder to him. Now he says: The police pressured him to make the statement and promised him that he would be released. There will be no resumption initially.
July 2012: The public prosecutor’s office is again investigating the Peggy case. Its main focus now is to find the body.
April 2013: Attorney Michael Euler is applying to the Bayreuth Regional Court to reopen the case. He works for the citizens’ initiative “Justice for Ulvi”. Euler relies, among other things, on defense witnesses who claim to have seen Peggy on the afternoon of her disappearance, but were never heard in court. Meanwhile, investigators are digging up the backyard of a house on Lichtenberg’s market square. meters deep. They come across a few bones, but they probably come from an old cemetery, not Peggy’s. The homeowner is also the focus of the investigation: the pensioner was in prison for child abuse.
September 2013: It becomes known that there is another suspect: He is in custody in Saxony-Anhalt because he abused his daughter. His parents’ house is searched. The then 17-year-old often visited his half-brother in Lichtenberg, Peggy’s neighbor, and was friends with the girl. His half-brother is now also considered a suspect.
December 2013: The Bayreuth regional court orders the case to be reopened – and refers, among other things, to the fellow patient who retracted his statement in 2010. It also cites the possibly incorrect assessment of the expert who declared Ulvi K.’s confession in court to be credible.
January 2014: The police open a grave in the cemetery in Lichtenberg in search of Peggy’s body. An old woman was buried here on May 9, 2001. But the investigators find no trace of the girl.
April 2014: Surprisingly, the Bayreuth public prosecutor’s office relieves the colleague who was previously responsible for the case. At the same time, two journalists made serious allegations against the presiding judge. The retrial begins on April 10th at the Bayreuth regional court.
:Peggy’s mother’s lawyer: “taken back 15 years”
How did the DNA trace of the NSU terrorist Uwe Böhnhardt get close to the girl’s remains? The connection remains a mystery. Now Peggy’s mother has spoken out for the first time.
May 2014: The expert partially corrects his report and the court ends the taking of evidence prematurely. “To this day, not a single piece of material evidence has been found to support Ulvi K.’s confession at the time,” it says. The public prosecutor and defense demand an acquittal, and the chamber agrees.
February 18, 2015: The Bayreuth public prosecutor’s office is suspending its investigation. However, an investigation against unknown persons is being maintained in order to pursue possible leads.
March 19, 2015: The Bamberg Higher Regional Court decides that the originally convicted man should be released from the psychiatric hospital.
June 3, 2015: The ZDF program “Aktenzeichen XY… unsolved” takes up the Peggy case.
June 16, 2015: A former suspect in the Peggy case is sentenced to seven months in prison without parole for sexual abuse of a child in another case. In the Peggy case, he is no longer considered a suspect.
May 2016: A man formerly suspected in the Peggy case is demanding compensation of more than 20,000 euros. In 2013, investigators searched his property in Lichtenberg several meters deep in search of the missing girl. The investigators found bone remains. But they didn’t come from Peggy.
July 2, 2016: A mushroom picker finds skeletal remains in a forest in the Thuringian district of Saale-Orla-Kreis.
July 4, 2016: Police and prosecutors say the bones “most likely” came from Peggy. This is what initial forensic medical examinations and findings at the site revealed.
July 12, 2016: Peggy’s skeleton that was found is not complete. This is what the head of the Peggy special commission, Uwe Ebner, says. The girl’s clothing was also missing, as was any trace of the nine-year-old’s school bag. “Unfortunately, the decisive information is still pending,” says senior public prosecutor Herbert Potzel.
July 14, 2016: After another report on the Peggy case in the television program “Aktenzeichen XY… unsolved”, around 80 tips were received by the special commission in Bayreuth. Some of them give “reason for further examinations,” say the investigators.
October 13, 2016: DNA traces of suspected NSU terrorist Uwe Böhnhardt are found at the site where the skeleton was found. This is reported by the Upper Franconia police headquarters and the Bayreuth public prosecutor’s office. The marks were discovered on a scrap of cloth lying close to the girl’s remains.
8 September 2017: The police have finally ruled out a connection between Peggy’s murder and NSU member Uwe Böhnhardt. The DNA trace “clearly” came from one of Böhnhardt’s headphones, according to the investigators. How it got to where it was found remains unclear. In the meantime, a measuring stick was suspected as a transmitter, but has since been ruled out.
September 13, 2018: The police are pursuing a new lead: investigators are searching several properties in the districts of Wunsiedel and Hof. The focus is on a 41-year-old man who was questioned several times in 2001 after the girl’s disappearance. Ulvi K., who was initially convicted of the crime in 2004 but was acquitted in a retrial in 2014, is said to have named him as an accomplice after Peggy’s disappearance. After his questioning, the 41-year-old was initially released.
September 21, 2018: The 41-year-old admits that he took Peggy’s body to a forest in Thuringia and forgave it there.
December 11, 2018: Manuel S. is arrested. The investigators see strong suspicion that the 41-year-old himself was involved in Peggy’s murder as a “perpetrator or accomplice.”
December 12, 2018: The suspect retracts his partial confession, and his lawyer accuses the police of putting S. under massive pressure during the questioning.
December 24, 2018: Manuel S. is released from custody. The Bayreuth district court rejected a complaint from the public prosecutor’s office.
February 21, 2019: Ulvi K.’s lawyer reports several investigators. They are said to have played a secretly recorded phone call of their client to others. At the end of June 2019, the Würzburg public prosecutor’s office stopped its investigation again: there was no evidence of criminal behavior on the part of the investigators.
October 22, 2020: The Bayreuth public prosecutor’s office announced that it had stopped the investigation – more than 19 years after the then nine-year-old Peggy’s disappearance. The suspicion against Manuel S. could not be substantiated. Since his name was also mentioned publicly by investigators, his lawyer is considering suing the Free State for damage to his reputation.
6 April 2022: Almost 21 years ago, the then nine-year-old girl Peggy disappeared – on April 6, 2022, her remains were buried in a secret location. “We wish that peace would return and we would be given the space to grieve,” said the statement from Peggy’s mother and the family.
May 22, 2024: Peggy’s mother fails with a lawsuit for damages against an ex-suspect. A civil division of the Hof regional court rejected the woman’s lawsuit as unfounded. She was unable to prove that the defendant had taken the child’s body to a forest in 2001.
(With material from the dpa news agency)