“The Teufelstal Bridge on the A4 near Jena. In 1991, the body of a young girl was discovered here. It was 10-year-old Stefanie Drevs. She had disappeared two days earlier in Weimar. A case that even the criminal investigators cannot forget.”
“Yes, of course you always try to put emotions aside, otherwise you simply couldn’t approach the whole case objectively and rationally. But despite everything, he will never be forgotten. When I drive over the Teufelstal Bridge every day, the thought really stays with me.”
“They think about it every time they drive over this bridge. No matter which direction they look, they tell themselves that in 1991 a girl was thrown from this bridge.”
“27 years later, Berlin, Reinickendorf. It is March 4, 2018. A special operations unit of the Berlin police arrives. Hans-Joachim G. is to be arrested here today. He is suspected of being responsible for the abuse and murder of Stefanie Drevs in 1991.”
“because we had no objective evidence and because we could, um, literally, uh, only get him to confess through questioning, which is why we had to work so hard to get to this point.”
“For more than a year, investigators had been gathering evidence. They believe Hans-Joachim G. is the perpetrator, but they have no proof. If the man doesn’t confess to the crimes himself, it will all have been for nothing. Chief Detective Dirk Stiebitz from Weimar is to question the suspect.”
“How do we get him to confess? How do we talk to him? Well, this has been blown out of proportion. You can imagine he won’t be thrilled to show up after 27 years and confront him with this. And if they say, well, if you admit this, then leave after so many years, neither he nor they will like that. So they have to find a way to get him to open up.”
“The operation is meticulously planned. Nothing is left to chance. The investigators also brought in external consultants. Sabrina Rizzo from Hamburg is a negotiation and behavioral expert. She can read people.”
“My suggestion, again, was that I wouldn’t dictate anything, I would only advise him to overload him, because the moment I’m cognitively overloaded, I make mistakes, and I have to provoke that moment, and the mistake for someone who has killed is to confess.”
“Will the behavioral expert’s concept work? The special operations unit is bringing out the big guns.”
“Police, police, police!”
“When I was at G.’s during the raid, we later found out—he told us himself—he was in the kitchen. Uh, he had just gotten up and was cooking himself some eggs. Uh, and at that moment he saw a chainsaw shoot through the door, and uh, he couldn’t explain it. He then grabbed a clothes rail from a cupboard, a small iron bar, and stood in the officers’ way because he thought they were burglars.”
“It will all be over in 10 minutes. The investigators will be taken to the suspect’s location.”
“Hans-Joachim was in the apartment, restrained by the SEK (Special Deployment Commando), so he seemed somewhat helpless at first. Yes, uh, he was of course completely taken aback and not at all happy with the situation. That’s why we waited until we confronted him with the accusation, but he seemed relatively composed and I think he said in the apartment that he knew we were coming, that the police were coming and would question him.”
“The suspect had come to the attention of the cold case unit of the Jena police inspectorate in Thuringia. They are investigating three unsolved murders from the 1990s, so-called cold cases. These three children are involved: Stefanie Drevs, 10 years old; Bernd Beckmann, 9 years old; Ramona Kraus, 10 years old.”
“The head of this cold case investigation group is an experienced criminal investigator, Chief Detective Inspector Lutz Schnelle.”
“I was appointed head of this special commission for cold cases, and as head, one has a multifaceted function, primarily to assemble a high-performing, professional team. And, uh, I did that with colleagues from the Jena, Weimar, and Saalfeld fire departments.”
“They are using people they know. However, they are also bringing in people with different characteristics and skills. Around 40 investigators are being seconded from the Thuringian state police. They are supposed to finally solve the three child murders.”
“We worked on this case for over a year and a half, and there were highs and lows, both morally and in terms of motivation. One of the team leader’s jobs is, quite literally, to keep the motivation level very high every morning. And, uh, our slogan was: The perpetrator is in the file. We just have to find the right methodology, because we were convinced that our colleagues 20 or 25 years ago had done a good job. Um, they just couldn’t identify the perpetrator back then. So we have to look for the perpetrator in the file, and he’s somehow, somewhere, somehow, he’s in there.”
“Chief Detective Inspector Dirk Stiebitz is one of the investigators of the Cold Case Unit. He was already involved in the Stefanie Drevs case in 1991 at the Weimar Criminal Police.”
“And I have to say that this case never really left me in all the years leading up to the formation of the special commission, did it? Since I was involved in the search after the report was filed, I was actually the only one in the special commission who knew about this case firsthand, and every time I drove over the Teufelstal Bridge, for example, I started thinking: Who would do something like that? Where is he, huh? And why can’t we solve this? So it definitely left its mark on me. Of course, as a police officer, there are cases you forget. Well, because life is fast-paced, you say, yes, you forget things. But this case, for example, I could never forget.”
“Back to 1991. It’s August 24th, the day Stefanie Drevs disappears while playing in the park. When she hadn’t returned home by 5 p.m., her parents contacted the police. Dirk Stiebitz is on duty at the station as a young police officer.”
“I was on duty that weekend, on call, and uh, it went like this: In the early evening, Stefanie’s parents came to the police station and filed a missing person report. They reported that the child had not returned home from playing in the Goethepark area.”
“In missing persons cases, the first few hours are crucial. Commissioner Stiebitz knows: the longer a person is missing, the lower the chance of finding them alive.”
“In a case like this, of course, the warning lights go off. Um, well, I’m also a father. Many of us have small children at home, and you’re not just a police officer, you’re also a human being. And that’s why it’s actually a difficult undertaking to get a handle on things like this. But first, we have to suppress it, let me put it that way. That’s something you have to learn in the police force, and, uh, as I said, and, uh, in situations like this, when there’s a suspicion that something worse might have happened, which we assumed because the man mentioned it, Stefanie didn’t come home. Of course, we give it our all.”
“Investigators are beginning to reconstruct the events at the scene. Witnesses are being questioned.”
“Stefanie lived about 200 meters in this direction on Musäusstrasse, and back in August 1991, it was a warm summer day, and she was playing with other children, including her siblings and, uh, a friend, here at the so-called Ox Eye. Yes, the water was warm, and the children spent a lovely day here, first in the morning and then they came back again in the afternoon. As we later reconstructed, the perpetrator, according to his own statement, stayed up here behind the rock you see here for about two hours, observing the children, and, um, he made the decision here to speak to one of them.”
“The stranger initially engages the children in harmless conversation. After about half an hour, he asks if one of the children would show him the way to the nearby Belvedere Palace. As bait, the stranger offers 50 marks.”
“Stefanie came from a socially disadvantaged background, uh, she was saving up for a driver and needed the money, and 50 marks was a lot of money for a child back then, and therefore uh, she probably uh, ignored her fear and went with the man.”
“Goethepark in Weimar, 1991. When Stefanie hadn’t reappeared after an hour, the children alerted their parents, who then contacted the police. Extensive police measures were immediately initiated.”
“For example, that evening classmates were questioned again, the children were asked about their experiences. On Sunday, August 25th, we searched Goethe Park with the help of the riot police, conducted further investigations, and these continued on Monday, August 26th. Yes, I remember even flying in a police helicopter. We had requested it from Berlin because Thuringia didn’t have its own yet. It had to come from Berlin. But even that didn’t bring any results.”
“Stefanie seems to have vanished without a trace. The Teufelstal Bridge on the A4 near the Hermsdorf interchange. Less than 50 minutes from where Stefanie disappeared. The girl has been missing for two days. Children playing under the bridge discovered a body.”
“On the 26th, I think around 5 or 6 pm, I don’t remember exactly, but that’s roughly when the report came in that it was Stefanie, or rather that a child had initially been found, but it was then confirmed quite quickly that it was Stefanie.”
“Stefanie fell 48 meters from the Teufelstal Bridge. Her body lies about 8 meters from the edge of the bridge.”
“Yes, of course you are emotionally devastated. You tell yourself, well, we gave it our all, we couldn’t find the child, and at the same time, I don’t want to say anger, but something rises up inside you where you say, now it’s about finding the person who did something like this.”
“Yes, Stefanie’s body will be autopsied at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Erfurt.”
“The 1991 autopsy results indicated that Stefanie, who had, uh, fatally fallen from the bridge, apparently from a great height, was still alive, and that, uh, there might have been a sexual assault because, I believe, her panties were turned inside out. Externally, there was nothing to see, well, um, but her clothing had been altered and she had tranquilizers in her blood.”
“The toxicology report states that the girl had high concentrations of psychotropic drugs and sleeping pills in her blood. This suggests that Stefanie was unconscious when she fell from the bridge.”
“I then stayed with the special commission for about four weeks. Of course, we also checked local sex offenders and conducted alimony reviews. The special commission is searching for the perpetrator throughout Thuringia. A leaflet is being distributed to the public nationwide, asking for information about a vehicle with Dresden license plates that was seen at the crime scene. The case will also be featured on the ZDF television program “Aktenzeichen XY… ungelöst” (Case File XY… Unsolved).”
“Ladies and gentlemen, the first new case preoccupied the people of Weimar, the city of Goethe and his students, three-quarters of a year ago. Sabrina, Stefanie, and their siblings were spending the day in the upper part of the park near the famous Sphinx Grotto. The young man who had offered the two girls ice cream the day before was also in the park that afternoon. The young woman with the stroller later couldn’t clearly remember the stranger who had spoken with the two girls for some time. Subsequent police investigations revealed that Stefanie Drevs was likely taken unconscious to the Teufelstal motorway bridge the following night, about 35 km from Weimar. There, the perpetrator threw the child into the abyss. Stefanie died from the impact.”
“The crime has deeply shaken the population of Thuringia. The special commission in Jena has tried everything possible over the past nine months, but has made virtually no progress in catching the perpetrator.”
“And then colleagues from Weimar and Jena continued working on the case. If I remember correctly, until about March, April, uh, ’92. Yes. And uh, a lot was done, a lot of investigations uh were carried out, checks were made, but ultimately there were no leads uh that could have led to the perpetrator. There was nothing concrete, so unfortunately the files had to be closed at that time.”
“25 years later, the Stefanie cold case is reopened. Commissioner Schnelle has his hands full compiling the files from the original investigation.”
“The file had indeed been a large part of the respective department, but over the years parts of the file were repeatedly handed over to the public prosecutor’s office, partly to the court and partly to lawyers, so it took a long time until we had the complete file together.”
“In Stefanie’s case, there are only 18 files in total. The evaluation is sobering for the police officers.”
“The Stefanie D. case was unknown to us and, based on our initial impression, seemed to be the most hopeless case, the most hopeless case of all. There were no more objective leads. Um, we only had the findings and investigation results contained within the 18 binders.”
“Even the exact location where the body was found can no longer be determined. The Teufelstal Bridge was demolished and rebuilt in 1997. The surrounding area was also altered in the process. One question is crucial: Did Stefanie fall to her death in a terrible accident, or was she pushed? Because only if it was murder is the statute of limitations still in effect.”
“We no longer had the original bridge; the Teufelstal bridge had been renovated, so we said to ourselves, we will do everything possible, everything within our power and abilities, to be able to say, at least for ourselves and for the bereaved, that the case is closed and the perpetrator cannot be caught.”
“The university in Mittweida, Saxony, has a Faculty of Applied Computer and Biosciences. Its director, Professor Dirk Labudde, is internationally recognized as one of the leading data forensics experts. Can Labudde digitally reconstruct the old bridge for the special commission’s investigation? Can this clarify exactly what happened around the time of the fall?”
“It was a specific commission, namely to truly depict, to model, the crime scene from the 1990s, um, or early 1990s, and that’s really the crucial question. Yes, so to truly depict little Stefanie’s last minutes, in order to then be able to say, well, it was murder and it wasn’t, uh, and was she really pushed?”
“Yes, the topography of the Devil’s Valley is being precisely measured. Then the search for photographs of the old bridge begins. The initial yield is meager. Only a few pictures of the structure can be found.”
“But in the end, we were able to restore the topology and the bridge very well and very efficiently. And for the bridge, we found the original construction plans from 1938 in the archives. They said, okay, now we have all the dimensions and we’ll essentially recreate it on the computer.”
“Labudde, together with staff and students from his faculty, is getting to work.”
“It sounds so complicated, but it really isn’t. If we think about the gaming industry, we see scenes that are created on computers. And that’s exactly what we’ll be doing, won’t it? We’ll take the crime scene report, the whole photo album, and incorporate it all into a digital scene.”
“The digital Teufelstal Bridge now also makes it possible to reconstruct the events of the crime. Did Stefanie fall from the bridge in a terrible accident, or was she pushed?”
“So we made it relatively simple for ourselves. That’s not to say it was easy, but we started by saying: Okay, what is free fall, which you probably know from school? You take an object and let it fall from a precisely defined height. Yes, and then it lands at a precisely defined location. We conducted several simulations and then had some statistics and were able to determine that the actual location where the object was found had nothing to do with little Stefanie Drevs’ free fall.”
“The blue circle marks the location where the body was found, 8 meters from the former edge of the bridge. The reconstruction shows the free fall as it would have occurred if Stefanie had not been pushed. The point of impact would then be significantly closer to the edge of the bridge than the actual location where the body was found.”
“So we can’t definitively say whether it was thrown or pushed. What we can say with physical precision is that it was accelerated, yes, and had an initial velocity of 2.5 meters per second.”
“The physical calculations regarding the actual location where the body was found are unequivocal. Stefanie was murdered.”
“The reconstruction of the events, the possible events, was a key element for us in the further presentation of evidence and also in the conclusive conviction of the perpetrator. And Professor Labudde was able to state precisely, based on his data and the description, that the child was pushed, i.e., thrown over the bridge, by a third person, by one of the perpetrators.”
“But who is the perpetrator? Despite the partial success, it looks as if the murder of Stefanie Drevs will remain unsolved. A year after the cold case task force began its work, the head of the task force is having great difficulty motivating his team.”
“Of course, even as a manager you sometimes experience fluctuations in the chances of success, but we always motivated each other and said, uh, we can do it, we can do it, because the perpetrator is in the case.”
“Besides the Stefanie Drevs case, the cold case unit is also investigating the murders of Bernd Beckmann and Ramona Kraus. For the time being, the investigators have no choice but to concentrate on the far more extensive files of the other two cases. Chief Detective Claudia Becker-Fritz is evaluating these files, and a clue from these files of the other two cases will be crucial in the Stefanie Drevs case.”
“Since our investigations initially focused more on Bernd Beckmann, I started reading the entire file sometime at the end of November, beginning of December. I read every single lead, evaluated each one, determined what still needed to be investigated, where the investigation needed to resume, and sometime at the end of February – it really took a while – I got to lead 305.”
“Track 305 is Hans-Joachim G., a truck driver from Weimar. He has six prior convictions for child abuse. However, in the case of Bernd Beckmann, which is actually the subject of the file, he has an alibi.”
“Track 305 consisted of three folders, and I read them. I didn’t just read them once, I read them two or three times because I thought this track had been exhausted in the Bernd Beckmann case, but what’s written there actually fits the Stefanie case 100%.”
“Between 1969 and 1994, Hans-Joachim G. abused at least 12 children, almost exclusively girls between the ages of 8 and 12. The crimes took place almost without exception in Thuringia. Hans-Joachim G. always followed the same pattern. He would approach the girls, ask for directions, offer them money, and lure them into his car. He would then give the children sedatives, drive to a secluded location, and sexually assault them. The only difference from the Stefanie Drevs case is that the other victims survived. Hans-Joachim G. simply abandoned them after the crimes.”
“Those are exactly the points where I say: If this doesn’t fit, what does? Yes, you really get worked up inside. Yes, but then you tell yourself: ‘Now you have to stay calm.’ Now you read everything together and, above all, write everything down, because we’ve already had many leads, and it’s him, and it can only be him. This could be our perpetrator, who knows. Lead 120, no, then the next one is lead 143, and then you tell yourself, now you’re going to take it easier again. Take your time to sort everything out first.”
“Commissioner Becker-Fritz goes through the files again and again. There is no solid evidence, but she is convinced she has found the perpetrator.”
“I think it really took me a week or two to write this memo, and then I handed it over on March 7th. In 2017, I presented something to the head of the special investigation unit, where I said, I have something here that I need to share. I also wrote it down so everyone could read it, because of course you get nervous, because you think, man, this could be our number one suspect, right? And not in the Beckmann case, which is what we’re actually working on, but in a completely different case.”
“Special investigation team leader Schnelle is electrified. He has Hans-Joachim G. discreetly observed.”
“The more we studied the person, the more details of his modus operandi, his perpetrator behavior, became identical, also in comparison to Stefanie D.”
“Hans-Joachim G. is 65 years old today and lives in Berlin. He was last convicted in 1994 for multiple counts of child abuse. After years of therapy, he was released in 2008.”
“The man, Hans-Joachim G., was convicted after the fall of the Berlin Wall, spent a long time in prison, then received therapy, was released, I believe in 2006, and then, to put it simply, settled down, didn’t he? He found his way back to life, lives in Berlin, was a truck driver, so he seems completely inconspicuous, just a normal man.”
“Did the man really kill Stefanie Drevs? The investigators lack the final piece of evidence. They must arrest and interrogate Hans-Joachim G. If he doesn’t confess, all their work will have been for nothing. At precisely that moment, the head of the special investigation team, Schnelle, happens to be attending a lecture by a negotiation and behavioral expert who possesses an unusual talent: she can read people.”
“So, the presentation was about the concept I developed for being able to read people, which consists of four building blocks. And I presented these four building blocks in this talk. What do you need for that? Nonverbal communication is about being able to read emotions. What persuasive tool does the specific person I’m negotiating with need? Then I need questioning techniques, which is the third building block, namely situational rhetoric, and of course, the meaning of the answers. Why am I getting this answer and not another one? And the fourth building block is, of course: How do I correctly recognize incongruities, that is, between what is said and what I see? And incongruity is either an indication of a lie, or, if it’s conflicting, an indication of the truth. Uh, and that’s the concept summarized, and that’s what I presented.”
“Sabrina Rizzo normally develops negotiation strategies for top executives in the business world. After her presentation, Soko chief Schnelle approaches her. He has an unusual request: he wants her to share her knowledge with his investigators for the Stefanie Drevs case. Rizzo agrees.”
“They said, ‘Ms. Rizzo, please help us.’ To which I replied, ‘Give me everything you’ve found out, please give me all the documents – this has been agreed upon with the public prosecutor’s office, of course, hasn’t it?’ Otherwise, I wouldn’t be allowed any access. Everything you have, and I’ll read from it what I need.”
“For weeks, behavioral expert Rizzo immersed herself in the case and developed an interrogation strategy. During the intercepted phone conversations of Hans-Joachim G., she made an unusual discovery.”
“I listened to over four hours of audio recordings, didn’t I? I mean, phone conversations that are currently taking place. And even then, for some people, these clues aren’t important at all. But I had one sequence, a sequence, uh, where he was talking on the phone with his stepson.”
“And now it must be said that every person has a baseline in their body language, facial expressions, or voice. For legal reasons, we reconstructed this phone call. In it, Hans-Joachim G. offers his stepson a ride in his truck.”
“Yes, if you’d like to come along for a week. Like I said, it’s impossible without children. That’s obvious. But someone has to take care of the children.”
“Yes, I can understand that. Basically, Kim won’t be driving that route by truck anymore.”
“When I speak, I have images in my head, and when I remember, I become either sadder or happier, depending on what I’m talking about. So, the more intense the image in my head, the more my pitch adjusts up or down. And if the level of sadness drops below zero and goes even lower, then more than just the sexual abuse of children must have happened.”
“Children are no longer allowed in trucks, or in cars. Yes, that’s a rule I’ve sworn to forever. I simply don’t want it anymore. And that should be clear to everyone, even those who don’t know.”
“Now I have to listen very carefully. The moment something changes, I listen very closely. And in this phone call, he didn’t even break off into grief, but went even deeper into grief. So, if you imagine you have a baseline, now it shifts into grief because he’s talking about children, and now it goes even deeper into grief, and then I have to say to myself, whoa, that was a real revelation.”
“Sabrina Rizzo now knows how the suspect thinks. She believes it’s possible he’ll confess. This is the investigators’ only chance, as the existing evidence wouldn’t be sufficient for a trial. Rizzo is developing an interrogation strategy for the day of the arrest.”
“Ms. Rizzo analyzed the person in great detail and told the, uh, interrogators, the future interrogators, not only to ask exactly the right questions at the right time, but also that the perpetrator would react in a certain way. And we have to prepare ourselves for that emotionally, but also in terms of interrogation tactics.”
“The day arrives on March 4, 2018. Hans-Joachim G. is to be arrested. Behavioral expert Rizzo has proposed questioning him immediately after his arrest in his apartment. Two experienced investigators from the special commission are on standby so that the interrogators can be the first to make contact with the suspect during the raid.”
“That was a tip from Ms. Sabrina Rizzo, which was very important because it meant that the contacts for the two interrogators were already in the apartment.”
“Chief Detective Inspector Stiebitz is on site during the operation. Is he supposed to play the role of the good guy during the interrogation?”
“I have to say, I’ve been involved for a long time. At first I thought, well, what’s the point? I mean, what’s she going to tell you? In retrospect, I have to say it was very important because Rizzo was able to analyze this man based on her own characteristics.”
“But first, it depends on the men of the Berlin SEK. The other members of the special commission are monitoring the operation from their offices in Berlin and Weimar.”
“You wait the next few minutes to see if everything went well, if you were able to arrest the perpetrator without injury, and what the initial conversations revealed. You can imagine the inner turmoil.”
“Hans-Joachim G. is completely unaware. The behavioral expert is now focusing on stress. She calls it cognitive transference.”
“The police, the SEK officers, then opened the apartment and it took about 10 minutes. Then the officers came downstairs, handed us the key and gently told us that Hans-Joachim G. was in the bedroom.”
“Behavioral expert Rizzo planned the choreography of the interrogation down to the smallest detail. Nothing is left to chance.”
“Um, yes, for example, as I said, I was supposed to sit on the left side next to the perpetrator because I can see that the person’s emotional side is on the left, and if you address him from the left, he reacts more emotionally than if I’m standing there. That’s very interesting. Well, it worked, didn’t it? Because he had more or less built up trust in me, and then he opened up to me.”
“Will the Rizzo method work? The interrogation begins in the suspect’s bedroom.”
“Here, my colleague confronted him with the circumstances of the crime and also informed him of his rights as a suspect. Very important. His rights were explained to him as well. I sat down next to him and, um, he initially denied it. He said he couldn’t remember anything, that he’d never been there, etc. And, uh, yes, I’d say after a short time he said he had another secret. That’s how it all started. And then I asked him: What kind of secret? He said, uh, he’d once been from Bad Berka, there had been a child there, and I said: No, no, let’s talk about Weimar now. And then he started: Yes, there was a story in ’91 at the Ochsenauge in Weimar, and a child asked for berries, and from that moment on we knew we were on the right track with him, because he had already admitted to having had contact with the child. So we knew he was the perpetrator.”
“The first major hurdle has been cleared. Hans-Joachim G. has made a partial confession. He does not want to admit to the murder.”
“Yes, of course, I would say that for me personally and also for my colleague, you’re naturally very tense, that has to be said. Yes, you never know how the man or the perpetrator will react. Will he open up, will he refuse to give a statement, and when he then admitted to the contact, well, you do feel, uh, it’s perhaps a feeling of elation, that might be saying too much, but you do feel good. Above all, I knew that after 27 years I was sitting across from the person I could never forget.”
“Yes, Hans-Joachim G. is being taken to the State Criminal Police Office 1 on Keithstrasse in Berlin. The interrogation is being recorded. For legal reasons, the following recordings are verbatim reenactments.”
“So my colleague and I sat with him in the media interview room. His rights were explained to him again. I remember that he, uh, let’s say, then really got going. He cooperated for hours, I think three hours. He also said several times that he didn’t want a lawyer, and that’s how he described it.”
“And then I went with her. To the car.”
“Yes, indeed. What did you tell the child on the way?”
“We didn’t speak while we were walking. We actually, uh, I, uh, she was supposed to walk a bit behind me.”
“So you took her by the hand?”
“No, no, she walked behind me, about 2 or 3 meters away, so it wouldn’t look like I was going on a hike with the child.”
“What Hans-Joachim G. doesn’t suspect: He is being watched behind the mirror by Sabrina Rizzo.”
“During the interrogation, she also stood behind a mirror and observed his gestures; how did he react to questions? Yes, what could be a lie? What is the truth? Yes, for example, yes, she is a professional in this field.”
“What did you actually want to do with the child?”
“Uh, at first I didn’t want to do anything with the child, and then I wanted to undress. If I had reached my climax that quickly, how do you say it, then it would have been over. That would have been the end for me, because after that it’s over. I’m no longer interested.”
“In the video interrogation, he still possessed extensive and detailed knowledge after all these years, which was completely incomprehensible or even beyond my grasp, wasn’t it? So there are perpetrators who commit a crime and after three years say: ‘I don’t remember it anymore,’ but he knew almost to the minute what had happened.”
“What did Stefanie say about it? Hans-Joachim G. testifies that he gave Stefanie sedatives. Then he administered an overdose to the child.”
“During questioning, he himself said, just as he described the child and even reenacted on the chair, how the child was after being given the tablets, that the child was sitting in the car and chattering, right? And he himself admitted that he said afterwards that it was Ms. Tan or Ms. TN-Letten who had been used, that he himself had taken two tablets and given her an unknown quantity, and that she had taken them, and that he himself then noticed after the two tablets that they were already having a certain effect on her head, after just two tablets, and the child perhaps took 10 or 15.”
“Does Hans-Joachim G. himself fear that he poisoned Stefanie?”
“That damn [__] seemed suspicious to me. I hope I’m not doing anything wrong now. I don’t want her to die, that was part of the development, wasn’t it?”
“Did he push Stefanie off the bridge to distract from the drug poisoning? At this point in the interrogation, Hans-Joachim G. begins to contradict himself.”
“We were, of course, familiar with the reconstruction by Professor Labudde from Mittweida University. In summary, the expert opinion concluded that there was an impulse, which means the child couldn’t have fallen off the bridge on its own, right? And Hans-Joachim G. initially testified in his video interrogation that he had dropped the child off in an emergency stopping bay and told the child to walk across the bridge to the nearby rest area on its own, and then he drove off. That was his first version.”
“As I walked to the car, she probably tried to stand up. She’d tried a few times before, but it never quite worked. So I brought this blanket, or a short one, you know, and put it on my shoulder so I wouldn’t get cold.”
“After more than three hours, the interrogation has reached a dead end. Behavioral expert Rizzo repeatedly shared her observations with the investigators. The suspect is clearly lying.”
“But I’d already done that, and she already had her feet on the ground. I said: ‘Stay, stop for a moment, collect yourself a bit, and then go back to Raschwetter.’”
“Now I have to ask myself: What can I do to make him take us seriously? And then I told, um, one of the interrogators, to please slap his thigh and say: ‘This is too ridiculous, uh, I’m outta here, I’m not going to be made a fool of any longer.’ That triggers a reaction in the other person, especially in him, doesn’t it? Not in everyone, but he felt stress and, uh, respect. And that’s exactly what he needs to feel, yes.”
“Yes, that was the answer. They can’t possibly know something like that. Damn it.”
“I want both, I want it now. I’ll tell him.”
“I’m telling him the truth. Either it was too high on the railing, in which case it probably got stuck there.”
“Behavioral expert Rizzo is not letting up. Hans-Joachim G. is on the verge of making his final confession.”
“A person who moves slowly speaks slowly. The fact that they need to do things slowly because they aren’t very fast triggers a stronger emotional response in that person than in someone who is already fast. And the two essential words in this brevity are ‘now’ and ‘only’. Yes, so ‘now you have the chance’ or ‘only here can you do it’. Yes, so scarcity in both a temporal and a spatial sense.”
“This experience has left such a lasting impression on you, you certainly haven’t forgotten it. And now it’s time to clear the air. That’s what matters.”
“If you imagine that a person has remained in a certain posture for a very long time to control themselves, and the other person says something that triggers an emotional reaction in them, then something in their body will move. And I saw exactly that movement and said, um, at least I knew from the body language, uh, we’re very close.”
“This impression is so profound for you, you certainly haven’t forgotten it. And now it’s time to clear the air. That’s what matters. Not just the hand gesture, but, and this is much more crucial, the ‘I’ll say it’ moment, the golden moment, the moment when the other person considers whether to say it now or not? And you can recognize that by one thing, namely when their eyes move down and to the left, and that’s exactly what he’s doing here.”
“Rizzo is right. Shortly afterwards, Hans-Joachim confesses to the crime.”
“I then made him promise to tell the truth and to tell us today that he did it. Let me finish, you pushed Stefanie off the bridge, is that the truth?”
“Yes that is correct.”
“Yes, and then I simply received a WhatsApp message containing that. Without saying a word, we hugged each other and said, yes, we were on the right track with this investigation we’d been conducting for a year now; we’d solved a murder, a child’s murder. Yes, that was so important. That one word was incredibly influential, even today. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.”
“On the same day, investigators brought Hans-Joachim G. to Weimar. They also drove across the Teufelstal Bridge.”
“We were driving along the A9, A4 Teufelstal, past the crime scene. My colleague said, ‘Can you show us again the spot where you threw the child down here?’ So, where it happened, and then we drove onto the bridge, the Teufelstal Bridge, and he was driving at a walking pace, and at some point he said, ‘Stop, this is where it was.’ That was the spot. Yes. And, uh, I think someone burst into tears and said they had the death of a child on their conscience. That happened in the car.”
“While Hans-Joachim G. is being brought before the magistrate, the investigators from the cold case unit are now carrying out another important task. Stefanie Drevs’ mother is being informed.”
“The woman reacted with great relief. Relieved in the sense that she now has the certainty that we have identified the perpetrator, and she reacted with relief that, um, her daughter’s murderer has been caught.”
“The case was heard before the Gera Regional Court in 2018. In its verdict, the court took into account the perpetrator’s age and his previous prison sentences. Hans-Joachim G. was sentenced to 12 years in prison for murder. He received the verdict without showing any emotion. Stefanie Drevs would be 43 years old today. The work of the cold case unit cannot bring back her lost life. But the outstanding work of the Thuringian investigators shows that it is never too late for justice. Uh.”
