Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
In June 2010, two brutal attacks on female taxi drivers in the Lake Constance area shook the whole of Germany. The perpetrator, 28-year-old Andrej W., went down in criminal history as the taxi murderer of Lake Constance. He is still considered highly dangerous to the general public and is currently serving his sentence at the North Baden Psychiatric Center in Wiesloch. No employee of the forensic psychiatric center in Wiesloch is allowed to be alone in a room with the convicted murderer and rapist, as this unassuming young man is extremely violent. But what happened? On June 8, 2010, Andrej W. got into the car of 44-year-old taxi driver Heidi F. at the train station in Singen. He directed her to a dirt road on the outskirts of town. There, he stabbed her several times in the neck with a knife and tried to kill her by breaking her neck. When he thought she was dead, he dragged the woman out of the car and assaulted her while she appeared to be dead. He then fled. But Heidi F. survived, although she was left paralyzed on one side of her body. The next day, he wanted 32-year-old taxi driver Zana O. to drive him from Friedrichshafen to Mainau Island. During the trip, the mother of two was supposed to stop at the parking lot of Hagnau Beach Park. As with his first victim, he stabbed the woman several times in the neck. Then he tried to rape her. He then fled to his grandmother’s house in Senftenberg, where he hid in her garden shed. Four days later, the police arrested him there while he was watching soccer on TV. A DNA sample had led the police to him so quickly. He had provided a saliva sample in 2007 in Singen due to minor thefts. On February 8, 2011, Andrej W. was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Regional Court in Konstanz. According to an expert, he suffered from severe personality disorders, including pathological sexual fantasies and necrophilia, and was therefore admitted to a psychiatric ward. Just one year later, the young, slight man made headlines again with his spectacular escape. Andrej W., who was allowed to take his daily walk in the courtyard from 10 to 11 a.m., used this opportunity to free himself from his ankle bracelet with the help of a nail. Despite video surveillance, he was able to climb the 4-meter-high courtyard wall by unhinging a toilet door. He had no problem getting past the second 5-meter-high wall with barbed wire, as it had a 7-meter-wide gap due to construction work. Andrej W. actually managed to escape from the high-security wing of the closed psychiatric ward in Wiesloch. A search operation was immediately launched with 50 officers, supported by helicopters, thermal imaging cameras, and dogs, to find the ticking time bomb that was Andrej W. as quickly as possible. After 36 hours on the run, two plainclothes police officers discovered Andrej W. on a bicycle in Zuzenhausen, about 10 kilometers from his escape location, at around 10:30 p.m. After a short car chase, they apprehended Andrej W. and arrested him. He remains in a secure psychiatric ward to this day. But who is this man with the baby face and piercing green eyes? Before his cruel crimes, Andrej W. was considered a petty criminal who was born in Russia and came to Germany at the age of 18. There, he committed several thefts between 2003 and 2007, which led to him being placed on a nationwide wanted list. He then went into hiding in his native Russia for three years and only returned to Germany in the spring of 2010, where he shortly thereafter began to act out his sexual fantasies involving dead women, as evidenced by videos found on his confiscated laptop. Even his attending physician sees only one option for Andrej W., namely chemical castration.
