Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
In Germany, there are more than 3,000 unsolved homicides known as cold cases. One of them is the murder of 31-year-old Italian aerospace engineer Domenico Lorusso, which went down in German criminal history as the Isar Murder and continues to raise many questions to this day. But what happened? On May 28, 2013, around 10 p.m., Domenico Lorusso was riding his bike with his fiancée on the bike path along Erhardstraße, heading to their shared apartment in Haidhausen. Suddenly, a stranger with brown hair and eyes and a long coat approached Domenico’s fiancée near the European Patent Office and spat on her for no reason. Domenico immediately turned his bike around. He wanted to confront the man. When he caught up to him, a scuffle broke out between the two. Then, out of nowhere, the mysterious stranger pulled out a knife and stabbed it into Domenico’s heart, causing him to collapse to the ground. The unknown man then calmly walked to the Cornelius Bridge and disappeared. Shortly after Domenico was admitted to the hospital, he died that same night. The Cornelius Special Investigation Unit was formed, named after the bridge where Domenico’s killer had been seen for the last time. The task force consisted of 30 police officers who, over the following months, interviewed a total of 25,000 men aged 16 to 65, 5,700 of whom provided saliva samples. This was because investigators had been able to secure the killer’s DNA at the crime scene, as he had injured himself while stabbing Domenico. According to Y-chromosome analysis, the killer’s paternal ancestors originated from northeastern Europe, likely from the regions of northern Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. In addition, over 7,500 cell phone users and 64,000 cell phones that had been logged in nearby were checked. However, there were no leads on Domenico’s killer, whose death had shaken all of Munich. That is why Domenico’s murder case was featured twice on the ZDF program “Aktenzeichen XY … ungelöst” in 2013 and 2016, and in August 2017, the case was reconstructed once again on the RTL II program “Ungeklärte Fälle – Deine Hilfe zählt.” Yet there was still no trace of Domenico’s killer, which is why the special investigation unit was disbanded as early as December 2012 and the investigative team reduced to eight people. Then, years later, Domenico’s siblings, Vitina and Paolo Lorusso, received an email stating that Domenico’s killer was allegedly a former member of a metal band. In fact, on the evening Domenico was murdered, a heavy metal concert took place just a 10-minute walk from the crime scene. To this day, Domenico Lorusso’s killer has not been caught and remains at large on the streets of Munich. But hope springs eternal that this mysterious cold case will eventually be solved.
