Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
A series of gruesome murders of five young female hitchhikers, three of whom had been raped before being strangled to death, took place between 1983 and 1990 in the Aachen area, which is why the media dubbed the perpetrator ‘The Strangler of Aachen’. The first victim was 18-year-old Marion Gerecht from Alsdorf, who was waiting by the roadside for a lift on 18 July 1983. She had no idea that this would be the last car journey of her life. Shortly afterwards, her body was found in a fishing pond with shards of windscreen glass in her bottom. Investigators reconstructed that, before her death, Marion had fought back fiercely against the killer and smashed the car’s windscreen with her feet. Yet, despite an intensive search, the police found no garage that had replaced a windscreen following the crime against Marion. Just six months later, on 15 February 1984, 15-year-old Andrea Wernicke from Würselen, who had been hitchhiking, was strangled. The perpetrator had got a taste for blood; his next victim, on 31 August 1984, was 17-year-old Angelika Sehl from Geilenkirchen. This murder was also featured in April 1985 on the ZDF programme ‘Aktenzeichen XY … ungelöst’. Over a year passed before the perpetrator struck again. This time, 18-year-old Marion Lauven from Aachen became his next victim. Five years then passed before the Aachen Strangler’s final victim, 31-year-old Sabine Neumann from Niederkrüchten, was killed on 19 June 1990. The series of murders came to an abrupt end with her. Almost 18 years passed without the police having any leads on the perpetrator. This was partly because the women were random victims who had no connection whatsoever to the murderer. All the women were hitchhikers simply looking for a lift, which is why the crimes were also referred to as the ‘hitchhiker murders’. But then chance came to the police’s aid. On 19 August 2007, a man was caught stealing scrap metal and willingly provided a saliva sample. The results of this sample, received on 23 August 2007, revealed something astonishing. The DNA matched the semen traces that had been secured at the five crime scenes. At last, the police had tracked down the murderer of the five women. He was Egidius Schiffer, a 51-year-old insurance broker from Viersen. During a search of his home, the police even found a receipt for a replaced windscreen, which had been fitted shortly after the first murder of Marion Gerecht. In addition, handkerchiefs bearing the initial ‘E’ were found, which had also been discovered in the clothing of one of the victims at the time. Egidius Schiffer was arrested and confessed to all the murders during police questioning. However, he retracted this confession before the trial began. He claimed that, as a self-confessed masochist, he had only made the confession because the punishment meted out by the court had aroused him sexually. Yet the weight of evidence against him was overwhelming. On 19 August 2008, Egidius Schiffer was sentenced by Aachen Regional Court to life imprisonment for five counts of murder and two counts of rape, one of which was already time-barred. Furthermore, the court found that the offence was of a particularly serious nature. Egidius Schiffer served his sentence at Bochum Prison, where, after 10 years, he was found dead in his cell on 23 July 2018. He had electrocuted himself with an electric cable in order to sexually gratify himself. This had caused cardiac arrhythmia, leading to cardiac death. Thus ended the bizarre life of the “Strangler of Aachen”, whose killing spree had come to such an abrupt end because Egidius Schiffer had married and the marriage had offered him stability.
