Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
A sex murder that remained unsolved for 20 years was one of the great mysteries in German criminal history. In the early morning of July 13, 1983, a firefighter discovered the body of 25-year-old Karen Oehme, daughter of Wolfgang Oehme, CEO of Esso AG in Germany, in a cornfield on the L 600 near Dülmen-Merfeld. Karen Oehme had been strangled and raped at least twice. Her white VW Beetle was found a few meters away on a farm road. Only the car keys were missing. Homicide detectives secured a large amount of semen in the young woman’s vagina and a bloody handprint on the back of her T-shirt. In addition to jeans fibers, reddish-blonde hair was also found, which clearly did not belong to the brunette Karen Oehme. The police also found vomit at the scene of the crime. It consisted of potatoes, onions, meatballs, and a corn kernel. Since the perpetrator had left many clues behind, the police were confident that they would find him quickly. But the detectives were sorely mistaken. Karen Oehme had studied veterinary medicine in Berlin and had come to the Hochmoor veterinary clinic in the summer of 1983 to work as an assistant doctor for six weeks. Young Karen was considered popular and helpful. She was committed, loved horses, and was a passionate swimmer who, shortly before her death, had been seen by a witness with a 25-year-old man with straw-blond hair at the outdoor pool. On the night of July 12-13, two motorists had seen a vehicle with Gelsenkirchen license plates on the road where Karen Oehme’s body was found. On July 12, a barbecue party took place in the garden of the Hochmoor Clinic, which Karen left between 8 and 9 p.m. She then went to a restaurant with a colleague to eat a salad. At around 10:30 p.m., she returned to the veterinary clinic, where she helped with emergency surgery on a horse until 11 p.m. She then drove her white VW to Dülmen and bought two portions of meatballs with potato salad at a tavern. She was probably meeting someone. Since she had parked her car in a hospital driveway, she was warned by two police officers at 11:47 p.m. This was the last time Karen was seen alive. On July 21, 1983, she was buried in the Wohldorf Forest Cemetery near Hamburg. After the brutal sexual murder, criminal investigators examined over 600 pieces of evidence, but without success. The murder of Karen Oehme particularly haunted forensic scientist Bernd Brinkmann, professor of pathology at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Münster. He had pubic hair from the deceased preserved, which had tiny traces of dried semen stuck to it, and it ended up in a glass tube with the trace number 23/83. He was certain that he would eventually be able to convict Karen Oehme’s murderer with it. He made his first attempt to crack the existing traces using DNA analysis in March 1992. But at that time, the perpetrator’s sperm was not sufficient to prove a genetic fingerprint. A second attempt in 1996 also failed. In December 2000, Brinkmann made a third attempt, as a single sperm cell was now sufficient to identify the perpetrator. This time, Brinkmann succeeded in determining the genetic fingerprint with a probability of 1 in 250,000,000. This identified DNA profile of the perpetrator was entered into the Federal Criminal Police Office’s database, and on March 23, 2002, the Federal Criminal Police Office reported a match. There was a match between the evidence found at the crime scene and a saliva sample that had been submitted. This led to Ulrich M., a father of two who lived with his wife and two children in a semi-detached house in the small town of Kevelaer in the Lower Rhine region and worked as a television technician. Ulrich M. was arrested on June 5, 2002. When he raped and murdered Karen Oehme, he ran a gym in Recklinghausen together with his brother. At the time, he was taking anabolic steroids to build muscle mass. Ulrich M. was 1.80 meters tall and weighed 105 kilograms. He liked to go to the Dülmen quarry pond in the evenings, where he met Karen Oehme. Ulrich M. had already been sentenced to imprisonment by the Essen Regional Court for rape, which was suspended on probation. This rape had been his first sexual intercourse. Ulrich M. was the second of four sons of an electrician who was very conservative and Catholic. Ulrich M. completed an apprenticeship as a radio and television electronics technician. He then joined the German Armed Forces. Just nine months after the murder of Karen Oehme, on April 1, 1984, Ulrich M. raped a 29-year-old woman twice on a lonely dirt road. During oral and anal intercourse, he threatened to kill her with pantyhose around her neck. He held the woman captive for a total of 10 hours before driving her home. Then, in November 1985, he strangled and raped a 20-year-old woman twice. She was able to remember the license plate number of his car, and Ulrich M. was arrested the next day. However, the court released him on bail the same day. Ulrich M. fled by train to London, where, after moving around several times, he founded a computer repair company in Swindon. He bought a house with a garden and even got engaged. When Ulrich M. was stopped by police in 1993, the officers discovered that his passport had expired and that he was wanted by the German authorities. In July 1993, Ulrich M. was extradited to the Federal Republic of Germany. His fiancée broke off contact with him. In October 1993, Ulrich M. was sentenced to three and a half years in prison by the Düsseldorf Regional Court for two counts of rape. He was released from prison early in April 1995. Shortly after his release, he met a 20-year-old woman in a discotheque. Despite his past, the two made plans for the future. In 1996, their first child, a son, was born. Ulrich M. bought a semi-detached house in a suburban neighborhood in Kevelaer. In the summer of 2001, he was asked by the police to provide a saliva sample. This was because in 1998, the Bundestag had passed a law allowing convicted sex offenders to be genetically fingerprinted and stored in a database. Ulrich M. provided two saliva samples. These incriminated him, and he was arrested on June 5, 2002. In December 2002, the trial against Ulrich M., who claimed not to have killed Karen Oehme, began at the Münster Regional Court. Ulrich M. testified that he had arranged to meet Karen Oehme on the day of the murder, and that she told him it would be their last meeting. Ulrich M.’s world fell apart. They both cried and Ulrich M. had to vomit. Afterwards, they slept together. But Ulrich M. had erectile dysfunction, so Karen M. massaged him with a painful grip. He hit her in the face to make her stop. To prevent her from touching him again, he grabbed her by the throat. He claimed that he knew nothing about Karen Oehme’s death until he was arrested. He claimed that he begged her to stay with him. When she refused, he grabbed her by the throat with both hands and squeezed and shook her violently. She then collapsed. He then carried her to the oat field, undressed her, and raped her, believing her to be unconscious. On the last day of the trial, forensic pathologist Brinkmann presented his findings. These revealed that Karen Oehme had been strangled twice, with 30 to 90 minutes elapsing between the two incidents. Only the second attack was fatal. Therefore, it was not bodily harm resulting in death, but murder. Presumably, an argument had broken out between Karen Oehme and Ulrich M. on the night of July 12 to 13. Karen did not want to sleep with Ulrich M., who hit her and then squeezed her throat with his hands. He forced her to perform oral sex. This explained the signs of a struggle that the police had found on the grass verge of the road. Ulrich M. dragged the unconscious Karen Oehme into the oat field, stripped her, and raped her. When Karen regained consciousness, another argument ensued, during which Ulrich M. strangled Karen to stop her from screaming. Only then did Ulrich M. vomit. Ulrich M. was sentenced to 22 years in prison followed by preventive detention for the sexual murder of Karen Oehme. This finally solved the mystery surrounding Karen Oehme’s murderer. In 2005, it emerged that Ulrich M. had raped, tortured, and strangled 24-year-old student Sylvie in her home in Avallon in 1989. Once again, Ulrich M. was convicted by matching DNA traces at the crime scene. These matched Ulrich M.’s genetic profile. Ulrich M. was sentenced to life imprisonment for the sexual murder of Sylvie in the court of Dijon in eastern France. Thus, after 22 years, this sexual murder was finally solved.
