Lüneburg, Germany. The historic centre with its impressive square and the university organised on the site of the former military barracks are a credit to this city of more than 72,000 inhabitants. But not all pages in Lüneburg’s history deserve to be commemorated. During the Second World War it was here that 20 forced labour camps were located and where Heinrich Himmler, one of the main leaders of Nazi Germany and Reichsführer of the SS, had his hiding place.

Birgit’s family came from Hamburg, but fled to Saxony after the first bombings of the city. This is where Birgit was born on 9 July 1948.

For years a talented photographer, wife of the rich Harald Meier, entrepreneur, loving mother, sister and daughter. But also a woman whose heart was broken.

Hollowly house

Late summer evening 14 August 1989. Birgit, 41, says goodbye to her daughter Jasmine and brother Wolfgang, saying she is tired and goes to bed.

– In the evening, at 10 pm, I spoke to my mother for the last time. The last time in my life – says Jasmine. – It was a normal conversation. I remember asking her what she was going to do now. She said she was very sleepy and was getting ready for bed because she had an intense day ahead of her. She had an appointment with a house sale lawyer. She was excited, dreaming of moving and having a fresh start after splitting up with dad.

But a few hours later Jasmine wakes up screaming, feeling that something terrible has happened. At midnight she dials her mother’s home number. When Birgit doesn’t answer, the sinking feeling mounts up. She takes a taxi and sets off from Hamburg, 50 kilometres away. She arrives just at the break of dawn. She is trembling. Her first instinct is to ring the doorbell, hoping to see her mother safe and sound. She notices that the curtains were not drawn, though Birgit used to do that at dawn. She sees around the house. She notices that one cat is inside and the other outside, which is also worrying, because the animals have always been inseparable. But inside, everything looks exactly as it always has. No signs of burglary, of violence.

Jasmine calls out to her mother, checking room by room. Each time she enters another room, her heart flutters at the thought that she might discover something terrible. But nothing of the sort happens. There is no indication that anything bad has happened to Birgit. In Jasmine’s bedroom she finds the bed unmade, the sheets in disarray and the clothes from the previous evening thrown around the room. But there is no sign of Birgit herself.

Doubtful evidence

When an adult disappears, four causes are considered. “Going out for cigarettes” – meaning a planned disappearance – an accident, suicide or crime. In Birgit’s case, the investigators focus primarily on the option of a planned escape and suicide.

The first report in the German media is limited to dry facts about Birgit’s appearance: a slim blonde with grey-green eyes and 165 centimetres tall is missing. Anyone with any information about the missing person is asked to contact the police.

– We took Mrs Meier’s disappearance seriously from the start. We started by searching her house. There were no signs of struggle, violence, blood. It was a normal, clean house – recalls Manfred Hamel, a former investigator for the Lüneburg police.

The investigators find no broken vases, no overturned furniture. Only a shoe print in the mud, which, although it leads towards the house, tells them nothing. They consider it unrelated to the case.

Birgit’s papers are missing, but her car is in the garage. Birgit’s brother, Wolfgang Sielaff, who is also a policeman, has a bad feeling about this. He asks that the house from which his sister disappeared be treated as a crime scene.

– It turned out that on the floor there was a green case in which mum had kept old photographs. Strangely, there was also cigarette ash in it, as if someone had used it as an ashtray. I’m convinced that this cassette was standing on the bedside table before mum disappeared, but police reports show that on 15 August it was, for some reason, put on the floor, under mum’s bed – says Jasmine.

A bottle of alcohol and two glasses, one with traces of lipstick, are also secured. Someone has visited Birgit. Someone after Jasmine, Wolfgang and her ex-husband who dropped by for a while. – We as detectives had to stick to facts and evidence and the most likely scenarios, not conjecture. And that’s what we focused on – Hamel stresses, explaining why for months they took the missing woman's husband as their prime suspect. Because husbands are almost always guilty.

When Birgit’s nieces Claudia Sielaff and Tanya David read the diary entries they kept in 1989, in 30 years’ time they will again feel the panic that grew every hour in their family: “That day we went to Lüneburg by bike, bought ice cream, made stops. We already knew that Aunt Birgit had disappeared. Lüneburg was swarming with police and patrols with dogs. Jasmine is sleeping at Uncle Harald’s. We wondered where auntie was. They checked to see if she had gone to Mexico, to visit a friend. However, they found nothing to indicate that she wanted to start a new life. It’s not even that she wouldn’t just leave her beloved cats. My aunt would never have done that to Jasmine.”

The police increasingly suggest that Birgit may also have committed suicide. She had recently separated from her husband, she took it very badly and the situation worsened when she found out about the existence of the other woman. She started to abuse alcohol. Birgit’s friends stress in their testimonies that she loved her husband very much, and that after the divorce she was not strong enough to start a new life. She could not stop loving him. – “Even if she was heartbroken, she would not take her own life. She loved her daughter too much. She was her whole world” –maintains in turn Lieselotte Sielaff, the mother of the missing.

Wolfgang puts up advertisements in more cities, gives notices to the press. He tries to get the media interested in his sister’s case. But his quest to find out where Birgit Meier is will take him almost 30 years.

Murderer from the forest

Four weeks before Birgit disappeared. Göhrde state forest, 20 kilometres from Lüneburg. Berry pickers come across the bodies of Ursula and Peter Reinold. The 45-year-old and her 51-year-old husband had gone on a picnic two months earlier. They were found hidden in a forest ditch, with no clothes and no visible signs of violence. The post-mortem gives no answer as to what was the immediate cause of death, but there is no doubt that they were murdered. The perpetrator took a picnic basket and the keys to a car, which he abandoned near the train station near Hamburg to cover his tracks.

Soon more bodies are found. This time of 46-year-old Ingrid and her younger lover. Both had been tied up with tape before their deaths. The man was strangled and then shot in the head, the woman had injuries to her skull and all over her body. A reward of 50,000 Deutsche Marks is being set for help in apprehending the perpetrator. The police have no clues and the local residents are shocked. They stop going to the forest. They begin to suspect each other, as everything points to the murderer coming from there.

The Göhrde forests are beginning to be called the forests of death. Panic breaks out in and around Hamburg. The police have no doubt that there is one perpetrator and give the case 100 per cent attention. A description of the alleged murderer emerges, given by the berry pickers who found the victims. According to witnesses, moments earlier they had passed a man with a “frowned face”. The sketched image of the murderer in the forest is published by all media outlets.

When Birgit disappears a month later, the police immediately rule out the possibility that it has something to do with a wanted serial killer. One of the investigators even comments that there is a one-in-a-million chance that a perpetrator from the Göhrde Forest is behind Birgit’s disappearance.

Two weeks later, a postal worker in Hamburg finds her ID in the mailbox. Is it a sign of life? Wolfgang establishes that the documents were dropped in the north-west of the city. However, this was not done by Birgit.

The lost years

– When our daughter, wife or sister disappears, the world comes to a standstill. Nothing is as it used to be. And although we persistently search for the answer to the question of what happened, sometimes, deep down, we do not want to know. We postpone indefinitely the day when we will know the truth – admits Wolfgang Sielaff. In the 1980s he was head of the State Criminal Police Office in Hamburg, but for a long time he did not have any insight into the subsequent stages of the investigation into his sister’s disappearance, because Lüneburg in Lower Saxony is outside his jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, the investigation drags on for months without yielding any results. Weeks, months, years pass, and Birgit’s relatives still do not know what happened. Finally, in the early 1990s, Wolfgang decides to take matters into his own hands. He is about to retire, so handling his sister’s case will not interfere with his job. He soon discovers, to his horror, that many reprehensible mistakes have been made in the investigation which should not have happened.

– I had confidence in the police, I am a police officer myself after all! I believed that my colleagues were doing everything in their power to explain my sister’s disappearance. Unfortunately, this did not happen. This meant that from 1989 to 2017 we knew neither where Birgit was nor what had happened that horrible night – Wolfgang laments.

It also occurs to him that something may have connected his sister’s disappearance with a serial killer from the Göhrde forests. Sielaff decides to lead the investigation himself. To this end, he forms his own team consisting of the best private detectives. – When I went through my sister’s case file, it occurred to me how much time we had lost – he adds.

Follow the bread crumbs

Was Birgit Meier the victim of the alleged Göhrde forest murderer, cemetery worker Kurt-Werner Wichmann? The 43-year-old forest murder suspect hanged himself in his cell in 1993, just before his trial. This caused the investigation into his case to be suspended. But research into, among other things, DNA shows that Kurt probably had blood of dozens of people on his hands.

During 15 years of private investigation, Sielaff searched for evidence that his sister had also fallen victim to the Wichman. When, at his insistence in 2017, human bones are found under the concrete garage wall of a house on the outskirts of Lüneburg, forensic examinations reveal that they belong to Birgit Meier. The woman died in 1989 most likely from a shot to the head, which was wrapped in a blue rubbish bag. The media savaged the investigators, accusing them of sluggishness. The house where Birgit was found belonged to Wichmann.

Why did the man never become a suspect in Birgit’s disappearance? Did investigators ever ask him about the missing 41-year-old? Yes, they did. Wichmann was among the interviewed participants at a certain party. It was there, at the beginning of August 1989, that he most likely first met Birgit. A few days after the woman’s disappearance, he, like the others, was called in for questioning. During his testimony, he wore gloves on his hands the whole time. When the investigators asked him why he covered his hands, he replied that he suffered from allergies and needed to protect his hands from irritation. This was considered a sufficient answer.

Wichmann’s house was not thoroughly searched until 1993, when he became the prime suspect in the Göhrde forest murders. Among other things, a soundproof room with weapons, sedatives and stun guns was discovered in the building. Several months after his arrest, Wichmann wrote farewell letters, including one to his wife and brother, whom he asked to clean the house. After Birgit’s remains were found, the investigation also resumed into the Göhrde forest murders. Among others, the man who allegedly assisted Wichmann in the crimes is being sought.

– Maria Radzik
– Translated by Jan Ziętara