Birgit Meier

**Birgit Meier** was a woman who went missing from Lüneburg, Germany on August 14, 1989.

## Case

    Birgit worked as a photographer and was married to Harald, a successful entrepreneur, but they wanted to divorce. Both were parents of the common daughter Yasmin.

On the evening of the disappearance, Birgit still had a visit from her husband, as they both wanted to clarify details about the divorce. They had agreed that Birgit should receive a settlement of 500,000 DM from her husband - therefore the police assumed that the husband would have a reason to harm Birgit in order to avoid paying the immense sum. In addition, a suicide was still a possibility for the investigators, but Birgit could not be found - her husband, however, could then also be quickly ruled out as a suspect.

The investigation into Birgit stalled due to a lack of leads and two double murders that occurred at the same time in the Lüneburg area.

## Recent developments

Three/four years after Birgit's disappearance, a man, 44-year-old Kurt-Werner Wichmann, came into the investigators' sights: he worked on Birgit's neighboring property as a gardener, knew Birgit personally and brought her home after a party. Furthermore, he had already been convicted of various crimes, including violent and sexual offenses, and had already been arrested.

In February 1993, searches were carried out at Kurt-Werner's home. In the process, conspicuous objects were found in a hidden, soundproofed room: Guns, weapons, ammunition, chains, cords, sleeping pills, stun guns, knives as well as handcuffs were found.

When Kurt-Werner learned of searches on his property, he fled, causing a traffic accident. When police arrived at the scene of the accident, parts of a submachine gun as well as ammunition were found in his car. As a result, Kurt-Werner was taken into custody, where he hanged himself with the belt of his pants on April 25, 1993.

Since Kurt-Werner was dead and (according to German law) dead people are not investigated, the police stopped investigating Kurt-Werner and the possibly related disappearance of Birgit.

Birgit's brother, himself a police officer, continued to recall the disappearance of his sister Birgit years later, and kept pushing the investigation again and again, as Birgit was still not found. So in 2017 he asked the new owners of the house where Kurt-Werner lived before his death, to be allowed to search on the property. They agreed and a handcuff was found on which blood from Birgit could be detected. In the further course were found on 27 September 2017 in the foundation of the garage, bones. After medical matching, they could be clearly assigned to Birgit.

That Kurt-Werner had something to do with the disappearance and murder of Birgit, can not be doubted due to the location and found DNA traces.

Furthermore, the police assume that Kurt-Werner may have had an accomplice or confidant in his brother. To him he wrote in the suicide note 'I am most worried when I think of our house, property and everything connected with it.' Moreover, the brother was the only one who had access to the soundproof room besides Kurt-Werner.

After Birgit was found after 28 years, the property was searched on a large scale: This revealed various objects, including a car buried in its entirety in the garden, as well as handbags, vehicle parts, jewelry, keys, various shoes and women's boots, weapons, and tools. These objects could not be assigned until today, however the approximately 400 found objects let assume that these are to be assigned to possible further victims of Kurt Werner. Kurt-Werner is also believed to be responsible for the two double murders that occurred at the same time as Birgit's disappearance.

## Sources

* *Spiegel* (German)
* *Landeszeitung* (German)
* Kurt-Werner\_Wichmann on Wikipedia