Göhrde Murders (1989)

In the summer of 1989, two couples were murdered several weeks apart in the Göhrde State Forest, a roughly 75-square-kilometer woodland in Lower Saxony, West Germany. Police concluded early on that the same person committed both double murders, based on parallels between the crime scenes, the theft of distinctive items from each pair of victims, and the abandonment of the stolen cars near railway stations on the same line. An unusual heatwave that summer accelerated decomposition of the bodies, complicating efforts to determine cause of death.

On 21 May 1989, Ursula Reinold, 45, and her husband Peter Reinold, 51, of Bergedorf, drove to the Göhrde to walk and, investigators believe, to picnic. They were killed in a forest clearing, and their bodies were hidden in a nearby depression. The offender took the couple's picnic basket and car keys, later abandoning their car near the train station in Winsen an der Luhe. The Reinolds were reported missing; blueberry pickers found their partially mummified, partially undressed remains seven weeks later, on 12 July 1989. Investigators could not determine whether the undressing occurred before or after the killings, or establish an exact cause of death, though strangulation and shooting were both considered.

The same day the Reinolds' bodies were found, Ingrid Warmbier, 46, of Uelzen, and Bernd-Michael Köpping, 43, a district manager for the German Lotto and Totoblock from Hanover, were killed roughly 800 meters away while walking in the forest; the two were having an affair and were each married to other people. Investigators believe the offender bound the pair's hands and feet before strangling and shooting Köpping, and beating and shooting Warmbier, then stole Köpping's Polaroid camera and car, later abandoning the vehicle near a spa clinic in Bad Bevensen. Police, already in the Göhrde investigating the first killings, discovered the bodies by chance on 27 July 1989.

A 40-member special commission interviewed roughly 10,000 people and issued a facial composite, but the case went unsolved for decades; a reported parallel with a similar double murder in Wales was never confirmed. The commission was later dissolved, and by 2014 police said the case would not be reopened for lack of resources. In 2002, Wolfgang Sielaff — a retired Hamburg police chief and the brother of Birgit Meier, a Lüneburg woman who had disappeared on 15 May 1989 — began a private investigation, eventually persuading Lüneburg police to form a new commission focused on Meier's case in 2015.

That investigation centered on Kurt-Werner Wichmann, whom Meier had previously met and who was charged with her murder in 1993 after a search of his house turned up firearms, a soundproofed room, and a car buried in his backyard. Wichmann died by suicide in custody ten days after his arrest, and the investigation against him was discontinued. In December 2017, Lower Saxony police announced that DNA evidence from one of the Göhrde victims' stolen cars — separate from earlier hair samples — identified Wichmann as the prime suspect in both double murders. A post-mortem announced in January 2018 found that Meier had been shot. Investigators believe Wichmann may have had an accomplice and have examined possible links to other unsolved killings.

The Göhrde murders remain formally unresolved: Wichmann's death means he can never be tried, and no second suspect has been identified. In the German press, the forest was dubbed "Totenwald" ("Death Forest"), and many hikers avoided the area for years afterward. The case has drawn sustained attention in Germany, including repeated segments on Aktenzeichen XY… ungelöst and a 2020 dramatization, Das Geheimnis des Totenwaldes.