Murder of Jakob von Metzler

On 27 September 2002, 11-year-old Jakob von Metzler was kidnapped in Frankfurt, Germany, by Magnus Gäfgen, a law student who came from a modest family background and had begun studying law at Goethe University in 1996. Gäfgen abducted Jakob intending to extort a ransom from his parents, who were members of the Metzler banking family, and killed the boy in his own apartment. He then demanded a ransom of one million euros from the Metzlers.

Police observed Gäfgen when he collected the ransom money and arrested him several hours later; in the interim, he had booked a holiday rather than release his victim, who was already dead. During his interrogation, Frankfurt police vice president Wolfgang Daschner ordered a subordinate officer, identified in case records as Ortwin E., to threaten Gäfgen with torture, an order given in an attempt to save the boy's life. After the threat, Gäfgen confessed and disclosed where he had hidden the body.

In July 2003, a court convicted Gäfgen of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment, finding a "grave level of guilt" (besondere Schwere der Schuld) that made him ineligible for the standard possibility of release after fifteen years. His appeal to the Federal Court of Justice was rejected in May 2004, and a further complaint to the Federal Constitutional Court was rejected in December 2004.

The torture threat used against Gäfgen became a significant legal matter in its own right. In December 2004, Daschner received a suspended sentence and a €10,800 fine for ordering it; Ortwin E., the officer who delivered the threat, was fined €3,600. In 2005, Gäfgen brought a case against Germany before the European Court of Human Rights (Gäfgen v. Germany, no. 22978/05). In 2010, the court ruled that Germany had violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, but had not violated Article 6, the right to a fair trial. Gäfgen separately sued the state of Hesse for compensation over trauma he said he suffered from the threat and lost that case, but in August 2011 he was awarded €3,000 in damages related to the police threats, less than the €10,000 he had sought.

Gäfgen is serving his sentence at Schwalmstadt Prison in Hesse. While incarcerated, he passed the first state law examination and, in 2005, published an autobiography, Allein mit Gott – Der Weg zurück (Alone with God – The Way Back). A plan to establish a "Gäfgen Foundation" to assist child crime victims drew public criticism, and he abandoned it after authorities said they would not permit it to be registered. In January 2015, it became known that Gäfgen had legally changed his name to Thomas David Lukas Olsen. He applied for release on probation in 2017; in 2018, authorities determined he remained dangerous and rejected the application, setting his minimum sentence at 23 years, meaning he would not be eligible for release before September 2025.