Kidnapping and murder of Ylenia Lenhard

Ylenia Lenhard was a five-year-old girl from Appenzell, Switzerland. On 31 July 2007, she left home on her bicycle to retrieve shampoo she had forgotten at the local public pool the day before. She was last seen leaving the pool, and her mother reported her missing shortly before noon. Her disappearance triggered an extensive search involving more than fifty St. Gallen police officers, thirty local firefighters, dog handlers, divers, and an army helicopter, alongside members of the public. Police received more than 1,400 tips, many of them speculative or false, and offered a reward of CHF 21,500 (about €13,000), funded privately, for information leading to her location.

That same afternoon, a man resting in the Bürerwald forest near Oberbüren, roughly 30 kilometres from Appenzell, was approached and shot in the chest without warning; he survived and was taken to a hospital by a passing motorist. The shooter died by suicide nearby the same day. That evening, his abandoned van was found in the same area with Lenhard's backpack, which contained her clothing, and her bicycle helmet nearby; her scooter was later recovered in the surrounding forest, and the shooter's body was found the following morning. Witnesses had also reported seeing a van matching his outside the public pool before Lenhard disappeared. By 6 August 2007, police had matched DNA and fingerprint evidence connecting the dead man to Lenhard's belongings and to the van, identifying him as the suspect responsible for her abduction. No prior connection was found between Lenhard's family and the suspect, and because he died before charges could be filed, the case never reached trial.

Lenhard's body was found on 17 September 2007, six weeks after her disappearance, in the Bürerwald forest by a local resident; the area had been searched multiple times without success. She was identified by her jewelry. Her remains, which had been disturbed by wild animals after burial in a shallow hole, showed no signs of physical harm, and investigators later confirmed there was no evidence of rape. Decomposition prevented investigators from fully establishing the circumstances of her death; her cause of death was ultimately ruled as toluol poisoning.

The case prompted Swiss citizens to petition for a nationwide child-abduction alert system, which was introduced in 2010 following a separate killing in 2009. Abduction alerts are now broadcast on trains, in transit stations, on highway signage, and by text message, and an intercantonal police unit established a sex-offender database. In October 2007, Lenhard's mother founded the Ylenia Foundation, which has funded school rebuilding and supplies for disadvantaged families in the Philippines. The Swiss newspaper Blick was separately criticized by the St. Gallen public prosecutor's office for publishing speculative and inaccurate reporting on the case, including repeated retractions, and for suggesting an unsubstantiated link between Lenhard's case and the 2007 disappearance of Madeleine McCann based on the timing of the two cases and a similar van sighting reported near McCann's location. St. Gallen police repeatedly stated no legitimate connection had been established, and in 2013 Scotland Yard investigators traveled to St. Gallen and were told the same. Police also declined to reopen Lenhard's case despite public speculation that the suspect had an accomplice, citing the absence of any third-party DNA on the recovered evidence.