← Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries
Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries
133. What Was Hiding in Germany's Göhrde Forest? The Göhrde Murders // DARK SUMMER VOL. 2
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Kayla Moore
This episode is brought to you by Jennybird. I love jewelry that not only goes with everything, but feels timeless. And that's why I love the pieces that I have from Jenny Bird. I've been rocking my Noah bracelet almost every day since I got it. It's this pearl bracelet, and I feel like pearls never really go out of style. And I've also been wearing my Lucille anklet, which is absolutely perfect for summer. It's got these little seashells and pearls on it, and I get so many compliments on it when I wear it out. Another Jenny Bird piece that I've really been loving are their Florence earrings. And I actually just saw that this is one of their most popular items. It makes it look like you have two earrings in your ear, even though you're only wearing one. It's cheeky and fun and also just is this really classic look that I love. 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Today on car finance financing subject to credit approval. Additional terms and conditions may apply. July 12, 1989. A group of blueberry pickers in the Gorda forest of Luna Bog, Germany, wandered off the trail in pursuit of some ripe berries. It was this beautiful summer day, but as they headed deeper into the woods, the light started barely breaking through the canopy. The the beautiful majestic area turned very haunting very quickly. And then when they entered a small clearing, they noticed a smell that turned their stomachs. They tried to pick the berries still, but the further they went off the trail, the more horrid the stench became. And soon it was overpowering. And that's when one of the pickers screamed out in horror. There on the forest floor, hidden by some dirt and ferns, were bones. Unmistakable human bones. Ones that were so badly decomposed that what little flesh was still on them was starting to merge with the soil. But there's enough left for the berry pickers to realize that they are looking at the bodies of two people. But who are they? And what happened? Welcome back to Heartstarts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings and mysteries. Your host, Kayla Moore, and thank you once again for meeting me here in the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters for this installation in our Dark Summer series. Today's episode spans decades and it's also international, so I wanted to shout out one specific listener today, Heli, who helped me with some of the German pronunciations. I love my German listeners. I actually can see how many of you there are when I look at the show's demographics. And you are currently number six on the map of countries who listen to Heart Starts Pounding. I actually think India is beating you by like 400 listeners. It's a really small margin, but you guys truly do have vowels in your language that my American mind can't even comprehend. So believe me when I tell you I'm trying my best. I also wanted to just add that we have some merch still available in our store and our Dark Summer T shirt will only be available for just a few more weeks, so make sure you grab one while you still can. If you would like some merch discounts, you can always head over to Patreon and Apple Podcast subscriptions. Apple Subs there's actually going to be a message at the end of this episode on how you can claim your discount, so stick around for that. Okay with that, let's get back to it. So when police arrived on the scene, they immediately noticed a few strange things about the bodies. One, they seemed to have been there for a while. Even in the summer. The level of decomposition was staggering. And two, they were naked except for a floral skirt that was on one of them, which was pushed up. The rest of their clothes were nowhere to be found at the scene. The bodies were quickly identified as husband and wife Peter and Ursula Reinhold. Months earlier, on May 22, their two teenage daughters reported them missing after they hadn't come home from a picnic the day before in the Gorda Forest. But what was especially eerie about this case was was how the day that the couple was reported missing, before the girls even called the police, they got multiple phone calls to their home phone. But every time they would pick up the person on the other end of the line was just gently breathing, like they were waiting for the girls to start talking. And the phone call would only end when the girls hung up. And they had a horrible feeling that something bad had happened to their parents and. And that maybe the person on the other end of the line knew it too. After receiving a missing persons report from the daughters, the police arrived at the forest to inspect the area. The first order of business was to figure out if Peter and Ursula even made it to the Gorda Forest as they had planned to that Sunday. For reference, the Gorda Forest is this beautiful, quiet and secluded place to have a summer picnic. But it can get very scary very fast. This is the type of forest that inspired all of those horrifying German children's stories from hundreds of years ago, like Hansel and Gretel. It's the kind of place where the Brothers Grimm would walk around at dusk for inspiration. The forest is about 75 square kilometers of really densely packed tall pine trees. There's walking paths that cut between them, but if you step off the paths for even a few dozen meters, that can cause you to become disoriented and lost and nearly invisible to all search parties. So the police knew that it wasn't going to be an easy task to track down the two picnickers. And at first the search was totally fruitless. There was a forester in charge of the nature reserve there that didn't remember seeing the couple. And that wasn't really that unusual at the time. The forest was a really popular destination and especially heavily visited on warm summer days. The daughters helped the police and the neighbors hang up flyers with their parents photos all over town. And in the photos, the couple looks really happy and conventional. They're middle aged, still dressing and wearing their hair like they did in the 70s. Ursula had short, thick, curly hair that framed her face like a halo. And Peter had a mustache, bushy eyebrows and aviator glasses. And not long after the flyers go up, there was a local woman who passed one of them and it sparked something in her. She remembered seeing the couple there that day. The woman called the police and she told them that that she had been riding her horse in the woods that Sunday when she ran into Ursula and they actually started chit chatting. She remembered Ursula's short teased hair and big framed glasses. She asked her why she was carrying a basket since it was kind of too early in the season to forage for those beautiful multicolored mushrooms that grow deep within the forest. And Ursula responded that the basket actually contained a picnic and Even from above the couple on her horse, this woman noticed that that Peter was wearing new bright white athletic shoes, which was a strange choice for hiking around this mossy nature preserve. She also remembered that he was wearing a pair of binoculars around his neck. But it wasn't just Peter's new sneakers or Ursula's picnic basket that made that Sunday memorable for her. See, a couple hours later, as this witness and her horse were headed home on the same trail, a Honda Civic drove towards them at a very high rate of speed. She was actually forced off the trail and had to pilot her horse up this dangerously steep hill to avoid being hit by the car. She didn't see the driver, but she was with someone who had the wherewithal to remember the license plate. And it was HH R246. And when the police heard that detail, they were completely floored because that was Peter and Ursula's car. The witness went on to say that she took another ride in the forest four days later on that Thursday. And as she was passing the same part of the trail near where she spoke to Ursula, there was something poking out of the grass that really caught her eye. It was a bright white athletic sneaker. On May 28, a baker at a local shop in town noticed that a Honda Civic had been sitting in the parking lot for a few days. He walked over to try the handle, and he noticed that the car was unlocked. So he called the police, at least hoping that they could have it towed. And the police quickly recognized the car. The baker didn't really expect to learn that this belonged to the missing couple, especially because his bakery was 60 km away from the Gorda Forest, where the Reynolds supposedly disappeared. That was kind of confusing. But things got much more confusing after police examined the odometer and compared it to the known route from the Reynolds home to the forest and the most likely route that the car would have taken from the forest to the bakery, because when they looked at the odometer, there was still 60km unaccounted for. So someone had driven the car for possibly a few days after it was taken from the couple. After that, though, there were really no clues about what happened to the couple until two months later, when the blueberry pickers stumbled upon their bodies. And now they had an answer, at least about where Peter and Ursula were. So they just needed to know, why did this happen? And more importantly, who had done this? One officer was talking to one of the blueberry pickers, just interviewing them, and he was trying to figure out if they had seen anything Else of note that day, anything that just seemed a little bit out of. And now this was a time before cell phones. So the blueberry pickers, when they found the bodies, had to bolt out of the nature reserve to report what they had seen. They were so panicked that they weren't really paying attention to anything else happening. But now, come to think of it, one of them noticed that they had passed a man about 40 years old, with a muscular build and brown hair, carrying a bag. It's not really much, but the police still jot that down. And then detectives soon arrived at the scene and began a thorough investigation. They sifted soil through a sieve to look for bullets or really any other clues, but it's not really enough to find anything that would point to who killed Peter and Ursula or even how they were killed. They know it's definitely a homicide, but the bodies were so decomposed that the means would probably never officially be determined. So that day, the police went home, they regrouped, and they came back on July 27th with an even bigger squad. They did discover a couple of small leads, including this plastic bag that had some items of clothing that was believed to have belonged to the couple. So they decided that they were going to spread out a bit more and keep looking. There could be some sort of smoking gun hidden somewhere in the dark woods. And that's when one group of officers took off in another direction. And they trampled through the mossy logs and the thick brush, going deeper and deeper into the Gorda Forest, just like the blueberry pickers had. They were only about 800 meters away from the crime scene when one of the officers shouted that they saw something. But this was not a clue. No, this was an entirely other crime scene. The other officers rushed over and they could barely process what they were seeing. There was a lifeless woman sprawled out on the forest floor. Her blonde hair was all matted with blood. And then there was a man lying next to her with a bullet hole in his head. This was another middle aged couple, also brutally murdered in another clearing in the same section of the same forest. And it was less than a kilometer away from the first crime scene. And these bodies were much less decomposed than the first two. So they figured that these victims must have been killed after Peter and Ursula while police were searching the forest for them. But who would do such a thing? The detectives had thought, thought that they were looking for a double murderer. But now they were really starting to feel like they were on the trail of a serial killer. And the serial killer was way ahead of them. This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. You know what doesn't belong in your epic summer plans? 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I ordered a really soft burgundy duvet cover and I love it so much that I also got a comforter for the guest bed. And guess what? I love that so much that I actually pulled it off the guest bed and slept with it in my bed the other night. And most importantly, I slept very well. I also ordered two extra firm pillows that I love. It's now the only pillow I use and I am very picky when it comes to pillows. And guess what? Every Buffy item comes with a complimentary three year warranty. Most brands stop at just one. While Buffy protects you against rips, stains or defects for three full years, no questions asked, get 20 off your first Buffy order using code HSP POD at Buffy Co that's 20 off when you use code HSP P O D at Buffy Co b u f f y dot code HSP POD. After discovering a second double homicide in the Gorda Forest while investigating the first, police didn't really know what to think. Their whole theory that the first crime could have been just a robbery gone wr was out the window. To have any chance of solving this case, they felt like they were going to need to know more about the second couple, starting with exactly when they had been murdered. The second pair of victims were much less decomposed than the Reynolds, so the medical examiner was able to make a precise estimate of their date and time of death. And they figured that they had been killed on July 12 while police were just 800 meters away investigating the reold murders. The new victims were identified as 46 year old Ingrid Warmbier and 43 year old Bernard Michael Kirping. And they were both reported missing on July 13, just a day after they were killed. And when their families learned of their deaths, they were shocked. Yes, it was horrible that they had been murdered, but their families were also shocked that they had been found together. See, both of them were married to other people. The story detectives pieced together went something like this. On July 12, the day after the Reynolds bodies were found, Ingrid and Bernard Michael arrived at the Gorda Forest to take a walk. The two had been having an affair for quite some time after meeting at a health spa. It seems like the lovers walked more than 2km into the woods when they must have encountered a stranger. At first they maybe thought it was just another picnicker, but then he drew his gun. If Ingrid and Bernard Michael's attacker noticed that there were police nearby, it either didn't deter him or it made him even more eager to complete the next crime. Most likely, the man threatened the couple, forcing them at gunpoint to lie face down. And then he bound their hands and feet with adhesive bandages. It seems like next he strangled Bernard Michael and then shot him in the head. He also crushed Ingrid's skull. And at some point, either before or after killing the couple, the murderer lifted Ingrid's shirt and cut her bra, which is similar to how Ursula had been found. And after this couple was dead, the killer stole Bernard Michaels Polaroid camera and his car keys. And just like he had done with the first couple, he took the man's Toyota Tercel and drove it out of the forest. But what I found extra eerie about this particular case is at some point the Next day, Michael Bernard, Michael's wife, received an anonymous call from a man who whispered, your husband is cheating on you, before hanging up. And that's kind of like the anonymous calls that the daughters were getting after their parents were killed. So after learning all of those details, police were certain that the two double murders were connected by more than just the location of the forest. In both cases, the victims were a middle aged couple. In both cases, items were stolen, but the motive didn't really feel like a robbery. And most damningly, the killer stole the victim's cars after both murders and seemed to have contacted their families. Investigators eventually found the Toyota Tercel abandoned and bot Bevensen, which is about 30 km from the forest. And just like with the Reynolds Honda, it had been driven by the killer after being used to escape the forest, probably for several days. And while the cars were found in different towns, both vehicles had been abandoned near train stations on the same railway. So the killer had probably dropped the cars off and then taken a train home. And when the Toyota was found, police discovered that there were two short hairs in the car that didn't match the couple. Unfortunately, the hairs didn't have roots. So at the time, DNA testing couldn't really do much. They would have destroyed the hairs in the process. But the investigators held onto them at the police station just in hopes that someday there'd be technological advances. And meanwhile, all around the community, word started spreading about the serial killer in the Gorda Forest. And it became a much less popular place to take a walk. In fact, it was going to be considered dangerous for decades to come. And it starts becoming known to locals as the Dead forest. But here's the thing. Police were so focused on finding this killer who had a very specific MO of attacking couples, that they hardly noticed months later, when another woman in the area vanished without a trace. On a hot summer night In August of 1989, a 41 year old woman named Birgit Meyer disappeared. The evening of August 14, she met up with her soon to be ex husband to hammer out some of the details of their separation agreement. She was taking the divorce particularly hard, at least according to some of her friends. And the following morning, her daughter went over to her apartment. But Birgit wasn't there. So of course the police focused their investigation on her husband, Harold. They felt like he had some hallmark characteristics of a husband who might do away with his wife. Like for instance, he owned a successful business and he was going to have to pay Burgundy Target a substantial sum of money in any divorce. So the police brought him in and they really put pressure on him to confess. But every time he denied any role in her disappearance. And not only that, he actually offered a large reward for tips on her whereabouts. And he actively participated in searching for her, which didn't really match with the profile the police thought he fit. Still, it was like investigators had a really bad case of tunnel vision because they kept pursuing Harold and really focused all of their energy on getting him to confess, rather than following up on any other tips they were getting. Like the fact that there was evidence Burgit had a visitor over that night after she was seen leaving the meeting with Harold. And also how some of her friends mentioned that she was seeing another man, one who seemed a little unstable. Eventually Harold even left to go to the US just to get away from the police harassment. And so that's when the police really latched onto another theory. Birgit probably died by suicide and they just haven't found her body anywhere. Maybe they suggested she was so ashamed of her marriage failing that she didn't want to go on living. Also, on top of everything that was already happening, the Berlin Wall fell just three months after Birgit disappeared. So it was a very crazy and chaotic time in Germany history. And it's kind of reasonable to think that maybe some of the police resources were sent in other directions and away from her case. Regardless, though, neither her brother Wolfgang, who happened to be a detective himself, nor her husband Harold, bought that she had killed herself. So they pooled some of their own resources and they hired a bunch of private investigators to keep looking for Bergut, even when the police stopped. The official investigation into Birgit, though, started cooling off. And so did the investigation into the couples that were found in the Gorda forest. And this all led up to the Wall falling over the next few months. There were a few things, though, that police did to try to help solve the Gorda murders. One of those things was they created a special commission to investigate. They were tasked with following a couple of tips from the public and interviewing a number of potential suspects. And with the help of the woman who was on the horse, as well as the blueberry pickers, police were able to create a composite scene sketch of the perpetrator, at least what he might have looked like. They said that he had dark hair, light skin and a broad nose. His lips were thin and severe. He was most likely middle aged, around 40 years old. And also a psychological profile of the suspect was created. And this is pretty interesting, but they decided that he was probably brutal Possibly a misogynist. He was aggressive, a loner, a overly correct, introverted, able to organize his time so he wouldn't be missed if absent from work. They also said that he was most likely sexually disturbed as well as mentally ill. The profiler even theorized that the killer had some sort of sexual problem, which may have caused him to act out his fantasies through murder instead. So with this information, police started going house to house in both the areas surrounding the forest and the areas where the victims cars had been abandoned. But they did not find any strong suspects in either of those places. And that December, a report about the Gorda murders aired on a popular German television show about unsolved cases. It was called Auchen Seisen ix Epsilon Ungelust. And it asked members of the public to come forward with any new evidence. A $50,000 Deutsche Mark reward was offered for any information leading to the identification of the killer. And we looked into it. That's about $67,000 USD today. Hundreds of tips came in after this episode aired and it ranged from reasonable ones to completely delusional ones. But the few leads that were worth following ended up leading to dead ends. And at that point the case went maybe not totally cold, but definitely lukewarm. By 1990, not much was happening with the Gorda case anymore. But Birgit's brother Wolfgang, along with the private investigator he hired, were still desperately looking for answers as to what happened to his sister. And that year they actually found a potential suspect. This handsome but very creepy local man named Kurt Werner Vickman, who knew Birgit for a little while before she vanished. She even reportedly went home with him once after a party. And once Wolfgang started looking more into Kurt Werner, he saw that he had a record tracing back to his teenage years when he was convicted of threatening to kill a tenant in his family home. And in the early 70s he did time for kidnapping, sexually assaulting and attempting to murder an 18 year old hitchhiker who only escaped with her life by somehow convincing him she wouldn't tell anyone about the kidnapping. And then she bravely reported him anyways. But by 1990, this guy was seemingly a respectable, happily married, law abiding citizen, and had been for over a decade. So when his name came up in connection with Burgit's disappearance, the local prosecutor didn't think he was a realistic suspect. Just seeing her at some parties and maybe hooking up once didn't seem like they really had a close enough relationship to motivate him to kill her. And the public prosecutor wouldn't sign a warrant for police to search kurt werner's home. But that changed in 1993, when a new public prosecutor came to town. And with no other leads to follow, she agreed to sign a search warrant for kurt verner's home. The officers brought a few cadaver dogs with them, Just in case burgit's body was there on the grounds. But at the time, it was said that the two had just casually known each other, so no one was really expecting much from this search. Still, they headed over to his house one day While he was out working as a cemetery gardener. And the second, the cadaver dogs arrived on kurt werner's property. The canines alerted all over the place. The police couldn't believe what they were seeing. It was as if there were dead people everywhere. The dogs pointed to the trunk of a red ford probe. They also pointed to random parts of the yard that, when were dug up, Revealed dozens of items. There were shoes belonging to unknown women. There were purses, items of apparel, Seemingly all from different people. The whole property was like this junkyard for miscellaneous personal items, like the kind of stuff it was easy to imagine a serial killer keeping as trophies. But none of the items after all of that searching Were confirmed to belong to birgit, at least not yet. Inside the house, Police found a few other suspicious items that they found. These blank checks that were used for forging. They also found a listening device for spying on the tenant who had been renting a bedroom from kurt verner. And then the dogs went down into the basement, and they pointed at something that, honestly, felt like it was straight out of a horror movie. There in the back corner of the basement Was a leather covered door that was padlocked. None of the other doors in the house were leather. None of the other doors were locked all day. Just this one. And so police started looking around for a key, but they couldn't find anything. Kurt verner must have taken the key with him when he went to work, which, of course, made the officers all the more anxious to get inside and see what he was hiding. If he had no problem leaving suspicious women she shoes buried in his yard, Then what could he possibly be keeping in this dungeon under lock and key? Police forced the leather door open with a loud crash, and it revealed this whole soundproofed secret room that apparently not even his wife knew about. And inside was a very different version of kurt verner Than he had been showing the world. One officer described it like a toy box for this man's true evil self. There were guns There were ammunition, there were drugs, there was Nazi memorabilia, including a pro Nazi book called quote, why we vote for Adolf Hitler. There was also a huge collection of pornography, which feels like the least shocking of all of this. But there was also child sexual abuse materials in there and syringes full of unknown substances. And possibly one of the creepiest objects of all was this set of handcuffs that police noticed had just the tiniest dot of blood on them. It wasn't enough to do a blood test for DNA, at least not with current technology, but police knew that they had to be careful and preserve it once again in case the testing got better over time. So they put the handcuffs in an evidence bag. Maybe one day in the future they would be able to figure out just whose blood that was. For now, though, officers had a much bigger problem. This episode is brought to you by Cookie Jam. It's summertime, which means it's time for me to do one of my favorite things, which is sit in the passenger seat playing games on my phone while my husband drives us to a weekend trip. But in all seriousness, I do have some travel anxiety, especially when it comes to flying. I'm sure many of you can relate to. And so having games on my phone is actually a very important part of my routine. 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Obsessed with the sheer trend. Try it with mesh flats, Feeling Boho, comfy sandals. Nail the whole free spirited thing. Find on trend shoes from the brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas and more at dsw. If you're an experienced pet owner, you already know that having a pet is 20 25% belly rubs, 25% yelling, Drop it. And 50% groaning at the bill from every pet visit. Which is why Lemonade Pet insurance is tailor made for your pet and can save you up to 90% on vet bills. It can help cover checkups, emergencies, diagnostics, basically all the stuff that makes your bank account get nervous. Claims are filed super easily through the Lemonade app and half get settled instantly. Get a'@lemonade.com pet and they'll help cover the vet bill for whatever your pet sitting swallowed after you yelled, drop it now. Police made a few big mistakes with this search. The first one being not waiting to do it until they could also get an arrest warrant and grab Kurt Verner before he found out the police were at his house. And then during the search, they made a second very big mistake. They actually called him at work to ask him to come in voluntarily for questioning. So by the time the detectives got enough evidence from his house to hold him, Kurt Werner was already on the road, heading outside of Germany and on his way out of town. He did something that no one really pieced together at the time, and it was reminiscent of the Gorda murders. He actually called Birgit's husband, Harold Meyer. He somehow knew who he was and he had his phone number. And he hissed into the phone, I have you and your clean brother in law to thank for this. And when Harold asked who was calling, Kurt Werner replied, you'll hear from me. He managed to stay on the run for two months. But then on April 15, 1993, he was pulled over after fleeing the scene of a traffic accident in his car. Police found parts of a submachine gun and ammunition in his trunk. He was arrested on a weapons charge and actually jailed for it. And then 10 days later, on April 25, Kurt Werner hung himself with a belt in his prison cell. He left behind several notes with these strange and cryptic messages that were for his family. One of them said, take special care of my tulip tree. Another one said, quote, the Madonna statue near the fireplace should be smashed. And another note instructed his brother to clean the gutters very carefully. I was reading through these notes, kind of couldn't believe what I was reading, that he had just taken his life after being arrested. And the notes seem like they would be normal if they were written down as a to do list. But when they're inside of a suicide note, they feel like almost cryptic messages, like they're part of some sort of code. To me, when I read that note, knowing about all of the stuff that he had hidden around his property. Stuff that made it seem like he had killed many, many people. It feels like he was giving instructions on how to destroy evidence. So when I read the note, it felt like there was a lot of action items for police officers. There was a lot for them to look into. But there was one problem with this. In Germany, you can't convict the dead of crimes. So oftentimes, investigations into people who have passed away tend to just stop. And so Kurt Werner's suicide effectively ended the effort to investigate him. But police are still allowed to investigate missing persons cases, and they can use the evidence they already have collected to do so. And they had a lot of creepy items from Kurt Verner's house. But there's a couple problems with this as well. Remember, nothing they found at Kurt Verner's home connected him to Burgit. And also they didn't fully search his house. And there wasn't really a comprehensive list of everything that was in there. It seemed like they jumped the gun a little bit, and they became too eager to try and arrest him, or at least get him back to the house while they were still investigating. And so now their hands were a bit tied. Efforts to find Burgit continued, but they weren't able to go back to investigate Kurt Verner's home. So as a result, it was pretty slow going. And over the coming years, life just goes on for everyone involved in the case. Burgit's brother Wolfgang, retires as a detective. Kurt Werner's widow, Alice, gets remarried to a man named Hannes Rudolph, who somehow agrees to move into Kurt Werner's house. Even with the creepy secret room in the basement and the couple, it seems like they leave the leather door closed for their entire marriage. Even after alice died in 2006, which was 17 years after Birgit's disappearance, Hannes continued to live inside that house. But he said he never once looked inside the secret room. It seemed like he was only able to live with it being there if he just pretended it didn't exist. And Wolfgang and Harold were getting older around this time, but they were still really determined to find Birgit at any cost. They were still paying for private investigators. And plus, after Wolfgang's retirement, he basically was on the case full time. And finally, in 2013, they got frustrated enough that they tried something that was kind of crazy at the time. They just appealed to Hannes Rudolph's sense of human decency. They went to him and they said, listen, your wife is dead. She can't be embarrassed anymore. At that Point. Hannes was elderly. He was mostly blind. He had nothing to do with Kurt Verner now. So would he please just let their team leave, look inside the secret room and see if they could find anything that might help find their missing loved one. And he tells them, yes, something about this plea worked. He says that they don't even need a warrant. They can just come straight in with their team. Wolfgang's investigators enter the secret room. Sometimes it was described by police as a torture room. And almost immediately they find a piece of evidence that police missed 20 years before. And it's something that makes them almost stop in their tracks. And wretch. Kurt Werner had recorded some of the episodes of that German TV show I told you about, the one that was about the unsolved cases. One of the episodes was about Birgit going missing. But another episode that he had taped and locked in this room was about the Gorda murders. He even recorded a follow up segment that featured tips on the murders that were sent in by viewers. This was really the first time that anyone put together that Kurt Werner must have killed Birgit and the two couples that were murdered in the Gorda forest. But how were they supposed to prove this to the skeptical police when he had been dead for 20 years at that point? And if the police agree that he's guilty now, would they just be admitting that they let a serial killer slip through their fingers? So now Wolfgang and his team believed that Kurt Werner killed at least five people. Birgit, Peter, Ursula, Ingrid and Bernard Michael. However, they needed to know as much as they could about the man himself. So they started digging deep into his background. And what they found was about as disturbing as a life story can get. So Kurt Werner Vickman was born in Luna Borg on July 8, 1949. He was his parents first child and he remained an only child until about 1958 when his younger brother, Hans Joachim was born. From the beginning of his life, Kurt Werner's behavior was described as being incredibly abnormal. According to his parents, at some point in his infancy, a taxi actually crashed into his stroller and gave him a horrible head injury. And they started blaming that event for all of his future misconduct. But his parents might also have been a little bit complicit in this. They were described as definitely being neglectful and possibly being abusive. An anonymous person allegedly saw him as a baby covered in his own feces and crawling around a dirty kitchen floor with piles of spilled flour everywhere. Other people who knew the family mentioned that his mother was frequently ill and sometimes she wouldn't get out of bed for days. His father was allegedly violent towards his mother, and on one occasion, he was seen chasing after her with an ax. Before the age of 14, Kurt Verner was sent to a reform school. And at age 15, he tried to strangle his family's tenant. And at 21, he kidnapped and sexually assaulted the hiker. And during those six years between the strangling and the kidnapping that finally sent him to prison, for a little while, there were a bunch of unsolved murders and sexual assaults that happened around the Gorda Forest. And we're not really ever going to be able to connect all of them, or really maybe even any of them to him. But police do believe that while he probably wasn't the only perpetrator, it seemed like there was a pattern. And they also said that violent crimes in the area went down when Kurt Werner was away in prison. But when he got out, he supposedly started his life over and he reformed himself and he got married and he became a member of his community. But around that time, police noticed that there was also another string of murders and sexual assaults in the area. Even while he was dating and later married his wife, he was wearing these nice suits, and he would hit the local cocktail party circuit. It seems like he was living two lives. The life other people saw and then the one that he kept locked in his secret basement room. After the 2013 search, both Burgit's case and the case of the Gorda murders finally start to heat up again, albeit slowly, after so many years without any progress. In 2015, while reviewing police evidence archives, an investigator named Richard Kaufman discovered the blood splattered handcuffs found in Kurt Werner's house. At the time that they were found, there wasn't enough blood on them to do any DNA testing. But as the officers in 1993 had hoped, the technology had improved immensely by 2016, when Kaufman finally sent the handcuffs in for testing. And the report comes back with the news that Wolfgang had been simultaneously hoping for and also dreading since 1989. The blood is in fact Birgitt Meyer's. It is the first physical evidence of her whereabouts since she disappeared. Kaufman theorized that Kurt Werner kidnapped Birgitt, maybe meaning to hold her for ransom. Harold, her husband, was fairly wealthy after all, and Kurt Werner enjoyed a very expensive lifestyle that he simply couldn't afford through work alone. But it's theorized that maybe something went wrong during this kidnapping because Kurt Werner killed birgit instead. In 2017, the Private Investigative team for Birgit's case excavated a concrete slab in the garage at Kurt Berner's home with the elderly homeowner's permission. And underneath it, they find Birgit's skeleton. There's fingernails and earrings there confirmed to be hers. Her skull showed that she did die of a gunshot wound to the head, just like Bernard Michael in the forest. And after Birgit is found, the police finally agree with Wolfgang's team that Kurt Werner must be a serial killer. Later that year, the two hairs that were found in Bernard Michael's car are finally tested with new methods. And so is Trey's DNA from the Reynolds car seats, which were wrapped in plastic at the time the killer drove their car. And that actually trapped some of the killer's skin cells inside. And the results all confirmed that Kurt Werner had been in at least one of the cars. We're not certain exactly which one it was. News reports and even police statements seem to kind of conflict this point. But regardless, there were too many other commonalities between the double homicides for anyone to suspect two different people of committing these crimes. On December 28, 2017, the Lunabog Public Prosecutor's office announced that the police believed the Gorda murders to be solved. This is all based on DNA evidence, and Kurt Werner Vickman was, in fact, the killer. And not only that, now they suspect that he took way more than five lives. All in all, there were 21 other murders in the area that he could have had ties to. And In June of 2018, the investigative team looking into Kurt Berner emails colleagues all over Germany with a subject matter. Line quote, suspected serial murderer. Investigators across the country were invited to review photos of evidence found at his home and check to see if any of their unsolved cases might be linked to this dead cemetery gardener. And 236 case files are identified as possible additional crimes committed by this man. Which means investigators will probably be looking into this case for decades to come. And they're really still taking it seriously, too. And so seriously that in 2022, they asked the public for help locating a 1989 Hamburg phone book, which they want to use to verify phone numbers potentially connected to the Gorda murders. And why, maybe you're asking, would old phone numbers matter so much now? Because there is actually one final terrifying detail that I haven't told you about Kurt Werner's crimes, and that is that he may not have been killing alone. As far back as the 1960s, several of the sexual assaults that match Kurt Werner's pattern involved survivors who said they were Attacked by two men. So were those crimes separate? Or is it possible that he had an accomplice, one who was never caught? There's other clues that point to an unidentified accomplice, one who participated in the Gorda murders or at least helped cover them up. And that's because Kurt Verner probably drove his own vehicle to the forest before both murders. There was no reasonable way to get there at the time other than driving. And then both times he left in the victims vehicles. And that begs the question, who drove his car back? And why did he leave such cryptic instructions to his wife and brother in his suicide notes? Did, quote, clean the gutters very carefully, actually have something to do with hiding evidence, kind of like I suggested before. According to friends and relatives, Kurt Werner was very close with his younger brother, Hans Joachim Vickman, until the day he died. And Hans Joachim was really dependent on Kurt Werner. He had him tell him what to do in almost every big decision in his life. But to this day, Hans Joaquim refuses to discuss his brother with reporters or the police. And there hasn't been enough evidence against him for the police to really arrest him. But if he has a conscience and he knows something that the police don't know about Kurt Werner, maybe one day he will talk. In the meantime, police are asking all of us for help. They've created a website with photos of items from Kurt Verner's home that are believed to be evidence in other crimes he may have committed. But these are ones that haven't been linked to any specific case. Members of the public are asked to look at these items and contact police if they recognize anything, particularly if they belonged to a person who disappeared or was killed before 1993, or if they may belong to someone who experienced an unsolved sexual assault in that time frame. The items include a number of shoes found buried on the property, along with some clothing. There's a lot of women's handbags and even parts of a disassembled blue car. I'll link the website in our show notes. It's actually very spooky to go through, but there's a lot of good that can come from it. And if you recognize anything, and I mean anything, you don't have to hesitate to send a tip in. If Kurt Berner's mystery accomplice is still out there, he probably thinks he's going to remain free for the rest of his life. And proving him wrong in time to make an arrest might be the only way to close hundreds of open cases and bring justice to hundreds of grieving families. And with that, I will leave you. That's all I have for this week's episode of Heart Starts Pounding. Join me here for another installation of Dark Summer when next week I take you across the world again to explore one of Australia's greatest unsolved mysteries. See, I told you I was going to talk about places where it wasn't currently summer. You're definitely not going to want to miss that. And until then, stay curious. Heartstarts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heartstarts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our Associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Additional research and writing by Yelena War. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at wme and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out Heartstarts Pounding. Com.