The Weimar murder case - strength and risk of material evidence

by attorney Gerhard Strate, Hamburg

1. The Chronology of Events

On the early afternoon of August 4, 1986, Karola and Melanie Weimar, five and seven years old, are reported missing in the village of Philippsthal/Hesse by their mother. During her first few hearings the mother, Monika Weimar, reports that the children had got up at around 9.30 am and, after a short breakfast at round 10. 15 am, had left the house to go to a playground nearby. The father of the children, Reinhard Weimar, told the police that he had slept until the late morning, finally got up at around 11.30 am and waited for his wife to come back who had driven into town an hour earlier on some errands. She had come back at around 12.15 pm.

In the afternoon already, the neighbors of Mr and Mrs Weimar start to search for the girls. Monika Weimar does not participate in this search. On the other hand, her husband, Reinhard Weimar, is seen making inquiries after the children at a pigeon release stand and at a fair, five kilometers away from the Weimar domicile. During the following two days several hundred police and Federal Border Police comb all surrounding forests, fields and meadows for Melanie and Karola, in vain.

On August 5, 1986, already, the officers of the homicide squad of the criminal investigation department in Bad Hersfeld learn that Mr and Mrs Weimar's marriage is not quite a happy one. They find out that Monika Weimar has been friends with an American soldier, Kevin Pratt, since May 1986. There has already been talk of divorce. The criminal investigators' first suspicion falls upon Monika Weimar; they assume the children were abducted, possibly with the help of Kevin Pratt.

In the afternoon of August 7, 1986, Hans-Georg Führer, a bus driver, stops on a car park on road 3255 between Wölfershausen and Herfa to have a coffee break. While busy straightening the net curtain on a side window of his bus, his eye falls on a dense strip of stinging nettles that has grown in front of a bank on the next field. A short gust of wind stirs the stinging nettles, and Hans-Georg Führer notices the legs of a child about one meter deep behind the straight-growing nettles. He calls the police, and Melanie Weimar's body is recovered. Karola Weimar's body is soon found after intensive search on surrounding picnic areas. They find her at around 6 pm on a disused street in the so-called Bengendorfer Grund, four kilometers from the other place where her sister was found. Both corpses have the clothes on that Monika Weimar had described in her report of the missing girls. The panties of both children show no signs of wetting; they are - as one detective will describe them later - "sparkling white". Melanie Weimar's clothes and hair are covered with clinging seeds, the fruits of goosegrass. Both Melanie and Karola are wearing hair-slides. The next day, a post-mortem is carried out, and the specialists in forensic medicine diagnose that Karola died of strangling and Melanie of suffocation, possibly under a soft cover.

On August 11, 1996, the children are buried with great participation and sympathy of the public. Officers of the special task force created meanwhile have also come to the funeral ceremony. The couple make their farewell to Melanie and Karola. The pictures published afterwards show Reinhard and Monika Weimar side by side at their children's grave; they do not support each other. Monika Weimar's brother-in-law is holding her arm. The death notice that had appeared the previous day in the "Hersfelder Zeitung" contains a mysterious epitaph, the origin of which never became clear: "Father, when Mother asks: 'Where have our children gone?' tell her that we are in Heaven."

On August 22, 1986, the special task force receives the first results of various investigations which were ordered from the criminal department of the Office of Criminal Investigation of the state of Hesse. They find out that a crack in the windshield of the Weimar car cannot have been caused from outside - i.e. by falling rocks, according to Monika Weimar -, but by a ramming impact from inside the car. Furthermore, it becomes evident that two allegedly anonymous letters that Monika Weimar received and handed over to the criminal investigators were very probably written by herself. Moreover a witness, who went to his dentist in Wölfershausen on his motorcycle on the day the girls were reported missing, states that he saw a white Volkswagen Passat with black fancy stripes - like the one that Mr and Mrs Weimar own - on the car park of road 3255, both on his way to the dentist at 11.03 am and back home at around 11.20 am. Three days later, Melanie's body was found a few meters away. One thing seems to be obvious: Monika Weimar must have been the driver of the car. And there is even more that seems to be evident: Her false statement concerning the cause of the damaged windshield, the origin of the anonymous letters as well as her appearance, a few hours before the children were reported missing, on the site where Melanie's body was later found, focus suspicion on her.

On August 28, 1986, Monika Weimar is questioned again. At the same time, Kevin Pratt is questioned too, as well as other members of the family. Monika Weimar denies to be the author of the letters. She now explains the origin of the crack in the windshield with the fact that, on the night before August 4, 1986, when she came back from a discotheque with Kevin Pratt and had sexual intercourse with him in the car, her foot slipped and her heel bumped on the windshield. On the evening of August 28, 1986, she is arrested.

On August 29, 1986, the questioning continues. At first she sticks to her description. After a break of the questioning, at around 11 am, there is a turn:

Monika Weimar now declares that the children had already been dead when she returned home on the night of August 4, 1986. When she opened the apartment door the rooms were dark; the dining room alone was lit. She immediately entered it and went from there to the children's room. Her husband was sitting on the edge of Karola's bed, bent down, weeping and totally confused. He made a very absent impression on her. Next to him, on the floor, there was an empty beer bottle. Then she saw the children. Both were still half covered with the blanket. She touched and shook the children, but they gave no sign of life at all. She took her husband by the shoulder and asked him: "What have you done?" As she could no longer bear the sight of the dead children she ran to the bedroom and sat there on the bed. She was totally desperate and did not know what to do. After she had sat for some time in the bedroom, shocked and dazzled, she heard the sound of a car; she believed it to be the family car. Some time later the car came back. Her husband entered the apartment and came to her in the bedroom. Again she asked him: "Why did you do that?" He answered: "Now nobody will get the children." He described to her where he had disposed of the bodies. She explained her stay next day on the place where Melanie was found with the fact that she wanted to see her children once more. Yet she could only find Melanie's body. Asked why she had reported them missing and why she had given a false statement of what happened on that Monday morning, she said that she felt pity for her husband and that she had also blamed herself for the death of the children. Nobody beside her husband and herself knew how the children died and were brought to the places where they were found. To this day, she sticks to that description.

On August 30, 1986, the husband is arrested on the order of the responsible public prosecutor, Raimund Sauter. His application for a warrant of arrest is rejected by the Local Court in Fulda; a complaint against this decision with the Regional Court in Fulda is to no avail. In the middle of October, the public prosecutor Raimund Sauter is replaced as the officer in charge - after members of the criminal investigation department in Bad Hersfeld used their influence with the head of the public prosecution in Fulda with urgent requests. The arrest warrant his successor applies for is issued immediately on October 27, 1986. Monika Weimar remains in custody and under arrest until December 4, 1995. Concerning the judgment of the Regional Court in Fulda, pronounced on her on January 8, 1988 - sentenced to life for double murder -, the Federal Supreme Court, in its appellate decision one year later, confirms that the circumstantial evidence has been assessed in a "judicious and comprehensible" way (NJW 1989, 1741, 1744).

On December 4, 1995, the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main orders the retrial. Monika Böttcher, divorced Weimar, is released after more than nine years in jail. On April 24, 1997, she is acquitted by the Regional Court in Gießen in a retrial, after 55 days of trial.

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