Zurich · CH
True Crime Zurich
Spy Bankers, the Heist of the Century, and Bribes by the Lake
De quoi parle cette balade ?
Welcome to Zurich, the clean, calm and famously discreet city where trams run to the second and the lake glitters at the end of every street. But behind its polished bank facades and medieval church towers, Zurich has kept some very loud secrets: an open drug scene the whole world watched, a gunfight beneath its busiest square, a robbery so big it made headlines around the globe, and a dawn raid that shook the world of football. Our journey begins in a quiet riverside park that, not so long ago, was anything but quiet.
Ce que vous verrez
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1
Needle Park - Platzspitz
Park
From 1986 until police sealed it on 5 February 1992, this riverside park behind the Swiss National Museum was Needle Park, Europe's biggest open drug scene, where up to 3,000 people gathered at a time and 21 died in 1991 alone.
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2
Shootout Below the Station - Bahnhofplatz
square
On 19 November 1979, four members of West Germany's Red Army Faction fled a 548,000 franc bank robbery into the Shopville underpass right below this square, where a gunfight with police killed a woman of 56 and badly wounded an officer; Rolf Clemens Wagner was caught the same day and jailed for life.
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3
The Car Park Confessions - Urania Observatory
observatory
In the summer of 1991 a 29 year old woman was stabbed to death in the Urania car park beneath this observatory tower; seven years later a jailed arsonist, known only as Caroline H., confessed and got life, then withdrew every word and still insists she never killed anyone.
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4
Drowned in the Limmat - Lindenhof
Viewpoint
On 5 January 1527, Reformed Zurich bound the Anabaptist leader Felix Manz hand and foot and drowned him in the Limmat right below this terrace for the crime of baptizing adults, the first of six Anabaptists drowned here, and the city waited until 2004 to mark the spot.
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5
Spies on the Banker - Paradeplatz
square
In September 2019, Credit Suisse had private detectives tail Iqbal Khan, its star banker who was leaving for UBS across this very square, until a car chase ended in a scuffle over his phone and the scandal toppled the bank's top brass.
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6
The Heist of the Century - Fraumünster
church
On 1 September 1997, five men in a stolen van disguised as a Telecom vehicle drove into the yard of the Fraumünster post office, just behind this famous Chagall church, and escaped with 53 million francs in minutes; the robbers were all caught, but roughly half the money has never been found.
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7
Zurich Is Burning - Bellevueplatz
square
On the night of 30 May 1980, a protest on the Opera House steps against a 60 million franc renovation exploded into Zurich's biggest street battle since 1968, raging around Bellevue until dawn and sparking two years of youth riots under the slogan 'Züri brännt', Zurich is burning.
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8
The FIFA Dawn Raid - Hotel Baur au Lac
hotel
At dawn on 27 May 2015, plainclothes Swiss police collected room keys at this grand lakeside hotel and arrested seven FIFA officials for the United States, two days before the FIFA presidential vote, in a bribery case that ended with guilty pleas and prison terms in Brooklyn.
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