Düsseldorf · DE
True Crime Düsseldorf
Snipers, Smash-and-Grabs, and the Vampire of Düsseldorf
De quoi parle cette balade ?
Welcome to Düsseldorf — a city of gleaming boutiques, carnival tradition, and a Rhine waterfront as scenic as any in Germany. But behind that polished surface lie nine stories of snipers and serial killers, corporate fraud and pipe bombs, a ram-raid in broad daylight and a cold case from the sixteenth century. This walk follows Düsseldorf's criminal history from the riverbank where Germany's reunification architect Detlev Karsten Rohwedder was assassinated, through the Altstadt's medieval squares and a notorious courthouse, along the Königsallee and into the Hofgarten where the Vampire of Düsseldorf once hunted, all the way to a suburban train station that became the site of a still-unsolved xenophobic bombing. Every stop is a real place. Every case is a true crime.
Ce que vous verrez
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1
The RAF Assassination - Rheinuferpromenade
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Standing on the Joseph-Beuys-Ufer, you look west across the Rhine toward a quiet villa row where, on Easter Monday 1991, three rifle shots shattered the night and killed one of Germany's most powerful men; a murder that remains officially unsolved to this day.
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2
The Strangled Duchess - Schlossturm
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The Schlossturm is the last stone left of Düsseldorf's medieval castle, and the place where Duchess Jakobe of Baden was found dead in her chamber on the morning of 3 September 1597 in what remains one of Germany's oldest unsolved cold cases.
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3
Barricades and Blood - Marktplatz
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On Düsseldorf's picture-perfect Marktplatz, in the shadow of the golden Jan Wellem statue, a physician called a crowd to armed resistance against Prussian soldiers on 9 May 1849, igniting a night of barricade fighting that left more than a dozen dead.
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4
The V-Sign Trial - Ehemaliges Landgericht
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In January 2004 this elegant 1923 courthouse hosted the most photographed corporate trial in modern German history, where a defendant's V sign to the cameras as proceedings opened became a national symbol in a case involving fifty-seven million euros in executive payments and six men charged with breach of trust.
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5
The Plot That Never Was - Heinrich-Heine-Allee
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In February 2016, this grand boulevard was named as the target of a horrific ISIS double-bombing plot. But when the case reached the court two years later, the chilling intelligence turned out to be a complete fabrication.
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6
The €3.3 Million Ram-Raid - Königsallee
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On Monday, 14 December 2020, a stolen car rammed the side entrance of the Breguet boutique on the Königsallee at 9:56 in the morning. Three masked raiders swept more than 40 watches worth €3.3 million from the display cases in under two minutes, then fled on waiting motorcycles.
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7
The Vampire's Park - Hofgarten
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In the autumn of 1929, Germany's oldest public park became the hunting ground of Peter Kürten, the "Vampire of Düsseldorf", who attacked women on these paths and drank the blood of a swan by the water's edge.
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8
The Effi Briest Affair - Malkastenpark
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The tranquil Malkastenpark, home to Düsseldorf's prestigious artists' club since 1848, was drawn into scandal in 1886 when a fatal duel in this city inspired one of German literature's greatest novels. Baron Armand von Ardenne shot and killed his wife's lover Emil Hartwich in a case of dishonored aristocratic pride that Theodor Fontane immortalized as Effi Briest.
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9
The Unsolved Bombing - S-Bahnhof Wehrhahn
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On a summer afternoon in July 2000, a pipe bomb hidden in a plastic bag exploded beside a group of language-school students on this pedestrian ramp, injuring ten people. More than two decades later, the Wehrhahn bombing remains officially unsolved.
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