The Fall That Was Murder - Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse
On 17 October 2001, 87 year old Margarete Lanz was found covered in blood on the landing outside her flat at Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse 5. Everyone assumed a fatal fall, until the autopsy revealed she had been beaten to death, a few steps from Salzburg's busiest shopping lane, by a killer who has never been identified.
Sobre este lugar
Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse is one of the oldest lanes in Salzburg, laid out around 1140 and named after the mayor whose family inspired Mozart's Haffner Serenade and Haffner Symphony. Between the Hotel Elefant, an inn since 1442, and the ornate merchant houses that lead down to the Franciscan church, it looks like the last place a murder could pass unnoticed. Yet on 17 October 2001 a neighbour climbing the stairs of the apartment house at number 5 found 87 year old pensioner Margarete Lanz lying blood soaked on the landing in front of her own door. She died at the scene. To the first people on the stairs it looked like a tragic fall, but the forensic institute reached a very different verdict: massive blunt or sharp force injuries that no staircase could explain. The Salzburg homicide commission questioned residents and passers-by throughout the old town, yet in a lane that sees thousands of visitors a day, nobody had seen a thing. Whether she was the victim of a robbery that escalated or of someone she knew was never settled. Because murder never lapses in Austria, her file still sits open with the cold case unit of the Landeskriminalamt, one of the handful of Salzburg killings that remain unsolved.
Datos clave
- 87 years old — The age of Margarete Lanz, the pensioner found beaten to death on the landing outside her apartment at Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse 5.
- 2001 year — On 17 October 2001 a neighbour discovered her body. First taken for a fatal fall, the case was reclassified as murder after the autopsy.
- 7 unsolved murders — In January 2012 the Salzburg criminal police counted seven unsolved murders in the city over 31 years. The Lanz case is one of them and remains open today.
📍 Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse 5, 5020, Salzburg