2023-10-21 22:00:00
As of: October 22, 2023 12:00 a.m
After 15 years in prison, Jan Philipp Reemtsma’s kidnapper, Thomas Drach, was released on October 21, 2013. He held the Hamburg millionaire prisoner for 33 days in 1996 and extorted a ransom worth millions.
Midnight; There was the forest where I had been abandoned, then there was the village, the first house in which the light was still on, and the person who lived there let me come in without any ifs or buts, even though I looked following him like a strange rascal must have occurred. I called my wife and said, ‘It’s me. I am free.’ Jan Philipp Reemtsma, “In the Cellar”
With these words Jan Philipp Reemtsma described the first minutes of freedom following his kidnapping. The then 43-year-old spent 33 days and nights in a cellar dungeon. On April 26, 1996, the kidnappers finally released him following paying 30 million German marks.
Most of the ransom money was squandered and disappeared
The kidnapping of the Hamburg literary scholar, patron and multimillionaire is considered one of the most spectacular criminal cases in the history of the Federal Republic. Rarely has a kidnapping victim been in the hands of his kidnappers for so long, and never has so much ransom been paid – 15 million German marks and 12.5 million Swiss francs. To date, however, only around 1.5 million marks have been seized from the loot. A large part is likely to have been used up in money laundering and while fleeing.
Reemtsma is kidnapped and put in chains
The kidnapping began on the evening of March 25, 1996. Reemtsma left his home in the Blankenese district of Hamburg to get a book from his workhouse, 50 meters away. The perpetrators intercept him on the way there. They beat him down, blindfolded him with adhesive tape and took him to a house in Garlstedt in the Osterholz district north of Bremen that had been rented specifically for the kidnapping. There they put their victim in chains. The room only contains a table, a chair, a mattress and a camping toilet. Before the perpetrators come into Reemtsma, they knock. Then he has to press his face into the mattress. In order not to be recognized later, the head of the kidnappers, Thomas Drach, only speaks to Reemtsma in English.
Investigations
The head of the special commission at the time, Dieter Langendörfer, remembers the investigation into the Reemtsma kidnapping case in 2011. Video
Blackmail letter weighed down with a hand grenade
On the evening of the kidnapping, Reemtsma’s wife Ann Kathrin Scheerer found a blackmail letter. It is placed on a wall in front of their house – and weighed down with a hand grenade. In it, the kidnappers demand a ransom of 20 million marks and threaten to murder their hostage if the press or police get involved.
Reemtsma’s wife informs the police that same night.
Two money transfers fail
Two days later, the kidnappers sent the first sign of life: a Polaroid photo of their injured victim and a letter with instructions. They soon suspect that the police have been informed and threaten in another letter: “If the (ransom) handover fails for police tactical reasons, (…) we will cut off one of Mr. Reemtsma’s fingers. He already has a broken nose. “
Further information
The kidnapping of Jan Philipp Reemtsma is one of the most spectacular kidnappings in German criminal history. A story that still has consequences for the family today.
more
On April 3rd at 2:45 a.m. one of the kidnappers called, his voice distorted. But the agreed handover of money by Reemtsma’s wife and the lawyer Johann Schwenn, who was appointed as the money messenger, fails. It wasn’t until a week later that the kidnappers contacted us once more. On April 13, they led Schwenn first to Luxembourg, then to a parking lot near Trier, where Schwenn threw the money bag over a fence, as the kidnappers demanded. But Schwenn was late because a police officer traveling with her forgot her passport. Nobody collects the millions. Camouflaged police officers collect the money once more the next morning. The fear for the victim begins once more.
Ransom delivery without police
The kidnappers are now taking a new path. In consultation with Jan Philipp Reemtsma, they contacted the Hamburg pastor Christian Arndt and the Kiel sociology professor Lars Clausen. Both are private confidants of the kidnapped man. They should take over the negotiations and handing over the money on their own. This time the police are left out. The blackmailers increase the ransom demand to 30 million.
On the evening of April 24th, Arndt and Clausen set off with two travel bags. Its contents: 30 million marks, part of it in Swiss francs. The two leave the car on a dirt road near Krefeld. A little later the kidnappers report: They have received the money. Hours later, the kidnappers take Reemtsma to a forest near Harburg in southern Hamburg. They release him there. It’s April 26, 1996, just before midnight.
Videos
Kuno Haberbusch, then head of the Panorama editorial team, regarding keeping quiet for so long. Video
The media is silent
What only became known to the public later: Shortly following the kidnapping, journalists leaked rumors regarding the kidnapping. However, the police and family appeal to them not to report it so as not to endanger Reemtsma’s life. The cooperation is successful: all media outlets are holding back, even though more and more journalists are learning regarding the crime. It was only following Reemtsma’s release that they jumped into the case and reported in all the details for days.
Encrypted contact in “Hamburger Morgenpost”
Secret messages: The police target the kidnappers with newspaper advertisements.
A Hamburg daily newspaper is particularly involved in the kidnapping case from the start: In one of their first blackmail letters, the kidnappers ask Reemtsma’s wife Ann Kathrin Scheerer to place a classified ad in the “Hamburger Morgenpost”. Title of the greeting: “All the best Ann Kathrin”, plus a fax number. In the days and weeks that followed, the police used the classified ads almost every day to contact the kidnappers, for example to signal their willingness to negotiate or to request a sign of life. To outsiders, the texts appear enigmatic. They contain messages like: “Tell me, why didn’t you send me a picture?”, “The wait is becoming unbearable” and once more and once more: “Get in touch.”
Koszic’s accomplices and judge are convicted in 1997
A month following the end of the kidnapping, the police in Spain caught two accomplices of the main perpetrator, Thomas Drach. The police had located the house in Garlstedt in which the perpetrators held their victim prisoner and came across the two through the rental agreement. On February 14, 1997, Wolfgang Koszics and Peter Richter were sentenced to ten and a half and five years in prison. Koszics was involved in planning the kidnapping and monitoring the victim. Richter had obtained the necessary equipment and made the blackmail calls to the family.
Koszics was released from prison in 2011 and said he felt threatened followingwards. In February 2012, his body was discovered on the coast of southern Portugal – the circumstances of how and why the then 72-year-old fell off a cliff cannot be fully explained. There has long been speculation regarding a suicide, as part of his loot was accidentally burned, as well as a murder, as Koszics might have had access to other parts of the loot. Whether there is an actual connection to the ransom remains unclear.
A third accomplice turned himself in in 1998 and received six years in prison.
The main perpetrator, Thomas Drach, was not caught until 1998
In 2001, Thomas Drach was sentenced to 14 years and six months in prison. He has been free once more since October 2013.
The search for Thomas Drach, whom several witnesses identified as a resident of the house in Garlstedt, was initially unsuccessful. It wasn’t until 1998 that he was arrested in Argentina. Two years later he was extradited to Germany and sentenced to fourteen and a half years in prison in 2001.
Drach was supposed to be released from prison in July 2012, but the Reemtsma kidnapper was sentenced in November 2011 to a further prison sentence of one year and three months for extortion. In 2009, Drach is said to have tried to incite an acquaintance to blackmail his younger brother Lutz with two letters from prison. On October 21, 2013, the time had come: Thomas Drach was released from prison under strict conditions following more than 15 years in prison.
Years of hunting for millions in ransom money
The question of the missing ransom money remains. In addition to the state investigators, a security company commissioned by Reemtsma has also been searching for the millions for years. Drach’s brother Lutz, who was caught in Madrid in 2002, confessed in 2004 to having laundered almost four million euros from the Reemtsma ransom and received six and a half years in prison. Another accomplice was sentenced to six years in prison in 2008 for money laundering. But a large part of the ransom money is still considered missing or squandered. The search has officially ended since 2016.
Reemtsma kidnapper Drach back in court
Eight years following his release from prison in the Reemtsma case, kidnapper Thomas Drach will be arrested once more in February 2021 – in Amsterdam. Police and public prosecutors accuse him of involvement in four robberies on cash-in-transit vehicles in Cologne, Frankfurt am Main and Limburg in 2018 and 2019. Total loot: more than 230,000 euros. In two of the crimes, Drach is said to have shot a security employee. The charges at the start of the trial on February 1, 2022 include, among other things, particularly serious robbery and attempted murder. One of the victims died in October 2023. “It is being investigated whether the gentleman’s death was due to the events at issue here,” said the victim’s lawyers. According to the regional court, it is initially unclear whether and how the death of the security employee will affect the progress of the proceedings.
Further information
The Reemtsma kidnapper faces another long prison sentence. He is said to have robbed a cash-in-transit truck and it is also a case of attempted murder. (02/01/2022) more
Two years following the kidnapping of millionaire Jan-Phillip Reemtsma, Thomas Drach, head of the gang, was arrested. However, there is no trace of the ransom. (08/12/2014) more
Since his kidnapping in 1996, almost everyone has known his name. Reemtsma’s passion is social research and literature. more
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Hamburg Journal | 02/01/2022 | 19:30 o’clock
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