Frankfurt investigator: “The Tristan case is my constant companion”
-
fromGeorg Leppert
conclude
The Frankfurt commissioner Uwe Fey determined the murdered 13-year-old in autumn – even after almost 25 years. An excerpt from the recently published FR magazine “Frankfurter Tatorte”.
This text may also lead to people calling Uwe Fey and claiming that they could solve the murder case. Fey knows that, he can handle it. He is not angry with people either, on the contrary. Any clue, apart from the tips even necessary clairvoyants and dowsers, can be valuable, says the chief detective. But Fey, who is 60 years old and will retire in a few months, has on the other hand been in the business long enough to be able to assess the probabilities correctly: the chance that there will actually be a clue from the population about the arrest of the murderer of Tristan Brübach leads is very low. It was too long ago for that. Almost 25 years now.
Nevertheless, the media keep reporting on the case. TV documentaries about unsolved murders, in particular, regularly focus on Tristan. “And then the next day my mailbox is full of clues,” says Fey.
The fact that the murder case continues to be a big topic beyond Frankfurt is mainly due to the unbelievable brutality with which the crime was committed. One thing is certain after the investigation: 13-year-old Tristan Brübach meets his murderer on the afternoon of March 26, 1998 on the way home in the Liederbach tunnel at Höchst train station. The boy was beaten and strangled until he passed out and then killed with a cut in the throat. Then the perpetrator removed both testicles and meat from the child’s buttocks and thighs.
Do you have to be hardened or even lacking empathy to become an expert on such a heinous crime? Fey shakes his head. For one thing, he doesn’t like the term “expert”. “I do my job,” says the policeman. And as such he is now dealing with the so-called cold cases, criminal cases that happened a long time ago. Some of these could be solved thanks to new techniques – such as comparing DNA samples. Tristan’s murder is not one of them.
On the other hand, Fey was at the homicide squad for a quarter of a century, most recently he headed the police station. In this function one has to deal with the abysses on a daily basis. Fey is definitely not numb. “The Tristan case affects me, of course,” he says. He would like nothing more than to find the culprit. For this he also deals with the horrific details.
FR talk of the town
On the occasion of the publication The “Frankfurter Tatorte” invites the Frankfurter Rundschau to talk about the town on Wednesday, December 1, at 7 p.m. in the Haus am Dom, Domplatz 3.
On the podium sit the police chief inspector Anja Lange, the former judge at the regional court Klaus Drescher and the FR police reporter Oliver Teutsch.
A registration is necessary at fr.de/anmeldung. The 2G rules apply. The evening will also be broadcast live: fr.de/eventvideo
Around 95 percent of all homicides in Germany are solved. But it is also a fact that the longer it has been since an act, the lower the chance that the police will be successful. Much of the evidence has “burst like a soap bubble,” says Fey. In this respect, the Commissioner cannot simply say that the murderer will be found at some point. There is at least a chance that the perpetrator will at some point want to clear the table. Maybe just before his own death. If he’s still alive at all.
Immediately after the fact, things didn’t look too bad for the Frankfurt homicide squad. There were three teenagers dying from the observed crime – albeit from a distance. It provides a description of the perpetrator. Then there was the man with the pigtail and the eye-catching harelip on his upper lip, who was seen near the crime scene at the time of the crime. A man, presumably between 20 and 30 years old, even turned up at a law firm and said that he had just got out of prison and that a nun was “crap again”. An employee of the firm sent him to a specialist lawyer specializing in criminal law. The suspect never appeared there.
And then there was another mysterious phone call. It was April 7, 1998, the day after Tristan’s funeral. A man said he was the culprit, was standing at the Höchst train station and wanted to be picked up. When the police got there, he was gone. The caller’s voice could later be tapped over the phone, tens of thousands of people died. Even that did not lead to a solution to the case.
Over time, the clues became more and more vague. Fey and his colleagues went after them anyway. They checked suicides because it was possible that the perpetrator could not live with his guilt and killed himself. And she takes care of a tip from a paramedic who worked in psychiatry in Hadamar in Central Hesse during his training. A previous patient looked very similar to the phantom, said the man. But even with this hint, the murderer could not find himself. And the man who sneaked into the Höchst cemetery at night in October 1999 and dug the boy’s grave four feet deep was never found by the police. It is quite possible that it was the perpetrator, says Fey today. In any case, it was disturbed and fled.
The police finally relied on so-called suspect-independent series tests. All male residents of Höchst and Unterliederbach between the ages of 18 and 45 should give their fingerprints. That too did not lead to anything.
Once the Tristan case seemed to be resolved quickly, at least the solution seemed near. In 2016, the Hessian State Criminal Police Office announced that Manfred S., who died in 2014, was under suspicion. The serial killer is said to have killed and dismembered at least five women between 1971 and 2004. The investigators saw parallels to the murder of Tristan because of the high level of brutality of the acts. But it is now clear that Manfred S. is ruled out as a perpetrator.
Uwe Fey doesn’t seem disaffected. He’s just a realist. “The Tristan case,” he says, “is my constant companion.” And that will not change with his retirement either.