More than 23 years after an unknown body was found in the Main, the police have gone public with the case again. The corpse of a 13 to 16-year-old girl, wrapped in a leopard-print duvet cover and weighed down with a parasol stand, was floating in the water on July 31, 2001 on the river bank in Frankfurt-Nied. Since then, all attempts to clarify the girl’s identity and the reasons behind her death have been in vain.
The autopsy of the body, which had been in the water for between twelve and 24 hours, revealed that the teenager had been killed by kicking or hitting her chest or stomach with a blunt object. In addition, the girl had probably previously been severely abused over a long period of time. Several misaligned fractures of both upper arms, some elongated scars on the forehead, torso and legs as well as numerous burn scars all over the body were found.
The police presented a first computer image with a reconstruction of the face a week after the body was found. Forensic investigations revealed that the girl probably came from Afghanistan, Pakistan or northern India and came to Germany very early, probably between the fourth month and the fifth year of her life. The teenager is said to have lived in Germany, most likely in an urban area, for the last 22 months before her death. She may have spent part of her childhood in the Odenwald, in the Rhine-Palatinate region or in the Hunsrück.
Reconstruction: the face of the unknown deadHLKA
The victim had dark brown to black hair, was, according to police, 1.57 meters tall and emaciated to 38.5 kilograms. What was noticeable was the deformed left ear due to violence. Before the body was thrown into the Main, a maximum of three kilometers upstream from where it was found, the perpetrators had tied the body up like a bundle in the bed cover and then tied it to the umbrella stand; his knees bent and pressed against his thin body.
The gruesome crime, which is known to the Frankfurt murder squad as “The Girl from the Main,” shocked even hardened investigators. It was said 23 years ago that the young person must have experienced an unimaginable martyrdom. At that time, suspicions were expressed, among other things, that the girl might have been employed in a diplomatic household and had been mistreated there. According to the police, several circumstances indicated this. However, investigations in diplomatic circles remained inconclusive, as did the checks on more than a thousand young women in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India who had lived in Germany at some point.
“Murder does not expire,” is the title of the search call from the Hessian State Criminal Police Office, with which the mysterious case is now to be reopened. At the internet address k.polizei.hessen.de/374749457 The computer image with the presumed facial features of the unknown person as well as other images and details about the murder can be found. The case is also expected to be broadcast on the ZDF program “Aktenzeichen XY unsolved” on December 11th. A reward of 10,000 euros is being offered for information that leads to the arrest of the perpetrator or perpetrators.
The resumption of the public search is part of the international “Identify Me” campaign, in which the police have set themselves the goal of identifying 46 dead women from several European countries, including nine from Germany. In most cases, these women were either murdered or died under dubious or unclear circumstances. Some of the cases, like that of the unknown Frankfurt deaths, date back decades.
