Mord in Eberswalde (2013)

In 1969, two nine-year-old boys are murdered in Eberswalde (Frankfurt (Oder) district). A murder investigation commission (MUK) is set up under the leadership of criminal police inspector Heinz Gödicke and Stefan Witt, a major in the Ministry for State Security. Relatives and acquaintances of the victims are questioned on a wide scale, but this yields no leads to the killer. The fact that both bodies bear numerous small knife punctures that were not fatal leads Gödicke to suspect a sadistic and mentally ill person. The case of child murderer Jürgen Bartsch, which had recently come to public attention in West Germany through the media, strengthens his suspicion. But Witt, representing the State Security, will not allow this line of thought to be pursued: something like that could not and must not exist in the German Democratic Republic. Tensions between the two investigators increase further when the secret relationship between Witt’s partner, primary school teacher Carla Böhm, and Gödicke comes to light. The party-line Witt announces the dissolution of the MUK and has the case filed as unsolved. Gödicke, who promised one of the victims’ fathers that he would find his child’s murderer, continues investigating for months. But he cannot prevent a third child murder. Witt, now promoted to colonel, appears again, and Gödicke tells him that he has this child’s death on his conscience. Gödicke takes the initiative and questions children at the Eberswalde school. One boy gives him a lead about a young man around twenty years old. The commissioner compares a list of animal abusers compiled during the investigation back in 1969 but never examined with the list of people who attended the victims’ funeral in 1969. This leads him to Erwin Hagedorn, born in 1949. Hagedorn works at the Mitropa restaurant at Eberswalde station, which explains to the investigators the professionally skilled use of a knife as a murder weapon, according to the investigation. When Gödicke and his colleague Georg Thom of the People’s Police visit the suspect, he confesses: “I’m the one you’re looking for.” Since Hagedorn confesses to all three murders and there is no doubt about his guilt even after a reconstruction of the crime, he is sentenced to death. Gödicke does try to speak up for him, believing him to be mentally ill and therefore not criminally responsible, but the judge does not listen. After a plea for clemency is also rejected by Walter Ulbricht, then chairman of the GDR State Council, Hagedorn is executed on September 15, 1972, at the Leipzig penal institution by an unexpected close-range pistol shot to the back of the head.