"I had known Frauke for a few weeks. She was totally nice. I had to work the late shift that night. I didn't go to the pub after that, even though she asked.
My shift ended at 10:15 P.M..
Practically everything applied to me: He doesn't know her for long. Had just had a traumatic incident. May be a little crazy. Has written her messages. Went on a picnic with her two days before. Lives in Hövelhof, which is near the radio cell Sennelager. Goes to the Dören cemetery at night. I would have suspected me too.
Frauke wanted to nurse me back then. Normally I don't let anyone get close to me, but she was able to do that. To this day, I still don't understand how she managed that. We went to the disco twice. I didn't know what it was between us at the time. I didn't have a girlfriend until then. I admit, I liked her. She was a great girl.
My late shift went until 10:15 pm. After that I went to play billiards with my work colleague. And meanwhile I texted with Frauke. She wrote that she would cook for me with Isabella. I replied: I'd love that, but then you have to wear something decent. This remark later became my misfortune. I was frequently interrogated. They speculated that I had a crack. My buddy didn't have a girlfriend until he committed suicide. Did he kill himself because of that? Whether I now had a hatred for women? Whether I wanted to take revenge? Whether we had both been gay?"
Isabella*, the girlfriend who was with the victim in the pub that night, about Niels M.:
"One of my best friends."
Isabella C., female white
"At just before nine, we dropped her off at the pub. I didn't feel like watching soccer, I'd rather talk to my new girlfriend on the phone. Because I had forgotten my apartment key, Frauke lent me hers. And I promised her that I would stay up and open the door for her.
I was lying in my room, watching TV. She didn't come. But no offense, I thought, she was at the pub, having a good time. I don't go to bed that early anyway. After midnight came a text message from her. Everything normal.
Then, when I almost fell asleep, I called her. Cell phone off. Sure, battery empty, I thought. So I left the door open so I could hear the ringing. Then I fell asleep.
Isabella woke me up with the call. I went to Frauke's room. The bed was made, she hadn't come home. But that's not Frauke, she doesn't stay out at night. I immediately called the hospitals.
Frauke had been in the kindergarten group with my younger brother. Years later, someone dragged her along to a friend's party. And suddenly she was in my arms. I was 18, she was 16, but that was long gone in Paderborn. Frauke had another relationship in the meantime, that was just over. We got along well. We went grocery shopping together once a week and cooked once in a while. Otherwise, everyone lived their daily lives. Frauke was a very helpful person, it was almost a helper syndrome, maybe that was her tough luck."
The call on Thursday: Hello Christos, I wanted to say that I am fine and that I will be home soon. Tell mom and dad and the others.
"Christos? She only said that to me when she was angry. When she wanted me to listen carefully. It was like a text she recited slowly and monotonously. Totally dazed, as if on drugs, not herself at all. I think she was in a room, but I'm not sure. She hung up right away. I couldn't ask a question. I was so relieved to hear from her. A sign of life.
I immediately informed her mother Ingrid. Frauke is coming today. What a relief.
The call on Saturday: I won't be back that late. Come home tonight.
"Are you hurt?"
No. I'm in Paderborn. I'm in Paderborn. I'm in Paderborn.
Why did she emphasize Paderborn so much? And why did she announce she was coming and did not? We wondered whether something could be wrong with her. Whether she had messed up and that's why she didn't want to come back.
After the phone call on Sunday.
She gave answers, but they were riddles. That's why I worked out a strategy with the others for the next conversation: First find out what situation she's in. Don't put pressure on her. Not saying: What kind of things do you do? Don't drill. But slowly circle it. How are things? Where are you? And I wanted to sound compassionate and depressed so she would finally say where she was. But on Monday there was no call. And she had called every night.
The call on Tuesday.
I sat at my desk until late at night and tried to study for the university, it was exam time. Karen* (Frauke's sister) was in Frauke's room at the computer, she often stayed overnight in the shared flat at that time. Suddenly the cell phone rang. I yelled, "Frauke's calling!" And turned on the loudspeaker.
Honestly, I considered this call a step forward. Because a real conversation developed, so long, just under five minutes. But Karen thought, precisely because it was so long, that it could be goodbye.
The talk comes to Frauke's strange repeating of words like Paderborn and Mom and if it could be a hidden code used by her.
But was she still clear enough to send such a hidden messages? I doubt it.
What I wondered the most: Why did the perpetrator let Frauke call for a week? Did he want to reassure the police? So he could do what he wanted to her? Was it a game for him? Maybe he was putting her off. You get to go home if you play by the rules. Maybe she was still alive.
After her body was found.
Was she just thrown there, or was she carefully discarded? Did the person care about her?
It's obvious that they suspected me. If you Google my name, you can still read today: Chris, the roommate, did it. Logical, the ex-boyfriend who takes all the calls. I could have sat there and used one cell phone to call the other. I was lucky that Karen* was there for the last call.
On speculations if Frauke's answer to the question whether she was been held (hostage), which she answered with "Yes,...No, No" might have been her 'death sentence'.
But why did he let her continue talking after that? Why didn't he intervene? Did he have compassion? Was it an emotional attachment to her?
I want to be able to find peace. I keep asking myself: Did she know she wasn't going to survive this? And if so, what did she feel? To imagine that is the worst thing. If the perpetrator knew Frauke, then he must have some sort of remorse. I hope he collapses under the weight at some point."
Karen L., femalee white
Isabella C. is the last known person seen Frauke alive.
While she was having dinner with her mother and Chris, I texted Frauke: "We're sitting in the pub now. Good view of the screen. Feel free to come by."
She did.
Everyone was in soccer fever. We had arranged to wear red and white that evening, England was playing against Sweden. We sat in a row like in a movie theater. She was texting the whole time with Niels, one of my best friends, whom she had just met. Suddenly her phone beeped, went off. Battery dead. We had the same thing, I lent her mine, got it back later.
She said, "Oh, how do I phrase this?" We laughed a lot.
Frauke looked tired. Yawned a lot. Right after the game she took off: "Chris is waiting, I'm going home, otherwise he'll have to stay up half the night." I still walked her to the door. "See you tomorrow, Frauke!" I don't know which way she went.
The next morning I sat in the nursing school at eight o'clock on the dot. Frauke had the seat right across from me, but it was empty. I went to the teacher. Did Frauke call in sick? After the first lesson, I called Chris at home: Did Frauke miss?
After the call on Thursday, when she announced to come home.
I was sitting in the car that night with some friends, just across the street. We were watching the entrance to Frauke's apartment to be there when she came. But she did not come.
The police told us that Frauke might have been in the mood for some time off. Nonsense, she wasn't like that. We were totally annoyed with the police. They should have investigated more intensively.
On treating Niels as a suspect.
I have known Niels since childhood. "You're wasting your time," I told the police. Niels was simply a new acquaintance. Frauke once wrote me in a letter that he was a buddy for her, nothing more.
The police was taking footage on Frauke's funeral.
I remember looking up from the pew and recognizing some Detectives on a platform. Suddenly they pointed at someone in the crowd. I couldn't see who, all the pews were so full. But I got scared: what if he is among us? That was gross.
"The vacations were just around the corner. It was the 20th of June. I visited Frauke in Paderborn. She wanted to watch soccer that evening. Before that we went out for dinner, Frauke, Chris and me. They hadn't been together for over a year, but they were still good friends. They lived in a two-person shared apartment.
After Frauke disappeared.
I wanted to file a missing person's report with the police in my town. The officer said Frauke was an adult who could choose her own whereabouts. Maybe, but she is a thousand percent reliable. He at least informed the colleagues in Paderborn. They looked to see if there had been an accident. Nothing.
Frauke had only been in Paderborn for three quarters of a year. She had previously completed her high school degree in Bielefeld at a vocational college, combined with training as an educator. She wanted to work in a facility for the handicapped, and did her year of training as an educator there. Then she couldn't find a job, so she went to Paderborn to train as a nurse. I had been skeptical about sharing an apartment with Chris. "Will it work out, Frauke? You were together for four years. Now that it's been a year, do you want to move in together?" But she didn't like the nurses' home. Frauke turned 21, she was in a phase of life when you are curious, about everything, including others. She was a self-confident, open person. That's how her friends saw her, too.
She got along well with everyone, even with weird birds. When I wanted to know what her acquaintances did for a living, she'd say, "You're always asking! That's not interesting at all." And I thought, don't drill too much or you'll lose the wire.
I also found her first text message to be authentic. We knew that her battery was dead. So after she left the pub, there must have been someone who had a charger or a suitable battery for her. Maybe someone she knew was with her.
Downtown Paderborn was crowded that evening. Someone had to have seen her. We handed out flyers all over town on Thursday night, the entire nursing school was there, probably 40 people.
That she called Chris was logical. She trusted him. And she knew that I didn't always have my cell phone in my pocket back then. Her father didn't use the cell phone at all back then. After the call, we waited in the shared apartment. Waited and waited. On the cell phone we could not get through to her.
Frank, Frauke's brother, called his sister when she text-messaged Chris.
What does "I can't say" mean? Does it mean she doesn't know, or she can't say? Frank thought her voice sounded clear on the call. Her father and I waited in the apartment. All night, but nothing happened. I was done.
The police told me, "What do you want? She did call, she's alive, and so this is no longer a job for us." I was beside myself. I was even more alarmed by the whole thing. The constant announcing that she was coming home, her blurry voice, the cell phone turned off. The police didn't even know where the calls were coming from. Only the origin of the first text message had been determined. It took days for the network operator to provide more information. Later I had to learn that the police had requested the data only for the first calls until Friday night. We waited weeks for the others because the court order was missing.
On Tuesday evening Karen, Frauke's father and I were at Chris's again. Waiting again. Earlier we had tried in vain to buy a voice recorder. She didn't get back to us, so Frauke's dad and I left around 11 p.m..
Then the call.
She went much further in this conversation, initially answering the question of whether she was being held in the affirmative, but still we had no concrete starting point. No place, no person. But after that, at the latest, it was clear to us that it was an abduction.
There was no more sign of life. Fear continued to rise in me. And everyone was alone with this fear. We distributed leaflets the second time. People were celebrating the World Cup, and we were looking for my daughter. I thought about her answers. Why, when asked where she was, she had replied, "Mom. Mom." At first, I assumed she had passed out. But maybe that was a hidden clue. I am a principal at a high school in Bad Driburg, east of Paderborn. I live there in a second home during the week. Did she want to steer in that direction?
I went to the police in Paderborn again. The officer just said: What I would imagine, if I thought that there was an abnormal sex offender up to mischief? He almost shouted. Frauke had run away from home.
The cell phone data was the most important thing. We knew that the first SMS was sent from Nieheim, far outside Paderborn, a rural area, all scattered villages. But the calls after that all came from different corners of Paderborn. From Sennelager in the north, where many English soldiers live. Then several calls from the industrial area Auf dem Dören in the east of the city. And a call from near the Mönkeloh industrial area, at the southern end of Borchener Straße. The kidnapper must have been driving through the area with Frauke.
Because we couldn't get the police involved, we hired a private detective. The man checked out the discos with Frauke's friends. Looking back, unfortunately, we have to say that he was not suitable, but expensive. I later went on a search myself. Talked to sect commissioners, drug counseling centers.
I could not sleep anymore. I twisted and turned her words so many times. Over and over again. But no matter how hard I tried during those weeks, I just couldn't decode them clearly.
Frauke's body was found.
Late at night, around 11 p.m., the head of the county police department called: We have a body, probably your daughter. Probably? It was agony. I couldn't get my mind together until the next morning. I called the woman back and asked: Do you really believe that Frauke voluntarily walked these 15 to 20 kilometers into the forest to lie down and die? That can't be! She agreed with me and said that it must now be assumed that she had been killed.
Detective Östermann was at our door two days later. Then they knew for sure that it was Frauke. He told me about the place where she was found. My school is nearby, but I've never been there. The killer must have known his way around. The trees are high, the street is narrow. Strange that this place is called Totengrund (Dead's ground). Was that on purpose?
Talking about Niels.
During dinner, she talked a lot about him. A young man who had been hit hard because his best friend had taken his own life a few weeks ago. Frauke was struggling with that. How could anyone kill himself? Just like that. For her, it was a horrible thought, not understandable. Later I learned that the dead friend was buried in the cemetery Auf dem Dören. The corner from which most of the calls came.
Any other suspects?
The English soldiers? They often visit the pub, especially during an England game. And they live in Sennelager, where a call came from.
Frauke was buried at the end of October. It was a public funeral service, there were so many people who stood by us, they also had a right to say goodbye. The police told us they would like to film at the funeral to see if there might be someone there we didn't know.
We evaluated the videos. I was annoyed. The police had forgotten to film the second entrance. People I had seen were missing from the footage. I know that all of Frauke's former friends had come to the funeral.
The police focused on Nieheim
Why Nieheim? Why did the profilers settle? She had no connection there. And the way she emphasized Paderborn meant to me that she had somehow made it back to Paderborn.
Frauke was good with people. I think she had the hope that if she followed the instructions, she would still get him turned. And she gave up that hope at some point. This "Yes ... No! No!" in the last conversation - maybe that was her death sentence.
I don't know if I would have the strength, but I would like to ask him why there was no other solution than to take Frauke's life. Usually there is always another solution.
Maybe reality is worse than fantasy. But I want to know what happened. Will it help me? I don't know."
My sister liked to party. But she wasn't the type to just let men chat her up. She never had a one-night stand. Never. She was zero like that.
I had not expected that she would still contact us. I had feared the worst, even though I didn't dare to say so in front of the others.
After the last call.
Tears welled up in my eyes. She sounded like she was in a trance. It wasn't just exhaustion. The speech was totally washed out. I once had knockout drops poured into my glass, after which I sounded like her. I think she was crying, too.
My brother and I looked at her computer. She liked to chat. It was all new in 2006, people were still happy to have a flat rate back then.
After finding her remains.
At least certainty. The uncertainty is the worst. We would have been looking for her all our lives.
There are people of faith who say: At some point, everyone will stand before the Lord God and receive their just punishment. I am not a believer. I wish I were.
The situation now.
We don't talk about it much. A few years ago, my parents separated. We are certainly not the first family to break up over something like this."
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