Nearly 25 years after the discovery of a youth's body weighted down with a parasol stand in the Main River in Frankfurt, investigators have solved the case. The previously unidentified victim has been identified as a 16-year-old from Offenbach, the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office and the Hessian State Criminal Police Office in Wiesbaden announced on Monday. Her now 67-year-old father has been taken into investigative custody on suspicion of murder.
Tips from the public as part of the current "Identify Me" investigation campaign were decisive, according to investigators. A campaign in which authorities internationally seek leads to solve cold criminal cases. The father was arrested last Tuesday.
According to investigators, he is suspected of killing his 16-year-old daughter at the end of July 2001 in the family's apartment in Offenbach "through a multitude of brutal blows" and then throwing her body into the Main River in neighboring Frankfurt. A passerby discovered the dead youth on July 31, wrapped in a bedsheet and attached to a parasol stand, floating in the river.
According to earlier investigative reports, her body showed signs of long-lasting and not medically treated severe alleged abuse - including numerous long scars, misalignments of the arms from healed fractures, and burn scars on the entire body that could have been caused by lit cigarettes.
Police and the Public Prosecutor's Office did not comment on further details or background on Monday. The investigations are ongoing, they said.
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