The death of nine-year-old Marijana K. almost three decades ago leaves the investigators of the Essen Homicide Unit restless. This Wednesday evening, you hope to get clues about the girl's alleged murderer with the help of the viewers of "Aktenzeichen XY" (ZDF, 8:15 p.m.).
At the time of the crime, at the end of August 1993, the suspect was said to be in his mid-30s to early 40s. He had a receding hairline with grey-brown mottled hair, is the description of the police. His voice was noticeably high.
The Essen police describe the case, which they want to present in the program with ZDF presenter Rudi Cerne, in detail in a current press release. According to this, there were two cases at the time that were apparently closely related and in which nine-year-old girls were abused and severely abused. One of the children survived. The other, Marijana K., was found dead a few days after her disappearance.
According to the police, the first case involving the girl, who survived, occurred on February 6, 1992: a man lured the child into a car in the Altenessen district of Essen. He drugged and abused the girl, who was eventually found seriously injured by a young woman on a country road.
According to the police, the nine-year-old was on her way back from a children's birthday party when she met her tormentor in the early evening - very close to her home. The investigation revealed that the man managed to lure her into his white van. It is unclear what exactly happened then and how the child, seriously injured, ended up near the L422 country road in Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth, where it was found about ten hours after it disappeared.
After the girl was discovered there - about 30 kilometers from Essen - by the young woman, she was taken to a hospital, where life-threatening injuries and sexual abuse were found, according to the police report.
The second victim attributed to this perpetrator did not survive the attack: Marijana K. - also nine years old - disappeared after she was last seen in a pedestrian zone in Essen-Altenessen. Days later, Marijana was found dead on a federal highway in Lower Saxony.
Marijana was the daughter of a Croatian who earned his living as a road worker in Germany. The girl was visiting her father with her mother. Because nine-year-old Marijana K. actually lived with her four siblings in Croatia and only spent the summer holidays in the Ruhr area. She probably met her future killer for the first time at the market in Altenessen, where she was playing frisbee with a friend. According to the police, that was about three weeks before the crime. "Investigations revealed that the unknown man wanted to meet the children. There was no meeting," writes the police on the case.
The investigation revealed that in the early evening of August 31, 1993, Marijana wanted to go to a clothing store to meet her mother. But in the meantime the mother returned home without her daughter. From then on, Marijana disappeared until she was found dead on September 3, 1993 on the B75 between Bremen and Hamburg, near the village of Scheeßel. The coroner determined during the autopsy that the girl had been severely sexually abused.
With "Aktenzeichen XY" the murder commission of the Essen police hopes for new insights into the case. Information is accepted under the telephone number 0201/829-0.
Sources: Police Essen, ZDF, "Augsburger Allgemeine"
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