Between 1983 and 1990 five girls and young women, aged 15 to 31, were killed in the Aachen area of western Germany. The cases were separate events, spread over seven years, and none was solved at the time. They were linked in 2007, when a man in his early fifties who had been caught in a minor theft gave a saliva sample and the result matched evidence from one of the old files. In August 2008 the Aachen regional court convicted Egidius Schiffer of murder in five cases and sentenced him to life imprisonment. He died in his cell in Bochum prison in July 2018, at the age of 62.
Schiffer was 51 when he was arrested in 2007. Belgian public broadcaster BRF, which covers the German-speaking region on the border, described him that August as an insurance salesman who had recently lost his job and who lived in the Viersen district on the Lower Rhine. It reported that he was married for the third time and had a young son. United Press International, citing Deutsche Welle, described him as a former insurance salesman and a trained nurse, and the Tagesspiegel gave his profession at the time of the verdict as a trained nurse. His date of birth and his upbringing were not reported. At the verdict in 2008 he was 52.
The cases are known through their number, their dates and the age range of the victims, not through individual accounts. A prosecutor's document cited in 2007 gave the victims' ages as 15 to 31. A report on the case that August said that the first killing took place in 1983, two in 1984, one in 1987 and the last in 1990. UPI reported that the DNA match that led to the arrest concerned the case of a 17-year-old girl in 1984. The names of the victims, their home towns and the dates of the individual killings were not reported.
At least two of the victims were minors. The court found that each death was a murder, and that Schiffer was responsible for all five.
Little is known about the investigations of the 1980s. Police did say in 2007 that a sixth, very similar killing in the Aachen area was being examined to see whether it was connected, and that police were also in contact with authorities in Belgium and the Netherlands. No result of those enquiries was reported.
The turn came by chance. According to the reports, police in the Heinsberg district, near the Dutch border, caught Schiffer stealing scrap metal. At the police station he gave a saliva sample voluntarily. The sample was entered in the national database and compared with traces from unsolved cases. Roughly two weeks before the news broke in August 2007, it matched evidence from one of the old killings. Reports on the arrest date the theft case to March 2007. UPI reported that authorities in Aachen had been preparing genetic tests on 150 men who lived in the area of the 17-year-old's case when the arrest was made.
The Tagesspiegel's account of the verdict gives the gap between the last killing and the identification of the suspect as 17 years.
On August 20, 2007, Aachen police announced that they held a man who had confessed to killing five women and girls. UPI, citing Deutsche Welle, reported that he was arrested on a Monday, which was August 20, and that he had admitted the killings. BRF described the man as the presumed perpetrator, not a convicted one, and wrote that police were examining whether he was responsible for further cases.
The Tagesspiegel recorded in 2008 that Schiffer had confessed to police to all five killings. The interrogation itself was not described.
The trial took place before the regional court (Landgericht) in Aachen in 2008. The charges, as the Tagesspiegel summarized them, were murder in five cases and further charges, one of which was time-barred.
At the trial Schiffer withdrew his confession and said he was innocent. He gave an explanation for the DNA evidence, according to the Tagesspiegel, claimed that someone else had committed the killing in question, and offered a reason of his own for having confessed. The court rejected this account. The defense asked for an acquittal; the court followed the prosecution's demands.
BRF reported on July 17, 2008 that the verdict had been expected that day but was put off after the defense filed two new motions for evidence. The prosecution and the joint plaintiffs opposed the motions, and the court had not yet ruled on them. A further hearing day was set for August 12. The verdict came on August 19, 2008.
On August 19, 2008 the court found Schiffer guilty of murder in five cases and sentenced him to life imprisonment. It also found particular gravity of guilt (besondere Schwere der Schuld). The Tagesspiegel reported that the finding meant he must serve more than 15 years. The Abendzeitung, reporting on his death in 2018, also gave the sentence as life imprisonment from the Aachen regional court in 2008.
Whether the court also ordered preventive detention, whether Schiffer appealed to the Federal Court of Justice, and whether the judgment became final are not known.
Schiffer was held in Bochum prison. On the morning of Sunday, July 22, 2018, he was found dead in his single cell. He was 62. According to a prison spokesperson quoted by the Abendzeitung after a report in the WAZ newspaper group, police and prosecutors treated the death as an accident. There was no indication of suicide or of any third party. His lawyer said he had not been suicidal, according to The Star.
The victims' names were not reported, and the coverage quotes none of their families. Little is known of the individual investigations of the 1980s or of the court's detailed reasoning, and why the killings stopped after 1990 has never been explained. Police enquiries about further cases in Belgium and the Netherlands in 2007 produced no reported result, and he was convicted of no killings other than the five.
1983: first of the five killings in the Aachen area.
1984: two further killings, one of a 17-year-old girl.
1987: fourth killing.
1990: fifth and last killing.
March 2007: caught stealing scrap metal in the Heinsberg district; gives a saliva sample.
August 2007: DNA match announced; arrest and confession reported (August 20).
July 17, 2008: verdict postponed after defense motions.
August 19, 2008: Landgericht Aachen sentences him to life imprisonment, with particular gravity of guilt, for murder in five cases.
July 22, 2018: found dead in his cell at Bochum prison.