Norbert Poehlke was a police officer in the Stuttgart region who, according to investigators, killed three men in 1984 and 1985 and carried out a run of bank robberies across northern Württemberg. In October 1985, as the largest police inquiry in West Germany's postwar history reached him, he is reported to have killed his wife and two sons, and then he died by suicide in southern Italy. He was never arrested, charged or tried. What he is said to have done rests on what investigators concluded and the press reported, and no court ever tested it.
The case drew attention because the man sought for months turned out to be a serving officer, and because the inquiry had come across his name earlier and set it aside. It remains one of the best-known criminal cases of southwestern Germany and has been the subject of television documentaries as recently as 2026.
Poehlke joined the police after passing the entrance examination for police school in 1972, on his second attempt, the Stuttgarter Zeitung reported in 2015. During his training he met his future wife. They had three children, two sons and a daughter. He was a Polizeiobermeister and worked as a dog handler with the Landespolizeidirektion Stuttgart II; the Schwäbische Post described him as a father of three who was fond of children and had no prior record.
The family built a house in Strümpfelbach, a village near Backnang. According to the Stuttgarter Zeitung, they overextended themselves financially, and money worries shaped family life. A ZDFinfo documentary on the case adds that he had won a sum in the lottery, put it toward the house, and then needed steady extra income to sustain the standard of living he wanted. The Schwäbische Post gives the same explanation: with a modest salary, he wanted to keep up a high standard of living, and that, the paper wrote, led him to crime. Reports differ on the size of the lottery win.
In March 1984 the couple's three-year-old daughter died of a brain tumor. The Stuttgarter Zeitung and the Schwäbische Post both place the death shortly before the first killing attributed to him. Neither report draws a conclusion from the timing.
The first killing attributed to Poehlke took place on May 3, 1984, near Marbach am Neckar. The man who died was Siegfried P., 47, from Aschaffenburg. Investigators concluded that the offender wanted his car. The same day a Volksbank branch in Erbstetten was robbed, and the car was used in the robbery. The offender cut his own hand during the raid and left a blood trace, which later mattered to the inquiry because the blood type was a rare one.
The Stuttgarter Zeitung wrote that the Erbstetten robbery was, beyond doubt, to be attributed to the offender later nicknamed in the press, and it treats the killing of Siegfried P. as part of the same series. The Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, in a 2005 article reprinted from the Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung, names the man and gives his age as 47.
The second killing attributed to Poehlke happened in the last days of December 1984 near Großbottwar, in the Ludwigsburg district. The man who died was Eugene W., 37, an Englishman who lived in Nuremberg.
Reports differ on the date of the killing. The Stuttgarter Zeitung puts it on December 21, 1984, and says an attempted bank robbery in Cleebronn was foiled that day when an elderly man mistook the offender's car for his nephew's. It dates a completed robbery at the Volksbank in Cleebronn to December 28. The Landesarchiv article places the killing on December 28, the day of the Cleebronn robbery. The man's car was again used in a bank robbery; witnesses at Cleebronn noted an odd stance and a waddling gait in the man who came in.
After the Cleebronn robbery the authorities set up a special commission in Großbottwar, according to the Landesarchiv. The Stuttgarter Zeitung says a first team of 20 officers was later expanded.
The third killing attributed to Poehlke was on July 22, 1985, between Ilsfeld and Flein, in the Heilbronn district. The man who died was Wilfried S., 26, from Beilstein. The Landesarchiv article counts him as the third victim.
The same day, a bank in Spiegelberg was targeted. The branch manager saw the man approach and warned the staff, and the alarm was raised; the offender left without taking anything, according to the Stuttgarter Zeitung and the Schwäbische Post. The Landesarchiv article adds that a patrol stopped the officer in his own car afterward, and that the patrol officer called him a colleague. Only one regional newspaper account records that stop.
Investigators grouped four bank raids in the region with the killings, in Erbstetten, Cleebronn, Spiegelberg and, in late September 1985, Rosenberg. The Stuttgarter Zeitung counts four raids in all; the Schwäbische Post says the Rosenberg raid, unlike the earlier ones, was not accompanied by a killing and differed in its method, which delayed the link to the others. It notes that the raids were timed around police shift changes, and that the killings took place in different police districts. The Stuttgarter Zeitung draws the same conclusion that inside knowledge was suspected.
The inquiry grew into what the Schwäbische Post and the teleschau service describe as the largest police operation in postwar West Germany up to that time. The Schwäbische Post puts the special commission at 85 officers. The ZDF page for the 2026 documentary speaks of more than 100 investigators and over 4,000 leads, and both the Schwäbische Post and the Landesarchiv give 4,482 leads, more than 1,000 people checked and about 540 tips.
Police warned the public that the offender would probably use force without hesitation. The case was shown on the television program "Aktenzeichen XY ... ungelöst" on July 5, 1985, and produced no decisive tip, the Stuttgarter Zeitung and prisma wrote. Witness descriptions were inconsistent and pointed the inquiry in several directions. The Stuttgarter Zeitung adds that Poehlke's wife may have seen the broadcast, which described the offender's gait and posture; it does not say whether she suspected him.
After the third killing, investigators considered that the offender might be one of their own. The items recovered from the killings were of a type issued to police, which the Stuttgarter Zeitung and the ZDF page for the 2026 documentary both describe as the point at which the question was raised whether the killer was among the investigators. The Schwäbische Post and the Stuttgarter Zeitung report a large technical screening of police-issued equipment, and they differ on the size of it: the Schwäbische Post counts 7,661 items tested, the Stuttgarter Zeitung about 12,000 sent to the federal criminal police office in Wiesbaden. Every police officer was also asked for a blood sample, because of the rare blood type found at the first robbery.
In August 1985 a young police officer was arrested in connection with the case. The suspicion was soon dropped, and the Stuttgarter Zeitung says public trust in the police suffered. Poehlke himself had come up in the screening. The Schwäbische Post and the Landesarchiv both say his name sat in the files as lead number 3799 and was set aside, because his appearance and build did not match the witness descriptions. The Landesarchiv article reports that the Interior Ministry later admitted that individual officers had made mistakes.
According to the Stuttgarter Zeitung, Poehlke came under suspicion only in early October 1985, through a check of lockers at the Ludwigsburg railway station carried out as part of an unrelated terrorism inquiry. Officers found a police uniform, other items and a letter addressed to him. Questioned by the special commission, he said he had stored the uniform after attending his mother-in-law's birthday. Investigators checked the date, but the paper says they did not check whether he had been at the party. The Schwäbische Post adds that a car linked to one of the robberies had been parked near the lockers.
He refused to give a blood sample at the hospital in Marbach while the police-issued equipment assigned to him was being tested. He reported sick in the first week of October and never returned to work. The Schwäbische Post reports that tips against him multiplied in early October and that on October 21 investigators confirmed that the equipment assigned to him matched the evidence from the killings. That date falls one day before his own death, and it is not known whether he knew of the result. The Landesarchiv article says he learned from colleagues that the inquiry had succeeded, and that he acted before officers could come for him.
On October 13, 1985, investigators attributed to Poehlke the killing of his wife and his eldest son in Strümpfelbach. The Stuttgarter Zeitung and the Schwäbische Post give that date.
He then left Germany with his younger son. According to the Landesarchiv article, he drove about 1,400 kilometers south toward Brindisi. The Stuttgarter Zeitung says he went to Torre Canne, on the Adriatic coast of southern Italy, a place where he had spent holidays as a child. On October 22, 1985, he is reported to have killed his younger son there and to have died by suicide. The Stuttgarter Zeitung's headline puts the number of people he killed at six. The child victims are attributed in the same way as the others: no court heard any evidence of what happened.
Because he died before any arrest, there was no charge, no trial and no verdict. What is known comes from the investigators and the Interior Ministry, as the press reported their statements.
Siegfried P., 47, came from Aschaffenburg. Eugene W., 37, was an Englishman who lived in Nuremberg. Wilfried S., 26, came from Beilstein. Little more was reported about them or their families. Within his own family, the people attributed to him as victims were his wife and the couple's two sons, whose ages and names were not reported.
The reports differ on several points. The date of the second killing is either December 21 or December 28, 1984. The amounts taken in the robberies vary between outlets, as do the figure for the lottery win and the number of police-issued items tested. The age given for Poehlke in 1984 and 1985 differs by a year between the Landesarchiv article and the Schwäbische Post. The Landesarchiv article also gives a later date, October 18, in connection with the deaths of his wife and eldest son.
More basically, none of the killings was proven in court. The attribution rests on the equipment match reported for October 21, the check of the lockers and the sequence of events in October 1985. The Landesarchiv notes that author Fred Breinersdorfer, in a documentary novel about the case, argued that investigators had overlooked important clues.
The case has been retold repeatedly on German television. A feature film by Bernd Schadewald and Fred Breinersdorfer, which won a Grimme Prize, was made in 1990; a later television film, and the ZDFinfo documentary of September 2020, followed. On September 30, 2026, ZDF broadcast "XY history", a 45-minute documentary on the inquiry, and the Stuttgarter Zeitung published an interview the same day with a former local reporter who covered the case. The ZDF page says the series of killings caused fear in southwestern Germany in the mid-1980s.
1972: passes the entrance examination for police school on his second attempt.
March 1984: the couple's three-year-old daughter dies of a brain tumor.
May 3, 1984: first attributed killing, near Marbach am Neckar; bank raid in Erbstetten.
Late December 1984: second attributed killing, near Großbottwar; bank raid in Cleebronn; special commission set up in Großbottwar.
July 5, 1985: the case is shown on "Aktenzeichen XY ... ungelöst".
July 22, 1985: third attributed killing, between Ilsfeld and Flein; attempted bank raid in Spiegelberg.
August 1985: a young police officer is arrested and soon cleared.
Late September 1985: bank raid in Rosenberg.
Early October 1985: lockers checked at Ludwigsburg station; Poehlke reports sick.
October 13, 1985: attributed killing of his wife and eldest son at home.
October 21, 1985: investigators confirm a match with equipment assigned to him, according to the Schwäbische Post.
October 22, 1985: attributed killing of his younger son at Torre Canne, Italy; Poehlke dies by suicide.