December 8, 2022 • 42 mins
After the murder of a cop in southwest Germany in 2007 a massive hunt was launched across Europe. The suspect was a female serial killer who had left DNA behind during a number of crimes. She was so slippery, she was known as The Phantom of Heilbronn.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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(01:08):
That's right, and now on with a spooky show. That's right.
So what what a dishes this Chuck the Spooky Phantom
Edian that's what Dave thought. But now and you can
understand how you would get that impression from the title,
But the phantom of Hyle Braun is it Hyle You
(01:31):
do the second syllable okay for an e I okay,
so hile Braun sorry double end at the end, and
the phantom of heil Braun would prove to be essentially
what amounts to a criminal mastermind as far as we're concerned, Um,
for being able to evade the police for so long
(01:52):
despite being so sought after. I mean like they made
international news. Um, this case. It it was that vexan.
So we love cold cases, we love true crime cases,
and this one is like really great, Yes, so big
thanks to Olivia for helping us out with this one.
(02:12):
Uh and she very stuteley starts with a brief overview
of DNA forensics, which we covered a lot of times,
but um, just as a reminder, this started out DNA
forensics and collection and using it for criminal cases in
the nineteen eighties in the UK. UH. Notably, I think
the first case was the exoneration of a seventeen year
(02:35):
old UH suspect in a rape and murder case of
two girls. UM. Back then before they had this is
like pre DNA database. UM. Their idea, which you know
worked pretty well in this case, was to basically do
a big genetic sweep and ask for five thousand local
men to give up DNA samples of blood or saliva. Uh.
(02:57):
And there was a local baker there named Colin Pitchfork
told his friend Lu said like, hey, mate, would you
mind donating your blood for me and his friend. I
guess the word got around like hey, that's a weird
thing to do. Uh. Someone overhears this in a pub
and all of a sudden, Colin Pitchfork is in fact
arrested and another gentleman is exonerated. Yeah, through the use
(03:20):
of DNA. And it was the guy who actually invented
using DNA for forensics, Alec J. Jeffries, who became knighted,
and he discovered it by accident. He was trying to
find how um heritable diseases passed two families and realized like,
oh wait, I can actually identify every single participant in
this study because of their DNA and a light bulb
(03:42):
went off and like that was that was an amazing
first case. Like he exonerated somebody who was innocent and
caught the bad guy and the murdering rape of two girls.
Like it doesn't you can't possibly have a better first
outing than that. Um And and so as it was old,
DNA profiling took off like a rocket, particularly in the
(04:03):
UK at first, but then it spread very quickly to
other European countries and the US, And by nine the
FBI said, hey, all of you UM police departments in
the United States, you start sending your your samples into US,
will create profiles, will run him against the database, and
we will catch your bad guy for you. So it
became much more standardized within three years of that first case. Yeah,
(04:27):
and all the private companies who were doing that before
the FBI stepped up said thanks a lot. Yeah, now
we're bankrupt, thanks a lot of FBI. We We had
a pretty good racket going. But it did needed to
be codified in the database became a very big part
of it because, like I said, pre database they were
doing and as you'll see in some of these crimes,
even with the phantom things like genetic sweeps and genetic
(04:50):
drag nets and things like that. Yeah, there was another
guy who enters the picture in ninety seven he was
from Austria's name was Roland van or Shot. I think
I got it UM and he said, hey, you know
how we only thought we could get DNA from blood,
saliva or semen. It turns out we leave DNA everywhere.
Everything we touch has little bits of UM d NA
(05:14):
left behind. And here's a way to extract that and
and UM identify it and profile it basically UM. And
so now all of a sudden DNA goes from this
is a really useful tool. Kind of two. We can
use this and basically every case we come across somebody
like UM uh steals a can of coke out of
(05:36):
the Honor System coke machine, you could you could like
profile their DNA and probably catch them from that. It
was like it opened it up that much. It's you're dead. Yeah,
it stopped. It decreased UM Honor System co mashing crime
by like five almost overnight. Uh. Those genetic dragnets were
(05:56):
happening more and more, and then they eventually built up
the database such where they were less and less necessary,
especially when UM country started sharing data across their borders,
which uh here in the United States we do that
in an interstate fashion. Uh. And maybe with Canada and Mexico.
I'm not really sure actually, but if they're lucky, if
we're feeling like that. Uh. And but in Europe UM,
(06:19):
this started happening about two thousand five, when Germany, Austria, Belgium, France,
Luxembourg in the Netherlands said uh, and Spain said, hey,
let's sign this treaty UM that means we can share
our our DNA findings with each other UM. Two thousand seven.
That was basically all of Europe, all the EU got
on board. UH. And the reason we're talking about the
(06:39):
EU s because all of these uh, myriad crimes that
this phantom purportedly committed were in Europe, and mostly around Germany. Yes,
and because these crimes were committed after Roland von uer
shots um discovery that you can get DNA samples from
(07:00):
just about anything UM, the European police had become well
versed in lifting DNA from crime scenes, and so they
were able to track the who would come to be
called the Phantom of heilbron Um through the DNA left
behind at these crime scenes. And apparently they were already
tracking this person for a few years in a much
(07:24):
more isolated way. But the whole thing blew up and
the nickname that the Phantom of Heilbron All happened in
I think April of two thousand seven, when a twenty
two year old policewoman named Michelle kay Sweater was murdered
while she was taking a lunch break. Can I correct
your pronunciation? Yeah, I believe that would be Kaisa Vetta.
(07:50):
That's much better when I say kay Sweater. Yeah, but
that's okay. She was was murdered in cold blood. She
was twenty years old on lunch break with a cop
named Martin Arnold, and they were sitting in their patrol
car and hal Bron and a couple of people jumped
in the back seat shot them from behind. They stole
(08:11):
their handcuffs, they stole their guns. Uh, and Kaisa Vetter died.
Martin was only twenty five and was in a coma
for weeks. And if you read any interviews with Martin Arnold,
that just like you know, completely wrecked this guy's life. Uh.
He lost memory from the point where he parked the
car to eat and literally doesn't remember anything else except
(08:33):
waking up in the hospital. So all that to say,
there was no identification of anything, right, yeah, I saw
that he couldn't. I can imagine if you're in a
coma until they dislodge a bullet from your brain, it's
a pretty good bet you're not going to be able
to remember anything. Is he able to remember stuff? Now?
Do you know? Like from that point on? Yeah, I
mean I think he recovered. But um, it was just,
(08:55):
you know, one of these sad stories of this young
guy who was always wanted to be a cop early
on on the job and you know, just gets And
this was not a it's not like this crime happens
a lot in the US, but it was a very huge,
big deal crime and it like rocked Germany. It was
such a big scary thing. Yeah, because Heilbron is not
(09:15):
a huge, bustling metropolis. It's a small town. And the
fact that the murder of a cop in the small
town in Germany caught the entire country's attention and outrage,
you know, it does go to show you like, that's
a really big deal in Germany, or it was at
least in two thousand and seven. And also I think
the manner of the murder to where um, the perpetrator
(09:36):
of the criminals, um got to drop on them so
quickly that the cops weren't even able to like, um,
get their weapons out, like they just completely by surprise.
So it was an enormous deal. And it turned out
that they were able to find some genetic material UM
on the rear seat of the car and on the
(09:57):
center console of the car, and they found on something
really really surprising that UM. The only genetic material that
they could work up a profile from belonged to a woman.
And that did not fit the idea of Germans at
the time of somebody who had jump in the backseat
of a cop car and murder a pair of cops,
(10:18):
or murder one and try to murder the other one. Yeah,
it was. It was shocking, but it was confusing at
the same time, like no one understood sort of the
findings that happened. UM. A few months later, Uh, they
are working with the DNA and they said, hey, wait
a minute, these samples match some other crimes that are happening. UM.
(10:42):
Two other murders in particular. The first was from it's
a cold case. Uh, this woman, I'm gonna say it's
les a lot Schlanger. I was sixty two years old
again in Germany and it's about a hundred miles west
of Heilbroun. And on mate any third of that year,
I had put some cakes in the oven. Her neighbor
(11:03):
came by to have t knocked at the door. No
one answered, and it turned out that she had been Schlinger,
had been strangled with the wire from a flower bouquet
in her sitting room. Cops investigated a bunch of witnesses.
No one saw anything, no one heard anything. But we
have this d N A on the rim of a
teacup that matched the DNA from the killer of Michelle
(11:26):
kaisaveta yeah, from cold case? Right, that's right. And then
there was another two thousand one cold case in the
murder of a man named Joseph Wallzenbach. How's that. That's great.
He was an antique stealer, and he too was murdered
with a weapon of opportunity, some garden twine that happened
to be handy. Um strangled, So both both lise a
(11:49):
lot and Um Joseph were strangled Um and he was
strangled in his shop, and they they found d NA
on his body, a few items in the shop, and
then the back of a close which is so creepy
that they assumed that, um, the phantom who would be
come to be known as the Phantom, put the clothes
sign out and left. Um, that's just cold, you know
(12:12):
for sure, that kind of calculation. Yeah, that's like a
movie shot right there. Yeah, it's just scary. So now
we have three murders, um, and an attempted murder. Two
of the victims were cops. UM, all of them linked
to the same woman over the course from two thousand
and seven, all in roughly the same general area of Germany. Yeah,
(12:37):
and two of the murders are similar enough, and that
they were strangled with some kind of wire and I
think both were missing just little amounts of money. Um,
it didn't seem like a huge robbery kind of thing,
but they were close enough to where there were some
similarities to where they said, Okay, these make a little
bit of sense together. However, except that it was a
(12:58):
woman who was strangling, which is not common at all. Uh.
And then the cop one though that many years later
was really kind of threw everyone for a loop. Um. Nevertheless,
the DNA all matched and so the media started in
with his story. Like you said, the Phantom of heil
Broom or the woman without a face. Yeah, and apparently
(13:19):
she's been known as the woman without a face before
when they were tracking those two cold cases that they've
matched the DNA too before, and then with the murder
of the police officer, Um, she became the Phantom of
Heilbron Um. So now German UM investigators were like, we
have a woman serial killer on our hands who's been
active at least since and no one has seen her,
(13:42):
and we need to find this person a S A P.
Because she's now a cop killer. All right, I think
it's a great cliffhanger. Yep. Should we take a break? Ye?
All right, We'll be right back with more of the
Phantom of heilbron right after this. So, Chuck, I have
(14:16):
to say, I just want to say this, Um. There
was a part where we're talking about DNA profile sharing
the across the EU in two thousand seven, they also
were sharing license plate information and that occurred to me
that the font on those plates was false song suresh
one day shrift. Yeah, and I just I spelled it out.
(14:39):
I sounded it out. My god, I was gonna say
it in this episode, come hell or high water. Good job,
thanks um, all right. So where we last left you
was there is the murder of a police officer, the
serious wounding of another, and then two cold cases from
many years before, all tied to the same d n
A of what they know is one um. All of
(15:03):
a sudden, they start matching this DNA with these uh
you know, people start sharing databases in crime um particulars
around the EU, and they said, wait a minute, this
person's DNA is everywhere. There's and and it's not murders.
There are a dozen break INDs, and there are car
thefts in Austria and in France and in Germany. And
(15:26):
there's a break in in an office in Germany. There's
a burglary in Mainz, Germany. The the gas cap of
a car that was stolen had this d A d
n A on it. In two thousand three, there was
a toy pistol used in a robbery in France with
this d n A on it. And everyone is like,
that's why this name Phantom of Heilbron like locked in
(15:48):
so much, because all of a sudden, like you could
go on for an hour listing the crimes that this
DNA was found at. Yeah, so we've got a female
serial killer in Germany who also Pierce savoth taste for
just common crimes as well, so much so that it
seemed like she may have been more of a um
(16:10):
like a burglar or robber who was totally fine with
murder but didn't need to murder all the time. Um,
more than a serial killer that liked to engage in
petty crime and one of those, I just have to say,
one of those um burglaries. A breaking at an office
in Dietzenbach on New Year's Day two thousand three. One
(16:31):
of the prosecutors in this case, who was tracking the phantom,
named Gunter Horn, said that this was a professional job.
It's a quote, but it was the theft of a
can of loose change. So I thought that was kind
of hilarious that he was like, this person is of
aiding us that it's a professional job no matter what
she's doing, even if she's stealing loose change in a
(16:51):
coffee can from an office, doesn't matter. She's pro Well.
I mean, that's the kind of interesting thing about this case,
I think is once you have this DNA at all
these crimes, your your cop masterminds are going to start
trying to piece together and they did in this case,
like we gotta profile this person, and what kind of
a person would I don't think we mentioned that was
(17:12):
also the DNA was found on a heroin needle. Yeah,
that was a big turning point to a seven year
old stepped on in Germany and his parents said, hey,
can you investigate this? My kids stepped on this needle.
They swabbed it and found that DNA. So all of
a sudden, this profile was like, this is a drug user.
Maybe she steals little bits to to fund the drug
(17:33):
habit and maybe, like you said, the murders just happened
out of necessity because of these petty crimes. So kind
of the point is like, once you've got all these
weird disparate crimes, um, you're still gonna have cops that
are trying to tie them to a single sort of brain. Right,
they were just trying to figure out who they were
after basically. Um, So yeah, that heroin syringe from two
(17:55):
thousand one really kind of explain things like the coffee
came and of loose change, you know, um, those kind
of robberies and breake ins um. And then there was
another thing that kind of added to the puzzle as
they were on her trail. Um in two thousand five
in Verms in Germany. UM, a Roma man shot his
(18:17):
brother and so the police were, um getting stuff from
the crime scene. What's they called. They were collecting evidence
from the crime scene, and um, the DNA they found
on one of the bullets was the phantoms. So now
they're like, okay, this kind of explains how she's making
(18:37):
her way back and forth around the EU in France, Germany, Austria.
She's she's basically looked up with the Roman community, if
not Roma herself. Um. And then there was one other
thing too, Um, she had accomplices in some of these crimes,
and they were none of them would say a word
(19:00):
about her. They all clammed up. Whenever the cops went
to them and said, hey, you know this crime you
got busted four we just found out that you had
an accomplice, They would just not They just stopped talking. Yeah,
And uh, I think when I think it was the
gunter Horn talked about the fact that I think his
frustration and police's general frustration that even after these people
(19:21):
are behind bars, they're still not talking and they're not
saying anything. So they basically said what we kind of
did was basically wait for reports to come in with
this d n A turning up again and then we
would have a new lead. And between I think, uh
two thousand seven, summer two thousand seven and spring two
(19:42):
thousand eight, um, they were like garden shed break ins.
Sometimes food and drink was stolen. Um, nothing real big happened.
But again lots of more crimes start trickling in. Um.
And they think also the that those garden shed break ins,
that she was spending the night in those garden sheds,
(20:05):
So that would suggest also that she was aware she
was being hunted and on the run. Yes, look right there,
you can see a depression in the haystack right so. Um.
So there was another one too, and I believe this
was the last crime. They they Yeah, I think it
was the last crime. No, it wasn't. There was another crime.
It was a little odd, um it was. It took
(20:28):
place in near the Luxembourg border where a woman who
was the manager of the cleaning staff at a fishing lodge.
Someone snuck up behind her, hit her on the head
hard and made off with three hundred euros that I
guess she had on her. And when they they did,
they collected evidence in the room at that fishing lodge.
They found the phantom's DNA there. Now, from what I saw,
(20:49):
it wasn't on the woman or any weapon or anything
like that, just in the room. So they didn't know
whether she had been there before or whether she was
involved in this. But either way they were like, Okay,
now she's over by Luxembourg too. I flew out of
Luxembourg once. Oh yeah, how how's the airport? I threw
up in a trash can at the airport. Long story.
(21:13):
Does it have to do with rope trauma? No? Now
we have two mysteries. Almost got um. So the biggest
crime aside from that initial uh police murder uh in
these cold cases came in two thousand eight with a
triple murder. This was in January two tho eight. The
bodies of three used car dealers from Georgia European Georgia
(21:38):
not here, We're found in the Rhine River in Germany
and two men were arrested, a forty year old Iraqi
and twenty six year old Somalian citizen. So they looked
at these guys and say, we know what happened. Um.
These car dealers were in town getting cars to sell
back home, and they had a lot of cash on them,
(21:58):
so you murder them for their me They searched the
one suspect, the Iraqi suspect, and they found traces of
you guessed it, the phantom of Heilbron DNA was in
that car. Yeah, please question the guy. And again he's
not talking. He has no nothing to say to the
police about who this mystery woman is. Yep. So now
(22:20):
she's shown that she's capable of, if not participating in,
at least presiding over triple homicides. That is not that
many people are capable of triple homicides, you know, But
it's also kind of not surprising if you look at
her past that she's also willing to get up in
close and personal and strangle elderly citizens with garden twine.
(22:42):
So it's not that big of a shock, but it's
a it's a it's a big addition to the profile
of of her that the police are coming up with.
And so um, they started to put all this stuff
together like that the syringe suggested that she used drugs,
and you know, some of the pettier crime suggested that
she was committing them to probably get drugs. Um. She
(23:06):
generally stuck around southwestern Germany, but she also was capable
of moving over to Austria and France, and so they
said her connection with the Roma probably helps her do that. Um.
So they were putting this together and they still weren't
finding anybody. No one was emerging like she just kept
(23:28):
eluding them crime after crime after crime. And one of
the big problems was is there was either no eye
witnesses to the crime or no eye witnesses saw her.
And then one day, one day there was an attempted
break in and star breaking in two thousand six. By
the way, I'm expecting you to be like your way
off if I'm way off, and if you say nothing,
(23:49):
then I nailed it. That's how I'm taking these correct, okay,
and and sar breaken uh that somebody saw the person
attempting to to break in, and in that break in
attempt they found the phantom's DNA. But the puzzler was
that the person the eyewitness who saw the attempted burglar
(24:10):
described a man with a soul patch, even a terrible,
terrible soul patch. And this added a whole another twist
to the mystery, and one interesting thing notably though, is
none of the crimes, even though there are crimes committed
all over this area, none of them happened in Bavaria,
which is a little unusual because it's right there. But
just put a pin in that one, which suggested then
(24:32):
to the cops that is possible that the phantom who
they knew to have the sex of a female but
had a soul patch, conceivably may have actually been a
transgender man. So they added that to the profile as well,
that's right, which I'm sure you know, added a whole
other layer for them. Another layer that was added that
we should mention was that Germany had I guess you
(24:54):
could call a very um I guess to put it
kindly rocky historical record of identifying races and ethnicities as
a country. UM. So because of that, there were pretty
strict laws on how Germany could use DNA and how
much insight they could get from it. So, in other words,
(25:14):
an investigator UH in Germany was not allowed to determine
race or ethnicity, or hair or eye color using DNA.
Um It was possible in Austria, so they're a little
less strict there at the time, and they were able
to take a closer look at this d n A
and say, hey, we think we can't be sure because
(25:35):
it's two thousand. What year was this seven or eight? Uh.
We're pretty sure though that this woman probably has blonde
hair and blue eyes. Um, so we got that going
for us. Yeah, but they also said in some interviews
that they're like, that's I mean, we're talking about Germany
for one. But also they said that they was accurate,
(25:55):
so the margin of error left the possibility of UM
falsely arresting hundreds of thousands of Germans. So they essentially
they might as well have not had any idea what
her hair eye color was. Yeah. Again, this is the
early days of d NA UM such that they also
did a DNA dragnet. Uh. This is pretty pretty big,
long shot, but they did saliva swab of about three
(26:17):
thousand women in Belgium, France and southern Germany and Italy. Uh.
They focused on drug users, unhoused women, women with criminal
records that were pretty serious. They offered up big time money.
I believe it got up to about three hundred thousand
euros uh, a lot of dough um, but you know,
(26:38):
nothing was helping out. And in total, I think They
ended up spending what they guessed to be about sixteen
thousand hours of police overtime pursuing the Phantom of Heilbroun,
and yet she kept a luning him Chuck and I
say that we take our second break and come back
and talk about how she was finally apprehended. Let's do it. Yeah, okay,
(27:20):
So now we're in March two thousand nine. Um, this
is uh finally the case that kind of breaks things
wide open for the Phantom of Heilbron When police were
investigating the death of a man who died in a
fire and thought maybe he was an asylum seeker who
had disappeared years before, and so they were trying to
find out if this was the same the burned body
(27:43):
that they found was the same as this asylum seeker.
They tested a card where they know that this asylum
seeker had given fingerprints, like here is my fingerprint d
NA right here, and it matched the phantom. And they said,
well that all right, I know this phantom matches have
been crazy, but this is literally impossible. We know who
(28:05):
this man was and it is a man. It is
not a woman who had committed these crimes. So they
said let's retest it and the DNA has disappeared from
the card. And then everyone went, well, what in the
wide wide world sports is are going on here? Right?
And before they could answer that question, a German magazine
(28:26):
named Stern came out and said, um, guys, there is
no phantom of heil Braun who. Yeah, they've been chasing
false positives from DNA matches, likely from contaminated equipment or swabs, right,
And what they realized they had literally been tracking were
(28:48):
cotton swabs. They have been tracking the DNA of a
woman who worked in a cotton swab factory that they
used to um take DNA sample from. That was the
phantom of Heilbron was a I think a seventy one
year old Polish grandmother who worked in the factory of
the cotton swapmaker. Yeah, so I tried to find out
(29:10):
who she was specifically, I couldn't and I also found
that it was there were quite a few older Polish women.
I guess that kind of thing happened sometimes where you
hire a bunch of people out from an area, So
it could have possibly been from other women in that
same area who worked at the factory. Because I couldn't
(29:31):
find her actual name, did you not that? I feel
like I did see it somewhere in one of the articles. Okay,
I didn't know if they tried to grant her a
non unminimon I don't. I swear, I swear I saw it.
I'm almost positive because I could see why they be. Yeah,
they'd make her anonymous. But then in retrospect, she didn't
(29:52):
do anything wrong. It wasn't her. But you avoid people
from bothering this old lady. Sure, But as a matter
of fact, the cops. The first thing the cops did
was throw the maker of these cotton swabs right under
the bus. Because you can imagine everybody, the phantom of Heilbron,
this internationally described criminal that the cops have been after
(30:12):
for years, that the Heilbron police alone spent sixteen thousand
overtime hours trying to catch, didn't exist. There was no phantom.
It was such a on the cops faces that you
they're still peeling it off. And so of course they said,
this is the manufacturer's fault. What the hay is going on?
Why is there other people's d n A on these
(30:33):
cotton swabs when you're double double packaging, and we considered
these one one cops said the Mercedes of cotton swabs,
and the manufacturers like, well, we never said you could
use them for d N a collection. Yeah. They've fired
back pretty quickly and said these are for testing food
guys or medical testing, hygienic tests like definitely not collecting DNA. UM.
(30:56):
I don't think we mentioned either before this even happened.
As soon as it sort of came out from Stern
the magazine, there were investigators that said, sort of on
the downlow, for at least six months, we've been kind
of wondering and investigating whether or not this could have
been a contaminated evidence case. Yeah. The other investigators were like, well,
thank you for even mentioning that to us. They kept
(31:18):
that pretty quiet though, Um to put a button on.
The Bavarian thing is, Bavaria did not source their swabs
from this company. So that's explains why there was never
any DNA even though Bavaria is right there where all
these crimes were happening. Yeah, and the company was Grinder
bio One International, a g and the thing that that
claimed that they were like, well, we never said this
(31:40):
is for DNA collection. It's for like food, food stuff
sampling and stuff like that. Um. The cops were like,
well then why have you been selling them to police
departments all over Austria and Germany? Um, you know, what's what?
What did you think we were using them for? And
the company was just like you wint them out and
it was like it's the same you know. Yeah, there
(32:01):
was a PR spokesperson shaped dust cloud just left at
the podium. That was it. Well, they're like, I thought
you were testing your give a coke, take a coke,
saying in your office your honor your coke machine honor system. Alright,
so I guess, uh, we should talk a little bit
(32:21):
about what this what happened because of this? Um it was,
like you said, a big humiliation for the German police. Um.
It was also a bit of a hit on d
N a sampling. Um. You know, we've talked about DNA
a lot over the years, and DNA is great in
collection of DNA for exoneration and for for proving someone
(32:44):
as guilty as is amazing and it's really come a
long way. But DNA has always sort of giveth and
taketh away in certain cases. Uh, it's not perfect, Like
Livia says it's not a silver bullet, and I think
it was sort of has always kind of been painted
that way, especially for juries are like, you know, when
they see DNA evidence, I think the first thing you
(33:04):
think is that's like as iron glad as it gets. Yeah,
and that's not necessarily always the case. No, And as
a matter of fact, if you zoom out a couple
of orders of magnitude and look at this case, the
Phantom of Heilbron case needed to happen because people were
being convicted on circumstantial DNA evidence alone, like their DNA
had been found in the scene, not on the murder weapon,
(33:25):
not on the body, just at the scene, and people
are going to prison for that kind of stuff because judges,
juries prosecutors saw DNA is like infallible. Basically, if your
DNA was there, you were guilty essentially. So the Phantom
of heil Bron case really slowed that down. And like
you said, it didn't say d there's there's a lot
wrong with DNA in using that for forensics. It's hey,
(33:47):
this is a really good way to to come up
with evidence, but you need to also do the old
fashioned police work to fill it out to make sure
you have the right person. So it just kind of
slowed everybody down in like it was. I think it
was really necessary because this is like the time when
c s I was at its peak yet TV show
was huge at like in two thousand and eight um
(34:10):
and and like that had that was because everybody thought
of d n A in that way, So it was
good it happened in a sense. Yeah. Absolutely. There was
one case, if you want to get specific from Olivia
dug Up for us, where there was an English cab
driver whose DNA was discovered from the fingernails of a
murdered woman. And you know, a jury, here's that and
(34:32):
they're like fingernails, Like of course he did it because
she was fighting him off and got his DNA under
her fingernails. But it was someone who rode in his
cab and got a little little bit of that d
NA on him, killed this woman and got that d
n A on her. Uh. And I believe the cabby
spent eight months in jail before they found out the
truth and acquitted him. So that's a tough one though.
(34:55):
Well sure, I mean that's an outlier, but it's just
a good example of how it needs you need to
tread a little lighter. I think one of the other
things though, is it's not like this should have been
a surprise for everybody, UM that d N A wasn't
infallible because back in our friend or shoot or shot,
the guy who said, hey, you can get d NA
(35:17):
off of everything, his his research also showed you can
also really really easily contaminate anything with d NA, So
we should all be very careful. Everybody's like all we
heard was we can get DNA samples off of anything.
There's like, we didn't hear all that. We weren't within
or shot. Oh man, that was amazing, chuck, holy hate.
(35:38):
But that was that filled my heart. So there was
there's an international standard, the International Organization for Standardization, I
should say an international organization UM. They published a new
standard called i s O three eight five that basically says,
this is how you UM collect forensic evidence with DNA
(36:00):
to minimize UM contamination that kind of stuff. And I
read a forensic blog UM who was who said were
these were the the DNA analysts not even doing control samples?
And I went and looked it up. And a control
sample is one of the most basic things you can
do where you take your cotton swab that has, like say,
a blood stain on it, and you pull off a
(36:22):
little bit of the cotton swab that's not stained, and
you test them both to make sure that the cotton
swab that's not staying doesn't come back with any genetic material.
If it does, your sample is compromised. And they weren't
doing that apparently, or else they would have figured this
out almost immediately. So they were not doing very basic stuff.
And maybe it's because it hadn't been standardized, like this
(36:43):
is what you're supposed to do by that time. But
you know, in two thousands sixteen, finally they got around
to saying, here's how you do it. Right. It's like
when you put on a band aid. You take off
the peely part and you hold it by the sticky part.
You don't hold it by the bandage, right, and then
you take a sample of the bandage and then you
(37:03):
run it through your DNA profiling machine. Sure so, and
there's actually those things exist. Now, there's something called rapid
DNA machines. Yeah, because DNA is not going anywhere, nor
should it. You can look no further than the Golden
State killer case. Where they actually caught the serial killer
who killed like scores of people, are raped scores of
(37:25):
women and killed I think a dozen or more people. Um,
just through his DNA They found it through like a
genetic genealogy site. Um, they discovered this guy. So yeah,
you don't actually want to get rid of d n A.
But what seems to be problematic is we're going a
different way where now police stations have these rapid DNA
machines where you just throw a cotton swab in and
(37:47):
it spits out a genetic profile that you can run
in CODIS. But that you're taking the professional analyst out
of the out of the equation, and that seems dangerous
to a lot of people. Yeah. Absolutely, Um to button
up the original case that sort of got this all started,
which was the murder of Officer Michel Kaisaveta. Um it
(38:08):
was Nazis, uh. What they found out, it was a
very small terror of cell of just three people, the
National Socialists underground uh, and they were tied to the
larger Nazi movement, but they carried out a series of
murders throughout Germany from two thousand seven and all except
(38:30):
for the officers, all the other victims were immigrants, one
Greek citizen and eight of Turkish origin. And it was
two members of that group Uei Mundlos and Ui Bernhardt,
the two the two Ouhis. They robbed a bank um
in Eisenhocken, Germany. They were spotted um and this is
(38:50):
after after the murder. This is in and how they
got caught, well, not quite caught, but they were spotted.
And as police approached their burned out care of and
where they were hiding out, Moondlow's killed Boondhardt and then
himself and what looked like a murder suicide, even though
I think Brunehardt's last words were wall hold on man,
(39:13):
that's dark, that's dark. But these are Nazis. But they
also they they linked these guys to her murder um
directly using DNA analysis. They found sweatpants that had been
stained with blood that match Kaisa Vetters DNA and that
that's that's kind of neat how it came full circle
like that. But at the same time, it also strongly
(39:35):
suggests that these guys were wearing sweatpants with the police
woman's blood on them for three years. That's how gross
these stupid Nazis were. Yeah, and you know, it's even
funnier as I believe it's keys of Vetter After I
had my whole thing at the beginning about the I
and the E in German? Who keys of vetters? Even better? Yeah,
I think I screwed up the whole thing. We just
(39:55):
record it all, let's start from the beginning. So there
were two other outcomes from this. One was, hey, you guys,
UM ignored the murder of eight Turks and one Greek citizen. UM,
but yet you spent sixteen thousand overtime hours chasing the phantom?
How is that work? Why are you doing that? And
then also it really showed and revealed just how much
(40:18):
UM investigators will bend and shape their theories into really weird,
ridiculous shapes just to make it fit the DNA evidence,
rather than stopping and being like, wait, what what is
this again? This doesn't make any sense? Are we do
we have the right Are we on the right track?
So that's it, everybody, that's the Phantom of Heilbron. It
(40:41):
was a good one. That's an amazing story. And if
you want to know more about the Phantom of Heilbron,
you can search that on your favorite search engine and
jump down that rabbit hole. And since I said rabbit hole,
as always, that means it's time for a listener mail.
This is a very kind of cool little thedendum from
Eve in Libertyville, Illinois. Hey guys, well, listening to the
(41:05):
Selects episode on invasive species and one of you kind
of joke that would be crazy to shoot invasive plants
to eliminate them. And now it's been years since that episode,
but get this. I recently watched a nature documentary, Green
Planet with David Edinborough, which is awesome, and there's a
section on shooting invasive plants. Uh. In Maui, there's an
(41:26):
invasive plant called the micnia that's native to Mexico, and
sharp shooters and helicopters are being used to shoot the
plants growing on steep hillsides with herbicides without affecting the
entire ecosystem. Just another example of creative ways people have
found to fight invasive species. Attached to link. Thanks for
all you do. Eve in Libertyville, Illinois. Amazing, Thanks Eve.
(41:49):
Did we did we create that? Chuck? Did we cause that? Yeah?
I don't know. Let's say we did, Okay, between you
me and Eve, we we did we came up with that.
I know I got Jared of Subway arrested and boy
did I misjudge him? Uh So that was from Eve. Eve. Eve,
thanks a lot for that one. We always love hearing
(42:10):
new facts about old episodes, and you can send us
an email like Eve did to stuff podcast at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Shock and Dave c is here with us
and this is stuff you should know. That's right. Before
we get started, though, we want to quickly plug our
(00:24):
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(01:08):
That's right, and now on with a spooky show. That's right.
So what what a dishes this Chuck the Spooky Phantom
Edian that's what Dave thought. But now and you can
understand how you would get that impression from the title,
But the phantom of Hyle Braun is it Hyle You
(01:31):
do the second syllable okay for an e I okay,
so hile Braun sorry double end at the end, and
the phantom of heil Braun would prove to be essentially
what amounts to a criminal mastermind as far as we're concerned, Um,
for being able to evade the police for so long
(01:52):
despite being so sought after. I mean like they made
international news. Um, this case. It it was that vexan.
So we love cold cases, we love true crime cases,
and this one is like really great, Yes, so big
thanks to Olivia for helping us out with this one.
(02:12):
Uh and she very stuteley starts with a brief overview
of DNA forensics, which we covered a lot of times,
but um, just as a reminder, this started out DNA
forensics and collection and using it for criminal cases in
the nineteen eighties in the UK. UH. Notably, I think
the first case was the exoneration of a seventeen year
(02:35):
old UH suspect in a rape and murder case of
two girls. UM. Back then before they had this is
like pre DNA database. UM. Their idea, which you know
worked pretty well in this case, was to basically do
a big genetic sweep and ask for five thousand local
men to give up DNA samples of blood or saliva. Uh.
(02:57):
And there was a local baker there named Colin Pitchfork
told his friend Lu said like, hey, mate, would you
mind donating your blood for me and his friend. I
guess the word got around like hey, that's a weird
thing to do. Uh. Someone overhears this in a pub
and all of a sudden, Colin Pitchfork is in fact
arrested and another gentleman is exonerated. Yeah, through the use
(03:20):
of DNA. And it was the guy who actually invented
using DNA for forensics, Alec J. Jeffries, who became knighted,
and he discovered it by accident. He was trying to
find how um heritable diseases passed two families and realized like,
oh wait, I can actually identify every single participant in
this study because of their DNA and a light bulb
(03:42):
went off and like that was that was an amazing
first case. Like he exonerated somebody who was innocent and
caught the bad guy and the murdering rape of two girls.
Like it doesn't you can't possibly have a better first
outing than that. Um And and so as it was old,
DNA profiling took off like a rocket, particularly in the
(04:03):
UK at first, but then it spread very quickly to
other European countries and the US, And by nine the
FBI said, hey, all of you UM police departments in
the United States, you start sending your your samples into US,
will create profiles, will run him against the database, and
we will catch your bad guy for you. So it
became much more standardized within three years of that first case. Yeah,
(04:27):
and all the private companies who were doing that before
the FBI stepped up said thanks a lot. Yeah, now
we're bankrupt, thanks a lot of FBI. We We had
a pretty good racket going. But it did needed to
be codified in the database became a very big part
of it because, like I said, pre database they were
doing and as you'll see in some of these crimes,
even with the phantom things like genetic sweeps and genetic
(04:50):
drag nets and things like that. Yeah, there was another
guy who enters the picture in ninety seven he was
from Austria's name was Roland van or Shot. I think
I got it UM and he said, hey, you know
how we only thought we could get DNA from blood,
saliva or semen. It turns out we leave DNA everywhere.
Everything we touch has little bits of UM d NA
(05:14):
left behind. And here's a way to extract that and
and UM identify it and profile it basically UM. And
so now all of a sudden DNA goes from this
is a really useful tool. Kind of two. We can
use this and basically every case we come across somebody
like UM uh steals a can of coke out of
(05:36):
the Honor System coke machine, you could you could like
profile their DNA and probably catch them from that. It
was like it opened it up that much. It's you're dead. Yeah,
it stopped. It decreased UM Honor System co mashing crime
by like five almost overnight. Uh. Those genetic dragnets were
(05:56):
happening more and more, and then they eventually built up
the database such where they were less and less necessary,
especially when UM country started sharing data across their borders,
which uh here in the United States we do that
in an interstate fashion. Uh. And maybe with Canada and Mexico.
I'm not really sure actually, but if they're lucky, if
we're feeling like that. Uh. And but in Europe UM,
(06:19):
this started happening about two thousand five, when Germany, Austria, Belgium, France,
Luxembourg in the Netherlands said uh, and Spain said, hey,
let's sign this treaty UM that means we can share
our our DNA findings with each other UM. Two thousand seven.
That was basically all of Europe, all the EU got
on board. UH. And the reason we're talking about the
(06:39):
EU s because all of these uh, myriad crimes that
this phantom purportedly committed were in Europe, and mostly around Germany. Yes,
and because these crimes were committed after Roland von uer
shots um discovery that you can get DNA samples from
(07:00):
just about anything UM, the European police had become well
versed in lifting DNA from crime scenes, and so they
were able to track the who would come to be
called the Phantom of heilbron Um through the DNA left
behind at these crime scenes. And apparently they were already
tracking this person for a few years in a much
(07:24):
more isolated way. But the whole thing blew up and
the nickname that the Phantom of Heilbron All happened in
I think April of two thousand seven, when a twenty
two year old policewoman named Michelle kay Sweater was murdered
while she was taking a lunch break. Can I correct
your pronunciation? Yeah, I believe that would be Kaisa Vetta.
(07:50):
That's much better when I say kay Sweater. Yeah, but
that's okay. She was was murdered in cold blood. She
was twenty years old on lunch break with a cop
named Martin Arnold, and they were sitting in their patrol
car and hal Bron and a couple of people jumped
in the back seat shot them from behind. They stole
(08:11):
their handcuffs, they stole their guns. Uh, and Kaisa Vetter died.
Martin was only twenty five and was in a coma
for weeks. And if you read any interviews with Martin Arnold,
that just like you know, completely wrecked this guy's life. Uh.
He lost memory from the point where he parked the
car to eat and literally doesn't remember anything else except
(08:33):
waking up in the hospital. So all that to say,
there was no identification of anything, right, yeah, I saw
that he couldn't. I can imagine if you're in a
coma until they dislodge a bullet from your brain, it's
a pretty good bet you're not going to be able
to remember anything. Is he able to remember stuff? Now?
Do you know? Like from that point on? Yeah, I
mean I think he recovered. But um, it was just,
(08:55):
you know, one of these sad stories of this young
guy who was always wanted to be a cop early
on on the job and you know, just gets And
this was not a it's not like this crime happens
a lot in the US, but it was a very huge,
big deal crime and it like rocked Germany. It was
such a big scary thing. Yeah, because Heilbron is not
(09:15):
a huge, bustling metropolis. It's a small town. And the
fact that the murder of a cop in the small
town in Germany caught the entire country's attention and outrage,
you know, it does go to show you like, that's
a really big deal in Germany, or it was at
least in two thousand and seven. And also I think
the manner of the murder to where um, the perpetrator
(09:36):
of the criminals, um got to drop on them so
quickly that the cops weren't even able to like, um,
get their weapons out, like they just completely by surprise.
So it was an enormous deal. And it turned out
that they were able to find some genetic material UM
on the rear seat of the car and on the
(09:57):
center console of the car, and they found on something
really really surprising that UM. The only genetic material that
they could work up a profile from belonged to a woman.
And that did not fit the idea of Germans at
the time of somebody who had jump in the backseat
of a cop car and murder a pair of cops,
(10:18):
or murder one and try to murder the other one. Yeah,
it was. It was shocking, but it was confusing at
the same time, like no one understood sort of the
findings that happened. UM. A few months later, Uh, they
are working with the DNA and they said, hey, wait
a minute, these samples match some other crimes that are happening. UM.
(10:42):
Two other murders in particular. The first was from it's
a cold case. Uh, this woman, I'm gonna say it's
les a lot Schlanger. I was sixty two years old
again in Germany and it's about a hundred miles west
of Heilbroun. And on mate any third of that year,
I had put some cakes in the oven. Her neighbor
(11:03):
came by to have t knocked at the door. No
one answered, and it turned out that she had been Schlinger,
had been strangled with the wire from a flower bouquet
in her sitting room. Cops investigated a bunch of witnesses.
No one saw anything, no one heard anything. But we
have this d N A on the rim of a
teacup that matched the DNA from the killer of Michelle
(11:26):
kaisaveta yeah, from cold case? Right, that's right. And then
there was another two thousand one cold case in the
murder of a man named Joseph Wallzenbach. How's that. That's great.
He was an antique stealer, and he too was murdered
with a weapon of opportunity, some garden twine that happened
to be handy. Um strangled, So both both lise a
(11:49):
lot and Um Joseph were strangled Um and he was
strangled in his shop, and they they found d NA
on his body, a few items in the shop, and
then the back of a close which is so creepy
that they assumed that, um, the phantom who would be
come to be known as the Phantom, put the clothes
sign out and left. Um, that's just cold, you know
(12:12):
for sure, that kind of calculation. Yeah, that's like a
movie shot right there. Yeah, it's just scary. So now
we have three murders, um, and an attempted murder. Two
of the victims were cops. UM, all of them linked
to the same woman over the course from two thousand
and seven, all in roughly the same general area of Germany. Yeah,
(12:37):
and two of the murders are similar enough, and that
they were strangled with some kind of wire and I
think both were missing just little amounts of money. Um,
it didn't seem like a huge robbery kind of thing,
but they were close enough to where there were some
similarities to where they said, Okay, these make a little
bit of sense together. However, except that it was a
(12:58):
woman who was strangling, which is not common at all. Uh.
And then the cop one though that many years later
was really kind of threw everyone for a loop. Um. Nevertheless,
the DNA all matched and so the media started in
with his story. Like you said, the Phantom of heil
Broom or the woman without a face. Yeah, and apparently
(13:19):
she's been known as the woman without a face before
when they were tracking those two cold cases that they've
matched the DNA too before, and then with the murder
of the police officer, Um, she became the Phantom of
Heilbron Um. So now German UM investigators were like, we
have a woman serial killer on our hands who's been
active at least since and no one has seen her,
(13:42):
and we need to find this person a S A P.
Because she's now a cop killer. All right, I think
it's a great cliffhanger. Yep. Should we take a break? Ye?
All right, We'll be right back with more of the
Phantom of heilbron right after this. So, Chuck, I have
(14:16):
to say, I just want to say this, Um. There
was a part where we're talking about DNA profile sharing
the across the EU in two thousand seven, they also
were sharing license plate information and that occurred to me
that the font on those plates was false song suresh
one day shrift. Yeah, and I just I spelled it out.
(14:39):
I sounded it out. My god, I was gonna say
it in this episode, come hell or high water. Good job,
thanks um, all right. So where we last left you
was there is the murder of a police officer, the
serious wounding of another, and then two cold cases from
many years before, all tied to the same d n
A of what they know is one um. All of
(15:03):
a sudden, they start matching this DNA with these uh
you know, people start sharing databases in crime um particulars
around the EU, and they said, wait a minute, this
person's DNA is everywhere. There's and and it's not murders.
There are a dozen break INDs, and there are car
thefts in Austria and in France and in Germany. And
(15:26):
there's a break in in an office in Germany. There's
a burglary in Mainz, Germany. The the gas cap of
a car that was stolen had this d A d
n A on it. In two thousand three, there was
a toy pistol used in a robbery in France with
this d n A on it. And everyone is like,
that's why this name Phantom of Heilbron like locked in
(15:48):
so much, because all of a sudden, like you could
go on for an hour listing the crimes that this
DNA was found at. Yeah, so we've got a female
serial killer in Germany who also Pierce savoth taste for
just common crimes as well, so much so that it
seemed like she may have been more of a um
(16:10):
like a burglar or robber who was totally fine with
murder but didn't need to murder all the time. Um,
more than a serial killer that liked to engage in
petty crime and one of those, I just have to say,
one of those um burglaries. A breaking at an office
in Dietzenbach on New Year's Day two thousand three. One
(16:31):
of the prosecutors in this case, who was tracking the phantom,
named Gunter Horn, said that this was a professional job.
It's a quote, but it was the theft of a
can of loose change. So I thought that was kind
of hilarious that he was like, this person is of
aiding us that it's a professional job no matter what
she's doing, even if she's stealing loose change in a
(16:51):
coffee can from an office, doesn't matter. She's pro Well.
I mean, that's the kind of interesting thing about this case,
I think is once you have this DNA at all
these crimes, your your cop masterminds are going to start
trying to piece together and they did in this case,
like we gotta profile this person, and what kind of
a person would I don't think we mentioned that was
(17:12):
also the DNA was found on a heroin needle. Yeah,
that was a big turning point to a seven year
old stepped on in Germany and his parents said, hey,
can you investigate this? My kids stepped on this needle.
They swabbed it and found that DNA. So all of
a sudden, this profile was like, this is a drug user.
Maybe she steals little bits to to fund the drug
(17:33):
habit and maybe, like you said, the murders just happened
out of necessity because of these petty crimes. So kind
of the point is like, once you've got all these
weird disparate crimes, um, you're still gonna have cops that
are trying to tie them to a single sort of brain. Right,
they were just trying to figure out who they were
after basically. Um, So yeah, that heroin syringe from two
(17:55):
thousand one really kind of explain things like the coffee
came and of loose change, you know, um, those kind
of robberies and breake ins um. And then there was
another thing that kind of added to the puzzle as
they were on her trail. Um in two thousand five
in Verms in Germany. UM, a Roma man shot his
(18:17):
brother and so the police were, um getting stuff from
the crime scene. What's they called. They were collecting evidence
from the crime scene, and um, the DNA they found
on one of the bullets was the phantoms. So now
they're like, okay, this kind of explains how she's making
(18:37):
her way back and forth around the EU in France, Germany, Austria.
She's she's basically looked up with the Roman community, if
not Roma herself. Um. And then there was one other
thing too, Um, she had accomplices in some of these crimes,
and they were none of them would say a word
(19:00):
about her. They all clammed up. Whenever the cops went
to them and said, hey, you know this crime you
got busted four we just found out that you had
an accomplice, They would just not They just stopped talking. Yeah,
And uh, I think when I think it was the
gunter Horn talked about the fact that I think his
frustration and police's general frustration that even after these people
(19:21):
are behind bars, they're still not talking and they're not
saying anything. So they basically said what we kind of
did was basically wait for reports to come in with
this d n A turning up again and then we
would have a new lead. And between I think, uh
two thousand seven, summer two thousand seven and spring two
(19:42):
thousand eight, um, they were like garden shed break ins.
Sometimes food and drink was stolen. Um, nothing real big happened.
But again lots of more crimes start trickling in. Um.
And they think also the that those garden shed break ins,
that she was spending the night in those garden sheds,
(20:05):
So that would suggest also that she was aware she
was being hunted and on the run. Yes, look right there,
you can see a depression in the haystack right so. Um.
So there was another one too, and I believe this
was the last crime. They they Yeah, I think it
was the last crime. No, it wasn't. There was another crime.
It was a little odd, um it was. It took
(20:28):
place in near the Luxembourg border where a woman who
was the manager of the cleaning staff at a fishing lodge.
Someone snuck up behind her, hit her on the head
hard and made off with three hundred euros that I
guess she had on her. And when they they did,
they collected evidence in the room at that fishing lodge.
They found the phantom's DNA there. Now, from what I saw,
(20:49):
it wasn't on the woman or any weapon or anything
like that, just in the room. So they didn't know
whether she had been there before or whether she was
involved in this. But either way they were like, Okay,
now she's over by Luxembourg too. I flew out of
Luxembourg once. Oh yeah, how how's the airport? I threw
up in a trash can at the airport. Long story.
(21:13):
Does it have to do with rope trauma? No? Now
we have two mysteries. Almost got um. So the biggest
crime aside from that initial uh police murder uh in
these cold cases came in two thousand eight with a
triple murder. This was in January two tho eight. The
bodies of three used car dealers from Georgia European Georgia
(21:38):
not here, We're found in the Rhine River in Germany
and two men were arrested, a forty year old Iraqi
and twenty six year old Somalian citizen. So they looked
at these guys and say, we know what happened. Um.
These car dealers were in town getting cars to sell
back home, and they had a lot of cash on them,
(21:58):
so you murder them for their me They searched the
one suspect, the Iraqi suspect, and they found traces of
you guessed it, the phantom of Heilbron DNA was in
that car. Yeah, please question the guy. And again he's
not talking. He has no nothing to say to the
police about who this mystery woman is. Yep. So now
(22:20):
she's shown that she's capable of, if not participating in,
at least presiding over triple homicides. That is not that
many people are capable of triple homicides, you know, But
it's also kind of not surprising if you look at
her past that she's also willing to get up in
close and personal and strangle elderly citizens with garden twine.
(22:42):
So it's not that big of a shock, but it's
a it's a it's a big addition to the profile
of of her that the police are coming up with.
And so um, they started to put all this stuff
together like that the syringe suggested that she used drugs,
and you know, some of the pettier crime suggested that
she was committing them to probably get drugs. Um. She
(23:06):
generally stuck around southwestern Germany, but she also was capable
of moving over to Austria and France, and so they
said her connection with the Roma probably helps her do that. Um.
So they were putting this together and they still weren't
finding anybody. No one was emerging like she just kept
(23:28):
eluding them crime after crime after crime. And one of
the big problems was is there was either no eye
witnesses to the crime or no eye witnesses saw her.
And then one day, one day there was an attempted
break in and star breaking in two thousand six. By
the way, I'm expecting you to be like your way
off if I'm way off, and if you say nothing,
(23:49):
then I nailed it. That's how I'm taking these correct, okay,
and and sar breaken uh that somebody saw the person
attempting to to break in, and in that break in
attempt they found the phantom's DNA. But the puzzler was
that the person the eyewitness who saw the attempted burglar
(24:10):
described a man with a soul patch, even a terrible,
terrible soul patch. And this added a whole another twist
to the mystery, and one interesting thing notably though, is
none of the crimes, even though there are crimes committed
all over this area, none of them happened in Bavaria,
which is a little unusual because it's right there. But
just put a pin in that one, which suggested then
(24:32):
to the cops that is possible that the phantom who
they knew to have the sex of a female but
had a soul patch, conceivably may have actually been a
transgender man. So they added that to the profile as well,
that's right, which I'm sure you know, added a whole
other layer for them. Another layer that was added that
we should mention was that Germany had I guess you
(24:54):
could call a very um I guess to put it
kindly rocky historical record of identifying races and ethnicities as
a country. UM. So because of that, there were pretty
strict laws on how Germany could use DNA and how
much insight they could get from it. So, in other words,
(25:14):
an investigator UH in Germany was not allowed to determine
race or ethnicity, or hair or eye color using DNA.
Um It was possible in Austria, so they're a little
less strict there at the time, and they were able
to take a closer look at this d n A
and say, hey, we think we can't be sure because
(25:35):
it's two thousand. What year was this seven or eight? Uh.
We're pretty sure though that this woman probably has blonde
hair and blue eyes. Um, so we got that going
for us. Yeah, but they also said in some interviews
that they're like, that's I mean, we're talking about Germany
for one. But also they said that they was accurate,
(25:55):
so the margin of error left the possibility of UM
falsely arresting hundreds of thousands of Germans. So they essentially
they might as well have not had any idea what
her hair eye color was. Yeah. Again, this is the
early days of d NA UM such that they also
did a DNA dragnet. Uh. This is pretty pretty big,
long shot, but they did saliva swab of about three
(26:17):
thousand women in Belgium, France and southern Germany and Italy. Uh.
They focused on drug users, unhoused women, women with criminal
records that were pretty serious. They offered up big time money.
I believe it got up to about three hundred thousand
euros uh, a lot of dough um, but you know,
(26:38):
nothing was helping out. And in total, I think They
ended up spending what they guessed to be about sixteen
thousand hours of police overtime pursuing the Phantom of Heilbroun,
and yet she kept a luning him Chuck and I
say that we take our second break and come back
and talk about how she was finally apprehended. Let's do it. Yeah, okay,
(27:20):
So now we're in March two thousand nine. Um, this
is uh finally the case that kind of breaks things
wide open for the Phantom of Heilbron When police were
investigating the death of a man who died in a
fire and thought maybe he was an asylum seeker who
had disappeared years before, and so they were trying to
find out if this was the same the burned body
(27:43):
that they found was the same as this asylum seeker.
They tested a card where they know that this asylum
seeker had given fingerprints, like here is my fingerprint d
NA right here, and it matched the phantom. And they said,
well that all right, I know this phantom matches have
been crazy, but this is literally impossible. We know who
(28:05):
this man was and it is a man. It is
not a woman who had committed these crimes. So they
said let's retest it and the DNA has disappeared from
the card. And then everyone went, well, what in the
wide wide world sports is are going on here? Right?
And before they could answer that question, a German magazine
(28:26):
named Stern came out and said, um, guys, there is
no phantom of heil Braun who. Yeah, they've been chasing
false positives from DNA matches, likely from contaminated equipment or swabs, right,
And what they realized they had literally been tracking were
(28:48):
cotton swabs. They have been tracking the DNA of a
woman who worked in a cotton swab factory that they
used to um take DNA sample from. That was the
phantom of Heilbron was a I think a seventy one
year old Polish grandmother who worked in the factory of
the cotton swapmaker. Yeah, so I tried to find out
(29:10):
who she was specifically, I couldn't and I also found
that it was there were quite a few older Polish women.
I guess that kind of thing happened sometimes where you
hire a bunch of people out from an area, So
it could have possibly been from other women in that
same area who worked at the factory. Because I couldn't
(29:31):
find her actual name, did you not that? I feel
like I did see it somewhere in one of the articles. Okay,
I didn't know if they tried to grant her a
non unminimon I don't. I swear, I swear I saw it.
I'm almost positive because I could see why they be. Yeah,
they'd make her anonymous. But then in retrospect, she didn't
(29:52):
do anything wrong. It wasn't her. But you avoid people
from bothering this old lady. Sure, But as a matter
of fact, the cops. The first thing the cops did
was throw the maker of these cotton swabs right under
the bus. Because you can imagine everybody, the phantom of Heilbron,
this internationally described criminal that the cops have been after
(30:12):
for years, that the Heilbron police alone spent sixteen thousand
overtime hours trying to catch, didn't exist. There was no phantom.
It was such a on the cops faces that you
they're still peeling it off. And so of course they said,
this is the manufacturer's fault. What the hay is going on?
Why is there other people's d n A on these
(30:33):
cotton swabs when you're double double packaging, and we considered
these one one cops said the Mercedes of cotton swabs,
and the manufacturers like, well, we never said you could
use them for d N a collection. Yeah. They've fired
back pretty quickly and said these are for testing food
guys or medical testing, hygienic tests like definitely not collecting DNA. UM.
(30:56):
I don't think we mentioned either before this even happened.
As soon as it sort of came out from Stern
the magazine, there were investigators that said, sort of on
the downlow, for at least six months, we've been kind
of wondering and investigating whether or not this could have
been a contaminated evidence case. Yeah. The other investigators were like, well,
thank you for even mentioning that to us. They kept
(31:18):
that pretty quiet though, Um to put a button on.
The Bavarian thing is, Bavaria did not source their swabs
from this company. So that's explains why there was never
any DNA even though Bavaria is right there where all
these crimes were happening. Yeah, and the company was Grinder
bio One International, a g and the thing that that
claimed that they were like, well, we never said this
(31:40):
is for DNA collection. It's for like food, food stuff
sampling and stuff like that. Um. The cops were like,
well then why have you been selling them to police
departments all over Austria and Germany? Um, you know, what's what?
What did you think we were using them for? And
the company was just like you wint them out and
it was like it's the same you know. Yeah, there
(32:01):
was a PR spokesperson shaped dust cloud just left at
the podium. That was it. Well, they're like, I thought
you were testing your give a coke, take a coke,
saying in your office your honor your coke machine honor system. Alright,
so I guess, uh, we should talk a little bit
(32:21):
about what this what happened because of this? Um it was,
like you said, a big humiliation for the German police. Um.
It was also a bit of a hit on d
N a sampling. Um. You know, we've talked about DNA
a lot over the years, and DNA is great in
collection of DNA for exoneration and for for proving someone
(32:44):
as guilty as is amazing and it's really come a
long way. But DNA has always sort of giveth and
taketh away in certain cases. Uh, it's not perfect, Like
Livia says it's not a silver bullet, and I think
it was sort of has always kind of been painted
that way, especially for juries are like, you know, when
they see DNA evidence, I think the first thing you
(33:04):
think is that's like as iron glad as it gets. Yeah,
and that's not necessarily always the case. No, And as
a matter of fact, if you zoom out a couple
of orders of magnitude and look at this case, the
Phantom of Heilbron case needed to happen because people were
being convicted on circumstantial DNA evidence alone, like their DNA
had been found in the scene, not on the murder weapon,
(33:25):
not on the body, just at the scene, and people
are going to prison for that kind of stuff because judges,
juries prosecutors saw DNA is like infallible. Basically, if your
DNA was there, you were guilty essentially. So the Phantom
of heil Bron case really slowed that down. And like
you said, it didn't say d there's there's a lot
wrong with DNA in using that for forensics. It's hey,
(33:47):
this is a really good way to to come up
with evidence, but you need to also do the old
fashioned police work to fill it out to make sure
you have the right person. So it just kind of
slowed everybody down in like it was. I think it
was really necessary because this is like the time when
c s I was at its peak yet TV show
was huge at like in two thousand and eight um
(34:10):
and and like that had that was because everybody thought
of d n A in that way, So it was
good it happened in a sense. Yeah. Absolutely. There was
one case, if you want to get specific from Olivia
dug Up for us, where there was an English cab
driver whose DNA was discovered from the fingernails of a
murdered woman. And you know, a jury, here's that and
(34:32):
they're like fingernails, Like of course he did it because
she was fighting him off and got his DNA under
her fingernails. But it was someone who rode in his
cab and got a little little bit of that d
NA on him, killed this woman and got that d
n A on her. Uh. And I believe the cabby
spent eight months in jail before they found out the
truth and acquitted him. So that's a tough one though.
(34:55):
Well sure, I mean that's an outlier, but it's just
a good example of how it needs you need to
tread a little lighter. I think one of the other
things though, is it's not like this should have been
a surprise for everybody, UM that d N A wasn't
infallible because back in our friend or shoot or shot,
the guy who said, hey, you can get d NA
(35:17):
off of everything, his his research also showed you can
also really really easily contaminate anything with d NA, So
we should all be very careful. Everybody's like all we
heard was we can get DNA samples off of anything.
There's like, we didn't hear all that. We weren't within
or shot. Oh man, that was amazing, chuck, holy hate.
(35:38):
But that was that filled my heart. So there was
there's an international standard, the International Organization for Standardization, I
should say an international organization UM. They published a new
standard called i s O three eight five that basically says,
this is how you UM collect forensic evidence with DNA
(36:00):
to minimize UM contamination that kind of stuff. And I
read a forensic blog UM who was who said were
these were the the DNA analysts not even doing control samples?
And I went and looked it up. And a control
sample is one of the most basic things you can
do where you take your cotton swab that has, like say,
a blood stain on it, and you pull off a
(36:22):
little bit of the cotton swab that's not stained, and
you test them both to make sure that the cotton
swab that's not staying doesn't come back with any genetic material.
If it does, your sample is compromised. And they weren't
doing that apparently, or else they would have figured this
out almost immediately. So they were not doing very basic stuff.
And maybe it's because it hadn't been standardized, like this
(36:43):
is what you're supposed to do by that time. But
you know, in two thousands sixteen, finally they got around
to saying, here's how you do it. Right. It's like
when you put on a band aid. You take off
the peely part and you hold it by the sticky part.
You don't hold it by the bandage, right, and then
you take a sample of the bandage and then you
(37:03):
run it through your DNA profiling machine. Sure so, and
there's actually those things exist. Now, there's something called rapid
DNA machines. Yeah, because DNA is not going anywhere, nor
should it. You can look no further than the Golden
State killer case. Where they actually caught the serial killer
who killed like scores of people, are raped scores of
(37:25):
women and killed I think a dozen or more people. Um,
just through his DNA They found it through like a
genetic genealogy site. Um, they discovered this guy. So yeah,
you don't actually want to get rid of d n A.
But what seems to be problematic is we're going a
different way where now police stations have these rapid DNA
machines where you just throw a cotton swab in and
(37:47):
it spits out a genetic profile that you can run
in CODIS. But that you're taking the professional analyst out
of the out of the equation, and that seems dangerous
to a lot of people. Yeah. Absolutely, Um to button
up the original case that sort of got this all started,
which was the murder of Officer Michel Kaisaveta. Um it
(38:08):
was Nazis, uh. What they found out, it was a
very small terror of cell of just three people, the
National Socialists underground uh, and they were tied to the
larger Nazi movement, but they carried out a series of
murders throughout Germany from two thousand seven and all except
(38:30):
for the officers, all the other victims were immigrants, one
Greek citizen and eight of Turkish origin. And it was
two members of that group Uei Mundlos and Ui Bernhardt,
the two the two Ouhis. They robbed a bank um
in Eisenhocken, Germany. They were spotted um and this is
(38:50):
after after the murder. This is in and how they
got caught, well, not quite caught, but they were spotted.
And as police approached their burned out care of and
where they were hiding out, Moondlow's killed Boondhardt and then
himself and what looked like a murder suicide, even though
I think Brunehardt's last words were wall hold on man,
(39:13):
that's dark, that's dark. But these are Nazis. But they
also they they linked these guys to her murder um
directly using DNA analysis. They found sweatpants that had been
stained with blood that match Kaisa Vetters DNA and that
that's that's kind of neat how it came full circle
like that. But at the same time, it also strongly
(39:35):
suggests that these guys were wearing sweatpants with the police
woman's blood on them for three years. That's how gross
these stupid Nazis were. Yeah, and you know, it's even
funnier as I believe it's keys of Vetter After I
had my whole thing at the beginning about the I
and the E in German? Who keys of vetters? Even better? Yeah,
I think I screwed up the whole thing. We just
(39:55):
record it all, let's start from the beginning. So there
were two other outcomes from this. One was, hey, you guys,
UM ignored the murder of eight Turks and one Greek citizen. UM,
but yet you spent sixteen thousand overtime hours chasing the phantom?
How is that work? Why are you doing that? And
then also it really showed and revealed just how much
(40:18):
UM investigators will bend and shape their theories into really weird,
ridiculous shapes just to make it fit the DNA evidence,
rather than stopping and being like, wait, what what is
this again? This doesn't make any sense? Are we do
we have the right Are we on the right track?
So that's it, everybody, that's the Phantom of Heilbron. It
(40:41):
was a good one. That's an amazing story. And if
you want to know more about the Phantom of Heilbron,
you can search that on your favorite search engine and
jump down that rabbit hole. And since I said rabbit hole,
as always, that means it's time for a listener mail.
This is a very kind of cool little thedendum from
Eve in Libertyville, Illinois. Hey guys, well, listening to the
(41:05):
Selects episode on invasive species and one of you kind
of joke that would be crazy to shoot invasive plants
to eliminate them. And now it's been years since that episode,
but get this. I recently watched a nature documentary, Green
Planet with David Edinborough, which is awesome, and there's a
section on shooting invasive plants. Uh. In Maui, there's an
(41:26):
invasive plant called the micnia that's native to Mexico, and
sharp shooters and helicopters are being used to shoot the
plants growing on steep hillsides with herbicides without affecting the
entire ecosystem. Just another example of creative ways people have
found to fight invasive species. Attached to link. Thanks for
all you do. Eve in Libertyville, Illinois. Amazing, Thanks Eve.
(41:49):
Did we did we create that? Chuck? Did we cause that? Yeah?
I don't know. Let's say we did, Okay, between you
me and Eve, we we did we came up with that.
I know I got Jared of Subway arrested and boy
did I misjudge him? Uh So that was from Eve. Eve. Eve,
thanks a lot for that one. We always love hearing
(42:10):
new facts about old episodes, and you can send us
an email like Eve did to stuff podcast at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
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