The Explanation Makes Sense, But Is It The Truth?
A true crime story that urges us to question the stories we tell ourselves
The Spree
For sixteen years, from 1993 to 2009, the German authorities chased a serial killer they never managed to apprehend. The murders were simply too spread out: they originated in southwest Germany but expanded to the southeast of France and the northwest of Austria. The modus operandi was too inconsistent: from stealthy strangulations to brutal, point-blank shots. The reasons were too varied: from small burglaries to drug-related crimes.
The Profile
All the police had to go on was the minimal traces of DNA that connected the crimes throughout the years and locations, and that told them to look for a woman of Eastern European descent. And that was it.
The ‘woman without a face’, as she became known, was murdering pensioners in rural France and executing German police officers. She was also exceptionally muscular as reported by a jeweller’s CCTV footage in which she looked more like a brute male than the stealthy female they had been searching for over a decade. She also seemed to be addicted to heroin. In short, the story made no sense at all.