The Cold Case Files Page 8

  Whatever vehicle the killer or killers used to travel into the depths of Ballypatrick Forest, it was quite possibly a particularly sturdy vehicle. It would have been driven along dirt-tracks within the forest in darkness, and a killer who gave enough thought into travelling that far into the forest may well have felt secure in that his vehicle was reliable in difficult terrain; perhaps it was a jeep, or a truck or a van. As detectives strive to keep an open mind on what may have occurred, they have also considered that the vehicle which brought Inga-Maria to her death in the forest may not have been the same vehicle that she was either abducted in or accepted a lift in at Larne. Is it possible that Inga-Maria was taken to some location before she was transferred into another vehicle and then taken to her death in Ballypatrick Forest?

  The PSNI has long pondered these types of questions, with detectives having brainstorming sessions, trying to think ‘outside the box’. The fact that the 1,000 men who were prioritised for giving DNA samples failed to unlock the mystery has led officers to analyse and re-analyse the case. And they are learning new information all the time, in doing recent house-to-house enquiries and carrying out the recent voluntary sampling of men in the locality. Every piece of information is put into the mix. “The screening process has been good not only in terms of the forensic investigation, but also in terms of building up information,” says Raymond Murray. “It’s like an onion, layer upon layer of information. Who was in the docks, who was in the forest, who was in a particular place in Co. Antrim, what people were driving lorries, what people were driving cars. The account has grown substantially since 2005.”

  Back in Munich, Almut shows me more artwork that her daughter did in school. Inga-Maria was just two months short of her nineteenth birthday when she left for her trip to Britain and Ireland. She hadn’t decided what she wanted to do when she left school and she had one full year left in high school before she had to make up her mind. One of her favourite subjects was English and she spoke it very well, and had been very much looking forward to practising it when she headed off from Munich on her InterRailing adventure. Almut tells me that the original family home is just up the street. Inga-Maria was the younger of two daughters.

  In August 2006 Almut’s husband Josef died at the age of 67. In 1988 he and his wife had travelled to Northern Ireland to take their daughter’s body home and to meet police and make a public appeal for help in catching Inga-Maria’s killer. “My husband was a very good man, very good father and very good husband,” says Almut, as she looks at his Memorial Card. “Josef and I were both from Vorchdorf, a town in northern Austria. We met in school, I was the one who later pursued him. We moved to Germany for financial reasons and settled in Munich. Josef is now laid to rest here in Munich with Inga-Maria, I visit them every day.”

  Northern Ireland has thousands of unsolved murders, most of them linked to the Troubles. The Historical Inquiries Team was specifically set up to review more than 3,200 deaths attributed to the conflict from the late 1960s to 1998. There is an understanding in Northern Ireland of the need to get answers for families who have been bereaved. That feeling is also reflected in the many other cold-case murder investigations which the PSNI has undertaken in recent years. One of those cases is the murder of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy, who was abducted while cycling near her home at Ballinderry in south Co. Antrim in August 1981. Six days after her disappearance Jennifer’s body was found ten miles away at McKee’s Dam near Hillsborough. A massive investigation was put in place at the time by the RUC, and in recent years detectives from the PSNI’s Serious Crime Branch carried out a full re-investigation. In October 2011 a Scottish serial-killer was convicted of Jennifer’s murder. After murdering Jennifer in 1981, this man had murdered three other girls in Britain during the 1980s.

  Another cold case which has seen renewed investigations is the disappearance of 15-year-old Arlene Arkinson, who vanished on a night out in August 1994. It is feared that Arlene was murdered and her body secretly hidden either in Co. Tyrone or in Co. Donegal. In August 2011 it was confirmed that the PSNI planned to begin new searches for the missing teenager, using specialist search equipment.

  The potential for huge developments which forensic science can have in a cold-case review was clear in a remarkable case solved by the PSNI in 2008. For twenty years the person who battered and strangled 66-year-old Lily Smyth in her apartment in Belfast had escaped justice. But the killer had left a small bloodstain on a towel in Lily’s apartment and tiny amounts of his blood on her clothing. A full cold-case review had begun in 2005 and advances in forensics led scientists to finally identify the stain on the towel as being that of William Stevenson, who had lived in the same flat complex as Lily. Stevenson’s blood was subsequently found on items of Lily’s clothing which had been kept safe for two decades, and the probability of a match was given as one in a billion. In October 2008 Stevenson was given a life sentence and told he would serve a minimum of 25 years for a murder he had committed twenty years before.

  The person who left their DNA at Inga-Maria Hauser’s crime scene has never been detected in any other criminal investigation. This means he has not been convicted of any crime in Northern Ireland, England, Scotland or Wales. Detectives have considered that perhaps the crime scene donor is dead. But even if he is, the developments in familial DNA mean he could still be identified through his relatives. The crime scene stain is a permanent fixture in the investigation, and establishing its owner is crucial in moving the investigation forward.

  The PSNI have liaised with Gardaí to see if the DNA found at Inga’s crime scene matches anyone on files in the Republic. One major hindrance in this work is the continued lack of a DNA database in the Republic, despite repeated promises by successive Governments. While the crime scene was in rural north-east Antrim, it is still possible that people south of the border have information about the case. Perhaps they were on the ferry that night, or know people who were.

  The murder of Inga-Maria Hauser is the only murder of its kind to have occurred in Northern Ireland. Many visitors were killed in violence linked to the Troubles, but no other tourist was sexually assaulted, murdered and their body hidden by an opportunistic random attacker, similar to what happened to Inga-Maria. However, in the Republic of Ireland there are a number of tragic cases of women who came to the Republic of Ireland to either visit or live and who fell victim to murderers. One of those women was also from Munich. Twenty-three-year-old Bettina Poeschel was on a holiday in September 2001 when she decided to visit the historic Newgrange site in Co. Meath. She got a train from Dublin to Drogheda and then began to walk towards Donore, three miles from Newgrange. Bettina failed to return that night and her body was found 23 days later during a Garda search. Her murderer was a convicted killer from Drogheda named Michael Murphy. He had previously served a sentence for the manslaughter of another woman. He is now serving a life sentence for Bettina’s murder. Another murder which was committed by a known violent offender occurred in October 2007, when Swiss student Manuela Riedo was murdered in Galway by local man Gerald Barry. Manuela’s murderer is now serving a life sentence for strangling his victim to death; he is also serving a life sentence for raping a French student in Galway in the same year he committed murder.

  The murders of Bettina Poeschel and Manuela Riedo were committed by men with a history of extreme violence who lived local to the areas where they committed opportunistic attacks on visitors to Ireland. A major difference between these solved cases and Inga-Maria Hauser’s unsolved case, is that the ‘crime scene donor’ who left his DNA at Ballypatrick Forest has not surfaced in any other criminal investigation in Northern Ireland or anywhere else where DNA databases have been checked.

  In the 1990s six women disappeared in the Leinster area, and they have never been found. It is feared that these women may have been killed and their bodies hidden. There has been no clear evidence to show a serial killer is responsible for any of these cases. Indeed in three of the disappearances—Fiona Pender
in Co. Offaly in 1996, Ciara Breen in Co. Louth in 1997 and Fiona Sinnott in Co. Wexford in 1998—it’s thought the victims may have known their killers. But in the other three cases—the disappearance of American woman Annie McCarrick in 1993, Jo Jo Dullard in Co. Kildare in 1995, and an 18-year-old woman in Co. Kildare in 1998—it’s believed random abductors may be responsible. And there are also three unsolved murders of women whose bodies were then hidden, which may have involved random attackers. Marie Kilmartin vanished from Port Laoise in December 1993; her body was found hidden in bog water on the Laois-Offaly border in June 1994. Patricia Doherty disappeared in Tallaght in December 1991; her body was found buried in the Dublin Mountains the following June. And the oldest such unsolved case occurred when Antoinette Smith disappeared in Dublin in 1987; her body was found buried in the Dublin Mountains on 3 April 1988—co-incidentally Antoinette’s body was found while Inga-Maria Hauser was travelling through Britain en route to Northern Ireland. There is nothing to indicate that Inga-Maria’s killer was responsible for any of the unsolved disappearances and murders which Gardaí have so far failed to solve, but even if there is no link, it is clear that there were a number of similar type murderers operating on the island of Ireland in the late 1980s and into the 1990s.

  One issue which the PSNI have long considered is why was Inga-Maria’s body left so that it was eventually found. Although the killer or killers went to great lengths to bring Inga-Maria to a remote spot in Ballypatrick Forest, once they had murdered the teenager, they simply left her body there, with all her belongings strewn around. They didn’t try to bury her body, or hide it in any other way. Did they panic, were they running out of time, were they expected to be somewhere, were they late for a workshift, or late with a delivery of goods, or would their wife or another family member be asking where they could be?

  Northern Ireland has seen a number of cold-case murder trials in recent years. Some of those cases have involved murders which occurred as a result of the Troubles. Some trials have resulted in convictions, and others in not-guilty verdicts. No matter what the verdict in any particular case, at least evidence has finally been tested in court and a verdict given.

  The Courts of Justice have also seen non-Troubles-related cold cases come before them. One of the most remarkable such murder cases only actually came to light because one of the killers—Colin Howell—finally confessed in January 2009 that he and his lover Hazel Stewart had murdered his wife Lesley and Hazel’s husband Trevor Buchanan in May 1991. For almost eighteen years, it was believed that Lesley and Trevor had committed suicide by inhaling exhaust fumes in Co. Derry. It was only when Colin Howell suddenly told all that it was realised that a double-murder had actually taken place and that both Lesley and Trevor had been poisoned by their cheating spouses. Howell later pleaded guilty to murder and Hazel Stewart was convicted of murder by a jury in 2011 and similarly given a life sentence.

  Before his arrest, double-murderer Colin Howell was a pillar of the community. A respected dentist and a church-goer, his friends and the wider community were left stunned by his revelations when he finally confessed in 2009. A case such as this begs the question—is it possible that Inga-Maria Hauser’s killer is also a pillar of the community, someone who has all the appearances of being a law-abiding citizen, someone who has lived a lie since 1988?

  In Almut’s apartment she keeps a scrapbook of all correspondence from Northern Irish authorities relating to her daughter’s case. There is a letter in German written by an RUC officer shortly after the murder to update the Hauser family on the investigation. There is also a letter in German sent by the PSNI in recent times to update the family on the ongoing work to try and identify the full DNA profile discovered in 2005. And there are other letters from 1988—correspondence from the funeral directors in Northern Ireland who cared for Inga-Maria before she was brought home to Germany, and contact from Germany’s Honorary Consul in Northern Ireland. The coroner for North Antrim wrote in May of that year to say that an inquest into Inga-Maria’s death could not be held due to ongoing police enquiries. In February of 1989 Moyle District Council wrote to say that still the inquest could not be held because the police investigation was continuing. The letter expressed the optimism that authorities were ‘hopeful of positive action’. To this day Inga-Maria’s inquest has not been held.

  The unsolved murder has been featured twice on the BBC Crimewatch programme, once in 1988 and the second time in 2005. In the second appeal, then Detective Superintendent Patrick Steele appealed to people who had made anonymous contact with police some years before to get back in contact. Getting the appeal broadcast throughout Britain was important and still is. While the killer may have had detailed knowledge of Ballypatrick Forest, that didn’t mean he was originally from Co. Antrim. He could just as easily have come from England, Scotland, the Republic of Ireland or anywhere else. In his appeal Patrick Steele spoke of all that had been taken from Inga-Maria. “If she was alive she could be living in Ireland, or she could be teaching English in Germany. Her whole life was stolen from her.”

  Detective Superintendent Raymond Murray and Detective Inspector Tom McClure and their colleagues are still actively working on the case, but they also hope for the magical ‘ping’—where someone is caught for some other crime and their DNA is put on the database and all of a sudden they finally learn the identity of the crime scene donor. “We would love if that was to happen, that a newly taken DNA sample would suddenly match our profile,” says Raymond Murray.

  But while we hope for that to happen, we are working to actively identify this person. We are looking abroad too and asking police forces in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia to check if our unidentified profile matches any profile they may have. We choose those countries because they are the traditional destinations for emigrants from Ireland. But working with the international police community is an exercise in itself, each country has different rules and standards in relation to DNA.

  As well as running the DNA profile against the databases in Northern Ireland and beyond, the police investigation has now seen over 2,000 people who are not on any database giving their DNA samples for the purposes of elimination. These are people in Co. Antrim and beyond who have voluntarily given their samples when requested by the police. As well as the SGM+ screening and the Y-STR familial trawl of DNA databases, detectives are also now looking at women who are on DNA databases, to see if any of their male relatives should be asked to give a DNA sample. This line of enquiry has developed as forensic science is now so advanced that certain female DNA profiles can be identified which show some similarities to the crime scene stain. Because of the way DNA characteristics are inherited from parents, there is a possibility that within that particular female group there may be a male relative of one of the women whose DNA profile could match the DNA from the crime scene. The PSNI has been contacting some women who are on the database to reach out to their male relatives and ask them to provide DNA samples for the purposes of elimination.

  The PSNI still have Inga-Maria’s backpack and her sleeping bag and other materials found with her body. Each item is safely guarded, each a potential piece of evidence if the suspected killer or killers are ever brought to trial. Inga-Maria was a bright, confident and friendly young woman who met her violent death over 1,000 miles from home. “It sits apart, it sits apart from the Troubles,” says Detective Superintendent Raymond Murray. “The murder is completely out there on its own. People are still very animated about it, it is viewed as a stain on the community, and that is the message coming across to investigators. There is something about an act of brutality perpetrated on a visitor who came to our shores for all the best reasons. She came to Northern Ireland at a time that it was in a state of conflict, yet she still came to see and to listen and to soak up the culture and the folklore, and somebody killed her.”

  Almut’s front-facing ground-floor apartment looks out on one of the busy streets in Munich just east of the River Isar. As
I sit with her and our translator, Almut shows me more paintings that Inga-Maria did in school and she shows me more photographs of her daughter. One of the sketches that Inga-Maria did was a two-dimensional self-portrait. She also made an elaborate papier mâché collection of puppet faces. Her sense of humour also comes across in a painting of a woman who is riding a bike which is far too small for her.

  Almut has two grandchildren from her other daughter. She worked as a nurse but is now retired and keeps active by playing badminton. Almut has not visited Northern Ireland since 1988. She knows the PSNI are doing all they can to catch Inga-Maria’s killer and she is grateful that they still remember her daughter. As we finish our interview Almut shows me another photo of Inga-Maria smiling at the camera. “That is my daughter,” she says proudly. “Isn’t she lovely.”