u/kabush27

I've been going down a rabbit hole on this one for a few weeks and I still don't really know what to make of it.

On July 11, 1994, a German Federal Border Police boat found a body floating in the North Sea about 20km west of Heligoland. The man had been beaten and then deliberately weighted down before being dumped. He came loose somehow and drifted back up.

Here is what they found on him.

He was around 45 to 50 years old, white, and roughly 196cm tall. Thats 6'5". Tall enough that someone, somewhere, should remember him. Slim build. Maybe 70 to 75kg.

His clothes didnt match a single country. Navy trousers, French made. A light blue shirt. A pure wool striped tie that Marks & Spencer made for English and French language markets, including Canada. Leather Church's loafers, size 11 British, resoled at some point, and they looked secondhand.

The weights used to sink him were two cast iron shoe lasts. Each about 3kg. Both stamped "AJK", which is the trademark of AJ Jackson Ltd, a cobbler's supplier that used to be based in Kingswood, Bristol.

Police think the lasts were manufactured in the 1920s or 30s, meaning they were already 60+ years old when someone used them to try to sink a man. They were shaped from female foot moulds. The shoes on his feet traced back to Bristol too.

For 28 years the police held the detail about the shoe lasts back from the public. I dont really know why they held it that long. Maybe they were waiting on a specific lead.

In 2021 they exhumed him and got a full DNA profile. No match, anywhere. Then in 2022, researchers at Murdoch University in Perth ran isotope analysis on his bones. The result said he had spent most of his life in Australia.

So now you have a tall Australian man, killed somewhere in Europe, dressed in clothes from at least three countries, weighted with ancient cobbler's tools from a specific English town, and dumped in the North Sea. And in 31 years, nobody in Australia, nobody in the UK, nobody in France, nobody in Germany, has reported a man matching this description missing.

Thats the part that doesnt make sense to me.

Who goes missing that cleanly. A person that tall, from a country that size, in an era with records and newspapers and phones. No wife. No employer. No parents. No friend who wondered where he went.

Theories I've seen floated:

Someone living under a false identity. Sailor, deserter, fugitive, someone where reporting him missing would have created more problems than it solved.

Someone whose family knew exactly what happened and chose not to speak.

Someone from a community small or closed enough that his disappearance was absorbed without paperwork.

None of them fully explain the clothes. The clothes are the strangest part for me. Who dresses like that. Second hand British shoes, French trousers, a Marks & Spencer tie. It almost reads like a costume.

Well, German police are still working it. Last public appeal I can find was May 2025 through Locate International.

If anyone here has run into references to him in Australian missing persons databases, or old Bristol leatherworking connections, I would genuinely love to compare notes. This one doesnt sit right with me.

been down this rabbit hole again for the past few days and I'm going in circles so figured I'd see where everyone else lands on it

for anyone who hasn't come across this one: november 1970, a man and his two young daughters find a partially burned body on a hiking trail in the isdalen valley outside bergen norway. woman on her back, sleeping pills scattered around her, bottle of petrol, empty liquor bottle. parts of her are badly burned but her back isnt because it was flat against the ground.

heres the thing though. every single label has been cut from her clothes. not just brand tags. the neckline labels, washing instructions, everything. she has no ID on her. nothing.

police find a suitcase she left at bergen train station. inside theres wigs, multiple pairs of glasses (some with actual prescriptions, some just clear lenses??), and a diary written in code. turns out she had checked into hotels across norway and europe under at least 8 fake identities.

passports from belgium, france, others. hotel staff remembered her because she was weirdly specific about room requests. particular floors, rooms facing certain directions, asked to switch rooms after checking in.

the coded diary was eventually cracked. it was just a travel log. but written so nobody could read it.

fingerprints matched nothing. isotope analysis done decades later says she probably grew up somewhere around the french-german border area.

some of her stuff pointed to italy and germany. 55 years later nobody has identified her.

so the spy theory is the popular one and honestly I get why. cold war, bergen had a naval base, norway shares a border with the USSR. coded diary, fake passports, counter-surveillance behaviour at hotels, systematically removing labels from clothes. thats textbook tradecraft. norwegian police quietly reclassified her death from suicide to "unknown cause" a few years ago which imo says a lot about how much they trust their own original conclusion

she had a prescription AND a massive dose in her system when she died. if someone wanted her dead why do it in a remote valley with fire and make it this whole scene when you could just make it look like an overdose in the hotel room. thats so much cleaner. and if she did it herself, why spend time cutting every label out of your clothes first. who does counter-surveillance prep and then kills themselves in the same afternoon. those feel like two completely different stories happening at once

either she had literally nobody in the world or the people who knew her decided a long time ago to never talk. I dont know which is worse honestly

bergen police exhumed her in 2017, ran dna, did more isotope work. nothing conclusive came out of it as far as I know.

anyone here gone deep on this? the BBC podcast death in ice valley is solid if you havent heard it and NRK did a big investigative series on it too. curious where people end up after going through everything because I genuinely dont have an answer on this one

been down this rabbit hole again for the past few days and I'm going in circles so figured I'd see where everyone else lands on it

for anyone who hasn't come across this one: november 1970, a man and his two young daughters find a partially burned body on a hiking trail in the isdalen valley outside bergen norway. woman on her back, sleeping pills scattered around her, bottle of petrol, empty liquor bottle. parts of her are badly burned but her back isnt because it was flat against the ground.

heres the thing though. every single label has been cut from her clothes. not just brand tags. the neckline labels, washing instructions, everything. she has no ID on her. nothing.

police find a suitcase she left at bergen train station. inside theres wigs, multiple pairs of glasses (some with actual prescriptions, some just clear lenses??), and a diary written in code. turns out she had checked into hotels across norway and europe under at least 8 fake identities. passports from belgium, france, others. hotel staff remembered her because she was weirdly specific about room requests. particular floors, rooms facing certain directions, asked to switch rooms after checking in.

the coded diary was eventually cracked. it was just a travel log. dates cities hotels. but written so nobody could read it.

fingerprints matched nothing. isotope analysis done decades later says she probably grew up somewhere around the french-german border area. some of her stuff pointed to italy and germany. 55 years later nobody has identified her.

so the spy theory is the popular one and honestly I get why. cold war, bergen had a naval base, norway shares a border with the USSR. coded diary, fake passports, counter-surveillance behaviour at hotels, systematically removing labels from clothes.

norwegian police quietly reclassified her death from suicide to "unknown cause" a few years ago which imo says a lot about how much they trust their own original conclusion

but heres what I cant get past. the sleeping pills. she had a prescription AND a massive dose in her system when she died. if someone wanted her dead why do it in a remote valley with fire and make it this whole scene when you could just make it look like an overdose in the hotel room.

thats so much cleaner. and if she did it herself, why spend time cutting every label out of your clothes first. who does counter-surveillance prep and then kills themselves in the same afternoon. those feel like two completely different stories happening at once

either she had literally nobody in the world or the people who knew her decided a long time ago to never talk. I dont know which is worse honestly

bergen police exhumed her in 2017, ran dna, did more isotope work. nothing conclusive came out of it as far as I know.

anyone here gone deep on this? the BBC podcast death in ice valley is solid if you havent heard it and NRK did a big investigative series on it too. curious where people end up after going through everything because I genuinely dont have an answer on this one

so i've been researching this case for a while and it's one of those where the more you read the more disturbing it gets. it's truly one of the most disturbing ones i have come across.

quick version: tristan brübach was 13 years old. march 26 1998 in frankfurt-höchst, germany. he leaves school early because he want to see a doctor and (apparently) cuts through an underground tunnel near the liederbach stream. this tunnel was a common shortcut for kids in the area, tons of schoolchildren used it daily. sometime that day someone kills him in that tunnel. throat cut, extreme violence. his testicles and parts of his buttocks were surgically cut off. his body was found by children crossing just short after lying on the concrete.

here's what we know about the killer. some children on the other side of the tunnel reportedly saw a man near the entrance around the time of the murder as they wanted to take the shortcut. they saw a man leaning over the concrete ledge doing something. they got scared and decided not to go through the tunnel. one witness apparently saw him washing his hands in the liederbach stream. and then he just disappears into frankfurt. gone.

police went through the motions. known sex offenders, people with violent records, dozens of interviews. they recovered dna from the scene but it never matched anyone in the system. there were suspects over the years and at least one was looked at seriously but nothing stuck.

then there's the phone call. someone called the police and claimed to be the killer. by all accounts the call was disturbing. police were never able to identify the caller or confirm whether it was actually the person who did it.

in 1999 tristan's grave was dug up. someone actually went to his grave and desecrated it. whether that was the killer coming back or someone else entirely i don't think was ever confirmed. but either way that's not something a random person does.

the main suspect is the "Zopfmann". police released a phantom image of a suspect, a man with a distinctive ponytail. that image is genuinely one of the most unsettling phantom sketches i've ever seen. if you haven't looked it up, look it up. it's been circulating in german true crime circles for years and it hits different than a normal composite sketch.

the thing i keep coming back to is the tunnel. you don't pick that spot randomly. this was a place full of children every morning. whoever did this either knew exactly when foot traffic dropped off or genuinely didn't care about being seen. i don't know which one is worse.

tristan was only 13.

if anyone's gone deeper into the german sources on this i'd genuinely like to know. this case gets basically nothing in english.

so i've been researching this case for a while and it's one of those where the more you read the more disturbing it gets. it's truly one of the most disturbing ones i have come across.

quick version: tristan brübach was 13 years old. march 26 1998 in frankfurt-höchst, germany. he leaves school early because he want to see a doctor and (apparently) cuts through an underground tunnel near the liederbach stream. this tunnel was a common shortcut for kids in the area, tons of schoolchildren used it daily. sometime that day someone kills him in that tunnel. throat cut, extreme violence. his testicles and parts of his buttocks were surgically cut off. his body was found by children crossing just short after lying on the concrete.

here's what we know about the killer. some children on the other side of the tunnel reportedly saw a man near the entrance around the time of the murder as they wanted to take the shortcut. they saw a man leaning over the concrete ledge doing something. they got scared and decided not to go through the tunnel. one witness apparently saw him washing his hands in the liederbach stream. and then he just disappears into frankfurt. gone.

police went through the motions. known sex offenders, people with violent records, dozens of interviews. they recovered dna from the scene but it never matched anyone in the system. there were suspects over the years and at least one was looked at seriously but nothing stuck.

then there's the phone call. someone called the police and claimed to be the killer. by all accounts the call was disturbing. police were never able to identify the caller or confirm whether it was actually the person who did it.

in 1999 tristan's grave was dug up. someone actually went to his grave and desecrated it. whether that was the killer coming back or someone else entirely i don't think was ever confirmed. but either way that's not something a random person does.

the main suspect is the "Zopfmann". police released a phantom image of a suspect, a man with a distinctive ponytail. that image is genuinely one of the most unsettling phantom sketches i've ever seen. if you haven't looked it up, look it up. it's been circulating in german true crime circles for years and it hits different than a normal composite sketch.

the thing i keep coming back to is the tunnel. you don't pick that spot randomly. this was a place full of children every morning. whoever did this either knew exactly when foot traffic dropped off or genuinely didn't care about being seen. i don't know which one is worse.

tristan was only 13.

if anyone's gone deeper into the german sources on this i'd genuinely like to know. this case gets basically nothing in english.

okay so i've gone down this rabbit hole multiple times and every time i come back i notice something i missed.

quick version for anyone new: lars mittank, german guy, 28. goes to golden sands resort in bulgaria with friends in summer 2014. gets into a fight. ruptured eardrum, can't fly. his friends go home without him. he ends up alone at some cheap hotel in varna which is called hotel color varna and starts sending his mom increasingly paranoid messages.

Then on the day he's supposed to fly home, he runs out of the airport doctor's office, climbs a fence, and disappears into a sunflower field. he left everything behind there that he had on him. his passport, wallet, phone, luggage, and the 500 euros his mom had just wired him. never seen again after that.

but here's what i keep getting stuck on.

he called his mom from outside hotel color at 3am and said four men were following him and that he'd hidden somewhere up high where he was being careful not to fall.

nobody knows where he actually was during that hour. he came back to the hotel and then the next morning he's at the airport, apparently calm on the cctv, right up until the moment someone walks into the doctor's office and he bolts.

that person was apperantly a construction worker. completely unrelated to lars.

so either something genuinely broke in his brain after the head injury, the medication he was prescribed had a bad side effect that is very rare and he was reacting to completely normal things as if they were threats. or he had a real reason to be scared and the construction worker happened to look like whoever that reason was.

the detail that always gets me though is what he said before he ran. "i don't want to die here."

anyway if anyone has gone deeper into the german sources on this i'd genuinely be curious what you found. english coverage of this case is pretty thin compared to what's actually out there