DNA EVIDENCE has given the answer to one of Germany’s longest criminal mysteries this week, and in a way no one expected.
Red-faced police say they have solved the mystery of a six-time killer dubbed the “Phantom” who had eluded capture for the past 16 years at 40 crime scenes in France, Germany and Austria.
The perpetrator: the DNA cotton swabs used in the investigation and, most likely, an anonymous factory worker.
Police suspect the aptly named “Phantom” never existed and had not killed six people, beginning with a strangled pensioner in 1993 and ending with a 22-year-old police officer shot dead in 2007.
Apart from the DNA link, police had little to go on: the crimes all took place in southwest Germany, France and Austria, but the pattern ended there.
Sometimes the “Phantom” was behind burglaries, sometimes murders. DNA evidence was once found on a teacup, another time on a gun, a cigarette packet and even a half-eaten biscuit.
Investigators first believed the “Phantom” was a woman until they released the photo-fit picture of a man in 2008, leading to tabloid suggestions that the killer was a transsexual.
As the years dragged on, and the crimes piled up, desperate investigators posted a €300,000 reward to the find the killer.
Alarm bells began to ring a few weeks ago when identity papers belonging to an asylum seeker who died in a fire tested positive for the killer’s DNA, but later showed no traces of it whatsoever.
The unpleasant conclusion reached by investigators was that the supposedly sterile swabs may have come in contact with DNA before being sealed. “An unknown person could have come into contact with the swabs, while they were being manufactured, packaged or delivered,” said a spokesman for the public prosecutor in the western city of Saarbrücken.
Stern magazine, which broke the story, suggested that the swabs may have come in contact with human skin cells, sweat or saliva.
Yesterday, workers at the cotton swab factory were DNA tested.