Munich Chef Dismembered

February 11, 2009

A Munich, Germany angler, out for a few hours of fishing along the banks of the Isar River, caught what he thought would be one of the most memorable fish he had ever hooked-except that what he reeled in was not a fish.  It was a man's arm with its hand attached.  Interestingly, the fingertips from the hand were missing, adding to the macabre, disturbing and bizarre discovery.  The fisherman promptly reported his gruesome find to the local police.
 
Following an investigation, police announced that the arm with hand was that of one of Germany's top chefs, Markus Schindlbeck, 35, who had recently disappeared prior to leaving on a trip to Barcelona, one of Europe's hot-spot destinations, with his girlfriend.  According to investigators, the chef's body had been butchered, cut into a number of pieces, and thrown into a river.  The Isar River, portions of which have been opened to nudists since the 1960s, is fed by the rushing water of snow melt-off in the Alps and joins up with the Danube River in Germany.  Police said Schindlbeck's torso ended up and had been found in the Czech Republic, but it had not traveled there via the river.  The chief of the German murder commission, Richard Theiss, said that the police believed Schindlbeck had been murdered, and cut up, inside his apartment.

"We believe the man was killed in his flat," Theiss said.  "The body was then chopped up there and the pieces packed in bed linen and then taken to the river.  The victim's car is still missing."

Although a motive for the gruesome slaying was not immediately known, the police said a reasonably fast resolution to the case had been accomplished.  As it turned out, a man across the border in Austria was arrested for the murder.  The police so far have only identified him as Heiko K., a 39-year-old former colleague of the butchered chef.

It was not long after being arrested that Heiko K. decided to confess.  Apparently the murder was motivated, at least in part, by Heiko K.'s heavy debt load.  Based on what they had been told by the alleged killer, police figured that the crime probably occurred on or about January 23, 2009, a Friday, shortly after Heiko K. came to Schindlbeck asking for a loan, which Schindlbeck had refused him.

"The 39-year-old Heiko K. was heavily in debt and wanted to borrow money from Schindlbeck," Theiss said.  "It came to a verbal dispute, then a physical confrontation."

Schindlbeck apparently had been strangled.

According to police accounts, Heiko K. pulled or dragged Schindlbeck's body out of the bedroom where he was killed and into the bathroom.  He then took the victim's credit card and purchased a saw, carpet knife, bolt cutter, suitcase, and garbage bags.  Upon his return to the apartment, he removed Schindlbeck's head, arms, and legs, and cut off his fingertips in an effort to make his identification more difficult for the cops.  He then allegedly placed the various body parts into suitcases and garbage bags, and loaded them into the trunk of Schindlbeck's car, which was very conveniently parked in the apartment's garage.

According to Theiss, Schindlbeck was a heavy man, approximately 120 kilograms (more than 260 pounds), which necessitated Heiko K. having to chop him up - chopping him into pieces apparently had made it easier for him to remove the victim's body from the apartment.  Because he knew that Schindlbeck had planned the weekend trip to Barcelona, he figured that he had plenty of time to dispose of the body.  Because Heiko K. had the victim's car and credit cards, he drove a convoluted course through parts of Europe into the Czech Republic where he allegedly hid Schindlbeck's torso in a Bavarian forest somewhere between Furth im Wald in Germany and Pilsen, far into the Czech Republic and many miles between the two locales.  Without his confession, police likely would never have found the torso.

The chef's legs and head are still missing.  Heiko K. claimed that he had tossed Schindlbeck's severed head from a bridge into a river.  Divers searched for the head, to no avail.  In the meantime, Heiko K. has agreed to be extradited from Austria to Germany where his case will be adjudicated.

Photo Credit: iStock

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Comments

[Fuzzy]

Wow, what a disturbing case.

[wc]

That is disgusting.