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Extreme-Right Violence

Two Very Similar Murders Go Unnoticed

By Sven Röbel

Two young men were killed in the space of only a few days in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt. The suspected killers are both neo-Nazis with previous convictions for similar attacks, and yet there has been no public outcry about the two cases.

When Rick L. died, in the bushes behind a bus stop in the eastern German city of Magdeburg, he had already suffered a martyrdom of countless blows and kicks. The 20-year-old art student was literally kicked and beaten to death by his tormentor. According to the autopsy report, Rick L., whose body showed substantial evidence of internal injuries, suffocated in his own blood.

A short time later Bastian O., 20, a right-wing extremist with previous convictions for similar attacks, was arrested and charged with the murder. Investigators believe that the deadly beating was triggered by the victim's critical remarks about O.'s apparent far-right views.

The second murder occurred the next weekend, less than 50 kilometers (31 miles) away, on Aug. 24. Marcel W., who had just turned 18, was found lying in a pool of blood in the town of Bernburg, his body covered with knife wounds.

David B., another neo-Nazi with a criminal record for violent offences, was arrested and charged with the murder. The victim had been scheduled to testify last week against the 19-year-old right-wing extremist in an assault case.

With two dead on two weekends and two neo-Nazi thugs with criminal records suspected as the possible killers, one would think the horrific proximity between the bloody acts, both geographically and chronologically, would have triggered a new discussion over right-wing extremist violence. On the contrary, the news of the deaths of the two young men was not even reported in the national daily newspapers.

And not even in Saxony-Anhalt did the two killings set off any political debate only a week after they occurred. Government officials and politicians alike treated these excessive acts of violence about as matter-of-factly as traffic accidents. Two people were killed, and hardly anyone noticed. Last Thursday, when SPIEGEL asked the press office at the state Interior Ministry in the state capital Magdeburg for a statement on the deadly attacks, the spokesman was not even aware of the second murder. The next day he confirmed that the police had already taken both suspects, "violent right-wing extremist criminals," into custody. By that time, the spokesman claimed, it was not clear whether the crimes were politically motivated.

'Ticking Time Bombs'

Saxony-Anhalt has a history of downplaying unpleasant facts. Residents of the state, with its high unemployment and dramatically shrinking population, have had their fill of negative news. Only last year, Interior Minister Holger Hövelmann, a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), was forced to admit that the numbers of criminal acts committed by right-wing extremists had been widely glossed over in his state. Even in the case of the two recent killings, it is far from clear whether they will ever be classified as "acts of violence with right-wing extremist motives." For now, at least, they are being treated as violent offences committed by young people under the influence of alcohol.

The question as to whether the killings in Bernburg and Magdeburg will enter the crime statistics as being directly politically motivated is, in fact, irrelevant. The fact is that the two suspects were part of a radical right-wing environment that places little value on human lives, particularly those of the "weak ones," and where an astonishing level of brutality can claim its victims at any time. Acquaintances describe both Bastian O. and David B. as "ticking time bombs" and say that it was "only a matter of time before something happened." But no one attempted to defuse those time bombs.

According to a former classmate at the Sophie Scholl Secondary School in the nearby town of Baalberge, David B.'s right-wing sympathies began by as early as the fifth grade. That was when he first met his later victim, Marcel W., a slight boy from a troubled family who had been "nice to everyone" but was already the victim of bullying attacks in school.

The former classmate says that while Marcel was eventually sent to a home for troubled teens in the town of Schönebeck, David B. apparently developed quickly into a "real Nazi," complete with radical right-wing tattoos on his entire body and a propensity for drinking binges and demonstrations of "national resistance."

In late September 2007, David B. moved into a studio apartment on the top floor of a multi-unit apartment building in a middle-class neighborhood on Martinstrasse in Bernburg. B.'s mother, who allegedly lives in Munich today, obtained the key to the apartment, which would later become the scene of the murder. The attic apartment was soon turned into a meeting place for the Bernburg skinhead community. According to neighbors, young skinheads wearing combat boots and carrying cases of beer marched up the steps to the apartment almost every weekend, inundating the neighborhood with Nazi music and radical right-wing chants until deep into the night.

Neighbors who tried to complain to David B. were apparently berated and threatened by the neo-Nazis. Residents say that even the police, at a station only 300 meters (984 feet) from the apartment building, eventually stopped responding to complaints about the noise and disorderly conduct, even though David B., who investigators say was already "a known entity" in the right-wing extremist community, had a criminal record. In October 2007, the Bernburg District Court convicted him of property damage, multiple assault offenses and the "use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations," and he was sentenced to an 18-month suspended sentence.

Neo-Nazi Claims 'Self-Defense'

David B. once again came to the attention of local police while still on probation. According to prosecutors, he brutally attacked his later victim, Marcel W., for the first time on Nov. 20, 2007. But prosecutors were unable to charge B. with assault because Marcel W. failed to appear on two court dates.

According to a close friend, Marcel was "terrified" of the neo-Nazi. She says that the boy, who was only 1.65 meters (5'5") tall and had last worked in a bicycle repair shop, had hidden from the violent David B. in her apartment on several occasions. The court had scheduled a third hearing for last Tuesday, at 2:30 p.m., and had ordered W. to appear as a witness.

But Marcel W. was dead by then.

He was last seen, in the hours leading up to his death, at the "Bernabeum" discotheque. Marcel's friends say that they cannot understand how the boy ended up in the apartment of the suspected killer, but they assume that he allowed B. to "talk him into it, maybe to get drunk or something."

But David B., the neo-Nazi murder suspect, told prosecutors that Marcel had "broken into" his apartment on that Saturday night, and that he had killed him "in self-defense" -- by stabbing him numerous times. At the time of the killing David B., now a murder suspect in pre-trial custody, was heavily inebriated, and it took almost 24 hours before he could be questioned.

The David B. case bears a striking resemblance to another bloody deed that occurred only eight days earlier in Magdeburg. Investigators say that Bastian O., the prime suspect, was also a "major player" in the neo-Nazi scene. According to the public prosecutor's office, the 20-year-old sports a tattoo of a swastika on his thigh, and his criminal record contains a series of violent offences. On May 16, 2006, the Magdeburg District Court sentenced him to 18 months in a youth detention facility, without parole, for incitement to racial hatred, robbery, predatory extortion and aggravated assault.

In February 2006, Bastian O. affronted a student from Togo with racist slurs, beat him brutally and, finally, set his dog on his victim. While incarcerated in the Rassnitz Juvenile Prison, O. attacked a fellow prisoner and was sentenced to two more months in jail.

When he was released this February, he moved into a building in Magdeburg's Leipziger Strasse neighborhood, less than three kilometers (1.9 miles) from the later scene of the crime. There is football hooligan graffiti in the entrance to the courtyard of the run-down, prefabricated high-rise apartment building, and the door of the apartment next to O.'s studio apartment is half kicked-in and covered with the imprints of combat boots.

According to a neighbor, the other tenants here also lived in "constant fear" of the "dangerous Nazi" and his comrades. The right-wing extremists, he says, had repeatedly thrown beer bottles at passerby and moving cars from the second floor of the building, until the police arrested O. on Aug. 18 and sealed off his apartment.

The evidence against the presumed killer appears to be overwhelming. Traces of art student Rick L.'s DNA were found on O.'s clothing, and investigators also found some of the victim's property in his apartment. Witnesses also say that they saw both the neo-Nazi and the liberal-minded student at a large, nearby discotheque, "Funpark," shortly before the killing took place.

Bastian O. himself, who initially declined to comment on the charges, is now believed to have admitted to investigators that he had had an argument with Rick L. in the discotheque, and that the student had called him a "Nazi." When contacted by SPIEGEL, O.'s attorney had no comment on the charges against his client.

Friends and concerned citizens have placed flowers and hung up posters -- the sort of display that always follows such crimes -- near the bushes where Rick L. died his agonizing death two weeks ago.

But there has been no public outcry. The local press simply reported the case as a "disco murder."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan