An undated police handout shows Peter Paul Michalski, one of two convicts who escaped from prison last Thursday. He was recaptured on Tuesday.
Germany's most spectacular jailbreak of the year ended Tuesday with the arrest of the second of two prisoners who had been described as armed and dangerous as they led police on a cat-and-mouse chase, briefly taking several people hostage along the way.
A police SWAT team arrested Peter Paul Michalski, 46, Tuesday at 9:50 a.m. just outside the small town of Schermbeck in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Although police have yet to release details on how they located Michalski, they arrested him after chasing him in a car while he was cycling along a road. Michalski was not wounded when the car pushed his bike off the road, police said.
Michalski had escaped a maximum-security prison in the western city of Aachen last Thursday with Michael Heckhoff, 50, triggering a manhunt across northwestern Germany, which was aided by helicopters. At one point, the entire downtown area of the city of Mülheim was sealed off.
Both men were serving life sentences, Heckhoff for kidnapping and attempted murder and Michalski for a 1993 murder. They allegedly seized pistols from a prison guard during their escape.
Heckhoff was arrested on Sunday. On Tuesday, the mass-circulation daily tabloid Bild published an interview with him in which he described how they escaped by copying a key in the prison workshop and threatening two guards with a pistol they had purchased in jail from another prison guard.
They seized two more pistols, walked out of jail and hijacked taxis to Cologne. Police arrested one guard on Friday on suspicion of helping in the escape.
"The first thing we did was go to the Christmas market," Bild quoted Heckhoff as saying. "We bought chips and mineral water at a chip stall. While we were eating, we saw a police helicopter circling above us. So we hid under a bridge."
Cologne police said in a statement that they were investigating how Bild got hold of the interview with Heckhoff and whether his comments were true.
Heckhoff added that they spent the night freezing under the bridge and managed to wash in a nearby hospital and have breakfast in its cafeteria.
Later, they took a woman hostage and forced her to drive them out of the city. "We got out and Paul gave the girl a tenner for fuel. She had to get home somehow," Heckhoff reportedly told the paper. Though that might make them seem like nice-enough fellows, Heckhoff was actually serving time for pouring gasoline on two people and setting them on fire.
Heckhoff also allegedly said that he and Michalski then walked into a forest. Spotting the police, they hid under two wheelbarrows. They then broke into a villa and held a man and his wife hostage overnight. "They knew who we were. We made it clear to them that they didn't have to be afraid ofd us," Heckhoff told the paper. They then reportedly showered, watched television, ate a meal the man cooked for them, robbed the two of €200 ($300) and took off in their BMW.
The next day, while Heckhoff was arrested in Mülheim, Michalski managed to get away. Police had asked pharmacies to watch out for Michalski because he needed prescription drugs.
cro -- with wire reports
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