Less than a week after a Hanover newspaper received a ransom letter from the purported thief of the golden emblem of a beloved food company, the self-styled "Cookie Monster" seems to have had a change of heart. The Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung received a second letter from Germany's most-wanted cookie thief stating that the golden biscuit would be returned.

"Because Werni loves the biscuit as much as I do and now always cries and misses the biscuit so badly, I'm giving it back to him!!!" it reads, ostensibly in reference to Werner Michael Bahlsen, the head of Bahlsen, which makes the globally successful Liebnitz brand of cookies.

The initial letter demanded, among other things, that the company provide the treats to all the rooms at a local children's hospital if it ever wanted to see the golden cookie again. Bahlsen CEO Werner Michael Bahlsen offered to make a donation of 52,000 packs of biscuits to different organizations upon the emblem's safe return, but he also said that the company would not meet the thief's demands and that it "refused to be blackmailed."

The biscuit was stolen from outside Bahlsen's headquarters in Hanover. Both letters have been accompanied by photos of a person in a Cookie Monster costume sticking the golden biscuit in its mouth.

The perpetrator did not state in the letter when the cookie might be safely returned.

chw -- with wires