17-Year-Old's Kidnapping, Murder Stuns Germany

Anneli-Marie's captors demanded $1.3M in ransom before killing
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 20, 2015 8:16 AM CDT
17-Year-Old's Kidnapping, Murder Stuns Germany
Anneli-Marie R.   (Saxony Police)

The kidnapped daughter of a wealthy German businessman was found dead earlier this week—a horrific end to a case that has stunned Germany and left her parents in the care of police psychologists, reports the Mirror. Authorities say the 17-year-old, identified as Anneli-Marie R., was kidnapped while walking her dog near Meissen around 7:30pm last Thursday. About half an hour later, her father received a phone call from Anneli-Marie's phone: It was one of her captors demanding $1.3 million in ransom. Investigators say the last sounds he heard from his daughter were reportedly her screams on the line. Though the girl's family told the kidnappers in a letter that they would "fulfill your demands in order to be able to take our child in our arms again," her body was found on a farm Monday, hours after the arrests of two men, 39 and 61, reports NBC News.

Police—some 1,200 of them were involved in the case—say they found the suspects by tracking cell phones, reports NBC News. Authorities say the men, unmasked during the crime, probably killed Anneli-Marie on Friday so she wouldn't expose them to police; they found no evidence of sexual assault. Friday was the last day a kidnapper and the teen's father spoke; NBC News notes the family wanted to pay the ransom but couldn't wire it to a foreign bank as instructed in the specified time frame. Officials suspect there was a good deal of planning before the crime. "Based on the investigation so far, the younger suspect was supposedly taking walks with a dog in the area to find out at what times the girl was out and about," says a rep for the Dresden prosecutors' office. Investigators believe the captors also researched her on Facebook. (Cops are stumped by the case of a missing Connecticut couple.)

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