Manfred Seel

Manfred Adolf Seel (October 30, 1946 in Königstein im Taunus - August 26, 2014 in Schwalbach am Taunus), nicknamed the "Hesse Ripper" and "Jack the Ripper of Schwalbach", was a suspected German serial killer, who killed his victims in Frankfurt Rhine-Main area. Seel is suspected of five murders and is currently investigated for four other unresolved possible murders.^[1]

Life

Manfred Seel grew up as an only child in Kronberg im Taunus. In 1957 he moved to the secondary school in Oberursel. He then completed an apprenticeship for chemography in the traditional Frankfurt printing company in the Georg Stritt & Co. in Mainzer Landstraße. In 1967 he began is two-year military service.^[2] From 1968 to 1969 Seel served in the Raketenartilleriebataillon 52 in the Steuben barracks in Giessen.

From 1970 he worked in his trained profession in Frankfurt and began in 1973, and after being on his second chance in high school he graduated at the Goethe University Frankfurt with an abitur in art and social history, which he shortly broke off again.^[3] His job in the Mainzer Landstrasse was located in proximity of Johanna-Kirchner-Stift, in which two of his future victims, Gudrun Ebel and Hatice Erülkeroglu, were working together with his partner Werner Lederer, who led several horticultural companies in Schwalbach in 1986.^[4] His wife, with whom he was married with since 1973 and since 1979 had a daughter with, died in 2013. In his spare time Seel played from 1985 to 2014 the clarinet and saxophone in the band Overall Jazz Gang. He was described by neighbours as a friendly and inconspicuous man who, however, occasionally declined to aggressive outbreaks.

According to eyewitness testimony, Seel is said to have regularly visited the Frankfurt streets in early 1990s. A prostitute reported that she had been abused by him, and because of this incident the local helpline of the Frankfurt Streetwork - a consulting project for sex workers, reported to warn other women of this violent behaviour.^[5][6][7] In the year 1996, he made an alcohol withdrawal cure in the withdrawal clinic Sonnenberg in Erbach im Odenwald. Seel died in 2014, one year after he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer.

The investigation of Seel began a few weeks after his death, when his daughter and partner discovered carcasses in a rented garage near Seel's household. Since September 2015, the LKA Working Group Alaska has cited Seel as a prime suspect in several murders which are currently being investigated.^[8] Alaska was a nickname of Manfred Seel, as he was known to often wear fur clothing in warm seasons and also because Alaska was one of his preferred destinations.^[9] Seel was previously considered a "blameless citizen".^[10] The trail leads into Frankfurt's red-light environment and to rolling up cold cases of prostitute murders.

Murders

The murders attributed to Seel were carried out with great brutality and destructiveness from sexual sadism. The victims were killed by "harsh violence in sexually relevant zones".^[11] It is significant that the culprit kept trophies of his victims, except for one case, post mortem; he would gather organs or certain body parts such as genitals, arms or legs, which he later kept in hidden places. The perpetrator probably had deliberately sought retreat to the crime scenes for his sexual fantasies. Also, cannibalism currently can not be excluded.

The victims always had different parts removed. Investigator Frank Hermann said at a press conference: "Sometimes it's a right leg, sometimes a left arm - if you put it together, you could actually make a new body by doing that". The police acknowledge that Seel may have had an accomplice. The reason for this are traces and the extreme injury pattern on a corpse, which only could have been possible by the interaction of two corpses. The State Office of Criminal Investigation is currently appealing to the public for further information about the perpetrator and his victims. Also, they are looking for any surviving victims, with the help of whom conclusions could be drawn for the perpetrator, his motive or the course of events.^[12]

Ja, dieser Fall ist ganz sicher der außergewöhnlichste in meinem Berufsleben. Die Gewalt ist so widerwärtig und unfassbar, das sprengt alles, was ich bislang erlebt habe.

— Kriminalhauptkommissar Holger Thomsen, Soko „Alaska“^[13]

Modus Operandi

The police saw Seel as a misogynist or a misanthrope.^[14] On the hard drives of several PCs that were in his basement, investigators found 32,000 violent pornographic images and movies. The pornographic material of the collection was estimated to be of five terabytes. It is also assumed that Seel surfed in the Darknet, which leaves no traces. Perhaps they served as a graphic template for Seel's actions and expression of his sexual fantasies. According to Frank Hermann, it is not a series of spontaneously and emotionally expired sexual offenses, but very stringent acts in the killing series, with the sexual component on a whole different level.

The investigators assumed that Seel led a double life behind his bourgeois facade for decades. According to criminal psychologist Lydia Benecke the perpetrator felt no compassion or guilt. He would see his victims as objects for the satisfaction of his sexual needs, which he then disposed of. The reasons for the murders were most likely in his personality, which was dominated by sadistic fantasies and probably based on low self-esteem. The dehumanization of the victim, his humiliation, the addition of pain, unlimited power of life, a greatly diminished sense of empathy and control over the victim must have played a major role in the series of murders.^[15] The "trophy hunting" and the storage of body parts may have served another desire as well.^[16]

According to the criminal psychologist Helmut Kury, Seel felt "lust for violence and aggression" and most likely lacked "emotional vibration ability".^[17] He assumes that the "social aide" of his personality and the construction of the bourgeois facade, has served to conceal his perverse inclinations. The offender was capable of acting intelligently. He had not acted spontaneously and in the affect, but his deeds (selection of the victims and the course of action) was planned. The cause of his sadistic tendencies could have been early childhood developments. Seel's killing instinct, according to the investigatin police, probably expired between 1971 and 1991, as he had been in a psychologically stable phase due to changing circumstances such as marriage and family formation.

Victims

The police assume that between 1971 and 2004, Seel murdered at least five women. Especially drug-addicted prostitutes from the street, which are classfied as a high-risk group, as they can be easily addressed and their disappearance is usually not noticed immediately. The investigated murder cases show large behavioural matches, including a recognizable "signature" of the perpetrator.^[18] The commonality of the ritualistic murder series is that all victims were killed by strangling. In addition, the pubic area or the breasts of women were defaced. Furthermore, all body parts or organs were removed. The unsolved murders of the following women are currently associated with Seel:

• February 1971 – Gudrun Ebel (19), cleaner and geriatric care assistant. She may have been Seel's first victim. Her body was discovered on February 6, 1971 in a garden shed in Bad Vilbel. According to the investigators, the killer displayed sadistics acts, and had opened her lower abdomen with a knife, removing her uterus.^[19] The authorities assume that the perpetrator lured her into a gazebo and killed her there.^[20]
• April 1971 – Hatice Erülkeroglu (23), Turkish geriatric nurse. There may have been a connection, as Seel had his training and later worked in the immediate vicinity of the Johanna-Kirchner-Stift Altenheimes. The killer and the victim could possibly have been in an adjacent "party venue", a disused railway carriage on a former brownfield site, which often served as a meeting place for young people to get to know each other.^[21] The victim, who was attacked on the Camberger Bridge, suffered massive injuries to her head (her face had been smashed) and the genital area had been damaged, suggesting that the killer had a sexually sadistic personality structure.
• June 1991 – Gisela Singh (36), a heroin addicted, homeless and HIV-positive prostitute, mother of a daughter. Her body was discovered by mushroom pickers 14 days after her disappearance under a pile of rice at a parking lot in the Hofheim forest.^[22] Singh was working on the bar in Frankfurt-Kaiserstrasse. She was seen for the last time on June 14, 1991 at 3PM at Café Fix (a drug counseling center on Frankfurt's Moselstrasse). Shortly before, she had undergone medical treatment.^[23] It was found that her HIV disease was already in a very advanced state. Thereafter, according to unconfirmed testimonies in the Westend Street (in the summer of 1991, the street had spread from the Frankfurt train station district in the Westend Street) she had been spotted. In her handbag, a ticket for the E3414 express train from Karlsruhe to Heidelberg was found in addition to a small tube and a disposable syringe, which had been stamped the same day.^[24] Also, a trail was examined, which indicated a 40- to 50-year-old and about 1.80 meter tall suitor named "Hans", who was traveling with a blue Opel Rekord and had a license plate from Darmstadt.^[25] Later, it was pointed out that Seel had been of Singh's suitors. The woman had been strangled, and seven puncture wounds were found on her abdomen with a variety of scars on her thighs. At the time of the discovery, the body was already badly decayed and the head partilaly skeletonized.
• December 1993 – Dominique Monrose (32), a drug-addicted , homeless and HIV-positive prostitute from Martinique. She was last seen alive on December 3, 1993. The police assume that she had been killed that same day. Her torso was found in a garbage bag on Friedberger Landstraße. The culprit had severed her head with a knife. Her various body parts were found stored in plastic bags at various points on the so-called Offenbacher Kreuz on the Bundesautobahn 661. It is assumed that the killer had kept her torso in a freezer for about ten days, to be able to deal with it for longer. Monrose was known to have interfered with the scene by undercutting the usual market prices. She had undergone a methadone program and lived with a former suitor who reported her disappearance.^[26]
• July 1996 – Pia Isabel Heym (27), bank employee.^[27] The severed head of the mentally ill woman who was reported missing since July 1996, was found in a small garden in Sachsenhausen. According to the police Heym took tablets for the treatment of schizophrenic features. She may have been another victim of Seel.
• July 1998 – Julie Anna Schröder (18), drug-addicted prostitute who worked on the street. She disappeared in July 1998 from the Frankfurt station district. The woman is said to have been in bad health. The police assume that is was a homicide, and her body has not yet been found.
• September 1999 – Gabriele de Haas (32), a drug-addicted prostitute who disappeared in 1999. It is alleged that the culprit had chatted with her in a forum.^[28] The police assume that it was a homicide, and her body has not been found yet.
• April 2004 – A skeletonized woman's head was found wrapped in aluminum foil in Offenbach. Although her face was reconstructed with the help of forensics, her identity remains unknown.^[29]
• 2004 – Britta Simone Diallo (43). According to testimonies, Seel had apparently carried out a housing settlement for her. The prostitute, who had no fixed abode and was last seen alive in the autumn of 2003 and not reported missing, had been tortured before her death. Remains of her body (feet and thighs in a state of extreme decay) had been hidden in a blue plastic bin by Seel in his garage in Schwalbacher Nordstrasse. The body parts were found on September 10, 2014 by his Seel's daughter, which led the authorities to posthumously point at Seel as the prime suspect.^[30] The injuries suffered by Diallo were very much in line with the pictures found on Seel's computer, and it is believed that a manga comic owned by Seel may have been used as a template.^[31] It can not be ruled out with certainty that Diallo was still alive when Seel severed her arms and legs with a handsaw. In the area of the knees, pelvis, breasts and in the vaginal area eight nails were found.^[32] In addition, the body had several stab wounds and cuts. LKA chief Sabine Thurau called this act "the peak of Seel's sexual preferences". Due to the cruel accompanying circumstances, the investigator Frank Hermann almost excluded a single act and had his team of DNA analysts, profilers and specialists systematically investigate further victims.^[33]

At the time, Seel's participation in the murder of Tristan Brübach was not excluded. The 13-year-old student was killed in 1998 in an underpass of the Liederbach Canal near Höchst by an unknown person. Since the murder was committed in the vicinity of the highest station, in a relatively busy area, the perpetrator had to act very quickly and functionally. The police considered based on the similar modus operandi (paralled the Singh murder case: the shoes were of the killed were arranged in a specific patters in pairs next to the body). A dactyloscopic analysis of fingerprints on the victim's exercise book was negative. In October 2017, the head of the press office of the Frankfurt police said that Seel had been excluded as a suspect.^[34] The public search for Tristan's murderer will be resumed "soon".^[35]

Investigation status

With no evidence of fingerprints on his clarinet, the 2017 investigation focused on, among other things, on potential corpse deposits and DNA testing on garments worn by the victim. Since these are old cases, with correspondingly poor quality of the evidence, the analyzes will probably last even longer in order to rule out any traces of deception.^[36] Also, it still to be determined if there is a second offender. This hypothesis could neither be verified nor ruled out. The police exclude a possible victim circle, the exact number is not known, and outside the Rhine-Main area according to current knowledge largely from.^[37] So far no concrete results have been achieved.^[38] For the deeds of Seel, so far there are only indictments.^[39] The latest findings (as of December 2017) of the investigation state that Seel as probably active only in the Rhine-Main area and that there were no comparable cases in the Federal Republic and in Europe during this period.^[40] The special commission and working was meanwhile dissolved, and only the homicide commission can determine anything further.

Trivia

The true crime thriller Wolfswut, written by German bestselling author Andreas Gößling, which plays in Berlin instead of Frankfurt, is based on Seel's crimes.^[41] The well-known German author Nele Neuhaus has also announced that she was inspired by the crimes of the "Hesse Ripper" Manfred Seel in one of her Taunus thrillers, which will be published in November 2018.^[42]

References

External links

• Philipp Beng, Katharina Iskandar (2016-05-23). "Hinter der Fassade". FAZ.net. Retrieved 2016-06-20.
• Aktenzeichen gelöst: The serial killer of Frankfurt (Spiegel TV Magazin May 23, 2016)