The executed bosses of the underworld

It was July 27, 1995, a warm summer day, when Markus Klenk went looking for beer cans in a parking lot in Hedelfingen, a district in southeast Stuttgart on the left bank of the Neckar River, because there was a tin can exchange in Bad Homburg that weekend. Markus Klenk, who works as a nurse trainer, is a passionate beer can collector who has a whopping 17,000 beer cans in his basement and under his roof. Since the parking lot is particularly popular with truckers from all over Europe, who often dispose of their trash there, Markus Klenk was looking for cans in a grassy area. In the process, he discovered a strange package. When he took a closer look, he recognized a shoe under the plastic wrap. In addition, a terrible smell of decay reached his nose. He immediately alerted the police, who discovered two bodies packed in garbage bags inside. The bodies were those of Radomir and Zivomir Pantic, brothers known to the police, who earned their money with their two nightclubs, Winks and Champain, and by trading in firearms from war zones. The autopsy of the bodies revealed that both brothers had probably been tortured before their death and then killed in a veritable hail of bullets that riddled their bodies. Thirty-two-year-old Zivomir, better known as Bobby, had been shot several times with a Magnum, while his 29-year-old brother Radomir, known as Rade, had two dozen stab wounds and several bullet wounds from a Scorpion submachine gun. The two brothers had been executed. Since neither their cash amounting to 10,000 marks nor their jewelry worth 100,000 marks had been stolen, investigators assumed that they had been eliminated. But who was responsible and why? To answer this question, investigators looked into the brothers’ circle of acquaintances. The two brothers grew up with their two sisters in Bietigheim, far away from their native Serbia. Bobby was a 1.67-meter-tall, powerful man whose hobby was martial arts. Bobby was married to Sladjana, with whom he had a daughter. His brother Rade, three years his junior, was 1.78 meters tall and weighed 97 kilograms, and was engaged to a dancer. Both brothers had criminal records and earned a lot of money with their nightclubs. The Pantic brothers lived a lavish lifestyle. They vacationed in Cuba, owned Harleys, two Daimlers with the license plate S-EX, wore expensive jewelry and Rolex watches with diamonds. At business meetings, they always wore bulletproof vests and carried brass knuckles and weapons. The Pantic brothers often had feuds with German pimps from the red-light district. On the day of his death, Bobby was wearing a white shirt, black leather pants, and black leather boots. Around noon, he had checked that everything was in order at the Winks nightclub before meeting his brother and two car dealers at their favorite Italian restaurant on Tübinger Straße, where they ate seafood salad until Bobby’s cell phone rang at 3:06 p.m. Bobby spoke briefly with the person, whom he probably knew well, before suddenly leaving the restaurant with his brother Rade. He apologized to the car dealers and said they would be back in 15 minutes at the latest. But neither of them reappeared. Since Sladjana couldn’t reach Bobby, she called Rade’s fiancée. She hadn’t heard from her fiancé, to whom she had lent her silver Isuzu pickup truck with the license plate S-EX 6444 that morning. It was not until 11:15 p.m. the next day that Sladjana reported her husband missing to the police. Four hours earlier, Rade’s fiancée had reported her pickup truck stolen. When the police found the pickup truck at the port in Hedelfingen three days later and there was no trace of the two brothers, they assumed that a violent crime had been committed. A special commission was set up and a reward of 3,000 marks was offered for information. The Pantic brothers are said to have been involved not only in international arms deals, but also to have had contacts in the red-light district in Frankfurt, Munich, Nuremberg, Russia, and Eastern Europe. After the abandoned pickup truck was found, divers searched the harbor basin for hours, but without success. It was not until seven weeks later that the brothers’ bodies, wrapped in tarpaulins, were discovered by beer can collector Markus Klenk. Investigators were certain that the location where the bodies were found was not the scene of the crime. Strangely, shortly after the two brothers disappeared from the Winks nightclub, the safe containing 80,000 marks had been emptied. In addition, a Magnum and a Skorpion submachine gun were found during a search of the nightclub, the same weapons used to kill the Pantic brothers. Did the killers, whom investigators believed to be at least two perpetrators, possibly come from their immediate circle? At least that was what the investigators suspected. Bobby’s cell phone, a Sony Ericsson GH 337, on which he had been called, had also disappeared without a trace so that no one could trace the last call. The double murder of the Pantic brothers fills more than 50 files, but there is still no trace of the perpetrators. However, there is still hope that this murder of the underworld bosses will be solved, as DNA evidence exists.