Dr. Murder

A vicious murder of an upstanding citizen took place in the Munich area at Easter 2008. On Easter Sunday, 48-year-old Munich tax officer Anton Fanger left his farm in Kirchasch in the Erding district and traveled 100 kilometers to Augsburg to visit his former colleague, 36-year-old Sonja S. Sonja, who was pregnant, had invited Anton, who was single, to join her and her 62-year-old partner, orthopedist Wolfang R., for Easter dinner. Anton did not return home from his Easter trip until late in the evening. Several days passed without Anton showing up for work after the Easter holiday without excuse. When his concerned colleagues were unable to reach the conscientious Anton, they made their way to his farm. Once there, they saw a pump-action shotgun lying next to his house. Full of concern, they rang the doorbell, but no one answered. His coworkers alerted the police. When no one answered the door, they broke it down and entered the house, where they found Anton lying dead at the foot of the stairs. Next to him was a bullet casing. Blood was splattered throughout the house and several documents were scattered around. Among them was a will in which Anton had named his coworker Sonja as his sole heir. A loan agreement between her and Anton was also found, in which Anton had lent her €80,000 interest-free for 15 years. The autopsy revealed that Anton had been killed by a shot to the neck. As there were no signs of a break-in, Anton must have known the perpetrator, which is why he had let them into his house without hesitation. After the documents were found, Sonja immediately came under the investigators’ scrutiny, which is why they visited Sonja and her partner to question them. Sonja’s partner Wolfgang immediately came up with a preposterous story. He accused the Cameroonian mafia of killing Anton. Anton was allegedly in contact with a Cameroonian woman who wanted to find him a wife from her home village. But Anton had backed out. The woman insisted on the agreed sum, however, and that is why Anton was murdered. The story could not have been better written by a crime novelist. The police investigation then revealed that Sonja’s partner Wolfgang had already been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Darmstadt Regional Court in 1986 for murder and insurance fraud. Wolfgang was practicing in Frankfurt at the time. As he was in financial difficulties, he wanted to set fire to the practice in order to collect the insurance money. But his landlord caught on to his plan, so he drugged him and cut his nasal mucous membranes, causing him to choke on his own blood. He then set fire to the practice. But it did not burn down. This allowed investigators to find the syringe Wolfgang had used to drug his landlord. Wolfgang was imprisoned in Darmstadt from 1986 to 2003. Once released, Wolfgang, a father of two and four-time married man, regained his medical license. Investigators were certain that Wolfgang was the perpetrator and his partner Sonja was his accomplice. But the couple had an alibi. This only vanished when a neighbor testified that she had seen Wolfgang in the elevator with a bag on the day of Anton’s murder. He claimed he had to go to the central hospital for an emergency. In addition, a psychotherapist had meanwhile contacted the police. He testified that his patient had confessed to him to the murder of a man. After consultation with the medical association, he was released from his duty of confidentiality. This allowed him to reveal the name of his patient, which was Wolfgang R. – what an unexpected twist. On April 24, the couple was arrested and taken to Munich-Stadelheim Prison for pretrial detention. Although there were no traces of Wolfgang R.’s DNA in Anton’s house, charges were brought because the blood found in Anton’s house clearly belonged to one of Wolfgang R.’s patients. He had taken it from her a few days earlier. The documents found turned out to be forged. Anton Fanger had to die because Sonja and Wolfgang wanted to buy an apartment costing 800,000 euros. On January 30, 2009, Wolfgang R. was charged with the murder of Anton Fanger. On August 25, 2009, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a finding of particular severity of guilt and preventive detention. His partner Sonja was acquitted because Wolfgang had left her drugged in her apartment at the time of the crime. However, Sonja was sentenced to one year and six months’ probation for fraud and document forgery in another case. She had Wolfgang falsely certify illnesses so that she could retire early. The murder of tax officer Anton Fanger caused quite a stir at the time. Wolfgang R. was given the nickname “Dr. Murder” by the media, which continues to provide material for numerous films and books to this day.