The puzzle murder

An absolutely perfidious crime, which could easily have sprung from the pen of a crime writer, took place in July 2011. This crime went down in German criminal history as the puzzle murder. The name derives from the fact that individual body parts were found one after the other. These were pieced together like a puzzle to determine the identity of the corpse. First, in early July, anglers recovered a tattooed torso from the Spree River. After this horrific discovery, search dogs were deployed and found arms and legs under a bridge three days later. The head of the corpse was recovered from the Schäfersee lake in Reinickendorf two days later. Based on this, the body was identified as 31-year-old tattoo artist Raoul Schmidhuber from Vienna, who had been working as a tattoo artist in Berlin, moving from one tattoo studio to another. The autopsy revealed that Raoul had been struck more than 52 times with a hatchet and had ultimately suffocated in his own blood. Who was capable of such a crazy act and why? Investigators quickly turned their attention to 29-year-old James S., who had last seen Raoul alive. The tattoo artist from New York, who had already served five years in a US prison for violent crimes and was wanted on a US arrest warrant, had only recently arrived in Germany. Despite having been in Germany for only a few months, James S., who had recently become engaged to 21-year-old Lara S., whom he had met and fallen in love with at the “Eisern Union” soccer stadium, was once again on trial in Potsdam. Lara was currently completing her training as a veterinary assistant. Her route to vocational school took her right past Schäfersee, where Raoul’s head had been found weighted down with dumbbells. Could this be a coincidence? During questioning, James, who was an alcoholic, repeatedly contradicted himself and eventually confessed to Raoul’s murder. It was July 5 when the two men met in a tattoo studio in Schöneberg. Afterwards, they drove to the apartment of his fiancée Lara on Edisonstraße in Oberschöneweide. There, the two drank heavily. Lara had already gone to bed when an argument broke out between the two men. It escalated so much that both became violent. Then the inconceivable happened. James grabbed a hatchet and struck Raoul more than 52 times. First, he split his upper and lower jaws and his palate with the hatchet. After his incredible bloody deed, he woke Lara, who had to help him dismember Raoul’s body in the bathtub with a hammer, saw, hatchet, and knife. While he threw the organs in the trash, he packed the limbs in plastic bags, which he put in a wheeled suitcase. But first, he tried to peel off the tattooed skin to prevent the body from being identified. With the wheeled suitcase, he took public transportation to the Spree River, where he disposed of the body parts. Meanwhile, Lara meticulously cleaned the apartment. Lara did an excellent job, as even the forensic team found hardly any blood spatters when they searched the apartment. But this was not Lara’s only task. James had also tasked Lara with disposing of Raoul’s head. She quickly packed the skull into her backpack and threw it into the Schäfersee lake on her way to vocational school. What a diabolical couple! James S. was charged with the murder of Raoul Schmidhuber, but was only convicted of manslaughter. Since he had a blood alcohol level of almost 3 per mille, he was found to have diminished responsibility. He was sentenced to 10.5 years in prison. Lara, who had been in custody for over 5 months, lost her apprenticeship, but her case was dropped in exchange for a fine of 1,000 euros for obstruction of justice. This finally solved the mystery of the puzzle murder that had terrorized all of Berlin.