transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:06] This is Crime House.

Speaker 2:
[00:10] A five-year-old girl disappears from a family barbecue in the German countryside. Her parents think that she's lost in the woods, but police and search crews look for days and don't find a single trace of her.

Speaker 1:
[00:22] Many believe that's because Inga Gehricke was not lost at all. She was actually taken. Hi friends, welcome back to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases.

Speaker 2:
[00:46] I'm Kaelyn Moore, and I'll be the one digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories, and the court files released on these cases.

Speaker 1:
[00:52] And I'm your internet detective, Morgan Absher. I'm the one who's diving into anything I can find online to talk about the lesser known details and pull out those threads that just aren't adding up. Don't forget to share your thoughts on social media. Want ad-free listening and early access? Subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. And make sure to go back and listen to all of our previous episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Now, let's dive into Inga Gehricke's case and the Clues That Defined It.

Speaker 2:
[01:20] This is a really heavy case that we're going to get into today. But Morgan, shall we start by telling everyone kind of a happy, spooky thing that happened to us recently?

Speaker 1:
[01:29] Oh my gosh, from the Too Hot Takes episode we did?

Speaker 2:
[01:31] Yeah. So I was recently on Too Hot Takes with Morgan.

Speaker 1:
[01:33] My face, you guys, I was like so scared. I was like, where is this going? Okay. Yes. This is so cool.

Speaker 2:
[01:39] I was just on Too Hot Takes with Morgan and we were doing kind of spooky, some Let's Not Meet stories, some pregnancy related stories. At one point, I was talking about my aunt who passed away while I was pregnant. We put up the episode, it did pretty well. Then Morgan, you got a message from someone.

Speaker 1:
[01:56] I got a message from a listener and she sent it to me on my Patreon. It's from the username CraftyCottontail. But she basically said, do daffodils or yellow flowers mean anything specific to you or Kaelyn? She said that when she was listening to the Too Hot To Takes episode, she got this vibe and this read as you were talking about your aunt that passed.

Speaker 2:
[02:16] Yeah. You texted me that being like, hey, I don't know if this is anything, but someone sent me this.

Speaker 1:
[02:21] I'm going to send it, of course.

Speaker 2:
[02:24] Black Eyed Susan's were my aunt's favorite flower. When she passed away, we all got little book marks with her handwriting on them, and they were covered in Black Eyed Susan. The second you said, hey, do yellow flowers mean anything? I just immediately knew. I texted my whole family about it and we all had goosebumps and we're just honestly freaked out, but that was very cool.

Speaker 1:
[02:44] It's incredible. I really believe some people just have that gift. She said she had just been able to tap into it recently.

Speaker 2:
[02:52] Which I'm so curious what that means. Is that something that we all have that we can tap into?

Speaker 1:
[02:56] We should have a psychic, come on. We need to do like a spirit episode.

Speaker 2:
[03:00] Very, very, very cool. So what was their name? Cotton-Eyed?

Speaker 1:
[03:04] Crafty Cotton Tail.

Speaker 2:
[03:05] Crafty Cotton Tail. Thank you so much for reaching out with that because that was amazing.

Speaker 1:
[03:09] I know. If anyone has any spiritual stories like that, please, please share. Visitation dreams are so fascinating to me. But let's get into this case. This is a really intense one. I feel like I really fell down the rabbit hole on this case. And I will say we are having quite a few German pronunciation today. Please excuse our mispronunciations. We literally were practicing before the episode. But a lot of the source material I watched on this was in German and I had to listen with subtitles on. Like there's no really good translated material on this case. So it is a heavy one. And it's going to be a doozy for you guys out there.

Speaker 2:
[03:51] Definitely. And just a quick reminder that we always give, if you're watching this episode on YouTube, you're going to see some pictures, videos that will help you visualize the case. And if you're listening, you can find those same photos and videos on our social media that's at Clues Podcast. And as always, you should just follow us there anyways, because we talk a lot about these cases there as well.

Speaker 1:
[04:08] Yeah, we do confessionals over there talking about things we missed as we were recording the episode. Literally we hit end record and I'm like, oh my god, I forgot to mention this.

Speaker 2:
[04:16] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[04:16] Like last week, I literally added a botched mark on the board during our confessional. So we're still getting into the cases over there and diving a little bit deeper. So go ahead and follow. And just a warning before we begin. This episode includes discussions of child abduction, child abuse, child sexual abuse, serious mental illness, animal death, and other potentially upsetting materials. So please listen with care.

Speaker 2:
[04:40] Before we dive in, we kind of briefly mentioned this, but today's case did happen in Germany, which has some of the world's most restrictive privacy laws. That means law enforcement agencies and journalists are required to keep a lot of information about criminal investigations secret, especially things that could cast suspicion on a person who has not been charged with a crime. So there are some points in the story where we just don't have as many details as we normally might. And it's also worth noting that when it comes to the family, hardly any personal details were released publicly. So everything we know about them basically is included in the story today. And with that, this case starts on May 2nd, 2015. Artist Victoria Gehricke and her husband, a social worker named Jensuva, are enjoying a little family trip. Earlier that morning, they drove 50 miles from their home in Schönebeck, Germany, to a recreation area in a tiny village called Willemsof. They were going to spend a day out in the countryside. They arrived around noon and they were there with two other families. Now they've been kind of doing this thing for the last few years, meeting up in different places to all spend time together. It's become somewhat of a tradition. The Gehrickes took their four kids that day, two boys aged 10 and 8, and two girls who are 5 and 3 years old. The original plan was that this was just going to be a day trip and they were going to head home in the early evening. The other families that they're with have six children between them, so it was going to be this big group of 10 kids playing together all day. They had coffee and cake, they played football, they socialized while the kids were out playing, tiring themselves out. And when evening rolled around, everyone decided they were still having such a great time that they weren't ready to leave. So the three families decided to build a campfire around a barbecue site near the woods. They also arranged to use a kitchen at a house in the park to cook a meal and prepare any food for barbecuing that day. So at around 6 p.m., Victoria heads inside to start dinner. She keeps an eye on the kids through the kitchen window, specifically her five-year-old daughter, Inga. She is this big ball of energy. Her two blonde pigtails are bouncing around and she's chasing the other kids near a nearby field where there's adults playing soccer. At one point, Victoria sees Inga running towards the edge of the woods, which are kind of close by. But there's other adults that are keeping eyes on the kids there, so she's not really worried when Inga briefly slips out of her sight. Now, Inga is this really lively child who loved spending time with her family and exploring the world around her. So her kind of running around near the edge of the woods isn't surprising. She was known among relatives and friends for her curiosity and also her playful spirit and really her cheerful personality. So Victoria doesn't think too much about this, and she goes back to preparing the food for that night. She wants to get dinner on the grill before it gets too dark out. A few minutes before 6:30 PM, just as the sun is going down, Inga's dad, Yenzuva, sees her on the footpath going from the house to the outdoor barbecue area where the families are planning on eating. And she's carrying these two big bottles of water. Now, Yenzuva assumes that she's trying to help with the barbecue. She's the kind of kid who always wants to do her part. She was described as being very helpful. Even at five years old, she was always the type to, you know, bring the water bottles to her parents or just see what she could do to help. And a few minutes after that, two other kids see Inga heading back towards the house where her mother's cooking. Only she never makes it inside. At 6:45 PM, Victoria realizes that her daughter is nowhere to be found. So she runs outside and she starts screaming for Inga. As everyone sees what's happening, they rush in to help. They start running around the woods calling for Inga. The other kids were all looking for sticks for the campfire before she vanished. So at first the parents assumed that maybe she got lost while doing the same thing. But after over an hour of searching, there is still no sign of her. Not a single footprint, nothing. And now it's getting dark and it's getting too dark for a child to be out there alone. There's also wolves in this part of Germany and they're surrounded by over 8600 acres of forest. And these are dark, deep German forests. Like these are the forests that the brothers Grimm would write about in their fairy tales. So at 8:13 p.m., Jensuva and Victoria call the police and they officially report their five-year-old daughter Inga Gehricke as a missing person. Now, let's hit pause for just one second and talk a little bit more about the area that this disappearance happened in. It's in the Altmark region on the northeast side of Germany that's about 95 miles west of Berlin. Altmark is very rural, and the place that the families were visiting, Willemsof, is especially remote. Now, you're gonna see some videos on YouTube or on Instagram, but picture this. A giant, dense patch of forest surrounded by mostly farmland with just one narrow paved road and a couple of footpaths. In the center of the forest, you find this big clearing that has a bunch of buildings, some of which are over 200 years old. That is Willemsof. It was originally built as a big sheep farm, and during World War I, it served as a military hospital. But after that, it became a rehab center, as well as a residential home for those with intellectual disabilities. And that is what it was in 2015, and that's what it still is today. The facility and grounds are owned by a social work organization within the German Protestant Church. And in addition to this facility, Willemsof also has 22 guest houses and a small working farm, and many other structures.

Speaker 1:
[10:14] When you guys see these aerial shots of this place, you're going to be blown away by how vast it is. It's essentially a small village in the middle of a massive forest. And again, like deep, scary forest, like it is dense. And in one news investigation I saw, they noted over 38 structures. So it's not like, I don't know, in my head I was envisioning like a KOA campground where it's like, oh, there's a forest nearby, but, you know, open field, where like there's a couple of things. No, this is a village. There's so many buildings. And some of them look like big apartment buildings. This place is really expansive.

Speaker 2:
[10:51] Now, people receiving services from Willemsof give back by working on the farm and maintaining the guest houses. It's a workhouse in that way. Church groups, self-help groups, social workers, and community organizations are then invited to use the guest houses and grounds for retreats. Exactly like what the Gehrickes and their friends were doing that day. And as of this recording, the authorities haven't shared who the other families were with the Gehrickes kind of relating back to the privacy laws. Yenzhua, Inga's father, was a social worker at the time of Inga's disappearance, meaning that he was actually a member of one of those groups that were allowed to host retreats and rent the guest houses there, which they could use to prepare their food. But it also meant that the Gehrickes and their friends were not alone in those woods. Between Villamsoft's staff, residents, and guests, there were over 100 people in the area when Inga vanished. And again, it's a huge area and there's 100 people, so still feels very isolated.

Speaker 1:
[11:45] A lot of people coming and going, and the family interacted with a lot of people, like strangers throughout that day, like when they were playing soccer, they invited people to join them during their game. There's a lot of interaction between other people that aren't that known to them.

Speaker 2:
[12:01] Exactly, and the grounds are technically open to the public, just the guest houses require a reservation by the people who are approved to reserve them. So there could have also been other visitors just wandering around that day as well. But with so many people in this area, surely someone had to have seen something. And that brings us back to the search that first night on May 2nd, 2015. Inga's parents called the police at 8:13 p.m. and the first patrol car arrived just nine minutes later at 8.22. And at this point, everyone still assumed that Inga was lost in the woods. That's kind of the last place that they saw her. So the officers rushed into the forest and they joined the groups of friends and family already searching for her. But by 10 p.m., there's still no sign of Inga. And that's when search dogs arrive on the scene and begin their hunt as well. The search continued throughout the night, mostly focusing on that forest. By Sunday morning, May 3rd, they still had not located Inga or any sign of where she had gone. And the police realized that they're going to have to expand their radius and bring in more resources. So on Monday, May 4th, that's now a day and a half after Inga disappeared, over 1,000 people joined the mission, scanning the remote forest surrounding Villamshof. Police officers, firefighters, trained volunteer disaster relief workers, helicopters with thermal cameras scanned all 8,600 acres of the area from above, while 60 search and rescue dogs tracked the forest floor. Like, if she is in this area, they have the resources to find her. But even with this massive search effort, there's still not a single shred of evidence that leads to Inga.

Speaker 1:
[13:43] Which is insane to me, because we know, from previous cases we've done, these dogs are so good, like these scent dogs are insane.

Speaker 2:
[13:51] And especially if she, I mean, there's not that many people in the area. So there's, you know, a lot of times scent dogs get confused if too many people tramp through a crime scene. There's not that many people in the area. She took off on foot, and if she went into the forest, a dog should be able to follow that scent and find her. And they're not finding anything, and everyone starts getting a really bad feeling.

Speaker 1:
[14:11] I know, and you guys will see the videos of this team. I mean, they did their diligence, and they went arm to arm, and walked through the forest. And when I heard firefighters, I'm like, oh, well, that's great. But no, there were trucks and trucks of firefighters. Everyone showed out for this search. But still, they didn't really get anything from it, except one kind of witness, which brings us to our first clue, testimony from a local hunter. After hearing about this search, an unnamed hunter contacted the police to say that he heard a child screaming in the woods the night that Inga vanished. Now, again, we don't know who this hunter was. Law enforcement have never named him, and he's never spoken to the press on his own. But hunting season had just started, and there were a handful of hunters in this forest surrounding Wilhelmshof when Inga went missing. Now, Germany has a very set way. They allow for people to hunt. You have to acquire permits through your hunting club to even go on these lands. It's a very put together organization there to hunt. And most of these hunters were super eager to help police. But there was only that one that heard something unusual that night. After this tip, though, police went and reviewed footage from several hunters' game cameras. They even brought tracking dogs to the area that he claimed to hear the screams. But the dogs weren't able to locate Inga's scent anywhere nearby. So, investigators at this point are really starting to wonder, especially given their extensive search efforts, maybe Inga wasn't lost in the woods at all. The search dogs did provide investigators with kind of a little bit of a lead, though. According to Inga's family, the dogs did alert to a few spots near a field full of solar panels called Solarfeld, which is our second clue. The Solarfeld is about four miles from Wilhelmshof, or about a nine minute drive. There are a few houses and other buildings bordering the solar park itself, and there's a 400 person village that's somewhat nearby. But even with the help of their massive search party, detectives didn't find anything that would explain the alerts from those dogs at this Solarfeld. There was one other important thing near the solar park, though, that investigators started to turn to, and that's our third clue, which is a Forensic Psychiatric Hospital. The Ooked Spring State Hospital for Forensic Psychiatry is located between Wilhelmshof and the Solarfeld. It's about two and a half miles from the park by foot, or a six minute drive, and this facility is for people that are considered so dangerous and have mental health challenges so severe that they can't be punished for their crimes with a prison sentence. And this facility houses up to 290 patients at a time. A large portion of them are sex offenders, and it's more like a prison than your average hospital. Patients are involuntarily confined, so they're not allowed to go in and out. They have extensive security measures, both indoors and outdoors, to prevent them from escaping. And based on what we know about the search radius, it's likely that the hospital was included in this massive search, although it's never explicitly stated in our sources. We're unclear if there were any people that had escaped or were missing at this time. None of that has been released again due to those strict privacy laws. And if investigators found anything there of note, it's never been released to the public.

Speaker 2:
[17:43] So the search for Inga continued over the next two days, May 5th and May 6th, 2015. Drainage ponds in the area were empty. Searchers paid special attention to any slopes where Inga could have fallen, thinking that maybe she was little and she tripped. And they were also looking for, specifically for tripping hazards in the woods. The search party also combed through every building at Villamsov and interviewed about 100 people who were there when Inga vanished. Every garbage container was empty. Each apartment was searched from top to bottom. The koi pond was even drained so they could look for any clues in there. Searchers removed all the straw from the Villamsov barn and shoveled through a huge livestock manure pile. They were really just searching every square inch of this entire place. By May 6th, four days in, there still was not a single shred of evidence. And that's when they admitted defeat and they called off the mass search. The next day, May 7th, Inga's parents left Villamsov and headed home to Shunebeck with their three other children. And that same day, police made a really big announcement. They said that they no longer believed Inga got lost on her own, but that now it did appear to be a kidnapping case. On May 12th, 2015, 10 days after five-year-old Inga went missing, police announced that they were creating a task force specifically for her case. It was codenamed Vauld, which means forest. The Vauld team included about 40 people, all working under the top criminal investigator in the area. The same day that they revealed this task force, police also launched a website to share any information and to collect tips on Inga's disappearance. And luckily, her family had taken several photos of her the day she went missing, so the public could see exactly what she was wearing. A blue shirt with a butterfly on it, blue jeans, and pink barrettes holding back her blonde pig tails. Her missing front teeth also made her very recognizable. And that same week, police worked with a nonprofit to have over 3,000 posters printed for her. They also had her flyer displayed on almost 300 public information screens in places like subway stations and airports all across Germany. And by the third week of the search, Inga's case was featured on a German TV show about open investigations, which when it's translated is called XY Unsolved. I've talked about it on Hearts, Hearts, Pounding before because it's a huge show over there.

Speaker 1:
[20:14] I've never heard of it.

Speaker 2:
[20:15] It's, oh my God, the actual term is like, I'm going to butcher it, so I'm not even going to try. But it's like a very long German name. But it's responsible for like a whole bunch of cases being solved. We covered one on Hearts, Hearts, Pounding, The Gorda Murders, which were solved because of this show, basically. So it's huge over there. And when cases are featured, a lot of people see them. So when this airs, it generates a huge new wave of tips. Police followed every single one of these tips that seemed credible. They even followed suggestions that came from psychics. That's how desperate they were for any information on this. But one by one, they crossed all of these off the list without any solid leads that came through. On June 2, 2015, that's now a month after Inga disappeared, police decided to up the ante, and they announced a 25,000 euro reward for any information that led to Inga's location. It was the largest police reward offered in German history. And unfortunately, it did not really help the investigation.

Speaker 1:
[21:17] Not at all. And by this point, officials were getting desperate. So by the end of May, the police hired a private team of specialized scent trailing dogs and their handler, Andrea von Budenbrock. What she and her dogs found is our fourth clue. Andrea claimed that these animals were essentially miracle workers. They could do things no other trained dogs could, like trail a missing person by scent, even if they were traveling by vehicle. To be clear, most experts will say that scent trails last about two weeks at most, and scent particles are only detectable until they dry out. At this point, Inga had been missing for a month, and a scent trail blowing through the air, say, from a moving car window, would dissipate almost immediately. But Andrea claimed her dogs had abilities that couldn't entirely be explained by science. And I will say, a lot of police departments and prosecutors in the area at the time swore by her work.

Speaker 2:
[22:21] Her magic dogs.

Speaker 1:
[22:22] Her dogs are magical.

Speaker 2:
[22:23] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[22:24] So she had actually been hired to assist with everything from bombings to homicide investigations. And this really just blew my mind, you guys. There's a case that Andrea testified that her dogs alerted to a murder's suspects sent on a bullet that was still inside the victim's skull.

Speaker 2:
[22:43] Unreal. So someone had fired the gun, and the dog could still smell the person that was holding the gun just from the bullet. Yeah. Which sounds like it wouldn't be a real thing, but that's amazing that the dog was able to do that.

Speaker 1:
[22:58] I guess, yeah. This was based on a sniff of the bullet after it was fired into that victim. Like, mind-blowing for me. So that June, Andrea traveled to Wilhelmshof along with an assistant and seven specially trained dogs. Soon, two dogs caught ascent near Wilhelmshof and began moving south towards the Solarfeld and Psychiatric Hospital. But the dogs kept following the trail past those locations. Way past those locations, actually. They followed ascent trail all the way out of the region. Eventually, the dogs do split up. One turned east and ultimately led its handler to Dresden, Germany, which is about 305 kilometers or 190 miles from where Inga disappeared. The other dog just kept going and going and going. This dog was with Andrea and it eventually stopped in the town of Zilz, Austria, which is about 800 kilometers or 500 miles south of where Inga disappeared.

Speaker 2:
[23:59] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[24:00] 500 miles.

Speaker 2:
[24:02] I'm curious too, when they, are they just letting the dog walk for 500 miles and they're just trailing him? Because how is a dog picking up on ascent for 500 miles?

Speaker 1:
[24:13] Is the dog behind the wheel of the car?

Speaker 2:
[24:14] That's what I'm wondering.

Speaker 1:
[24:16] Are we just following the snoot?

Speaker 2:
[24:17] Yes, that's what I'm curious about, because it's just like I'm a little skeptical of this at this point.

Speaker 1:
[24:22] I'm skeptical. I'm trying to say it with a straight voice, but I watched an interview with a scientist who discusses this scenario. He's talking about the likelihood of Andrea being able to even do this scientifically. When you listen to him, you become dumbfounded because the skin cells of that person would have to travel through the car's ventilation system and then swirl around on the roadway, quickly dissolve, evaporate, be undetectable. The chance of catching that three and a half weeks later, he says it is, quote, impossible. I have a quote here directly from him, quote, this must be dismissed as nonsense from the onset. Yeah. Just imagine that in a really beautiful German accent. It was just like, yes, Mike Drop, my guy. But yet they spent a lot of time and resources doing this. They did end up searching the area in zilts. They apparently found someone suspicious and they became the focus of the investigation for a while. They never ended up charging that person. They've never said their name publicly. We have no details that have been leaked. And it was kind of clear at this point that this lead went nowhere. This extensive dog tracking operation was a bust. I will say, when you watch an interview with Inga's mom, she did appreciate this. She appreciated the search team's effort and the fact that they were willing to do this because it gave her such hope. And at this point, that's all you're holding on to is hope. This operation did end up going from June 2015 until December of 2015, and it put police out of 40,000 euros. Not to mention all the travel expenses for the officers who accompanied her to Austria. And again, they were kind of right back to where they started. No forensic evidence, no suspects, and no sign of Inga. Which, I will say, like, I know the family appreciated this effort, but to spend 40,000 euros on this dog tracking situation that doesn't even seem scientifically valid, some might include this as botched at this point.

Speaker 2:
[26:41] I'm curious what people would say because at the same time, it's great that they're still spending resources on this case to find her. I mean, what else are they gonna do? They have nothing else to go off of.

Speaker 1:
[26:52] You think that the dogs initially at the scene, though, would have found something. But again, her dogs are special, so let us know. I'm gonna be more cautious with my botched marks today, but let us know if you would be adding one here at this point, given the validity of this.

Speaker 2:
[27:10] There's so many cases, like we covered the Beaumont children in Australia, where they will dig up people's entire properties just based on what a psychic says. They've spent so much money on so many leads that really have gone nowhere, so it's just kind of like a common thing, but we wouldn't have nowhere to go.

Speaker 1:
[27:24] Yeah, and there's a lot of pressure. I mean, public pressure, pressure from everyone involved. So I understand it's a tight spot to be in, rock in a hard place, and you're holding out hope for anything.

Speaker 2:
[27:35] Well, after the unsuccessful six-month canine search, the Vald Task Force went back to following tips, checking alibis and looking into anyone suspicious in the Villamsov area. And they released very little information about what they were doing at the time, but we do know that they were looking into all of the known child sexual predators who lived in the area. And they did find one who seemed very suspicious at the time, though they wouldn't reveal this part of the investigation publicly at least for years to come.

Speaker 1:
[28:04] Towards the end of 2015, the police became aware of a suspect that really fit who they thought they were looking for. He was a 39-year-old sex offender who owned a dilapidated factory, which was located about 60 miles from where Inga went missing. And he also owned an apartment in another town, which was about 65 miles away. His name was Christian Bruckner.

Speaker 2:
[28:26] And those of you listening might have immediately had alarm bells go off because his name has been in the news a lot somewhat recently.

Speaker 1:
[28:35] Quite a bit. Christian Bruckner is our fifth clue. He had a lengthy criminal record dating back to his teenage years when he was first charged with sexually abusing a child. And as police continued to dig in to him, they got a hold of his Skype chat history, which really set off alarm bells. In 2013, two years before Inga disappeared, Bruckner sent a friend a Skype message saying he wanted to, quote, capture something small and use it for days. When his friend, allegedly a fellow pedophile, warned him that might be dangerous, Bruckner reportedly replied, quote, not if the evidence is destroyed afterwards. That same year, police investigating the disappearance of a three-year-old English girl named Madeleine McCann also got a tip about Bruckner. And again, as Kaelyn mentioned, you might recognize Bruckner's name, and it's because of his potential connection to the Madeleine McCann case, which if you're unfamiliar with that case, Madeleine McCann was taken from her bedroom at a luxury resort during a family vacation to Portugal in 2007. Her parents had left her and her twin siblings alone in their unlocked Portuguese vacation apartment. They were dining nearby at a tapas restaurant about 55 to 82 meters away, would check on the children periodically, but upon going back had discovered that Madeleine was kidnapped.

Speaker 2:
[30:00] That is one of the theories. I know there's a lot of people who think that the parents had something to do with it. Definitely.

Speaker 1:
[30:06] There's a lot of other podcasts out there that have done it, but let us know if you'd want to hear from us.

Speaker 2:
[30:10] Yeah, there's been a couple updates in the last few years.

Speaker 1:
[30:13] I mean, you looked at...

Speaker 2:
[30:13] Especially with Bruckner.

Speaker 1:
[30:14] Yeah, there's a new article that came out just five days ago.

Speaker 2:
[30:17] Yeah, that they lost a little bit of money that they were going to use to investigate the case more, so they might have hit another roadblock.

Speaker 1:
[30:23] So stuff is still coming up. But they also found that Bruckner matched the description of a man who was seen near the resort when Madeline disappeared. Several witnesses even told police that Bruckner had talked about killing Madeline, but none of them could prove it. Now, Bruckner was still being considered a suspect in Madeline's case in 2015, when the investigators on Inga's case heard about him. However, he hadn't been publicly named in Madeline's case by that point. Again, those strict privacy laws. The public had no idea who Christian Bruckner even was at the time. However, once the task force began putting the pieces together, they realized something chilling. Those investigators on this case thought Madeline and Inga looked really similar, both blonde hair, light colored eyes. What investigators were finding really frustrating is, at this time, the Madeline McCann investigation was stalled. It had run cold and get the marker ready. When the investigators were first looking into Bruckner, local police actually sent him a letter warning him that he was a suspect in that case. They didn't have a search warrant or anything in hand to search his property, so there was nothing to keep him from potentially destroying evidence.

Speaker 2:
[31:44] Which obviously he's going to do.

Speaker 1:
[31:46] Come on, you're going to give your number one suspect a warning that, hey, we're looking at you. But we can't come on site yet.

Speaker 2:
[31:55] Yeah, so if you have a hard drive with anything bad on it, promise you'll keep it intact? Like, no, of course, which we know now too, that he tried to destroy evidence.

Speaker 1:
[32:04] Come on. And the investigators in Madeline's case believed this was probably why two years later, they still didn't have enough forensic evidence to arrest him. Like you guys, they shot themselves in their own foot. So at this point, Inga's task force knew that they couldn't make the same mistake. They began collecting evidence against Bruckner to get a search warrant for his factory and that apartment he had. It wasn't easy. This guy was intelligent, calm, well-spoken. He presented himself well in court, had a lot of experience with the legal system. And if they gave him a chance to fight their warrant, he might win. So they knew it was going to take a lot of good police work and luck to get past his defenses.

Speaker 2:
[32:57] One thing that's interesting about German law, too, is you don't necessarily have to investigate someone who's dead. So if there's a cold case and the person has died, oftentimes those cases just will never get solved. They don't put any more resources into investigating someone if they've passed away. So there's been a couple high-profile cases in Germany where the suspect will get tipped off that there may be a suspect, and they'll just kill themselves. And then the case just goes nowhere after that. So it can be really hard to keep a cold case interested in it and resources going to it, especially if the person dies.

Speaker 1:
[33:34] That's insane.

Speaker 2:
[33:35] Different than how we do it in America.

Speaker 1:
[33:36] Again, why tip them off?

Speaker 2:
[33:39] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[33:39] You're so strict on privacy and not releasing anything in the regards to the investigation. Why even?

Speaker 2:
[33:46] Why risk it?

Speaker 1:
[33:47] Risk it? Why say anything?

Speaker 2:
[33:48] It's a little bit of a botch. In late 2015, the Vault Task Force was having a pretty difficult time getting a search warrant for Christian Bruckner's properties. But that all changed on January 14th, 2016. Because that's when a neighbor of Bruckner's identified only as Steve M had a pretty disturbing experience near Bruckner's factory. So Steve's Rottweiler broke away from him and ran onto Bruckner's property and just started digging. When Steve caught up with his dog, he could smell that something was rotting nearby, is how he described it. Steve was pretty sure he knew what that smell was, because his girlfriend Katarina was a police officer. She'd been trying to help the vault task force get more information and evidence from Bruckner recently. So Steve called Katarina and he told her about this smell. Under German law, that was enough for local police to search the property, which also eventually people were wondering if maybe they set that up, like maybe Katarina told Steve, hey, if the dog smells something on the property that smells like a dead body, like we can get a warrant. And at that point, you know, it's been so long that they haven't been able to get a warrant. So maybe it was orchestrated like that. The timing is a little suspect.

Speaker 1:
[35:06] Grasping at straws a little.

Speaker 2:
[35:07] But regardless, they were able to go actually investigate.

Speaker 1:
[35:10] I know. And I'm unfamiliar, obviously, I'm unfamiliar with all law, but German law, really I'm familiar with. I wonder if that could have been a botched mark for us, if that wouldn't have held up and Bruckner, you know, being savvy with the law would have been like, mmm, that's not legit. Your warrant is invalidated. But it worked in this case.

Speaker 2:
[35:32] It did work.

Speaker 1:
[35:33] And they got on site. So later that same day, January 14th, 2016, officers began digging around the property for the source of the smell. It turned out it was coming from a body, but not a human one. Two officers uncovered a dog buried in a shallow grave. And luckily, they didn't just stop there. For some reason, they decided to search beneath the dog. And that is when they found some pretty damning evidence. Underneath the dog was a bag containing USB flash drives, which is clue number six for us. When police looked at what was on those USBs, they found a lot of child sexual abuse material. There were also some text files where Bruckner had typed out violent sexual fantasies, including one about sexually assaulting a mother and her five-year-old daughter at an isolated farm. There was more than enough for them to then get a warrant for a full-scale search of the property. And police knew they only had one shot. If they didn't find enough evidence to arrest Bruckner, he'd get a chance to destroy anything they missed. And he would. But in February 2016, they took their chances. They had two teams totaling 100 police officers. And they split up and entered Bruckner's factory as well as his apartment about an hour's drive away. They turned both places upside down, but never shared exactly what they found. According to media reports, which police have declined to confirm, they may have seized 75 girls' swimsuits, more child sexual abuse material, a computer hard drive, a laptop, and more USB drives and memory cards. As far as we know, police did not find anything belonging to Inga or any evidence that would conclusively link Bruckner to her disappearance.

Speaker 2:
[37:29] The vault task force didn't give up on Bruckner though, but they were now hitting a wall. Later in 2016, they commissioned a psychological analysis of a case to see if an expert could provide any new insights. And unfortunately, the person they hired had very little experience, if any, in criminal investigations, which you can put that on the watchboard because-

Speaker 1:
[37:49] No, just wait.

Speaker 2:
[37:50] You got to do your due diligence.

Speaker 1:
[37:51] Just wait. We're going to get messy with this one.

Speaker 2:
[37:54] We're teeing it up. According to a lawyer representing the Gehricke family, she didn't even turn in a full psychological analysis. She mostly just focused on the timeline of the crime. And that document apparently didn't provide any new clues on who the suspect could be.

Speaker 1:
[38:11] Okay. So let's get messy here. That same family lawyer for the Gehricke's, he does not even believe that this psychologist is an actual forensic psychologist. So I watched an interview that was done on a German MDR investigative show, and they interviewed this lawyer and he said this. He also made a claim that this psychologist only got hired because of her connection to the lead investigator. So then this MDR investigative team, they go out. They're like, okay, you can't make this claim. We need to fact-check you. So they do, and they go out, and here's what they find. We will have this link, so if you do speak German, please go and watch this clip. Let us know your thoughts on what they found, but here's what I have. So they did find she is an actual psychologist. She did an internship in 2004 and 2005. Get this, under the same lead investigator on Inga's case, who then commissioned her for this analysis in 2016. This lead investigator and psychologist ended up getting married.

Speaker 2:
[39:29] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[39:29] Married.

Speaker 2:
[39:30] Married.

Speaker 1:
[39:31] They were already reportedly a couple as of 2015, 2016, when he commissioned her for this report.

Speaker 2:
[39:39] So a huge conflict of interest and like these are people's lives that we're dealing with. This is a family who's missing their daughter and he is hiring his girlfriend.

Speaker 1:
[39:48] You're using more resources to hire your girlfriend who's completely unqualified? The lawyer in this interview talks about how they had access to the state crime lab forensic psychologists they could have used.

Speaker 2:
[39:59] And they didn't.

Speaker 1:
[40:00] Why hire her?

Speaker 2:
[40:01] Chose someone else because of your personal connections to them.

Speaker 1:
[40:03] Yeah, it's getting an extra mark on the botched mark for the conflict of interest.

Speaker 2:
[40:07] It should get a huge botched mark because after that too, the budget is basically all used up. Like all the money that they had to investigate this case is gone. They followed over 2,000 separate leads. They investigated 600 supposed sightings and all of those were without results. So in August of 2016, 15 months after Inga vanished, the task force was officially disbanded. In early 2017, Inga's case files were transferred to the Public Prosecutor's Office for Safekeeping and the investigation was closed. It was obviously a huge disappointment to Inga's family, but it did allow her parents to give interviews for the first time without jeopardizing an active investigation. They can lift that veil of privacy a little bit. That's actually how the public learned that Victoria and Yenzuva had gotten divorced. Over time, they were driven apart by their differing beliefs on what had happened to their daughter. Yenzuva thought she was deceased, though he did still hope that her remains would be found. Victoria, on the other hand, just had a strong gut feeling that Inga was still alive, which is why Victoria continued to push hard for a new investigation. And then, get that botch board ready. In 2019, four years after Inga vanished, it looked like Victoria was about to have her request granted. A review team was formed by the Stendhal Police Force to examine all the work that was done in Inga's case and find a path forward. But instead of reviewing the entire case, the team was told to focus only on one thing, whether or not Inga's kidnapping was connected to Madeline McCann's case. And that review ended after just 11 days. And the team, you know, hadn't reviewed all of Inga's case files yet in those 11 days. There's a lot, I mean, we were just talking about like 600 potential sightings. It's a lot to go through. You're not going to go through it in 11 days. And it later came out that the head of the review team had complained about his own appointment to lead the review. He said that he did not feel qualified, but he was told that, you know, he had to do it anyways. He had never worked on a homicide investigation before.

Speaker 1:
[42:14] I'm sorry, what?

Speaker 2:
[42:15] And in his final report, the lead investigator called the circumstances surrounding the review team suspect.

Speaker 1:
[42:23] Okay, great. Thanks. What do we do with that?

Speaker 2:
[42:26] Exactly. It's just botched.

Speaker 1:
[42:28] We are up to four marks on the botched board, and I do have one off to the side under some words that say magic dogs?

Speaker 2:
[42:34] But it's Andrea, I would say, because we have a hard and fast rule on the show that dogs cannot be botched.

Speaker 1:
[42:41] So Andrea.

Speaker 2:
[42:42] Yeah, it's Andrea.

Speaker 1:
[42:44] And I will say, I'm giving it a hard time because she was utilized so much in a lot of other cases. And there was a policeman that was interviewed on this source I watched, and he's like, yeah, I had issues with her on another case, basically leading the dog in the direction she wanted the dog to go. Basically being like, she's making the dogs alert.

Speaker 2:
[43:04] Yeah, I was going to say, like, they're not getting special training. So I was wondering how they had the ability to do other things that some dogs couldn't do.

Speaker 1:
[43:12] As far as I know, these dogs can't drive cars, so.

Speaker 2:
[43:15] Yeah, so who's leading them around? Now, as for the question of whether or not those two girls' cases were connected, the review team's full report has never been released to the public, so we're not really sure. But in June 2020, five years after Inga disappeared, police announced that they had eliminated Christian Bruckner as a suspect based on cell phone location records. And what was found in those records has also never been released. More time continued to pass without any progress, and Victoria's frustration only grew. Meanwhile, Inga's older brother, now an adult, hired a lawyer to continue looking into his sister's case. And the lawyer agreed that the original investigation had missed significant leads and wasted resources on ineffective strategies like those Miracle Dogs, and none of those strategies found any hard evidence. But the authorities still didn't want to open a new investigation. So in March of 2023, that's nearly eight years after Inga's disappearance, Victoria took her complaints to the Saxony and Halt State Parliament. On April 16th, 2023, following an investigation by the Ministry of the Interior, Inga's case was taken away from the Stendhal Police and given to the Halle Police. Halle is about 90 miles away from Villamsov, close enough to know the region, but far enough that they were kind of a fresh set of eyes. Victoria urged the new investigators to re-examine every past lead and stop only when her daughter was found. But as the new team got to work, there was another investigation into Inga's disappearance happening. Only this one was actually seeing results.

Speaker 1:
[44:49] This investigation was not being conducted by law enforcement though. Instead, this was a collaboration between Inga's brother's attorney, Stefan Schape, and German journalists. In October, six months after Inga's case moved to Halle, one of those journalists, Sebastian Lieber, published an explosive report, bringing us to our seventh clue, a mysterious new suspect. Police gave him the pseudonym Martin H. So we're going to call him Martin. When the lawyer Stefan got a hold of the police files in Inga's case, he learned that Martin had actually been on their radar all along, and Stefan couldn't figure out why the police never seriously pursued Martin as a suspect. Martin grew up in Stendhal, the closest town to Wilhelmsof. His pattern of sexually predatory behavior started at the age of 11, when he began assaulting his nine-year-old sister. It was then that Martin developed an obsession with young girls. By the age of 20, he was officially diagnosed with pedophilia, which was the formal diagnosis in the DSM at the time. It has since been updated to pedophilic disorder. That same year, Martin had an episode of psychosis and ended up at a psychiatric hospital for several months. And Martin's hospitalization at this time didn't cure him of his pedophilia, but it did get him back on his feet enough to move to Berlin, where he then worked as a handyman. That's about 100 miles from Wilhelmsof, and it's where he was still living in November 2015, six months after Inga disappeared. He was in his early 30s at that time, and he rented an attic from a local homeowner that he used as a workshop, which he kept padlocked when he wasn't inside of it. Eventually, the homeowner got tired of dealing with Martin. Apparently, he was a really unreliable tenant. And so one day, she decided to just abruptly end his lease and ended up trying to go up into the attic and remove his things. But after Locksmiths arrived to help get her inside, she found a lot more than just carpenter tools. Martin was using this workshop to store a collection of homemade toddler-sized sex dolls that were dressed in real children's clothing.

Speaker 2:
[47:15] I, mm, you know.

Speaker 1:
[47:19] No words, it's so- Just no words. Just deranged, disgusting, horrible. And the homeowner immediately recognized this and phoned the police. She was like, this is f***ed up. What am I seeing in my house?

Speaker 2:
[47:31] There's no way this is the only thing he's doing. Like, someone needs to check this guy's hard drives.

Speaker 1:
[47:36] Yeah. Police arrive. They do discover child sexual abuse material and a backpack full of what seemed to be supplies for a potential child abduction. There were gloves, cable ties, tape, pepper spray. Two days later, police did arrest Martin and began interrogating him. Martin admitted that he had been fantasizing about kidnapping and essaying a young girl. But he told investigators that he would never actually hurt a child.

Speaker 2:
[48:04] I don't believe that for a single second. You have duct tape in your backpack.

Speaker 1:
[48:10] No chance. According to investigators though, Martin seemed relieved to be caught. Martin ends up telling the cops that his girlfriend had warned him that the police were looking for him.

Speaker 2:
[48:22] He had a girlfriend?

Speaker 1:
[48:23] He had a girlfriend at this time. And instead of trying to flee, he had actually gone and met up with a friend to seek advice. Police did manage to track this friend down and she confirmed the whole conversation. She said that when Martin first came to her, he assumed the police were looking for him, get this, as a suspect in Inga's kidnapping. Martin's making the connections.

Speaker 2:
[48:50] Yeah, he's the one being like, oh, I assume that they're just looking into me as like a suspect in this case.

Speaker 1:
[48:55] Yeah, Martin confessed to his friend that he was a pedophile and said he wished he had been the one to run across Inga alone in the woods. I didn't do it, but-

Speaker 2:
[49:07] But I wish I had.

Speaker 1:
[49:07] I wish I had.

Speaker 2:
[49:08] But I wish it was me.

Speaker 1:
[49:09] He even called the person who kidnapped her a quote, lucky finder.

Speaker 2:
[49:15] I do think that some people deserve a little bit of medieval torture.

Speaker 1:
[49:19] Martin, however, did insist he never actually met or harmed Inga, though he did tell his friend that he knew Inga was dead and that police were looking for her in the wrong area.

Speaker 2:
[49:33] Yeah. I mean, saying that you know that she's dead. Because we talk about this in cases, too. You have to watch out when someone's talking about someone in a past tense, because usually that's a tell. Like, if you ask them, family members, like, hey, this person's missing, what does your gut say? If they're like, well, I really know that they're dead. Usually that's a bad sign.

Speaker 1:
[49:50] How? How do you know?

Speaker 2:
[49:51] That's a tell.

Speaker 1:
[49:52] How? And Martin never explained how he knew this.

Speaker 2:
[49:56] Yeah, right.

Speaker 1:
[49:57] After prosecutors in Berlin heard his story and reviewed the case, they did suspect Martin was somehow involved in Inga's disappearance. In early 2016, they sent copies of all of their files to the police in Stendhal and urged them to treat him as a likely suspect. So the police in Berlin were essentially being like, here, we have this guy. Here's the connection to your case. They're putting him on the Stendhal investigators' radar. And this was right around the time that that Vald task force was focused on Christian Bruckner. After the disturbing double search of his two properties, Stendhal investigators did open an investigation into Martin H and learned that the attic in Berlin was not his only lair. Martin also owned a small house in a remote village, about two hours drive from Wilhelmshof. The windows of the house were bricked up, the doors had alarms on them, and the whole property was surrounded by a privacy fence. But the real surprise for investigators was a short distance from the house inside of a wood shed.

Speaker 2:
[51:04] I mean, it feels automatically like it's not that you don't want people to come in, it's that you don't want people going out. It's immediately reading the description of the house.

Speaker 1:
[51:13] Bricked up windows?

Speaker 2:
[51:14] Yeah. Fences, alarms.

Speaker 1:
[51:17] Privacy fence?

Speaker 2:
[51:18] What are you hiding? What's going on there?

Speaker 1:
[51:21] Inside of this wood shed, there was a hatch in the floor that revealed a staircase that led down to an underground dungeon-like room. Now, police did not find any forensic evidence linking him to have an Inga inside of this bunker. And afterwards, Martin continued to insist that he hadn't taken Inga or any other children. But he still couldn't control his fantasies, which is why he prepared for the day he might take a child, the day that it might happen.

Speaker 2:
[51:58] All of these preparations, building an entire bunker.

Speaker 1:
[52:00] But according to the lawyer, Stephen, who worked for the Gehrickes, there were a few other red flags. Police had also found that Martin used an excavator on his property shortly after Inga's kidnapping, and that he might have dismantled his own car around that time. It was all incredibly suspicious. But Martin provided an alibi for May 2nd, 2015, and the task force allegedly found it credible. They eliminated Martin from the suspect list without formally naming him as a suspect.

Speaker 2:
[52:30] My, okay, I'm just going to botch it for, because even if that alibi was confirmed by CCTV footage or whatever, that person cannot be released back into society.

Speaker 1:
[52:43] The dungeon. It's horrific.

Speaker 2:
[52:47] I know that the laws are like, oh, if you haven't broken a law, you can't go to jail. I do understand that in a philosophical sense. But as a mom now.

Speaker 1:
[53:00] You're coming at it from a tough angle.

Speaker 2:
[53:02] Yeah, it's like, oh my god, give him the brazen bull or something.

Speaker 1:
[53:06] We do get there. So we do get there. So as this is all happening though, Sebastian Leder, the reporter that was working with Stefan, digs a little deeper and he was able to find two anonymous sources who he described as close to the investigation. And they weren't sure that this was the right call to eliminate Martin as a suspect. They said that the person Martin had used for his alibi could not clearly remember where they were and what they did that day.

Speaker 2:
[53:34] Okay. So do we get another botch for that one then?

Speaker 1:
[53:35] I honestly think so.

Speaker 2:
[53:36] I'm just going to keep botching it.

Speaker 1:
[53:37] What do you mean? I don't think there was CCTV footage. And even now, because of AI, I think we're going to have a lot of difficulties being like, oh, there's footage tied to this.

Speaker 2:
[53:47] Oh, yeah. No, there's already like people who have loved ones that are missing, who are complaining that people are sending them like AI images of their loved ones and like AI video of their loved ones.

Speaker 1:
[53:58] That is devastating. But instead of trying to break this alibi, the task force just kind of moved on from Martin, and then they disbanded later that same year. As for Martin though, which again kind of speaks to that first botch mark you put, after a brief prison sentence for distributing marijuana, he was still found to be too dangerous to children, and this led to his confinement in secure psychiatric care. And as for those child sex dolls, in 2021, Germany also banned childlike sex toys like the ones Martin had made and stiffened their sentencing guidelines for sex crimes against children.

Speaker 2:
[54:43] I'm still going to botch it because why did it take so long? I'm sorry, I'm just mad.

Speaker 1:
[54:46] 2021.

Speaker 2:
[54:47] 2021. 2021.

Speaker 1:
[54:49] It's a tough pill to swallow.

Speaker 2:
[54:50] Until then you could have a toddler size sex doll and like botched, sorry. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[54:57] I know, I'm a little nauseous.

Speaker 2:
[54:58] Gotta take a deep breath after that section.

Speaker 1:
[55:00] I hope everyone is hanging in there okay. This is, it is a very tough, tough case.

Speaker 2:
[55:05] It's so hard to read about. It's just, it reminds me of John Benet in the sense that one of the shocking parts about the case is how many predators you realize live in the area. Where you're like, a little girl goes missing. The fact that we have multiple suspects because there were just that many predators living, like really horrible documented proof that they were predators in the area is just very upsetting.

Speaker 1:
[55:30] I know, in the beauty pageant world and who can just show up to those.

Speaker 2:
[55:34] Well, especially for JonBenet Ramsey. I mean, it's just like, I just don't. It's so hard to read about as now having a kid too.

Speaker 1:
[55:41] I know.

Speaker 2:
[55:42] How do you even protect your child in this world?

Speaker 1:
[55:43] Exactly. It makes you realize how much we don't protect kids. It's just, it's horrific.

Speaker 2:
[55:50] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[55:50] So big change needs to keep happening.

Speaker 2:
[55:53] Now, since Inga's case moved to the Hollett Police Department in April of 2023, there have been a few new developments, but sadly, none of them have led to finding Inga or charging a suspect. In December of 2023, there was a brief surge of hope after cadaver dogs discovered bone fragments in the forest around Villamshof. They did turn out to be animal bones. And then in 2024, there was a new effort to solicit tips from the public with the full support of Inga's family. And that's when a German beverage manufacturer got involved. They worked with cold case investigators to create an age progression photo of Inga, who would have been 15 at the time. And Inga's photos, along with information on how to submit a tip, were printed on smoothie bottles sold in Germany and in neighboring countries. The smoothie company also donated 25,000 euros to double the reward fund. And this campaign brought in 82 potentially useful leads.

Speaker 1:
[56:45] And that was in just the span of a month.

Speaker 2:
[56:47] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[56:47] The picture was only on those bottles for a month.

Speaker 2:
[56:49] And as a result of those new leads, a new search team spent two months in early 2025 scouring the forest around Villamself once again. And unfortunately, that search did not turn up any new evidence. As of May 2025, there were still eight investigators assigned to Inga's case, but they've gone quiet since early 2025. So we don't really know what they're focused on right now. We do know that the police have followed over 4,000 leads during the nearly 11-year investigation, and they still don't have a single piece of hard evidence. At this point, investigators believe that any forensic evidence in that forest was likely trampled on and destroyed during the first few days of the search. As for Christian Bruckner, he's never been charged with kidnapping, either in Madeleine McCann's case or in Inga's. The German authorities believe Madeleine is dead and that Bruckner did kill her though, but they still haven't revealed exactly what evidence they have. But we were reading about it earlier, and there's potentially an email that Bruckner was in charge of, that in January, around the time that Madeleine disappeared, there were maybe some emails that they found, or something about this email address that connected him to her death.

Speaker 1:
[58:00] And potentially phone tracking records putting him in that location, so it'll be interesting to see what comes out.

Speaker 2:
[58:09] Bruckner does continue to protest his innocence though. He did serve some prison time starting in 2017, first for sexually assaulting his ex-girlfriend's five-year-old daughter, and then for sexually assaulting a 72-year-old woman. Police hope to have enough evidence to charge him with Madeline's murder before the second prison sentence ended, but a massive search using excavators and ground-penetrating radar failed to unearth any remains. So Bruckner was released from prison on September 17, 2025. And as of this recording, he is enjoying his newfound freedom by camping out in northern Germany in the middle of the forest.

Speaker 1:
[58:46] It's going to get a botched. Why is a person like this enjoying forest freedom?

Speaker 2:
[58:50] Anything. Why does he enjoy anything? But if you were to ask Inga's father, Yenzua, he does not think Martin H or Christian are guilty in his daughter's disappearance. He is convinced that the perpetrator was someone within his own circle of acquaintances, someone that Inga might have gone with willingly. That was a huge, huge update when that was announced.

Speaker 1:
[59:16] Yeah. I mean, a lot of people note how calm she was that day. It might not have even been someone that was connected to those two other families they came with, but maybe it was an adult playing soccer with them earlier that day, and was familiar enough to where she wouldn't react and scream and things like that. So that's a tough, tough one. I know in a clip I saw of her mom from an interview, her mom said basically if she could beam herself back, I would search the grounds and the houses first and not the forest.

Speaker 2:
[59:49] Yeah, that's what Yenzhua said too. He said that he does think the case might have been solved if they had focused on the grounds and the buildings that day rather than immediately just running straight into the forest, diverting all of their attention away from these buildings.

Speaker 1:
[60:02] That's just so tough to know how to react properly in that situation.

Speaker 2:
[60:06] I know. I know. He does remain fairly certain that she is no longer alive, however, regardless of which direction she went off in. He mourns her each year on the anniversary of her disappearance by making a pilgrimage to Villainsoft and laying flowers at the base of a tree. There's also a theory that supports Yenzhua's feelings. A well-known German professor of criminology, Dr. Bettina Gutze, reviewed the case and predicted that the perpetrator would likely have been a man between 40 and 55 years old. He was probably employed. He probably was known to the family and likely well-spoken and presentable. More of a kindly uncle figure rather than a creepy weirdo. As for Victoria, she does still hold out hope that Inga is alive somewhere, and she's holding that same hope for Madeline McCann's family as well.

Speaker 1:
[60:57] But that is where we're at today. There's a few loose ends with Andrea von Budenbrock, whose dogs supposedly followed Inga's scent all the way to Austria.

Speaker 2:
[61:08] The magic dogs.

Speaker 1:
[61:09] The magic dogs. After the Inga investigation, Andrea published a book on her dog training methods. As of January 2026, she's under criminal investigation for fraud related to her scientifically improbable claims about her dog's insane performance. Her house was searched in December 2025. Police and prosecutors now suspect that Andrea was controlling her dog's route herself, rather than actually following them as they tracked a scent. She earned a lot of money from various police departments and prosecutor's office that way over the years and gave expert testimony in several high profile cases, which the validity of those cases now, like the trial, you could throw those trials out. They might, that might be a mistrial. That might be enough for an appeal.

Speaker 2:
[62:03] There could be people in prison because of her lies basically.

Speaker 1:
[62:07] So that is getting solidified. No more magic dog question mark. It's now an official botched mark.

Speaker 2:
[62:15] This is the first case we've done that has dog fraud in it.

Speaker 1:
[62:19] Dog fraud.

Speaker 2:
[62:20] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[62:20] I mean, it does make sense. Like if you teach a dog a command and you're like, okay, wink, sit, alert.

Speaker 2:
[62:27] Like, yeah, absolutely. It would be very easy to do fraud in that way.

Speaker 1:
[62:33] They talk about this with car searches. When police will bring in dogs for car searches, a lot of times they'll have the dog alert so they can search the vehicle. Like, there's a lot of cases that have gone to trial for misuse of dogs.

Speaker 2:
[62:50] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[62:51] Just insane. Another loose end that I came across is in that MDR investigative, there was a pastor who came forward with a confession. This pastor contacted police and shared that someone did confess to him that Inga is still alive, potentially in a place called Zilz. And when this investigative team looked at the people that were present that day, at Wilhelmshof, who was interviewed, there was someone there that did live in Zilz. Now, the investigative team that I watched, they did note that there were 11 places that could have matched this Zilz. However, I will say, Magic Dogs did go there. So it's an odd coincidence.

Speaker 2:
[63:37] It would be an odd coincidence, but I also wonder if that person read the dog investigation. In a newspaper, yeah, that, oh, the dog alerted in Zilz.

Speaker 1:
[63:45] Yeah. I believe the pastor has since passed. So-

Speaker 2:
[63:49] Interesting.

Speaker 1:
[63:50] Unclear if this tip will go anywhere at this point.

Speaker 2:
[63:53] Also, I forget what the rules are about pastors breaking that-

Speaker 1:
[63:58] That oath.

Speaker 2:
[63:58] Oath during confession. I believe if you confess to murder, your pastor doesn't have to though.

Speaker 1:
[64:07] I think the church is okay with them sharing, but I don't know. They're not mandated reporters from my knowledge.

Speaker 2:
[64:16] No, they're not.

Speaker 1:
[64:16] There are certain careers that are mandated reporters. If they hear something, they have to report it.

Speaker 2:
[64:22] I don't know. A quick Google search says, yes, pastors can and often are required to report you. In most US states, clergy are considered mandated reporters.

Speaker 1:
[64:30] There we go.

Speaker 2:
[64:30] Especially for suspected child abuse or neglect.

Speaker 1:
[64:33] There we go.

Speaker 2:
[64:35] That is the US. That's the US. Who knows? It could be.

Speaker 1:
[64:39] If you're in Germany, please let us know if you have an answer to that. Maybe we have a clergy person listening.

Speaker 2:
[64:46] I have some Catholic priests that listen to Hearts Arts Pounding because we've talked about exorcisms before. I've had some priests reach out with some really spooky stories on exorcisms they've witnessed. So forgive me, Father, for forgetting.

Speaker 1:
[64:59] I wonder if that has also changed in recent years with a lot of what's changed within the church due to previous child essay. So maybe now they are mandated reporters.

Speaker 2:
[65:11] So interesting.

Speaker 1:
[65:12] We're going to have to do a deep dive on that for the confessional.

Speaker 2:
[65:16] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[65:17] Literally the Clues confessional.

Speaker 2:
[65:20] We're ending this case, I think, with more questions than answers, for sure. And that's why Lawyers & Advocates for the Gehricke family recently launched a new website asking the public for more tips, which is why we wanted to talk about this case in 2026. If you have any information about this case, I know we have a largely US audience, but people from Germany have said that they listen to the show. So if you have any information about this case, you can share it directly with the family's legal team by visiting. The website is ingasuche.de. Inga's family has also chosen to highlight a specific nonprofit on their website. So to honor the Gehricke's wishes, we wanted to share a little about them too. It's called Victim Recovery Dogs EV. It's a nonprofit organization working in Germany and Switzerland, providing specially trained dogs to search for missing persons, particularly in cold cases. Unlike the Miracle Dogs, these are real search and recovery dogs whose work is supported by science.

Speaker 1:
[66:20] Yeah, we respect the dogs in this house, and there are real good trained dogs doing amazing work.

Speaker 2:
[66:25] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[66:25] This is one organization that supports that.

Speaker 2:
[66:27] If you are in their service area and you need help, you can reach out via their website. That's victimrecovery.com. And if you're the loved one of a cold case victim in the United States, there's a resource for that too. The nonprofit Season of Justice offers public awareness campaign grants to immediate family members of missing or murdered people whose cases are at least two years old. These grants can be used to pay for mass media outreach strategies like billboard campaigns. And they'll be opening applications for the 2027 round of grants on September 1st of this year, 2026. So you can sign up now to be notified when applications open. That's seasonofjustice.org. And with that, we're going to go to our highlighted missing person of the week.

Speaker 1:
[67:13] The case we're highlighting this week is that of Dulce Maria Alvarez. Dulce was 5 and was last seen on Monday, September 16th, 2019. She was playing at Bridgerton City Park behind Bridgerton High School in Bridgerton, New Jersey. She was last seen playing near the playground while her mother was nearby. Abduction is being suspected as the primary theory. She was last seen wearing a yellow shirt with a koala on the front, black and white pants with butterflies and flowers on them, and white dress sandals. She had long brown hair, brown eyes, was approximately three feet tall, female, Hispanic. Some witnesses say that Dulce was reportedly seen walking towards a red van with a man. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information that leads to the whereabouts of Dulce Maria Alvarez. Additional reward money may be available. If you have any information concerning this case, please contact the FBI's toll-free tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI and select option 4, then option 8. You can also text your information to TIP 411, subtext BRIDGETON, and that is all we have for this episode of Clues.

Speaker 2:
[68:24] Now we turn it over to you guys. Thoughts, theories, all of that. The comments is what makes this community so special. And if you're interested in a missing person's case, a child, where I really think it's going to be solved very soon, I think in the next few years we're going to know what happened, check out our episode that we did on Aisha Degree because it's a really twisty one. It's a very mysterious disappearance. But I think we're really close.

Speaker 1:
[68:47] I think we're so close. New ancestry, DNA evidence coming and kind of breaking this one open.

Speaker 2:
[68:52] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[68:54] Yeah, we're going to get some answers soon.

Speaker 2:
[68:55] Definitely.

Speaker 1:
[68:56] Yeah. Let us know where you ended up on the botched board. We have nine, including a miracle dog handler, Andrea. But again, let us know your thoughts. Let us know if you'd like to get into the case of Madeleine McCann a bit more deeply. See how Bruckner is involved in that case. Again, at Crime House, we really value your support. Share your thoughts on social. Remember to rate, review, and follow Clues to help others discover our show. Until next time, bye guys.

Speaker 2:
[69:24] Bye.