Transit corpses in the GDR

Murder without a body was the supposedly perfect crime. The Cold War provided a special historical stage for this, as many things were different in West Berlin than in the rest of the republic. Remo Kroll and Prof. Dr. Frank-Rainer Schurich describe and analyze three spectacular murder cases in which victims were killed in West Berlin, brought into the GDR through a border crossing point, and dumped near the transit route. In 1975, a headless female corpse was found near Lehnin, not far from the Dreilinden/Drewitz border crossing. In 1984, the dismembered body of an Afghan was found in the same place. In 1979, a hunter discovered a heavily charred body in the forest of Bad Klosterlausnitz. The cooperation of investigators from both German states had certainly not been considered by the perpetrators. Not only the transport of the corpses to the GDR was already connected with a high risk.