The Phantom of Heilbronn: The Most Dangerous Woman Nobody Could Find

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,440
[MUSIC]

2
00:00:05,440 --> 00:00:11,360
For over a decade, European law enforcement hunted a woman they called the Phantom of Heilbron,

3
00:00:11,360 --> 00:00:19,120
a suspected serial killer whose DNA appeared in more than 40 crime scenes across Germany, Austria, and France.

4
00:00:19,120 --> 00:00:26,800
Her profile connected murders, burglaries, drug offenses, and eventually the killing of a police officer in broad daylight.

5
00:00:26,800 --> 00:00:36,960
Investigators swobbed over 3,000 women, logged 16,000 overtime hours, and posted rewards of up to 300,000 euros.

6
00:00:36,960 --> 00:00:39,760
And you are not going to believe what they actually found.

7
00:00:39,760 --> 00:00:49,920
[MUSIC]

8
00:00:49,920 --> 00:00:55,840
Welcome to 10-minute murder, and for 15 years, law enforcement agencies across three countries believed

9
00:00:55,840 --> 00:01:01,280
they were hunting one of the most prolific and elusive criminals in modern European history.

10
00:01:01,280 --> 00:01:08,320
She was connected to over 40 crime scenes across Germany, Austria, and France, tied to murders,

11
00:01:08,320 --> 00:01:14,400
burglaries, drug offenses, armed robberies, and eventually the execution style killing of a police

12
00:01:14,400 --> 00:01:20,160
officer in broad daylight. Her genetic fingerprint kept turning up at scenes that shared nothing

13
00:01:20,160 --> 00:01:26,240
in common with each other, and places hundreds of miles apart, attached to crimes that formed no

14
00:01:26,240 --> 00:01:33,280
coherent pattern whatsoever. They called her the Phantom of Heilbron, or the Woman Without a Face,

15
00:01:33,280 --> 00:01:38,320
depending on which newspaper you picked up that week. Either way, she was one of the most wanted

16
00:01:38,320 --> 00:01:45,360
people on the continent, and search for her would consume 16,000 overtime hours, swob more than 3,000

17
00:01:45,360 --> 00:01:51,040
women, and ultimately exposed one of the most consequential investigation failures in modern German

18
00:01:51,040 --> 00:01:58,640
history. She did not exist. And I know at this point that doesn't make any sense to you, but

19
00:01:58,640 --> 00:02:05,600
trust me, it's going to make a lot more sense later on. The story traces back to May of 1993 in a

20
00:02:05,600 --> 00:02:12,720
small German town called Eider Oberstein, mostly known for its gemstone trade and a famous church

21
00:02:12,720 --> 00:02:19,680
built directly into the side of a cliff face, a quiet, unremarkable place. A 62-year-old church

22
00:02:19,680 --> 00:02:25,840
warden and pensioner named Lisa Lotch Schellenger was found strangled in her apartment. The murder weapon

23
00:02:25,840 --> 00:02:32,160
was the thin wire used to hold together a bouquet of flowers sitting on her table. No fingerprints were

24
00:02:32,160 --> 00:02:38,800
recovered, no witness came forward, no suspects materialized. The only trace of anything was DNA

25
00:02:38,800 --> 00:02:44,960
recovered from the rim of her teacup, and in 1993 the technology to make that evidence useful

26
00:02:44,960 --> 00:02:51,200
was still years away from being standard practice. The case went cold and the file went into a box.

27
00:02:51,200 --> 00:02:58,320
Eight years later, in March of 2001, an antique stealer named Joseph Walsenbach was found murdered

28
00:02:58,320 --> 00:03:04,640
in his Fryberg home, strangled with Garden Twine. When forensic teams processed the scene,

29
00:03:04,640 --> 00:03:10,640
a DNA staple from the kitchen drawer matched the decades-old profile from Schellenger's eight

30
00:03:10,640 --> 00:03:18,160
years ago teacup, one unidentified woman connected to two strangulation deaths, nearly 300 kilometers

31
00:03:18,160 --> 00:03:24,560
apart, eight years apart, and nothing obviously linking the victims to each other. German investigators

32
00:03:24,560 --> 00:03:31,440
had a serious, strange problem, and it was about to get much stranger. Over the following years,

33
00:03:31,440 --> 00:03:36,800
this DNA profile kept reappearing at scenes and seemed more random each time.

34
00:03:36,800 --> 00:03:44,240
In October of 2001, a seven-year-old boy near Gerylstein stepped on a discarded heroin syringe.

35
00:03:44,240 --> 00:03:51,440
His parents took to the hospital for testing, and the phantoms DNA was on the needle. A burglary in

36
00:03:51,440 --> 00:03:57,440
Boudinheim yielded her profile on a half-even cookie, a gang that robbed Vietnamese gemstone

37
00:03:57,440 --> 00:04:04,160
traders in France left behind a replica pistol, and her DNA was on that too. A violent dispute

38
00:04:04,160 --> 00:04:08,080
in warms between two brothers put her genetic profile on one of the bullets.

39
00:04:08,080 --> 00:04:14,800
Crime scenes kept multiplying across Austria. Criminal psychologist assembled a working theory.

40
00:04:14,800 --> 00:04:21,680
She was probably homeless, probably addicted to heroin, likely of Eastern European origin,

41
00:04:21,680 --> 00:04:27,360
drifting between countries and surviving on opportunistic crime. Austrian investigators ran

42
00:04:27,360 --> 00:04:33,920
mitochondrial DNA analysis suggesting Eastern European ancestry, which seemed to point everyone

43
00:04:33,920 --> 00:04:39,360
in the same direction. German law at the time actually prohibited police from using DNA to

44
00:04:39,360 --> 00:04:44,720
determine ethnicity, which meant German investigators were building a detailed profile of someone who

45
00:04:44,720 --> 00:04:50,480
appeared to leave their genetic material everywhere she went, and her face absolutely nowhere.

46
00:04:50,480 --> 00:04:55,840
And here's where the case genuinely starts to feel a little unhinged. The portrait emerging of

47
00:04:55,840 --> 00:05:02,080
Europe's most dangerous female criminal was being assembled from a half-even cookie, a heroin

48
00:05:02,080 --> 00:05:07,920
needle, and a replica pistol at a gemstone robbery in France. These could be the items that you

49
00:05:07,920 --> 00:05:12,880
might find if you thoroughly cleaned out somebody who's like a hoarder in their vehicle.

50
00:05:12,880 --> 00:05:20,160
The DNA kept matching, though, and in forensics, a match is a match. Michelle Kiesawetter was 22

51
00:05:20,160 --> 00:05:25,920
years old. She had grown up in the small, Thurnegan village of Oberwaisbach, developed a childhood

52
00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:31,600
dream of becoming a police officer and been specifically inspired by her uncle who worked in state

53
00:05:31,600 --> 00:05:38,240
security. She joined the Baden-Wertenberg Force in 2003, and by 2007 she had built a life in the

54
00:05:38,240 --> 00:05:46,000
southwest, staying active in her local biaithalon and fair clubs. On April 25, 2007, she was covering

55
00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:52,160
someone else's shift. She was not originally scheduled to work that day. She and her 24-year-old

56
00:05:52,160 --> 00:05:58,400
partner, Martin Arnold, were on patrol in Heilbron. And around two in the afternoon, they parked next

57
00:05:58,400 --> 00:06:03,520
to a large open public place where festival crews were already setting up their spring fair

58
00:06:03,520 --> 00:06:10,000
to take a lunch break. Two gutmin approached from behind the patrol car and fired into both

59
00:06:10,000 --> 00:06:16,400
officers' heads. Kiesawetter was killed immediately. Arnold was shot, fell into a coma for three weeks

60
00:06:16,400 --> 00:06:21,760
and survived, with no memory of the attack at all. The shooters took both service weapons and

61
00:06:21,760 --> 00:06:27,440
both sets of handcuffs, then disappeared into the afternoon. When forensic teams processed the

62
00:06:27,440 --> 00:06:34,080
patrol car, the phantoms DNA was on the rear seats and the center console. The investigation

63
00:06:34,080 --> 00:06:41,120
transformed within hours. A reward for 300,000 euros was announced. More than 3,000 women were

64
00:06:41,120 --> 00:06:47,920
swabbed across Germany for their DNA. 16,000 overtime hours were now being devoted to hunting a killer

65
00:06:47,920 --> 00:06:53,200
of police officers. Multiple witnesses at the park that afternoon described seeing men running

66
00:06:53,200 --> 00:06:59,440
from the scene. The DNA said female. Rather than pausing to ask whether the evidence itself

67
00:06:59,440 --> 00:07:05,040
might be the problem, investigators constructed theories around the contradiction. Maybe she was the

68
00:07:05,040 --> 00:07:11,600
organizer directing the men. Maybe she appeared male to witnesses while leaving biologically female DNA

69
00:07:11,600 --> 00:07:17,120
at the scene. German reporting later described this as investigators performing what they called

70
00:07:17,120 --> 00:07:23,920
"cognitive backflips". 3,000 women were swabbed while witness accounts were being managed around every

71
00:07:23,920 --> 00:07:29,440
theory, rather than the theory being questioned because of the witnesses and those overtime hours kept

72
00:07:29,440 --> 00:07:36,240
accumulating. The case came apart in early 2009 because of something that was simply not physically

73
00:07:36,240 --> 00:07:41,920
possible. French investigators were trying to identify the burned remains of a male asylum seeker

74
00:07:41,920 --> 00:07:48,000
who had gone missing in 2002. They pulled DNA from his original immigration fingerprints and ran

75
00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:54,880
it through the database. It matched the phantom. A dead man's fingerprints were returning the genetic

76
00:07:54,880 --> 00:08:01,360
profile of Europe's most wanted female serial killer. A spokesperson for the public prosecutor's

77
00:08:01,360 --> 00:08:08,000
office stated what was now obvious. This was impossible unless the testing itself was wrong.

78
00:08:08,000 --> 00:08:15,360
Second test using a completely different brand of cotton swab produced no trace of the phantom at all.

79
00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:21,920
The contaminated swabs were traced to a Bavarian manufacturer called Griner Bio-1. The swabs had

80
00:08:21,920 --> 00:08:28,320
been labeled sterile, which investigators had reasonably interpreted as DNA-free. Those two

81
00:08:28,320 --> 00:08:34,640
designations are not the same thing and that gap turned out to be the entire case. The sterilization

82
00:08:34,640 --> 00:08:41,120
process done with gamma radiation or ethylene oxide eliminates bacteria and viruses but leaves

83
00:08:41,120 --> 00:08:47,200
human DNA completely intact. The swabs had been handled and packaged by Eastern European women

84
00:08:47,200 --> 00:08:52,960
at the end of the production line and their skin cells had transferred onto every single one.

85
00:08:52,960 --> 00:08:59,840
The woman without a face was a 71 year old Polish factory worker who had no idea any of this was

86
00:08:59,840 --> 00:09:06,240
happening. While all of this was going on, two actual killers were moving freely across Germany.

87
00:09:06,800 --> 00:09:13,280
UAE Mundlose and UA Boneheart were the operational core of a neo-Nazi terror cell

88
00:09:13,280 --> 00:09:20,400
called the National Socialist Underground, the NSU. Between 2000 and 2006, they murdered eight

89
00:09:20,400 --> 00:09:26,640
Turkish citizens and one Greek citizen, nearly all small business owners using a silenced pistol

90
00:09:26,640 --> 00:09:32,160
and striking a broad daylight. The investigation into those nine murders was a failure with a specific

91
00:09:32,160 --> 00:09:38,000
character. Police focused almost entirely on the victim's own communities, theorizing organized

92
00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:43,920
crime connections, drug deaths and personal disputes. Grieving family members were interrogated for

93
00:09:43,920 --> 00:09:50,320
years as potential suspects. In one particularly memorable investigative maneuver, police set up an

94
00:09:50,320 --> 00:09:55,680
undercover fake kabob stall to draw out whatever criminal they had already decided must be operating

95
00:09:55,680 --> 00:10:02,800
inside immigrant networks. In 2006, victims families organized public demonstrations under the slogan

96
00:10:02,800 --> 00:10:07,440
"No 10th Victim", pleading openly with authorities to investigate a right-wing,

97
00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:14,160
extremist motive. Nobody acted on it. Less than a year later, Michelle Kiswetter was killed.

98
00:10:14,160 --> 00:10:21,680
The NSU's end came on November 4, 2011, when a bank robbery fell apart and the two men were

99
00:10:21,680 --> 00:10:27,600
cornered by police. They took their own lives by setting their motorhome on fire. Inside the wreckage,

100
00:10:27,600 --> 00:10:33,600
investigators found both service weapons stolen at the crime scene years earlier. The NSU trial ran

101
00:10:33,600 --> 00:10:40,800
from 2013 to 2018, the longest criminal proceeding imposed toward German history, drawing more than 600

102
00:10:40,800 --> 00:10:47,200
witnesses. It also surfaced evidence that Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BFV, had

103
00:10:47,200 --> 00:10:53,120
informants within NSU connections and maintained it had no prior knowledge of the cell's activities.

104
00:10:53,120 --> 00:10:59,120
Records documenting seven informants were deleted by a BFV employee in the days immediately before

105
00:10:59,120 --> 00:11:04,400
the group's existence became public. Martin Arnold, the officer who survived the attack,

106
00:11:04,400 --> 00:11:09,200
carries a 70% permanent disability rating. He lives with hearing loss,

107
00:11:09,200 --> 00:11:14,320
balance problems, and no memory of the afternoon that killed his partner. He has spoken publicly about

108
00:11:14,320 --> 00:11:20,240
his frustration that early witness descriptions placing men at the scene were minimized by investigators

109
00:11:20,240 --> 00:11:26,720
already committed to the phantom profile. In 2016, the operational organization for standardization

110
00:11:26,720 --> 00:11:34,720
published ISO 18385, requiring forensic supply manufacturers to maintain employee DNA exclusion

111
00:11:34,720 --> 00:11:41,360
databases. That standard did not exist before this case. It exists now because of the phantom of

112
00:11:41,360 --> 00:11:47,040
Heilbron. One woman's skin cells shed at the end of a production line in Bavaria without her

113
00:11:47,040 --> 00:11:52,560
knowledge became the anchor that locked an entire investigation in place while real killers

114
00:11:52,560 --> 00:11:58,320
operated in plain sight for a decade. The forensic community still studies this case says a warning

115
00:11:58,320 --> 00:12:04,560
about what happens when evidence stops being a tool for finding the truth and starts being used to

116
00:12:04,560 --> 00:12:16,640
protect a conclusion that investigators are no longer willing to question.

117
00:12:16,640 --> 00:12:25,520
Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, bingeable true crime stories. My name is Joe.

118
00:12:25,520 --> 00:12:32,160
Hello, I'm the host, and here is an email. Subject, a quick thank you. Hi, Joe. No big question here.

119
00:12:32,160 --> 00:12:37,440
I just wanted to say that your podcast has become one of those reliable things I can count on during the

120
00:12:37,440 --> 00:12:43,600
week. It's consistent, it's focused, and I don't feel like you're trying too hard. That's harder

121
00:12:43,600 --> 00:12:49,920
to find than it should be. Mark and Santa Rosa, California. I'm Mark. Thank you for the email, but

122
00:12:49,920 --> 00:12:57,040
TBH, I try, I try real hard on this podcast. I'm glad that it comes across as effortless,

123
00:12:57,600 --> 00:13:02,400
but on this side of the microphone there's a lot of effort. But that's good that it comes across

124
00:13:02,400 --> 00:13:08,000
the way that it does, because that is my intent. There's no real need for you to know all about how

125
00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:12,320
the sausage kits made on this side of it. Hey, thanks for the email, and if you're a brand new

126
00:13:12,320 --> 00:13:16,800
listener to this podcast, welcome, put your feet up, get comfortable, because there are hundreds

127
00:13:16,800 --> 00:13:21,920
and hundreds of back episodes for you to go and check out. First of all, make sure you hit

128
00:13:21,920 --> 00:13:28,080
subscribe before you do any of that. You can also check the show notes of this episode or go to 10minute

129
00:13:28,080 --> 00:13:33,360
murder.com. You'll find links to where you can connect with the podcast on social media. And don't

130
00:13:33,360 --> 00:13:40,000
forget, check out my, I keep calling it my new podcast. It's still new, kind of it's months old,

131
00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:46,880
but it's called True Crime Blueprint. If you like this podcast, but you wish it was a little bit longer,

132
00:13:46,880 --> 00:13:54,000
that's kind of what True Crime Blueprint is. I talk a little more casual there as well, because here

133
00:13:54,000 --> 00:13:58,640
I've got 10 minutes. I've got to get from fact to fact to fact to fact. I'm going to do it quickly,

134
00:13:58,640 --> 00:14:05,120
because 10 minutes is not a lot of time. But on True Crime Blueprint, there is no time limit and talk

135
00:14:05,120 --> 00:14:11,440
all day if I want to. I'm not going to do that, but I do talk a little bit more about the details of

136
00:14:11,440 --> 00:14:16,480
the cases on True Crime Blueprint. So if you are into that, go check it out. And that's going to do it for

137
00:14:16,480 --> 00:14:22,080
this podcast. Thank you again for listening to 10 Minute Murder. See you next time.