Alfred Lecki - The Hunt for the Escape King
While the other prisoners were celebrating Christmas 1969 in the jails chapel, Alfred Lecki calmly opened the prison gate with a duplicate key he made and disappeared with his prison buddy Helmut Derks. It was the third escape of the legendary "escape king", who had just returned to custody sat - this time in Essen and for the murder of a police officer. Never in the history of the Federal Republic had the hunt for an "ordinary" criminal been so high. On the run, Lecki expanded his reputation as an unscrupulous robber. In June 1970 he was the mastermind of the largest armed robbery to date on a money transport. Also known as the "man with a thousand faces", because he knew how to change his face, hair and appearance, 30 false passports were seized from him over the years. A quite unique story, reconstructed in this documentary.
Michael Gramberg
Director
Michael Gramberg
Writer
Casts & Crew
Also Directed by Michael Gramberg
About a dramatic bank robbery on August 16, 1988, where the criminals escape with two hostages and the media is right in the middle of their chase. Two days later the hostage situation was put to an end in a police operation on the A3 motorway. Three people were killed during this crisis - two teenage hostages and a policeman involved in a vehicle crash. The whole episode became a media circus in Germany and the Netherlands.
The discovery of two dismembered female corpses shook the inhabitants of the Baltic island of Fehmarn in 1970. The millionaire Arwed Imiela was the tenant of the hunting ground, where the body parts were found. Being an astrologer and for many of his female customers not only a life adviser, he was also their asset manager. His wealthy clients quickly gained confidence and appointed him general representative. He wrapped women around his finger, had charm, manners and charisma, as those who knew him still tell today. When the account holder's signature on a transaction for 150,000 Deutschmarks was exactly the same as that on other checks, a bank employee became skeptical. Imiela was then arrested on suspicion of fraud. But this was only the beginning of an ultimately unsolved riddle, as the alleged perpetrator remained coldly silent.
The documentary uncovers contradictions and flat lies in the scandalous verdict of 1962, as a result of which the alleged demimondaine Vera Brühne spent 18 years innocently behind bars, before she was pardoned in 1979. Were she and her friend Johann Ferbach, who died in prison in 1970, the victims of a political plot, in which the real murderers remained unknown? Dr. Otto Praun, whom the two are said to have murdered together in April 1960, had by no means made his considerable fortune as a doctor, but as an arms dealer in the service of the Federal Intelligence Service. Indications that the murderers acted on behalf of the BND, covered by the then Federal Defense Ministry under Franz-Josef Strauss, the later prime minister of bavaria, have not been conclusively refuted to this day. The investigation was sloppy at the time, and the process contained countless inconsistencies.
