Germany

Colonia Dignidad is a Chilean human rights mega-case involving child sexual abuse, forced disappearance, and political torture carried out inside a fortified German enclave in Parral from 1961 onward.

This podcast episode dives into the Wirecard scandal, in which the German payments company falsified its accounts and made 1.9 billion euros vanish without a trace.

Four people were shot at forest parking areas in Göhrde between 1986 and 1989. It took 21 years to find the perpetrator — only when genealogical DNA databases became available.

Between 1992 and 1993, a single man terrorized all of Germany with bomb threats against major department stores. Arno Funke, operating under the alias 'Dagobert,' evaded capture for months before finally being arrested—and now features in a new Amazon series starring Friedrich Mücke.

Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, chairman of the Treuhand agency, was killed by RAF terrorists at his home in Düsseldorf on 1 April 1991. The assassination was the most high-profile terrorist attack in Germany in decades. His murder was never fully solved.

Dresden's baroque streets hide a violent past. Several bookable true crime tours now bring the city's darkest chapters to life after dark.

BlackBook Tours leads small groups through Munich's old town, uncovering centuries of murder, executions, serial killers and terrorism from €29.99.

A guided walking tour takes visitors through 500+ years of murder, kidnapping and theft at real crime locations in Cologne's historic city centre.

A guided tour through St. Pauli traces the murder sites of serial killer Fritz Honka and the violent pimp wars that defined the district in the 1980s. The neighbourhood's notorious streets reveal decades of organised crime, prostitution, and bloodshed. Few areas in Germany carry a darker criminal legacy than this stretch of Hamburg's waterfront quarter.

Guided true crime tours take visitors to historic crime scenes across Munich. Tours run 120 to 150 minutes and start from 25 euros.

Guided true crime tours in Berlin take visitors to historic crime scenes, execution sites, and murder cases spanning from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. The tours offer a chilling look at the darker chapters of one of Europe's most storied cities.

A Northern German podcast systematically documents and analyzes crime cases in small towns and rural communities, dismantling the myth of the 'safe countryside' by showing that serious crimes happen among neighbors just as frequently as in metropolitan areas.

Jens Söring was convicted in 1986 of murdering the parents of an American judge in Virginia. The validity of his conviction was subsequently called into serious doubt. After 33 years in an American prison, he was released and deported to Germany in 2019.

A growing podcast trend shows that listeners across Europe are fascinated by real crimes from their own neighborhoods—not just sensational cases from major cities.

Torsten O. (Lutz Reinstrom) murdered two women he knew in Hamburg in 1986 and 1988, dissolving their bodies in hydrochloric acid in his home bunker. He was arrested in 1991 after a third, intended victim escaped, and he denied the killings throughout his 1995-96 trial. He remains in prison, serving a life sentence handed down in 1996.

On May 31, 2024, a knife attack occurred at Marktplatz in Mannheim, Germany, during a demonstration by the right-wing extremist group Die Basis and pro-Palestinian activists. A 25-year-old man of Afghan origin wounded six people, including five police officers present to maintain order at the demonstration.

One of Germany's most shocking child abuse cases was uncovered at Campingplatz Emsland near Lügde in 2019, where two men systematically sexually abused at least 43 children over several years. Andreas V. and Mario S. exploited their positions to gain access to vulnerable children while authorities failed in their oversight. The case exposed massive systemic failures in child protection and local government oversight.

On August 15, 2007, six Italian members of the Ndrangheta were shot and killed in Duisburg, Germany, in one of Europe's most brutal mafia attacks. The massacre was the culmination of a bloody feud between Calabrese mafia clans and marked a turning point in understanding the international reach of organized crime.

On December 1, 2020, 51-year-old Bernd W. drove a borrowed SUV into the packed pedestrian zone of Trier, Germany, killing six people — including a 9-week-old girl and her father — and injuring 23. A psychiatric expert later diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia; investigators ruled out terrorism.

The Lügde scandal was uncovered in 2019 when German police discovered an extensive child abuse network operating in the small west German town of Lügde. The case resulted in convictions of multiple perpetrators and triggered widespread criticism of how German authorities had handled warnings and tip-offs. It is now considered one of the worst child abuse cases in modern German history.