After 35 years of dead ends, police in Germany have arrested a 56-year-old man on suspicion of committing a murder in the 1980s. They are partly indebted to ZDF true crime show Aktenzeichen XY, ungelöst for the breakthrough...

Man arrested on suspicion of 1988 Cologne murder

On Tuesday morning police in Cologne arrested a middle-aged man on suspicion of strangling a young woman, Petra Nohl, in 1988. The murder took place in the city’s historic Altstadt during the carnival season. 

In a statement following the arrest, police announced that the man has been “accused of fatally strangling the then-24-year-old woman in the Altstadt during the night heading into Carnival Sunday in February, 1988," Nohl’s body was found on the morning of February 14, 1988, behind a food takeaway van in Cologne city centre.

The case of Nohl’s murder was reopened in December 2022 and the serious crimes police force (LKA) in North Rhine-Westphalia carried out a DNA test which led them to the new suspect.

German TV show helps reopen cold case

The new development comes after Nohl’s murder case was a feature on the popular true crime TV programme Aktenzeichen XY, ungelöst (Case number XY, unsolved). “Investigators were put on the suspect’s trail thanks to a witness report during the crime show,” police said.

A former acquaintance of Nohl had contacted police and told them that the suspect had been following her friend in the 1980s.

"The combination of DNA analysis by the LKA, the investigative work of the Cologne criminal police department, and the information provided after the programme led to the 56-year-old man being treated as a formal suspect," police said.

Of the 4.952 cold cases featured on the public broadcast programme in 2022, an astounding 1.948 have since been solved. Most famously, a feature on Aktenzeichen XY, ungelöst helped police to identify a German man who was subsequently arrested on suspicion of the murder of English schoolgirl Madeleine McCann.

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