Post by Admin on Jan 16, 2014 14:49:30 GMT
The Madeleine McCann mystery has helped solve a five-year-old murder in Germany. A record seven million people had tuned in to watch the show in which Kate and Gerry McCann appealed for help in finding their daughter. But immediately before their appeal - a young German girl whose mother, Sigrid Paulus, vanished five years ago had appealed for help in tracking her mum down.
Gerd Paulus admitted that he'd murdered his wife, Sigrid, five years after she disappeared
Christina Paulus, 21, said: ‘She was not there for my birthday or my graduation, but I always thought maybe she was there, somewhere, watching. But the worst was that I got married in 2011, I knew she would not have missed that. I tried the police again, and then I went to the media.’
The TV show Aktenzeichnen XY - German's version of Crimewatch - included a heart-breaking reconstruction showing the young girl at a zoo with a friend where she was convinced that she had seen her mother some weeks before, and had run after her shouting ‘, ’ only to lose her in the crowd.
Christina, pictured with her partner, Daniel, had for years believed that her mother was alive - but a caller on Germany's version of Crimewatch helped police establish that she'd been murdered
Immediately after that she decided to go to the media and after looking at the story a journalist raised the alarm with police. They discovered that Sigrid Paulus had not notified the authorities of her change of address, had not been using her health insurance card and had ‘left no other traces whatsoever’. It was then decided to include it on the German Crimewatch show, where it appeared as the item immediately before the McCanns appeal.
And a German police spokesman said: ‘With so many people watching the show, more than ever before, we were given an enormous access to the German public and we had one call in particular which told us that the woman's husband had been doing a lot of construction work at the time she vanished.
‘As a result of this we decided to do some investigations at the family home in Konigswinter, near Bonn in North Rhine-Westphalia. That included using a digger and dogs specially trained in looking for corpses, which resulted in a new cellar wall being dug out, and as a result a woman's body was found.’
Gerd Paulus admitted that he'd murdered his wife, Sigrid, five years after she disappeared
Christina Paulus, 21, said: ‘She was not there for my birthday or my graduation, but I always thought maybe she was there, somewhere, watching. But the worst was that I got married in 2011, I knew she would not have missed that. I tried the police again, and then I went to the media.’
The TV show Aktenzeichnen XY - German's version of Crimewatch - included a heart-breaking reconstruction showing the young girl at a zoo with a friend where she was convinced that she had seen her mother some weeks before, and had run after her shouting ‘, ’ only to lose her in the crowd.
Christina, pictured with her partner, Daniel, had for years believed that her mother was alive - but a caller on Germany's version of Crimewatch helped police establish that she'd been murdered
Immediately after that she decided to go to the media and after looking at the story a journalist raised the alarm with police. They discovered that Sigrid Paulus had not notified the authorities of her change of address, had not been using her health insurance card and had ‘left no other traces whatsoever’. It was then decided to include it on the German Crimewatch show, where it appeared as the item immediately before the McCanns appeal.
And a German police spokesman said: ‘With so many people watching the show, more than ever before, we were given an enormous access to the German public and we had one call in particular which told us that the woman's husband had been doing a lot of construction work at the time she vanished.
‘As a result of this we decided to do some investigations at the family home in Konigswinter, near Bonn in North Rhine-Westphalia. That included using a digger and dogs specially trained in looking for corpses, which resulted in a new cellar wall being dug out, and as a result a woman's body was found.’