Together with Schelkle's friend, Thomas Schmid, they had decided to tour the Nordic countries on an Interrail rail pass, with the aim of travelling from West Germany to Stockholm, crossing over on a ferry to Turku, continuing up through Finland to Lapland, and returning south along the coast of Norway.

[5] Viking Sally was later renamed MS Estonia, which subsequently sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994, claiming 852 lives in one of the 20th century's worst maritime disasters.

[5][3] Around 01:00 on 28 July, Schelkle and Taxis fetched their sleeping bags from inside the ship, while Schmid was asleep in a public area with the backpacks and other belongings of all three.

[5] At approximately 03:45, a group of three Danish boy scouts, on their way to a jamboree in Finland, were wandering around the ship's decks and chanced upon the victims' sleeping area.

The boy scouts soon realised that both had serious head injuries and were barely conscious, and that the whole area surrounding them was covered in blood.

[5] At 05:48, the victims reached the hospital, where Schelkle was pronounced dead on arrival despite attempts by the ship's nurse to resuscitate him during the flight.

[7][5] The first police investigators and crime scene technicians arrived on the ship at 06:30, while still at sea, on the same helicopter that had transported the victims to hospital.

The young British man they had associated with was also detained, as he was found in the morning with his clothes stained in blood, though he claimed this was the result of a nose-bleed.

[5] In December 2020 a district prosecutor announced that homicide charges have been filed against a Danish man born in 1969, one of the former boy scouts who discovered the victims.

[5] In October 2021, it was reported that the accused had allegedly confessed the murder to two Finnish police investigators in 2016, providing details of the weapon used, although he subsequently recanted this under formal questioning.

[12] The alleged confession was made without a defence lawyer or witnesses being present, and was therefore ruled inadmissible by the court hearing the case.