After he finished school he refused to pursue an officer’s career track in the National People’s Army and was consequently denied the right to study at university, ending his dream of becoming an actor or a pilot.

[1] Gueffroy and Gaudian based their decision to try to flee over the wall on mistaken beliefs that the Schießbefehl, the standing order to shoot anyone who attempted to cross the wall, had been lifted (it had not), and that the Swedish prime minister Ingvar Carlsson was to pay a state visit to East Berlin (he had already left when they attempted their escape).

Gaudian, badly but not fatally injured, was arrested and was sentenced on 24 May 1989 to imprisonment of three years by the Pankow district court for attempted illegal border-crossing of the first degree ("versuchten ungesetzlichen Grenzübertritts im schweren Fall").

Winfried Freudenberg died in the crash of an improvised balloon aircraft by which he crossed the border into West Berlin on 8 March 1989.

As compensation for Karin Gueffroy's loss, the East German government allowed her to go to West Berlin and visit Chris's grave in Baumschulenweg weekly, with the condition that she would not speak to Western media about the incident.

The fourth former border guard, Ingo Heinrich (now an electronic engineer), who was responsible for the mortal shot in the heart, was at first sentenced to three and a half years of jail.

[1][8] In 2000, two SED functionaries, Siegfried Lorenz and Hans-Joachim Böhme, were tried for the death of Gueffroy and two other young men, but acquitted as the judge could find no evidence that they might have been able to lift the shoot-to-kill order.