Within the space of a few weeks, two couples were found dead in the Göhrde State Forest, deemed by police to have been victims of the same killer.

The murders were widely reported on in the German press, and the area where they took place was largely avoided by members of the public for nearly thirty years.

[citation needed] There was an unusual heatwave in the summer of 1989 in Lower Saxony, and this meant the crime scenes were mostly undisturbed by weather conditions.

The offender also stole the victims' picnic basket and took their car keys, using them to access their vehicle which he later abandoned 300 meters away from the train station in Winsen an der Luhe, a small town in the Hamburg region.

[4] While on their way to notify the forester, the collectors met a brown-haired, well-built man who looked about 40 years of age and was carrying a bag.

[citation needed] Due to the condition of the corpses, the exact cause of death could not be explained, although it was clear that it was not suicide or an accident.

Although both married to other people, the couple was engaged in a clandestine relationship and had come to the forest after eating lunch in nearby Bad Bevensen.

In hunting sector 138 they met the perpetrator, and it is theorised that he threatened them with a firearm before forcing them to lie face down so he could tie their hands and feet with a Leucoplast band.

[citation needed] Two weeks later, on 27 July 1989, police officers taking part in the nationwide investigation into the murder of the Reinolds discovered the bodies of Köpping and Warmbier by chance.

[citation needed] Immediately following the discovery of the first crime, the Lower Saxony police formed a special 40-member commission with the detectives from the region and Lüneberg.

[citation needed] As a result of further investigations by police profilers, the perpetrator was characterized as "brutal, aggressive, emotionally cold, a loner, sexually disturbed, mentally ill, choleric, overcorrect" and "introverted".

[citation needed] The examinations of a number of persons, for example patients of closed psychiatry who were on parole at the time of the crime, as well as the guests of inns, hotels, and spas in nearby Bad Bevensen, did not provide new leads.

[citation needed] In 1993, a witness heard a man threaten his wife during a quarrel that she should not forget the Göhrde murders and that she might go the same way if she continues to cheat on him.

The first superficial review was promising, because the suspect had a firearms permit for a small caliber 5.6 mm gun, the same weapon used in the second double murder.

[citation needed] In July 2009 there was another, possibly last investigation approach: the two hairs secured from the vehicle of the Reinolds, which were neither assigned to them nor the environment.

[15] Decisive evidence for the identification of the perpetrator of the Göhrde murders emerged from the case of Birgit Meier (41 years old) from Lüneberg who disappeared without a trace in 1989, shortly after she separated from her husband.

The investigators found two small caliber rifles, a converted gas pistol, stun guns, a silencer, handcuffs, and sedatives.

[citation needed] Investigations into the Göhrde murders were resumed due to the initiative of Birgit Meier's brother Wolfgang Sielaff, the retired former chief of the State Criminal Police of Hamburg.

In 2002, following his retirement, he began his own private investigation and formed a team with the head of forensic medicine in Hamburg, Klaus Püschel, the defense lawyer Gerhard Strate, and other professionals.

[19] In 2013, during a search in a room belonging to Wichmann, Sielaff found videotapes from the Aktenzeichen XY TV episode on the Göhrde murders and newspaper clippings related to it.

[citation needed] In December 2017, 28 years after the killings, the Lower Saxony police announced that a new investigation had begun and that they considered Wichmann as the most probable culprit.

A trace of his DNA was found in one of the stolen victims' vehicles and according to the police, this was a separate lead from the hair that had been examined years before.

According to Sielaff's findings, there were 21 unsolved murder cases in Lüneberg and the surrounding areas which could be attributed to Wichmann by the perpetrator profile and their respective whereabouts.

After his release from prison in 1975, he spent three years in Karlsruhe, where he lived with an elderly woman whom he had met through a personal advert during his detention.

[citation needed] On 19 January 2018, following a post-mortem, it was announced by the Hannover Medical School that Birgit Meier had been shot.

As a result, analysts from the State Criminal Police Office of Lower Saxony filtered 24 unsolved cases, in particular homicides and missing persons.

[31][32] In the autumn of 2018 a suitcase appeared that had been lying in an attic in an industrial area in Lüneburg for years, containing two firearms with ammunition and a driver's license in the name of Wichmann issued in Karlsruhe in 1976.

The used car dealer had probably received this from his friend Hans Rudloff, the husband of Wichmann's widow, who died in early 2017.