Carmen Würth is a remarkable woman. You can not see her 81 years old. She wears her black hair tied to a braid and a light brown cape around her shoulders. Not five yards from her, her son's alleged kidnapper is sitting in hall 227 of the Gießen district court at the dock. She does not look. Nedzad A. should have been the one who gave her the worst hours of her life.
Carmen Würth seems composed. She speaks soberly and without any grudges. Instead, she says the man on the phone sounded "very calm and friendly" when he told her on June 17, 2015, that her son was in his power. She also remained friendly. "I thought that if we talk in a friendly way, it will not escalate."
On that Wednesday and the following night, she phoned the kidnapper several times. The next morning, her son Markus was released, although undercooled and soaked, but otherwise physically intact.
As a witness in court Carmen Würth tells that she had first thought the caller for a doctor. The man had to repeat three times that he kidnapped her child before it got through to her.
"I had to be the one who survived that"
Her husband, businessman and billionaire Reinhold Würth, was no match for the situation. "He was very, very excited," says his wife. She had told him that night to lie down and try to sleep. So it was Carmen Würth, who acted. "I had to be the one who survived that, I know that as the mother of three children."
Markus Würth has remained mentally retarded after an initial vaccination error. He speaks only a few words and communicates with gestures. Until his abduction, he lived for 30 years in an integrative institution in the Hessian slot, northwest of Fulda. And, as usual, he left the ceramics workshop that he was working on for lunch around twelve o'clock that Thursday. But at lunch, the then 50-year-old did not arrive. Shortly thereafter, Carmen Würth learned of the disappearance of her son.
At 3:41 pm, the hijacker called for the first time. Carmen Würth was in Greece with her husband. "He said: Mrs Würth, I have kidnapped your son," the mother recalls in court. She had told him then: "The boy is handicapped, he can not do anything to you, let him run!" He needs money because he is ill. If he did not get it, Markus would die, the kidnapper said. She remembers how puzzled she had been when the man then demanded only three million euros. "I thought there was a huge challenge coming now."
DPA
Nedzad A. in court
Carmen and Reinhold Würth flew back to Germany and organized the money. By telephone and by mail, the hijacker gave always new instructions. He demanded elaborate arrangements by Carmen Würth, the use of radios, the marking of their car with fluorescent paint, gave coordinates for a transfer point, changed location and details several times. "He made very crazy statements," she says. The money was not transferred.
Chained to a tree
Finally, the hijacker called again. By now it was Friday morning. Again he gave coordinates, this time for the place where the mother would chained her son to a tree in a forest near Würzburg. "I asked him, 'What about your money now?' Then he laughed and asked, 'Do you want to give it to me?' "She just did not want to do anything wrong, says the mother. The police then found her son at the specified location.
Markus Würth must be a very friendly, very open-minded person. Caretakers from the facility and his mother describe him in court as little suspicious. Carmen Würth also says that her son has an "incredibly good memory": "Due to his disability, he has other strengths than others, the appearance and sentences of people shape him very differently." He recognizes people again and again after years then with gestures experiences he has made with these people. "
The mother especially remembers a gesture. Markus Würth had once pointed to his feet, made a Umwickelbewegung with one hand and pretended with both hands, as he pulls something to. "He showed what happened to him," she says, "He hinted at the chain around his legs and the ties around his feet, and he looked very serious." The judge asks about the consequences of the crime for her son. He did not notice, she says. "But I think he thinks of it now and then."
Nedzad A. follows the statement of the mother motionless. He has to answer for the blackmail robbery in court. He has not commented on the allegations so far. Above all, it is a vote analysis that has brought him to the dock. Several calls of the kidnapper were recorded. The next day of the hearing, a voice expert is to be heard in court.