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The blackout held.
What would be unimaginable today, succeeded in the spring of 1996: Although only a few, soon dozen and finally hundreds of professional journalists in Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt and elsewhere knew that the multimillionaire and patron Jan Philipp Reemtsma was in the power of criminals who were extorting ransom wanted, not a word about it made it public.
It was not reported until the then 43-year-old hostage was released on the night of April 27, 1996 after paying DM 30 million.
Today the “news” would surely have been tweeted immediately or “shared” on a “social” network - no matter what that might have meant for the abductee.
One need not consider this development to be advantageous.
Jan Philipp Reemtsma in 2000 at the Hamburg Regional Court
Source: picture-alliance / dpa
The drama began on the evening of March 25, 1996. Reemtsma, who was one of the wealthiest Germans by selling the shares he had inherited in the cigarette company of the same name in 1990 and who supported diverse culture and science with his money, was on his way across his property on Monday to the small “workhouse” located separately.
But on the way there, two masked men overwhelmed him.
With a broken nose, handcuffed and blindfolded, he was forced to lie down in the trunk of a car.
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At the scene of the crime, the blackmailers left a letter wrapped in plastic, weighted down with a sharp hand grenade.
They demanded a ransom of 20 million marks and threatened to kill their hostage if the press or the police were to be involved.
A sign of life from the victim came in the mail on Wednesday morning.
A Polaroid photo showing the hostage and a hooded kidnapper with a Kalashnikov at the ready.
In the picture, Jan Philipp Reemtsma was holding a current issue of the "Bild" newspaper in his hand - the headline "Look here, they are happy" about Gerhard Schröder and his fourth wife Doris Köpf.
Reemtsma was held prisoner for five weeks in the basement of this house near Bremen
Source: picture-alliance / dpa
Reemtsma's wife was, of course, willing to pay, but she still got the police involved.
Several donations of money by a family friend, a well-known lawyer, were unsuccessful.
Instead, they increased the claim by 50 percent to 30 million.
In the early morning of April 25, the money was finally handed over near Krefeld - the perpetrators were able to disappear with 15 million DM and 12.5 million Swiss francs in cash.
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Jan Philipp Reemtsma was released late in the evening of the following day, after 33 days in a cellar dungeon in a house near Bremen.
Only now did the broadcasters and newspapers report.
Without the blackout, the agony for the victim would probably have been much longer - with unforeseeable consequences.
Reemtsma dealt with the borderline experience of kidnapping as it is his way - through a book.
In 1997 “Im Keller” was released.
In it he described how he directly or indirectly defended himself against the kidnappers.
During the entire time he kept himself physically and mentally fit - as far as possible - with iron discipline.
He memorized every detail of his dungeon and the perpetrators.
His precise memories later helped solve the crime.
Thomas Drach, here on wanted photos from 1996
Source: picture-alliance / dpa
The leader of the gang of four was a habitual criminal named Thomas Drach.
He had already been imprisoned for several years after two violent attacks in 1979 and 1981.
Almost exactly two years after Reemtsma's kidnapping, Drach was arrested on March 28, 1998 in Buenos Aires and transferred to the Federal Republic in the summer of 2000.
In 2001 the Hamburg Regional Court sentenced him to fourteen and a half years in prison - that was a symbolic half year below the maximum possible sentence.
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On the one hand, this was due to the conditions that were actually harsh by German standards during the two and a quarter years of extradition detention in Argentina, which had a mitigating effect.
On the other hand, on his emphatically cynical demeanor towards the victim and joint plaintiff.
Drach said, with a grotesque distortion of the facts: "The fact that Mr Reemtsma is sitting here so unscathed today is solely thanks to the level-headed perpetrators."
A Spanish police officer examines banknotes and documents in Murcia.
The money was seized from an accomplice in the kidnapping
Source: picture-alliance / dpa
After Drach had received a “lookup” of 15 months in a letter for attempting to instigate a robbery, he was released on October 21, 2013 - just eight weeks before the calculated end of his cumulative prison sentences.
He then lived in Ibiza.
He had used part of the ransom, and part of it was discovered in various depots.
Drach apparently remained a criminal: on February 23, 2021, he was arrested in Amsterdam because he and his accomplices are said to have robbed a money transporter near Cologne / Bonn Airport in March 2019.
He is also said to have committed two similar attacks in Cologne-Godorf in March 2018 and in Frankfurt-Nieder-Eschbach in November 2019.
Since two guards were seriously injured in the process, the charge this time could be attempted murder, the maximum sentence being what is known as life imprisonment, which usually means at least 17.5 years.
Should Drach be convicted for this, the 1961 born would not be released until his mid or late 70s.
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