Isabella Mueller (crime writer) 
A mysterious murder of a girl aged just 16 shook the whole of Germany over 100 years ago. On 14 May 1908, a forest worker found the body of a young girl in the Aachen Forest, in some bushes not far from the Siegel forester’s lodge; her skull had been smashed beyond recognition. Next to her lay a stone with hair and blood stuck to it. This had apparently been the murder weapon. The post-mortem revealed that the girl had been killed by multiple blows to the head and face with the stone. The body had already been lying in the forest for 10 to 14 days. A sexual offence could be ruled out. The body was identified as that of 16-year-old Laura Klinkenberg on the basis of her jewellery and a black mole on her finger. She was the youngest daughter of Johann J. Klinkenberg and his wife Theresia Vohs, who had died in 1904. Following the early death of her parents, Laura lived with her two brothers and her sister Rosa on the Crapoel estate in Walhorn, which had formerly been run by her father. Laura had been receiving treatment from a dentist in Aachen for some time. On 30 April 1908, she had another dental appointment, which is why she set off for Aachen that afternoon. Shortly after 8 pm, Laura was last seen alive by witnesses as she alighted from the Kleinbein tram at the Kettenis stop, coming from Aachen, to walk home through the Walhorn fields towards the Krapoler Wäldchen, where she encountered her murderer. As 50 marks were missing, the police assumed it was a robbery-murder. The public prosecutor’s office offered a reward of 1,000 marks, which was later increased to 3,000 marks for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrator. However, there were no leads whatsoever regarding Laura’s murderer until, eight months later, a prisoner at the detention centre in Haarlem, in the Dutch province of North Holland, confessed to the murder completely out of the blue. This man was August Cherié, who described the murder in great detail, which is why the police believed him to be Laura’s murderer. However, before he could be extradited to Aachen, he died in April 1910 in Haarlem prison. Today, a memorial stone in the Aachen Forest, where she was once brutally murdered, commemorates Laura Klinkenberg. It was erected on 7 April 2013 with the inscription: ‘Pray for the soul of Laura Klinkenberg from Walhorn, aged 16, who was found murdered here on 14 May 1908’.
