Exactly 30 years ago, a hostage drama took place in the Dachau hinterland, in which a crook kept a family under his control for 17 hours.
The father of this family was a branch manager of a bank that the freezing bandit ended up robbing.
With high prey he disappeared into the fog.
And never reappeared.
Großberghofen
- For a long time the robber spied on the daily rhythm of the Loderers. On the afternoon of November 28, 1991, he strikes. With a crowbar, he levered open a cellar window in the family's single-family home in Großberghofen (Dachau district). Then he waits in the house. His plan is simple: grab the head of the Odelzhaus branch of the Volksbank, Leonhard Loderer, take him to the bank, clear the safe and off to the center.
At 4 p.m. his plan was thwarted. At the moment when the branch manager's son is standing in the front door. The then 21-year-old law student comes home early because his lecture has been canceled. But the burglar remains freezing. At gunpoint, the student is forced to stand still. The robber wraps him from head to toe with black tape and lays him on the ground.
It is the beginning of what is probably the most unusual crime in the history of the Dachau region.
The hostage situation lasted 17 hours.
The robber brings no fewer than seven people into his power.
One of the hostages is Gertraud Loderer, the branch manager's wife.
Even today, 30 years after the attack, she can still see the pictures.
The revolver with the ivory-colored barrel that kept pointing at her.
The Robber's Giant Black Bag.
His balaclava with the big eye holes.
His calm, haunted way of speaking.
“If you cooperate, nothing happens, he kept saying,” remembers the then 44-year-old.
And: "I need the money!" "Everything," she adds, "is still deep in my bones today."
Raid in Großberghofen: The gangster takes the whole family hostage
At 7.15 p.m. on November 28, 1991, Leonhard Loderer, then 52, came home from work - and looked into the muzzle of a gun. The bandit asks him to take him back to Odelzhausen, to the safe. But that is not possible. The newly renovated branch now has a time mechanism. Loderer implies that he will not be able to open the counter and safe again until the next morning. But the man in the balaclava keeps his nerve. He "packs" Loderer like his son before. Then he waits for Gertraud Loderer to return.
At around 10 p.m., the dance teacher returns home to Großberghofen from a further training course in Munich. She too is caught immediately and a large towel thrown over her head. “I'm not allowed to look at him, he said to me,” the 74-year-old recalls. And in fact Gertraud Loderer never gets to see the robber's face. Just his shape. She values him around 30. Maybe 1.74 meters tall. He wears brown cowboy boots with black jacket and trousers. What preoccupies her to this day: "He spoke Bavarian dialect like the people here." Was the man from the area?
At around 11 p.m. the crook shipped the Loderers up to the bedroom. It is clear to everyone: He is waiting for the next morning. Only the candles on the Advent wreath light up the room. He quickly gets something to drink and magazines. Then he locks up and sits in front of the door. Nobody thinks about sleeping behind the bedroom door. “Let’s be happy and cheerful” - Gertraud Loderer discovered the text of the cheerful St. Nicholas song in one of the newspapers. “I've been praying this up and down for hours.” At 3:30 am she is suddenly interrupted - by the barrel of the revolver. “We have to go to the bank,” says the robber. But first he asks for coffee. Gertraud Loderer cooks some. After carefully washing the cup and placing it in the sink, he pushes Leonhard and his son, both handcuffed,in the back seat of Gertraud Loderer's white Opel Kadett. She herself is pushed into the driver's seat. The robber sits down next to her. His gun pointed at the driver. "Drive smartly now," he said, "remembers the 74-year-old. Then the car glides towards Odelzhausen at night and in thick fog.
Hostage drama in Großberghofen: the perpetrator disappears with 270,000 marks
A little later, the hostage-taker directs the car 150 meters from the bank to the side of the road. “The lights were already on in the houses around us. I walked very slowly and hoped that someone would see us, ”said Gertraud Loderer. But no one takes any notice of the four people moving towards the financial institution. In the back of the Volksbank they wait until it is 7 a.m., the safe can be opened and cleared out at lightning speed. But at seven o'clock the plan is history. Exactly at this point in time, the cleaning lady, her husband and two bank employees enter the counter. The hostage-taker approaches the quartet with the revolver in his hand and doesn't let himself be disturbed even when he is grumbled at by the cleaning woman's husband: “A bank robbery is not worth it, you will be locked up!"Gertraud Loderer will never forget how the villain said to her husband:" Mr. Loderer, take care of the rest! "
Finally, the hostage-taker and his meanwhile seven prisoners end up in the vault below, where the man in the cowboy boots helps himself.
270,000 marks in banknotes disappear into his huge pocket.
At 9.15 a.m. the robber also disappears - after locking his hostages in the anteroom to the safe.
He rushes off in the Loderer's Opel.
At around 10 a.m. on Friday, November 29, 1991, the prisoners were released.
Someone heard her knock.
The police are notified.
Two days later, a rider discovered the car in a depression - only 200 meters from the Loderer's house in Großberghofen.
There is still no trace of the robber and the money.
Großberghofen: The unknown perpetrator did not leave any usable traces
“I don't like going home anymore!” These were Gertraud Loderer's first thoughts after her liberation. But she still lives in the house where she was attacked. For a long time she was startled at every "creak or squeak". “Nobody offered us psychological care at the time, nobody asked us how we were.” In the meantime, she has had a burglar alarm installed. Your son lives with his wife and two children just a stone's throw away. He doesn't want to comment anymore. Leonhard Loderer retired early six years after the hostage-taking - after he was attacked two more times at the bank. He died in 2011.
“There are no contemporary witnesses either at the Fürstenfeldbruck criminal police or at the Dachau police station.
Some of the officers working at the time have already died.
A former detective, himself well over 70 years old, can remember the case, but does not want to be interviewed, "said the police headquarters of Upper Bavaria-North.
Then as now, Gertraud Loderer likes to look at "Aktenzeichen XY ... unsolved".
The hostage drama of Großberghofen never appeared on the show.
Perhaps because the robber from back then did not leave a single usable trace.
