As of: February 19, 2024, 6:31 p.m
By: Martin Schullerus
Comments
Press
Split
Track north of Lochham train station: In this area, railway employees found the body of the missing 83-year-old on Thursday - five months after the missing person was reported and the public search began in September 2023. © Martin Schullerus
The body of a Graefelfingen pensioner was found five months after his disappearance.
A few hundred meters from the retirement home where he lived.
Gräfelfing
- When the 83-year-old pensioner Anton L. disappeared without a trace from the Rudolf and Maria Gunst House (RMG) retirement home in Lochham in the early afternoon of September 14, 2023, a mystery arose.
Now there is sad certainty: Anton L. is dead;
he was found.
The relatives finally have certainty and can mourn and say goodbye.
But the mystery has not become any smaller.
In all likelihood, Anton L.'s body lay undiscovered in the middle of Lochham for five months.
“An 83-year-old from Lochham has been missing since Thursday, September 14, 2023, 2:00 p.m.
He was last seen outside a retirement home in Lochham and has been missing since.
The 83-year-old is disoriented and suffers from an illness with cognitive impairments.
The old people's home and the surrounding area were already intensively searched by the police yesterday.
The 83-year-old could not be found.” With these words, the Munich police headquarters launched the public search for Anton L. on September 15, 2023, including a photo and a detailed description.
Search was carried out with great effort
What followed was no useful information from the public, but a search that was carried out with great effort by the police, family and volunteers, lasted for weeks - and was not officially stopped until a few days ago.
Since July, Anton L. had been living with his wife in the old people's and nursing home, which belongs to Rudolf and Maria Gunst-Haus gGmbH, a 100 percent subsidiary of the municipality of Gräfelfing.
Around 2 p.m. on the day of his disappearance, someone from the RMG staff probably saw Anton L., who was severely demented, on the property next door to the home and called the ward.
But by the time Anton L. could be picked up, he had disappeared - and stayed that way.
The home staff searched the entire house and the surrounding area.
The police were looking for Anton L for days with a cavalry and dog squad as well as a hundred units. The public search was taken up by print, television and radio media - all in vain.
The desperate family started their own search campaigns with leaflets and even privately organized sniffer dogs.
Starting from the nursing home, the search covered the near and distant surroundings.
Anton L. remained as if he had been swallowed up by the earth, and no one had any idea of his whereabouts.
On Monday, the police officially revoked the missing person report: On Thursday, February 15th, Deutsche Bahn employees found a body on the track bed, a few hundred meters north of the retirement home, while inspecting the route.
“During the subsequent recording by the permanent criminal service and further comparison at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, the initial suspicion that the body was that of the missing pensioner was confirmed.
An autopsy revealed no evidence of foul play,” the police said.
Everything indicates that the place where it was found was also the place of death, it said in response to Merkur's inquiry.
So this tragic case, which was as grueling for the relatives, ends as it began - with an unsolvable mystery: How could it be that Anton L. remained undiscovered for so long despite all the searches and the location in the municipality?