Volume 19 · Chapter 5
The Limburg Schoolgirl Murders
Lutz Kecke, Monika Kecke
Victims: Jasmin G · Yvonne H
Case at a glance
- When
- October 9, 1994
- Where
- Elz, near Limburg an der Lahn, Hesse, Germany; the bodies were found near Hüttenberg-Volpertshausen
- Perpetrator
- A married couple, named in German reporting only as Lutz K. and Monika K.
- Victims
- Jasmin G, Yvonne H
- Outcome
- Both were convicted at the Limburg regional court on March 26, 2003; she received a life sentence, he received fifteen years followed by indefinite psychiatric confinement
The case
Jasmin G. and Yvonne H. were sixteen, close friends, and out for the night near Limburg in central Germany. In the early hours of October 9, 1994, they left the Anyway discotheque in the neighboring town of Elz and looked for a way home. A middle-aged couple pulled up, the woman offered them a lift home, and the girls took it.
The couple drove them to their house in the Westerwald, kept them unconscious with repeated doses of chloroform, and abused and tortured them for hours. Both girls died of chloroform poisoning. Their bodies were left in woodland near Hüttenberg-Volpertshausen and found on October 11. Investigators kept a sock recovered from the scene, and years later the DNA on it became usable. In 2001 police ran a mass screening of more than a thousand local men, and one sample matched a bricklayer in his forties.
He was arrested on September 18, 2001, confessed, and named his wife as the other participant. The regional court in Limburg convicted both of them on March 26, 2003. She was given a life sentence. He was found to have diminished responsibility and received fifteen years followed by indefinite confinement in a psychiatric hospital. That prison term ended in 2018, and he was moved to the hospital rather than released. German reporting identifies the pair only as Lutz K. and Monika K.
Read the full story
This case is told in full in True Crime Case Histories, Volume 19 by Jason Neal.
Get Volume 19 on AmazonCase photographs
5 photos
Where it happened
Why this case
“Two teenagers accepted a ride from a couple who looked like somebody’s parents, and that is the whole hinge of the case. The part worth sitting with is the sock. One piece of cloth held evidence no laboratory in 1994 could read, and seven years later it named the man who left it there.”
— Jason Neal, author of True Crime Case Histories
