The Perfect Murder

Maria Baumer was 26, a recent geoecology graduate from the Regensburg district of Bavaria and just elected to lead the state’s Catholic rural youth association. She was engaged to Christian F., a psychiatric nurse, and about 250 wedding invitations were addressed and waiting to go out. She disappeared on the night of May 25, 2012, after a family gathering. Her fiancé told police she had left of her own accord.

He kept that story going in public. In October 2012 he appeared on the German television program Aktenzeichen XY ungelöst, holding her phone and engagement ring and appealing for help, while privately pursuing another woman. On September 8, 2013, two mushroom foragers in the Kreuther Forst near Bernhardswald found her remains. They had been buried under quicklime and anhydrite binder to destroy them. He was arrested, then released that November for lack of evidence.

Newer forensic work closed the gap. Toxicology found tramadol and lorazepam in her remains, drugs the court concluded he had hidden in a cup of cocoa, while hair from her bathroom showed no trace of any such medication. He was arrested again in December 2019. On October 6, 2020, the Regensburg regional court convicted him of murder, imposed a life sentence and found particular gravity of guilt, which makes release after fifteen years unlikely. The Federal Court of Justice rejected his appeal in June 2021.