In a program from October 1993, the ZDF program “Aktenzeichen XY… unsolved” was dedicated to the murder of nine-year-old Marijana Krajina. To this day it has not been cleared up.
In the “Aktenzeichen” edition of August 3, 2022, moderator Rudi Cerne and his team make a new attempt. The episode runs from 8.15 p.m. on ZDF and from 10 p.m. in the media library.
It is about two cases of child abuse by a perpetrator who has not yet been arrested. Case 1 concerns nine-year-old Stefanie M. (the name was changed by the police to protect personal rights). On February 6, 1992, Stefanie was on her way home at around 5:20 p.m., she had attended her cousin’s birthday party.
Stefanie and two other children walked. The children eventually separated as their houses were in different directions.
She met a man in a white van near Stefanie’s house. He managed to lure Stefanie into his car. He drove in a different direction than Stefanie wanted.
About ten hours later, Stefanie was lying unconscious near a country road (L422) in Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth, which is about 30 kilometers from Essen. Stefanie was placed there by the perpetrator or perpetrators. When she regained consciousness, she crawled to the highway. Here she was found.
Life-threatening injuries and sexual abuse were attested to Stefanie in the hospital.
Case 2: A year and a half after the abuse of Stefanie M., another girl, who was nine years old again, went missing: Marijana Krajina. She was found dead three days later, with signs of severe physical abuse on her body.
During the summer holidays of 1993, Marijana, who lives in Croatia, and her mother visited her father in Germany, who was employed as a road construction worker here.
Three weeks before her disappearance, Marijana met the later perpetrator for the first time when she was playing frisbee with a friend at the market in Altenessen.
The unknown man wanted to meet the children, but the meeting never took place.
When Marijana Krajina left her father’s home in the early evening of August 31, 1993 to visit her mother in a clothing store, she did not return home. On September 3, Marijana’s body was found in a parking lot on the B75 between Bremen and Hamburg.
Everything indicates that the perpetrator is still at large. A good DNA analysis suggests that Stefanie and Marijana were abused by the same man. The public prosecutor’s office in Essen told the Tagesspiegel. In a description published by 24rhein.de and the ZDF program it says about the wanted person:
The homicide squad of the Essen police department takes tips on 0201/829-0.