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Woman killed in sadomasochistic game near Potsdam

A dead woman found in a motel room near Potsdam on Monday is thought to have died in a bizarre sadomasochistic sex game, German daily Bild reported on Wednesday.

Published: 30 July 2008 14:10 CEST

Police traced the mobile phone of her 37-year-old scientist lover Michael F. and found him in the woods outside of town as he was contemplating suicide, the public prosecutor’s office confirmed on Wednesday. He told police she had died accidentally.

Anja P., 20, had met with him at the motel in Beelitz-Heilstätten to model for fetish photos over the weekend, Bild reported.

According to Bild, the young woman was found bound and gagged, but German news agency DPA reports that a Potsdam public prosecutor’s office spokeswoman denied this on Wednesday afternoon.

The scientist from Mainz who is a project leader at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum booked a room at the motel on Thursday. The lodgings were created from what was once a lung sanitarium and would be “the perfect backdrop for morbid and bizarre film shoots,” Bild reported.

The two were apparently participating in a photo shoot that involved more than 30 models and hobby photographers.

The scene of her death in the two-room suite revealed spots of blood on the bedding, and wax droplets on the hardwood floors from a black candle that had burned down.

The pair were last seen in a nearby restaurant on Saturday afternoon. Some guests told the paper they remember the woman from Teltow-Fläming was wearing fishnet stockings as she dined on crepes with chanterelle mushrooms.

The Potsdam public prosecutor’s office said Michael F. is now suspected of manslaughter.

An autopsy has not revealed the cause of death and court doctors are waiting on toxicology reports to see if she was under the influence of drugs at the time of her death, the paper reported.

Scholz says attacks on deputies 'threaten' democracy

Scholz denounced the attack as a “threat” to democracy and the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell also sounded the alarm.

Police said four unknown attackers beat up Matthias Ecke, an MEP for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), as he put up EU election posters in the eastern city of Dresden on Friday night.

Ecke, 41, was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said. Police confirmed he needed hospital treatment.

“Democracy is threatened by this kind of act,” Scholz told a congress of European socialist parties in Berlin, saying such attacks result from “discourse, the atmosphere created from pitting people against each other”.

“We must never accept such acts of violence… we must oppose it together.”

Borrell, posting on X, formerly Twitter, also condemned the attack.

“We’re witnessing unacceptable episodes of harassment against political representatives and growing far-right extremism that reminds us of dark times of the past,” he wrote.

“It cannot be tolerated nor underestimated. We must all defend democracy.”

The investigation is being led by the state protection services, highlighting the political link suspected by police.

“If an attack with a political motive… is confirmed just a few weeks from the European elections, this serious act of violence would also be a serious act against democracy,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

This would be “a new dimension of anti-democratic violence”, she added.

Series of attacks

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s EU election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police added that a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had earlier been “punched” and “kicked” in the same Dresden street. The same attackers were suspected.

Faeser said “extremists and populists are stirring up a climate of increasing violence”.

The SPD highlighted the role of the far-right “AfD party and other right-wing extremists” in increased tensions.

“Their supporters are now completely uninhibited and clearly view us democrats as game,” said Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, regional SPD leaders.

Armin Schuster, interior minister in Saxony, where an important regional vote is due to be held in September, said 112 acts of political violence linked to the elections have been recorded there since the beginning of the year.

Of that number, 30 were directed against people holding political office of one kind or another.

“What is really worrying is the intensity with which these attacks are currently increasing,” he said on Saturday.

On Thursday two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and one was hit in the face, police said.

Last Saturday, dozens of demonstrators surrounded parliament deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt, also a Greens lawmaker, in her car in eastern Germany. Police reinforcements had to clear a route for her to get away.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

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