On Thursday RTL is showing the thriller Kidnapped – 14 Days of Survival on TV for the first time. The case is based on true events, which occupied the German media for several months in the 1980s. Some details of the kidnapping remain open over 40 years later.
In this article we clarify the following questions:
What is Kidnapped – 14 Days of Survival about?
The life of the successful investor Jochem Erlemann (Torben Liebrecht from Yesterday We Were Children) is no longer going according to plan. In 1980 he ended up in custody on fraud charges and his assets were frozen. And just at this time, his little son Johannes (Cecilio Andresen) is kidnapped.
The kidnappers only want to release him for a horrendously high ransom. Wife and mother Gabi (Sonja Gerhardt from Ku’damm 56) stands alone in a wide area and has to move heaven and earth to get three million marks and save her child.
No exaggerations: How closely does Abducted stick to the real kidnapping case?
Johannes Erlemann, now 53, was the inspiration for the production of the film and accompanied the shoot as a consultant. Therefore, some intimate insights into family life are possible and the film was able to use the real names of the main participants. In general, the plot corresponds very closely to the traditional course of the kidnapping case.
The abduction: Johannes Erlemann fell into the hands of the kidnappers in the Forest Botanical Garden in Cologne. He remembers the moment on March 6, 1981 as follows: “As I was speeding along here, one of them ripped me off my bike. It hurt so much when he grabbed me. I was scared to death. My heart was beating like a jackhammer. They then dragged me along.”
The ransom: In the film we see how Johannes’ mother Gabi scrapes together the required 3 million marks from friends and relatives. As Spiegel reported at the time, the perpetrators were only negotiated down to this amount. They originally asked for 8 million. The Erlemann negotiators had argued with the family’s tense financial situation.
RTL
Gabi Erlemann
The money handover: The trick in handing over the money went down in criminal history. The kidnappers instructed Johannes’ mother to put the money bags in a box. Below this was a tunnel that led to the sewer system. Here the kidnappers were able to take the money in peace and escape.
The release: Johannes Erlemann also spoke to Zeit about the redeeming moment in freedom after 14 days of captivity: “They dragged me onto a dirt road. […] They began to discuss. What do we do with this? Let’s run him over! They got into the car. They stopped with the engine running, 20 meters away from me. They would run me over. I could not move. […] Then they drove away. I looked at the stars. It was the happiest moment of my life.”
According to Erlemann, the following scene in the pub, where Johannes spent part of the 600 marks that he had won playing poker with the kidnappers, also happened in the same way.
The offender: On May 8, 1981, the kidnappers were taken into custody in Hamburg. According to the Spiegel (report from 1982) there was one “A landing net left lying in the forest and converted into a gripping arm is the decisive evidence.” A total of four people were involved in the kidnapping. They received prison sentences of between three and ten years.
Open questions: The ransom money for Johannes Erlemann was never completely found
RTL
Jochem Erlemann in a private jet
As depicted in the film, a Most of the ransom money seized in gas cylinders found in the house of the kidnappers’ leader. Apparently 1.2 million of the 3 million marks ransom are missing to date. What happened to the money is not known at the time of the TV broadcast.
Another question that the RTL film pays less attention to: What was Jochem Erlemann’s role in the tangled case? Complicity was suspected during the course of the investigation and later. Erlemann was in custody during the kidnapping on suspicion of fraud, but for a different crime: 220 million marks are said to have disappeared under the businessman’s care, wrote Der Spiegel. The case made waves across Germany. Erlemann accused some of his business partners of having something to do with the kidnapping.
It is still not clear whether the two cases – financial fraud and kidnapping – are connected or the timing was purely coincidental.
Kidnapped – 14 Days of Survival runs on Thursday at 8:15 p.m. on ZDF. You can also stream the crime thriller on RTL+ at any time.