The Dane accused of the murder of Viking Sally in 1987 Herman Himle has received a prison sentence in Denmark.
In April, the Glostrup District Court in Denmark sentenced him to prison for intentional arson, which corresponds to vandalism in the Finnish Criminal Code.
The verdict came from an explosive fire on January 27, 2023 that destroyed a luxury villa in Rødovre, near Copenhagen.
According to the judgment of the Glostrup District Court, the investigation into the cause of the fire revealed that the fire started from an explosion that occurred as a result of the ignition of at least two gas bottles and gasoline. The explosion was so powerful that it lifted the roof of the villa into the air and sent pieces of the building flying into the neighborhood.
However, the fire department managed to protect neighboring houses from the spreading fire, and no one was injured in the fire. However, the residents of the neighboring houses had to be evacuated on the night of the fire.
Worked as a repairman
Before the fire, Himle had worked as a repairman at the construction site of the villa. In the hearing of the district court, Himle admitted that he handled gas cylinders at the villa, but claimed that it was related to the preparations for the roof work.
However, based on the testimony of the witnesses, the court did not believe the explanation. Witnesses had seen Himle at the scene of the fire. A person who lived next door to the fire scene said that he saw Himle throwing matches on the sidewalk at the time of the fire. The matches were also connected to Himle in the forensic investigation.
Himle denied that he started the fire, but admitted that he had been there to watch the fire because he happened to be in the area at the time to meet his old friend. The matches Himle said he threw on the ground after lighting a cigarette.
However, the district court in Glostrup found, based on the evidence, that Himle had deliberately taken the gas bottles to the villa, opened their taps and started the fire. The villa was completely destroyed in the fire.
The motive for the crime was not revealed in the preliminary investigation or the trial.
Threatened criminal investigators
In the same trial, it was found that Himle was also guilty of threatening the police during the investigation and attempting to influence the witnesses’ statements.
During pre-trial detention, Himle had written two letters to the police officers investigating his crimes, in which, among other things, he said that he was a “ticking bomb” and called the policemen Gestapo pigs.
Himle sent a ten-page letter to one researcher, in which he wrote, among other things: “I don’t think you understand how sick I am” and “you are playing with a person who has a sick mind.”
Glostrup district court sentenced Himle to three and a half years in prison. Himle has announced that he will appeal the verdict to the Court of Appeal. He has been in custody since the preliminary investigation.
In Denmark, the verdict is reported for example Sjællandske Nyheder.
“I can be bad”
Based on ‘s report, 55-year-old Himle has spent more than twenty years of his life in prison.
He has threatened the authorities in the past and even used the same expressions Gestapo pigs and ticking bomb.
The last time he was sentenced to prison was in 2017, when he had threatened his ex-wife. During the pretrial detention for the crime in question, he also threatened the police and the prosecutor.
In the threatening messages he sent to his ex-wife, Himle claimed to have committed a murder on a Finnish ship, for which he had not been caught.
“I know how to be evil because I have killed twice before,” Himle wrote in one of his messages.
“I can be proud that I survived the murder. I am one of the few who have done the unsolvable,” he wrote in another.
At the same time as the threatening messages, the investigation team of the Southwest Finland police in Turku had reopened the murder investigation in the unsolved Viking Sally murder case.
In the morning of July 28, 1987, an unknown assailant had hit the German backpackers sleeping in their sleeping bags on the Viking Sally’s helicopter deck several times in the head with a hard object. Of the victims Klaus Schelkle, 20, later died in hospital. His female friend Bettina Taxis22, suffered serious injuries but survived the attack.
In 1987, Himle had been considered a key witness in the case and a helper for the victims, as he had said that he happened upon the crime scene as one of the first witnesses.
When information about the messaging came to the attention of the Turku police, Himle became the main suspect in the investigation. In the preliminary investigation, Himle indirectly confessed to the murder during the official interrogation, but later retracted his statement.
He was charged with murder and attempted murder. However, the district court of Varsinais-Suomen banned the use of the interrogation protocols during the trial in the spring of 2021, because Himle did not have a legal assistant present during the interrogations.
In the trial, the prosecutors would have liked to hear Taxis as an interested party. However, he still suffers from such intense fear states that he was unable to participate in the trial.
In the summer of 2021, the district court dismissed the charges against Himle. The verdict remained final.