Sometimes real life writes stories that are scarier than any thriller. This is also the case with this true crime, which caused an unforgettable goosebumps moment on live TV: A real murderer was a guest on the ZDF show Aktenzeichen XY … unsolved and duped the whole of Germany.
With file number XY he presented himself as an innocent lamb: the whole of Germany believed these bold lies
The year is 2012. 26-year-old Maria Baumer from Regensburg disappears without a trace while visiting her fiancé. When he returned from jogging, his fiancée was simply gone. Maria Baumer’s family is completely desperate and is doing everything they can to find out more about the whereabouts of the disappeared. The fiancé is also worried because The young couple was actually supposed to get married in just a few months.
The young woman is reported missing by her twin sister, but she remains as if swallowed by the earth. In October 2012, Maria’s sister made the decision together with her fiancé to appear at file number XY to draw public attention to the mysterious disappearance.
In the TV studio, the fiancé presents himself as a broken man: “You can’t put it into words. It was bad in the first few weeks when you didn’t know anything.” According to the man in the studio, the desperation has become greater with each passing week.
Particularly bold: For the show he is filmed praying for his fiancée in church: “I try to send her strength through wishes or prayers. Or send a wish that she comes forward.” Nobody in the studio had any idea that Maria was long dead at this point –
and her own murderer pretends to be an innocent lamb.
Pure goosebumps: The real perpetrator sat in the ZDF studio and deceived everyone
The young woman remained missing for a year, then the grisly discovery occurred: mushroom pickers found the remains of the missing woman in a remote forest. It quickly becomes clear who is said to have committed the crime: Maria Baumer’s fiancé. Search queries were found on the young man’s computer that clearly showed that he was over “the perfect murder” have researched. In 2020, the fiancé was ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment; It was clearly proven in court that he committed the cold-blooded act.
File number moderator Rudi Cerne was shocked that that he had a real murderer as a guest in the studio: “I can tell you that in retrospect the whole situation obviously got under my skin. I never would have thought it possible that it was all a blatant lie.”
But a ray of hope should calm him down. Because that Footage from the ZDF show was used in court against the perpetrator as Cerne revealed in the primsa podcast:
The court reporter told me that A murmur of incomprehension went through the crowd is when this video was shown.
ZDFinfo analyzed the scandalous case here:
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File number XY: This is how you can watch the show for free
True crime reporting has been booming in recent years. File number XY has been around for much longer than the true crime trend. The show has been on TV since 1967. The next episode will be broadcast on Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025 at 8:15 p.m. on ZDF. Older episodes can be streamed for free in the ZDFmediathek.