Munich’s only unsolved child murder

The only unsolved murder of a child in the Bavarian capital of Munich is that of 8-year-old Michaela Eisch. In 1985, Michaela Eisch disappeared without a trace until her body was found 29 days later. But first things first. On May 17, 1985, Michaela’s mother Helga left her apartment in the Munich district of Berg am Laim at around 5 a.m. to start her early shift at the “Zum Alpenhof” hotel in the city center. Beforehand, she took Michaela to her grandparents, who looked after her until her shift was over. Michaela played at the playground in the morning until she left between 10:30 a.m. and 12 noon. The day before, she had discussed with her mother that she wanted to pick her up from work alone for the first time. Michaela was supposed to take the subway from Innsbrucker Ring to Munich Central Station. A 13-year-old friend accompanied Michaela to the Michaelihof subway station. But Michaela never arrived at her mother’s workplace, who had spoken to her on the phone at 10:20 a.m. and said, “I’ll be there soon!” When Michaela did not show up at her mother’s workplace as agreed and her parents and acquaintances had not heard from Michaela, her mother reported her daughter missing to the police. The police immediately launched a large-scale search operation. But it was not until 29 days later, on June 14, 1985, that Michaela was found dead under the Braunauer railway bridge. Witnesses had seen her not far from where she was found on the day of her disappearance at around 5 p.m. at the Braunauer railway bridge kiosk with a 1.85-meter-tall, slim man with dark blond hair. Investigators assumed that this man was Michaela’s murderer, who had sexually abused her and then strangled her with her own panties. Since the mysterious man and Michaela appeared to be familiar with each other, according to eyewitnesses, Michaela’s murderer may have been an acquaintance of her mother Helga, who was looking for a partner. Despite intensive investigations, the police were completely in the dark as to who had abused and killed Michaela. Years passed until, in 2011, the homicide division was able to identify a DNA trace of the perpetrator using new tests, whereupon 1,750 men from Munich were asked to provide a saliva sample, which 1,173 did voluntarily. In addition, 1,000 other men who no longer lived in the city were asked to do so. However, the mass testing proved inconclusive. Even the hoped-for clues from the repeated coverage of the murder case on the ZDF program “Aktenzeichen XY … ungelöst” (File Number XY … Unsolved) did not lead to any hot leads. To this day, Michaela’s murderer has not been caught. Her mother Helga never got over the death of her daughter. A few years later, she died of a severe asthma attack at the age of only 35. She was buried in the same grave as her daughter in the Ostfriedhof cemetery in Munich. A memorial erected under the Braunauer railway bridge commemorates Michaela’s death. It is to be hoped that Munich’s only unsolved child murder will finally be solved and Michaela’s murderer will receive his just punishment.