It all started a cold morning of February 1, 1965. The marine bree small inert body. It was a child of just three years. His hair, gold as wheat, and his features, markedly Nordic, betrayed their foreign origin. But who was that little angel fallen in the waters of the Atlantic, like a soul that had precipitated from Caronte’s boat while crossing the Estigia lagoon?
Since the finding coincided with the scale in the port of two English transatlantics, the Windsor Castle and the Capetown Castle, which sailed at noon, emerged the hypothesis that it had fallen into the water from one of them without anyone warning it. However, that theory was discarded that same day, when an on -board review confirmed that no passenger was missing.
But the next day, when the edict of the Marine Court informing of the macabre finding was published in the press, the child’s photography caught the attention of the waitresses of the Ocean hotel, a modest second category establishment located in the corner of Gomera and Gomera streets Sagasta, in front of Las Canteras Beach. In that building, today turned into apartments, a child was staying of the same age with his parents.
Police confirmed that the drowned was, in effect, Klaus Dieter, son of Manfred Fitzka, 25, and his wife Ottillie, 23both of German nationality. The family had arrived on the island on January 18 to enjoy a two -week stay and their belongings remained intact in the room, as if at any time they were to return, although they had not done so since January 31.
The questions soon accumulate. Where were Klaus’s parents? Several witnesses claimed to have seen the family in different parts of the island, walking along the beach, touring the dock in a recreation boat or attending one of the bullfights that were then held in the capital. The last person to see them alive was a taxi driver who took them to the dock the afternoon of January 31, who noticed a detail that was recorded in his memory: while the woman and the child remained calm, Manfred seemed restless, as if Something will worry.
It was also learned that that night they had rented a recreation boat to go out in an open sea. The walk was planned to last two and a half hours, but the bad weather forced them to return before planned. Manfred, annoyed by the interruption, insisted that they reimburse part of the money.
The mystery intensified on February 7, when The sea returned another corpse. It was Ottillie. His body appeared floating beyond the dike, carrying with them new unknowns that darkened even more the case. The autopsy revealed that he had also died drowned, but the most disturbing were the bruises that marked his face: a blow to the lip, another in the right eye. An accident? A struggle? Soon a first hypothesis arose, that night, the last of his stay on the island, the family would have gone to the spring to walk with the child and enjoy the panoramic view of the city. They sat in the breakwater, and at some point, the mother or father placed the child in the curb, without noticing that there was a fat spot. Hence your pants presented oil remains at buttocks. Perhaps, the boy slipped and fell into the water, and his parents threw themselves behind him in a desperate attempt to save him, just to end drowning. But if everything was a tragic accident, why did Ottillie present signs of violence? And where was Manfred?
The answer came days later, when the sea returned its body further, in the missing Playa de Lugo. But unlike the previous ones, Manfred had not died drowned. A shot in the neck transformed the tragedy into crime.
Following that, theories multiplied. Could he have committed suicide after throwing his wife and son into the sea? That would explain the samples of violence in Ottillie’s face, but something did not fit: the couple had been seen in a party room several nights, always together, affectionate, lavishing attention; In the hotel nobody heard them argue; And, above all, who suicide hitting a shot in the neck? Shooting on the back of the neck is extremely difficult, both because of the complexity of pointing precisely and for the risk that the bullet does not cause immediate death. For this reason, most suicides with firearms occur by shots in the temple or inside the mouth, areas that ensure rapid and snapshot death.
Likewise, the possibility that the family had been the victim of a robbery was unlikely. In the mid -sixties Gran Canaria was a place too quiet for a crime of that magnitude, but the mystery demanded answers. The Spanish police, the German and the Interpol linked forces while the case acquired international thriller dyes.
The press did not take long to turn, spreading theories and details that made it the great milestone of the black chronicle of that new year. How was it possible for the whole family to go to the dike in the middle of winter? And the most disturbing: Manfred and Ottilie’s bodies appeared in accessible areas only by sea. How did they get there? Each new revelation, far from clarifying the facts, added more questions.
When he found out that Manfred and his family had East Germany fled And they resided near Stuttgart, the suspicions immediately pointed to the dreaded Stasi. No one ignored that the long shadow of the intelligence services of the extinct German democratic republic reached deserters and dissidents regardless of how far they would flee. That decade when the tensions of the cold war between both blocks marked international politics, there was talk of espionage, undercover executions, forced disappearances … Everything fit, but nothing could be tested.
Another theory, more prosaic but equally disturbing, pointed to the racketeering of Western Germany. Manfred had a difficult living standard of justifying with his job as a turner: he had two cars, one of them a high -end sport, and frequently traveled through Europe with his wife and son, despite taking two years unemployed. In addition, before leaving for Gran Canaria, he assured his father -in -law that he would return with a large sum of money, although he never explained how he planned to obtain it.
To this we had to add that the same day the family had to return to Germany, VARIOUS GOLDEN LOGOTES They disappeared from one of the cabins of the British cruise Capetown Castle, docked in the port on its route from South Africa to Southampton. Police soon linked the robbery of two Germanic citizens, and several witnesses claimed to have seen two boats sailing from the dock at an alarming speed.
The case became an irresoluble puzzle. Was it an expanded suicide, an execution for high treason, an adjustment of accounts for a badly planned robbery or something even more sinister? What really happened that fateful night of January 31, 1965 at the dock? Sixty years later, the unknowns remain submerged in the dark waters of history, waiting for answers that may never come out.
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(tagstotranslate) Mystery
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