Without a Trace: Missing Berlin Girl Causes National Distress
By Jessica Reincke
BERLIN — Mauerweg street looks like a typical suburban neighborhood in Berlin, complete with lush, green trees and fences framing the houses. If you did not know that a girl had gone missing here, you would probably pass it by without giving it a second glance.
But there are signs — literally — that tragedy has struck this neighborhood. Across the street from where 15-year old Rebecca Reusch was last seen, a sticker has been placed across the faded street sign with the worn letters “Maurerweg,” declaring in bold, black letters: “OVERKILL.”
Rebecca Reusch was reported missing February 18th when she did not come home after school. She had spent the night before at the house of her oldest sister Jessica and her brother-in law Florian, in the same neighborhood as her parents’ house. Since then, nobody has been able to explain what happened to Rebecca and who is responsible for her disappearance.
The case of Rebecca’s disappearance is a lot like her neighborhood. It appears to be pretty standard on the surface, but the more time you spend looking at it, the weirder the details appear to be.
As of now, five months later, there is still no solid evidence that provides an explanation for what happened within the hours between when Rebecca left her sister’s house and when she was supposed to arrive home from school.
Investigators and reporters have had to piece the story together as evidence is found. But they have found little to no new evidence since the initial searches of the sister’s property.
A few days after first collecting evidence, investigators changed the case from a missing person case to a murder investigation. But there is no body. And there is no suspect in custody. As time has gone on, Rebecca’s family has fallen increasingly quiet and out of the public eye.
Senior public prosecutor press spokesperson at the office of the general prosecutor Martin Steltner says there are several factors that caused this case to become a murder investigation. One of these factors is the internet router in her sister’s home showed Rebecca was still in the house that morning. Steltner also said her behavior before going missing did not suggest she left the house since she did not take any personal belongings with her, such as her cell phone or passport.
“Then we don’t know exactly what happened. The fact is, Rebecca is missing,” said Steltner after going through the facts of Rebecca’s case.
The prime suspect in this case has been and remains Florian R., Rebecca’s brother-in law and one of the last people to see her alive, since he was alone in the house with Rebecca after her sister left for work the morning of the disappearance. Steltner said evidence the investigators found suggests Rebecca never left the house and that she was killed by a man.
Though police found Rebecca’s DNA in Florian’s car and fibers from a blanket that went missing from the house, there was not enough evidence to bring the case to trial.
“We were convinced he was the man who had killed Rebecca. There is no other explanation for her missing,” Steltner said. “But the investigation went on and we did not get any further evidence. We didn’t find the body of Rebecca, we didn’t find any evidence that could strengthen the evidence against [Florian].”
That meant that despite the police department’s belief that Florian is responsible for Rebecca’s disappearance, it could no longer hold him, and when the arrest warrant was cancelled on March 22, he was released from jail.
During his arrest and since his release Rebecca’s family has consistently defended Florian. But in the beginning of the search, they tried to have as much media attention on this case as possible. Now the family refuses to speak to the press or make any media appearances, which has led the public to question their actions.
While a case like this might fade from view after a few days in the U.S., it has captivated Germans across the nation. The case has gained so much attention from the media and the public that it has become a case nobody in German law enforcement wants to be associated with, say those close to the case.
A neighbor of Berlin filmmaker Patrick Meyers is a police officer working on the case and has explained to Meyers why people do not want to be involved. “Usually the police try to solve [cases] without too much public attention,” Meyers said.
Thousands of articles have been written about Rebecca’s disappearance and the tag #findbecci is attached to thousands of posts on Instagram.
When it comes to crime, a few key differences between Germany and the United States go toward explaining why this case has gained such a strong national following here.
Missing person cases are not very common in Germany, says criminologist Kirstin Drenkhahn of Berlin’s Free University, and when they do occur it’s most often that they are cases of an adult wanting to go “off the grid” than a child being kidnapped, which is rare.
Disappearances, for any reason, are far more frequent in the United States. In the U.S. 460,000 children are reported missing each year while for Germany the number is 100,000. This means that in the U.S. one child goes missing every 1 minute and 9 seconds while in Germany a child goes missing every 5 minutes and 15 seconds.
This helps explain why there is no AMBER alert system in Germany and instead only a missing child number which is used for all of Europe.
Germans React
Since a missing person case, especially a case like Rebecca’s, is so rare in Germany it has gained a lot of national attention and has captured the public’s imagination.
Some Berliners, such as local filmmaker Patrick Meyers, feel they know Rebecca’s story without even seeking it out themselves. Coverage of this case was so extensive that you could not avoid hearing about the case even if you tried, he said. And for Meyers, the case was especially inescapable since his neighbor is a police officer working on the Rebecca case.
Meyers described feeling a personal connection to the case. “I don’t understand how people can judge how the family reacts, because none of us have been in such a situation, I don’t know what I would do if my daughter would have been missing. I would try to get as much public as possible,” Meyers said.
So little is known about how or why Rebecca disappeared that people like Meyers and Berlin reporter Regina Köhler can’t help but sympathize, wondering how they would react if their own children went missing. “In such cases, especially [when] young women are involved I’m always thinking about if it should happen to me or to my family. I try to imagine the feelings of the family,” Köhler said.
One of the more unsettling details people have fixated on is the physical appearance of Rebecca, specifically as seen in a photo which was widely distributed when she went missing. Almost every story about Rebecca is accompanied by this photo with the story then reducing her identity to this beautiful missing girl. But Rebecca, and other young girls who go missing, are so much more than their looks. Rebecca went to church with her family, she was a fan of the Kpop group BTS, and she is remembered by those close to her as a kind girl.
The photo was released by the police department and shared on websites like Instagram to enlist the public in the search, but it has been heavily edited with a beauty filter and looks nothing like the 15-year old girl.
Social media has a big role in creating interest in Rebecca’s story, both with the wide distribution of this photo and her family’s internet presence.
The family’s reaction has raised some eyebrows right from the start.
While some behavior, like wanting as much media attention as possible in order to get Rebecca’s story out, can be explained by the rarity of the situation, other actions seem too odd to ignore.
Observers have questioned why, despite the investigator’s and public’s suspicion of Florian, the family has continued to stand by him and even asserts that Rebecca is not dead, despite evidence collected by the police department, Rebecca leaving her belongings at home, and the DNA evidence in Florian’s car, that suggests she is.
But it was the family’s insistence on media attention at the start and then their sudden refusal to be in the public spotlight, that has raised questions among the public following the case.
Vivian Reusch, Rebecca’s older sister, was very active on social media and the rest of her family was open to doing interviews through print and television at the beginning of this case. Then, recently, without a warning they vanished from the spotlight and refused to speak to journalists about the case.
Berliner Morgenpost’s crime reporter Alexander Dinger was one of the people who was able to speak to Rebecca’s father before the family bowed out of the public eye. “After a while he refused to speak to local media, they were only talking to yellow press which was strange for me as a local reporter,” Dinger recounted.
He says it’s also strange that Vivien posts on her Instagram account, with a large following, about wanting to find her sister and criticizes the media for not writing about it but then refuses to speak to reporters when they ask serious questions in an effort to share Rebecca’s story.
“It’s a weird situation,” Dinger said.
What Now?
The big question now on everyone’s mind is what comes next for Rebecca’s investigation, now that it has hit a dead end. But the prosecutor’s office still holds out hope of finding the truth.
“It’s much too early to talk of the Rebecca case as a cold case. It’s much too early,” spokesman Stelter insisted. He went on to say that the family’s behavior is “very, very strange” and so investigators cannot give up.
Stelter also confirmed that despite brother-in-law Florian’s release, he is still considered a suspect. “For us there is no other version, we have no other hints for another happening. That’s what most likely happened,” insisted Steltner.
Steltner admitted that other theories have been suggested, such as a social media friend who had contacted Rebecca prior to that date and perhaps could be involved in her disappearance. But investigators have exhausted all other leads and explanations. For them Florian is the only explanation that is still possible/plausible. All the public can do now is wait and look out for any other signs.
Jessica Reincke is an aspiring crime reporter who recently got her bachelor’s degree with a double major in English and Psychology and a certificate in Journalism.
