[ad_1]
It took 146 long days for the handcuffs to click and for the quadruple killer Thomas Nick (37) to get behind bars. Five years have passed since the cruel act of Rupperswil AG kept Switzerland on hold. It was the largest criminal case in years, one of the largest prosecution actions in Switzerland, which fortunately succeeded because Nick apparently wanted to attack again: when he was arrested, he had tools to threaten and tie people up.
But how did investigators find out about him? Although he left DNA and fingerprints at the crime scene, they did not result in a hit in any directory. Police also conducted an expensive antenna scan to determine which cell phones were active at the time of the crime. Since there is a highway and a railway line nearby, the special commission received cell phone numbers of around 30,000 people whose devices had been connected to the surrounding antennas in the hours around the crime.
The indicator was not used
After Nick’s arrest, the new search method was hailed as a breakthrough. But now the “Aargauer Zeitung” reveals: The method cost more than 800,000 francs, but it was useless. Because they provided numbers, almost all Rupperswil residents who lived nearby, but there is no evidence of the perpetrator.
The killer’s cell phone number was on the long list, but investigators had to find it another way. Only then could they cross-match the list. However, this indicator was not used in the process.
“The search for antennas is usually useless”
As the newspaper continues, the exact method, the decisive approach, in which Nick was convicted, remains a secret. The killer lived only a few streets away, did he behave conspicuously when the police questioned neighbors? A hundred people did classic police work after the bloody act, searching the area and ringing the bells of all the surrounding houses.
The researchers do not want the decisive method not to be made public, lest it lose the surprise effect, as the “Aargauer Zeitung” reports. It has not been officially confirmed that the search for the antenna was of no use. Prosecutor Barbara Loppacher simply tells the newspaper: “Searching for the antenna alone is usually not enough to solve serious crimes.” (neo)
