Presenter Sven Voss recapitulates the solving of a recent, spectacular coup in Berlin together with investigators:

Members of the Remmo clan stole a one-hundred-kilogram gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum in 2017. However, unlike in the post-war era when police officers groped in the dark for months, Berlin investigators knew within a few days who was behind the theft. Thanks to the latest forensic technology and the smooth cooperation of different departments, 300 officers finally arrested the perpetrators in a coordinated operation.

Gang leader Werner Gladow was apprehended by the East Berlin police in his parents’ apartment in Friedrichshain in June 1949. A shootout ensued, and three gunshot wounds rendered the gangster incapable of fighting, while two police officers were seriously injured.

The trial before a jury court in East Berlin was one of the most important of the post-war period. At only 19 years old, Gladow was sentenced to death, despite an expert attesting that he was still mentally in puberty. It was the first execution in the GDR on November 10, 1950, by guillotine. “Der Spiegel” wrote at the time: “Gladow let himself be caught in the wrong sector. There, the death penalty had not yet been abolished.”