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Emergency services…
Yeah, can you send an ambulance to the rue du Tilleul?
We found an individual
with his hands and feet tied. He was gagged with duct tape
and his head was smashed in.
Is the person conscious?
Yeah, so far, he is, but he's in really bad shape.
He says he was kidnapped in Germany.
He’s wanted for voluntary manslaughter.
Voluntary manslaughter?
For a while now.
The case dates back to almost thirty years ago,
when a 14-year-old French girl, Kalinka, was killed in the 1980s.
There's been an unexpected development…
A father, who fought that fight.
This is a father who never gave up fighting.
He knew where his daughter's killer lived.
And I had a plan to help him.
Straight up.
What are you gonna do?
What would you do as a father?
What are you willing to do for your child?
LINDAU GERMANY
JULY 10, 1982
It was early morning.
The red telephone rang.
I answered it.
They mentioned an "unconscious person" and gave the address.
My immediate thought was:
WALTRAUD MAYER PARAMEDIC
"Hopefully, it’s not Krombach’s home."
"He’s a doctor, why do we have to go there?"
He burst out running,
saying, "I think it’s too late."
And he took us to the room,
and there laid the girl, dead.
Kalinka. His stepdaughter.
He was both agitated and collected.
The mother, on the other hand, was crying.
She was completely devastated.
My immediate thought was that rigor mortis had already set in.
As I was walking out, I noticed
that the girl had a hypodermic needle in her arm.
I asked Krombach: "So, what did you inject?"
And he said, "Calcium." He thought calcium would help.
"She was in the sun all day."
And he was adamant
that "she died from the heat."
That’s what he said.
A tragic case.
It continued to bother me.
I wanted to know how the girl had died.
It wasn’t a natural death.
I thought something wasn't right.
On July 10th, 1982,
in the morning, her mom called me
to break the news to me that Kalinka had died.
ANDRÉ BAMBERSKI KALINKA'S FATHER
She told me Kalinka had suffered from a heatstroke.
I was absolutely devastated, I was stunned.
I arrived in Germany at night.
The next day, I drove my car to the hospital.
I saw Kalinka’s face.
Kalinka was adorable. She was…
her parents' little darling.
She was so lovely.
From an early age, she was always smiling.
Kalinka was named
after a flower
from the Masurian woods.
Also, in Polish, it’s…
it’s a word that sounds great.
What I mean is that there's… a musical quality to it.
I prayed
for her soul to be at rest.
And then I left.
The next day, at her mother's house,
I went to see Nicolas.
He was only about 11 or 12 at the time.
He's the one who told me
that they had spent the day as they usually did.
Kalinka hadn't been overly exhausted.
It was only then that I started
to have this feeling that something was not quite right.
The death of a young girl who was in perfect health, in great shape…
I didn't understand.
I tried to understand the heatstroke theory.
It was warm and sunny in Lindau, about 29 to 30 degrees C.
But,
compared to Toulouse, it wasn't very hot.
It was indeed difficult
to believe certain details.
BAMBERSKI FAMILY
Her mom suggested we bury her in Pechbusque.
I think it was on the day of the burial
that rumors began to spread
suggesting that Kalinka had died due to some type of drug.
I'm Elisabeth Aragon, André Bamberski's neighbor.
We greeted him at the funeral.
That's all we could do.
I talked about it with my neighbors who told me:
"Rumor has it that she died
of an injection
that her stepfather had given her to help her tan."
That's the explanation I was given at the time.
An intravenous injection to make her tan?
Did you find those rumors upsetting?
Yes, they were, but well,
since there had been an autopsy…
I believe it was as I was about to leave that I asked her mom
to send me a copy of the autopsy report.
Maybe a week or two later,
l kinda blew up at her.
I was mad I hadn’t received the autopsy report.
When did you start suspecting Mr. Krombach?
In early October 1982.
When I read the autopsy report…
The report I received was all in German.
So, I had it translated.
It mentioned
that 400cl of the food Kalinka had eaten in the evening
went back up from her stomach all the way to her trachea,
and then, down into her lungs. She suffocated.
Even I, who knew nothing about medicine or autopsies,
when I read it,
it was obvious to me
that Kalinka died from regurgitation
and not from a heatstroke.
But both medical examiners
refused to specify the cause of death in writing.
I wanted to clear things up with the mom.
She told me she hadn't read the autopsy report!
Why?
There were also all those anomalies.
There were sexual anomalies.
That is to say, anomalies that are obvious to most people:
a tear on the right lip of the vulva,
Failure to establish whether or not there had been
any sexual intercourse prior to her death…
To me, it was obvious. I knew it:
"This is really fishy."
I'm Alexandre Parra-Bruguière. I took up this case as a lawyer in 2010,
when Kalinka Bamberski's mom
hired me as a prosecutor.
At the funeral, she already felt that Mr. Bamberski was intent
on making her look like the accomplice in her daughter's murder.
He wanted to know what happened and she was fine with Krombach’s version.
She had no clue about medicine, she was married to a doctor.
She just took Dieter Krombach's explanations for granted.
She never suspected a criminal act.
Of course.
The police chief asked him five questions over the phone.
Mr. Krombach jotted them down and he replied in writing from his home.
BECAUSE I WAS OVERWORKED, THEY ALLOWED ME TO ANSWER IN WRITING.
They didn't even investigate!
They never even called in Mr. Krombach
for oral questioning.
He wrote, "I first prepared 250mg of Solu Decortin
to fight the state of shock."
"I also tried to perform injections into the heart."
I wanted more details about what really happened.
So, we filed an appeal
with the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Munich.
MEDICAL EXAMINER
My name is Wolfgang Eisenmenger.
At the institute in Munich,
we received a piece of skin,
identified as the injection site on the arm.
And toxicologically, we did not find any poisoning
that could be the cause of death.
What do you think of the injections
Krombach gave Kalinka to try to revive her?
250MG INJECTION
Yes, for a doctor, I must say, it’s unusual
to make assertions like these.
Dr. Krombach claimed in his hearing
that when he found the girl
in her bed, rigor mortis had set in.
Once rigor mortis has set in,
it is absolutely pointless to attempt resuscitation.
Something is wrong, this man isn't telling the truth.
But, regarding this girl’s cause of death,
it wasn't pushed any further.
It wasn't enough evidence to prove he killed her,
to prove beyond any doubt that he killed her intentionally.
It was a matter of maintaining the credibility
of the judicial expertise.
My name is Patricia Jolly, I'm a journalist.
Before Kalinka's death,
the Krombachs were a blended family
where everyone seemed to be doing great:
Kalinka Bamberski and her brother Nicolas,
and Krombach's son and daughter, Boris and Diana.
Krombach's first wife died at the age of 24.
Kalinka’s mother did not speak German,
she deeply trusted Dieter Krombach.
She was convinced he did nothing wrong.
She said he was a good father
and that she had never seen any inappropriate behavior from him
towards her daughter.
Dieter Krombach was a nice guy, he likes to laugh,
he had this zest for life,
and the German justice system didn’t take up the case.
He was this handsome doctor in a white coat…
Few people get to have discussions with doctors…
Mr. Bamberski was a chartered accountant.
He's a very serious man, a rather austere man.
He’d experienced betrayal, his wife had left him.
She divorced Mr. Bamberski.
André Bamberski likes to see things through.
Everything becomes an obsession.
Things must be done properly, everything must be neat and tidy.
He has this consistency, this tenacity… to the point of obsession.
In June 1983,
I wrote to the prosecutor
to ask him about the next steps in the investigation.
And he replied
that Kalinka had died of natural causes,
and that no further investigation was necessary.
In other words: "Move on, nothing to see here."
This was very tough on me.
I wrote a leaflet.
I printed out 5,000 copies of it.
And I went to Lindau.
My goal was to make it public.
It was the day of the beer festival.
There were a lot of people on the street:
30,000 to 50,000 people.
So, I handed out the leaflets.
I'll read you a few excerpts:
"You must know that a criminal lives in Lindau:
a medical doctor, Dr. Krombach."
"He killed my beautiful daughter Kalinka."
"Also, allusions in the medical report
suggesting a sex act
have been ignored. Why?"
"I publicly demand that justice finally be done."
I also went to the cafes' patios, to the stores,
to all the people who were there.
And Diana, Krombach’s daughter,
turned up with police officers
to arrest me.
So, I was arrested, I was taken into custody,
I was questioned. In the end, they released me.
It was a certainty that Krombach had killed Kalinka.
And it was also a certainty that I would never give up.
From the start,
since he was present at the autopsy.
That was also highly irregular!
My name is Yves Levano, I'm a lawyer in Paris.
Dieter Krombach needed a French lawyer who speaks German.
For Mr. Krombach, Mr. Bamberski is crazy.
There are no other words for it. He's crazy.
Mr. Krombach did not attend the autopsy.
He went in to identify Kalinka's corpse.
And then he left the room.
The medical examiner said:
"You can imagine we checked"
for traces of sexual violence."
"We did not find anything."
They noticed a lesion on the upper lip.
Exactly. And then,
the undertakers dressed the body, cleaned it up.
By doing that, they damaged the corpse.
In July, it was very hot, the corpse was very fragile.
It was in an advanced state of decomposition.
That’s it.
Both medical examiners
removed Kalinka's genitals in their entirety.
The anomaly here is that…
subsequently,
we have no idea…
Nowhere in the autopsy report do they mention what they did with them.
I don’t have an answer for that.
But, once again, if we are saying
"Mr. Krombach made these things disappear,"
we have to say:
"Mr. Krombach has one, two, three, four, five accomplices."
Lindau is a resort town,
a really nice town,
with a lot of tourists, a lot of them.
Krombach?
He had a nice medical practice,
it was always full.
I remained his patient
because I had no reason to leave.
I didn’t know why the girl had died.
And he was a good doctor.
He was really a good diagnostician.
And a good laugh. I've got nothing bad to say about him.
And the mother was calm and friendly.
A truly nice person, I would say.
She physically lost the presence of her child.
And she later learned that Mr. Bamberski
was suspecting… was strongly suspecting her husband,
whom she did not suspect at all,
of being his daughter's murderer,
and his ex-wife of being the accomplice.
That's what I thought, and I put it in writing:
she had either participated in the actions
that led to Kalinka's death, or…
she never considered asking herself the question
about how Kalinka had died,
or about how it happened.
-Was their divorce adversarial? -Yes.
It was a high-conflict divorce.
Due to the situation, everything that came from Mr. Bamberski
was simply dismissed.
I met Danielle in a creperie in Casablanca.
It was in '65, she was barely 20.
Dany was a pretty girl, tall, blond, and pleasant.
We got married a year later.
And a year and a half later, Kalinka was born.
When Nicolas was born, she became the big sister.
The rift began,
let’s say, early 1974.
We had German records.
We had books to learn German.
I started to suspect something.
I was the one who made the connection
between that stuff and Dr. Krombach,
our neighbor who lived three houses down the street.
She told me bluntly that he was her lover, so,
that’s when we decided
that we were moving back to France.
I thought we were having a fresh start.
For me, life resumed as normal, until a year later
when she claimed that she had found a job in Nice.
Actually, Krombach had…
moved to Toulouse.
I followed her
and I realized that…
during the week, instead of going to Nice,
she was living with him in this apartment.
I was the one who filed for divorce.
There is somehow some form
of a desire for revenge regarding all the stuff that happened in the past.
Revenge against Krombach,
and revenge against her.
That made her paranoid about everything Mr. Bamberski would say.
My name is Philippe Motta.
I’ve been a journalist in Toulouse for about 30 years.
I met André Bamberski in 1985.
I went there, wondering
what to make of that story.
Is it worth it?
And the first thing that struck me was
that he had this huge stack of files,
containing all the stuff that happened, his thoughts…
After all the things I went through,
I don’t trust anyone.
Don’t ask me to trust you.
DANY PUT HER CONSCIENCE AT EASE
MURDER, HOMICIDE
I write everything down.
It must be said
he has so much talent for complicating things.
It was three years after it happened.
He asked me to take an interest in his cause.
So, we published an article,
I believe it was the very first one that was written on that story.
It’s not necessarily well written, but nonetheless, it’s two full pages.
And, out of caution, we titled it A Strange Story.
A STRANGE STORY
I also interviewed the mother.
She said she was tired of all of this.
Because, from what I understand,
she lived in Toulouse, so she had already left Dr. Krombach.
She left him because he was unfaithful.
And then, it ended in a divorce.
"I needed support after my daughter died."
"I’m leaving."
And yet…
for another five years, she remained
very, very close to him.
She was convinced he was innocent.
IS DR. DIETER KROMBACH A VICTIM?
Then, I interviewed Dr. Krombach.
"André Bamberski has been blaming me since day one."
"But that's because he's crazy."
He dismissed every claim.
"Write whatever you want. I don’t care."
That’s it. That was his reply to me.
We have one person who's saying
"Dr. Krombach is a murderer."
We have Dr. Krombach who's saying
"André Bamberski is crazy."
And we have a third person who's saying "I have nothing to say."
So,
we don’t have enough to know who is telling the truth.
A STRANGE STORY
Back then, in 1985,
I found out that a commission had asked the public prosecutor's office
to consider further investigations,
including the exhumation of Kalinka’s remains.
AUTOPSY, POST-EXHUMATION
The doctors who’d done the autopsy, said they handed over all the organs
with Kalinka’s corpse.
THE GENITALS WERE REMOVED
But some organs were still missing.
NO REMAINING PARTS
In my eyes, this exhumation already showed,
or at least confirmed, that evidence had been withheld.
By whom?
To this day, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to answer that.
But, once again, the German authorities dismissed the case.
Kalinka got…
carved up
like a pig in a slaughterhouse.
But nobody wanted to know
how and why she died.
Someone had told me that since Kalinka was a French citizen,
the French justice system could have jurisdiction.
Well, this gave me new hope.
I thought to myself, we have a justice system in France.
I hired a lawyer from Paris in January 1986:
Mr. François Gibault.
I am a lawyer.
I took the oath in '56.
Mr. Bamberski brought me the autopsy report,
Kalinka's exhumation.
Her sexual organs, indeed, had been removed, they were not in the coffin.
It's is one of the mysteries surrounding this case.
But it is important because Dr. Krombach
could not be prosecuted for rape or attempted rape
since the genitals had disappeared.
Due to lack of evidence, if you will.
In my mind, those were denials of justice.
And I couldn’t accept that.
Mr. Krombach hired a lawyer in France.
And, indeed,
Mr. Krombach refused to come to France.
He was questioned and summoned.
He always declined.
He always took a negative stance.
We do not know why Kalinka Bamberski died.
At that point,
the arguments for his innocence are just as believable
as the arguments for his guilt.
SVENJA MAUER-GÜNTHER FORMER LINDAU RESIDENT
Mr. Bamberski?
He knew something was off, and he was right.
Completely right.
When did you meet Krombach for the first time?
In the early '80s.
My mother was a regular patient of his.
As kids, she would always bring us along to the practice.
At first, it was calcium shots.
Always lying down, as they made you dizzy.
But I didn’t question it, I was only about 14 or 15.
Then we started doing iron injections.
My parents had split up in early 1985.
There was a lot of domestic violence.
Mr. Krombach was often around, as a doctor,
to see my father, to calm him down.
And then my father moved out,
and Krombach started inviting us over to go horseback riding.
And then he got the idea
to go on a horseback riding holiday in France's Camargue region.
We'd be staying there for the weekend, from Friday to Monday.
We were driving into Nice, and…
that was where the photos were taken.
I remember he was pushing on fifty back then.
And it all started with:
"Oh come on, give me a little kiss."
But we saw it as fatherly affection.
Was that the first time he crossed a line?
Yes. Definitely.
We arrived late and we had one room
with a large double bed and a single bed.
And the single bed was an extra camp bed.
And he told us
he would definitely be sleeping in the big bed
and we could choose who sleeps next to him.
My sister begged me
to let her take the small bed
and that I sleep in the big bed.
He’d brought his doctor’s kit with him.
We had iron deficiency, and it had to be treated regularly.
And at some point, I fell asleep and…
then the sexual assaults happened.
I was in total shock, like I was paralyzed.
Shock to the power of ten.
I just let it happen.
I didn’t dare move or say anything.
And I played dead and I remember him shaking me,
because he thought I’d died.
He was scared because I was playing dead.
I couldn’t believe that it was real.
That’s why I didn’t talk about it, when I should have gone to the police
but no, no…
Krombach was kind of an authority figure in Lindau.
A doctor!
Doctor worship is rather extreme in Germany:
"A doctor did that? No way!"
"They don’t do things like that! That can’t be true."
Nobody was aware he was a narcissistic sexual pervert,
especially with young girls.
As a doctor, how can one imagine
that such a person could commit such a crime?
To me, it was obvious.
I maintain
that he took advantage of the fact that Kalinka
was sleeping alone on the first floor.
Krombach went downstairs and…
he raped Kalinka.
He raped her, but Danielle and the German authorities
were convinced he wasn't responsible for anything,
that he was wrongly accused,
and that I was to blame
for making up all my claims against him.
In France,
the procedures dragged on for a while,
several years.
But in 1988,
three French professors of medicine,
confirmed
that her death occurred following a shock
caused by the medical actions of Mr. Krombach
that led to the reflux
and Kalinka's death by asphyxiation.
This judgment from the Indictment Chamber
referred Mr. Krombach to the Assize Court
for murder.
On March 9, 1995,
the Assize Court announced its ruling.
Mr. Krombach was obviously not there.
He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
But only for "inflicting bodily harm
leading to unintentional death."
Due to his absence, an arrest warrant was issued.
Of course.
And…
when people are innocent
and have nothing to feel guilty about,
they defend themselves.
It leads one to believe that he was guilty.
At that point, I was like: "Well, it's over. It's over."
I waited for the Director of public prosecutions
to have Mr. Krombach arrested
and…
to bring him to France.
But, I learned in late December 1995,
that the Ministry of Justice
had written, "Please do not carry out
the judgment against Mr. Krombach."
There was a political blockade
favoring Krombach over a French citizen,
who was the victim of a German.
And Germany said, "He was tried in Munich,
so we’re not extraditing him."
Those legal proceedings caused me to suffer so much.
I feel like I couldn't trust anyone anymore.
The arrest warrant was not carried out,
because Mr. Krombach had already been found innocent in his home country.
That’s it!
In early March 1997, a female journalist
from a Lindau newspaper, called me
to break the news that Dr. Krombach had raped, in his office,
a female patient under 16.
You see, I wasn’t wrong:
Mr. Krombach is indeed a sexual pervert.
I’m Barbara Völkel,
I work for German TV network ZDF.
30 years ago, women were not taken seriously.
Are you in favor of making marital rape illegal?
No!
If they went to the police to report
a sexual offense or sexual abuse,
they would laugh them off.
So in 1997, we had a big debate in Germany, in the Bundestag,
the rape laws had to be reformed.
On a train, I read a small article from the Allgäuer Zeitung.
There was this doctor, Dr. Dieter Krombach,
who had abused a 16-year-old girl in his practice.
And he only got two years of probation for it.
The sex offender remains a free man.
I started investigating this case.
There was a big outcry, in Lindau, by Lake Constance.
Dr. Krombach could have gotten 10 years.
Nobody here understands the mild sentence.
More than 2,200 signatures have been collected in a petition
to keep the doctor away from patients for good.
There was also a long, long lead-up
before I was allowed to interview Dieter Krombach.
A frontal interview of the sex offender on camera.
It remains the only interview Dr. Krombach
ever gave about his crimes.
His lawyers advised him against doing further interviews.
Only vetted questions could be asked, in the presence of his lawyer.
We were expecting a remorseful offender.
But that wasn’t the case with Dieter Krombach.
And he was flirting with the camera,
he even tried a few moves on me.
Yes, he said to me:
"Nice to meet you."
"If you weren’t blonde, I wouldn’t have agreed to this interview."
We did not see any sign of a remorseful offender
who had any sense that what he did was wrong.
Did you believe she was a willful participant?
She never said yes, but she never said no either.
When I kissed her, she kissed back.
At first, I was just kissing her, and I said "Do you want to go further?"
And she just smiled.
We were talking about the abuse of a 16-year-old girl.
And he mocked the victim.
And he didn’t think it was wrong.
It was very interesting for me,
and I also speak a little Russian and…
I told her "I love you" in Russian during the act.
And I mean, I’m not saying she was ecstatic,
but I had the impression that she was agreeing to it.
I told him, "But you drugged her!"
"She couldn’t fight back at all."
Like they said in ancient Rome: "Those who remain silent seem to agree."
It always affects me how he mocked his victim in front of the camera.
He had anaesthetized her to abuse her,
and he still justifies his actions.
Shortly before the interview ended, I asked about Kalinka.
And he said that was an accident
and that, since he would never go back to France,
he would never have to go to prison.
That's when the interview ended.
After it was broadcast on Frontal, the case became
known nationwide, worldwide, and across the border.
Can I briefly speak with you?
No.
-Can we do a short interview? -No, we cannot, we won't. Thank you.
In my opinion, the Kalinka case in Germany was closed far too soon.
Many elements actually pointed to a sexual offense.
He was only given a two-year suspended sentence
and he was banned from practicing medicine.
He was never allowed again
to practice in a clinic, in a hospital,
in a dispensary or whatever.
When did you start to track down Krombach's whereabouts?
Immediately after…
the trial in 1997.
What was your goal when you started doing so?
What I wanted was
to obtain justice for Kalinka against Krombach.
Back then, I'd make the trip
two to four times a year.
I hired a detective,
who told me Krombach was filling in for other doctors.
And, actually, those doctors were on leave
for just a few days, a week or more, two weeks at most.
So, I was wondering what he was up to.
My name is Petra Stephan. I studied librarianship in the GDR.
I also like to question things a lot.
But that’s my nature.
I think it was at the beginning of 2006.
The clinic called.
And said that they had a new doctor.
Out of curiosity, as always,
my first question was:
"What’s the doctor’s name?"
And the second question was:
"Where is he from?"
And the person on the phone replied:
"The doctor’s name is Dr. Dieter Krombach,
and he comes from Lindau, near Lake Constance."
I just thought:
"From beautiful Lindau…"
"Why would a doctor from Lindau move to Rödental?
"Let's look up what kind of doctor he is."
I was shocked by all the stuff that turned up,
all the stuff this doctor had done.
All the things he had done. Bad things.
I read that his first wife had died mysteriously,
probably from an injection.
I read that he had raped a patient,
and I read, above all, about Kalinka.
Then, armed with that knowledge,
I went to my appointment at the practice.
This whole thing was fishy.
I had a plan.
I’d have a look at the man first,
to make sure it’s really him.
I was afraid.
And I was shaking and trembling so much
that he noticed, and he asked me:
"Why are you so afraid?"
"Are you afraid of me?"
And I said, "No, no, I’m not afraid of you."
"I’m just nervous about the examination."
And I immediately thought, "that’s him."
I informed three different authorities.
I wrote to the newspaper.
I sent an email to the mayor
and to the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians.
I also sent Mr. Bamberski an email.
And he got in touch with me.
Thanks to this lady,
the German authorities learned
that from 1997 onward, he started
filling in for other physicians all over Germany.
He provided false documents
to the various clinics, hospitals,
medical offices where he would work.
He never got his license to practice medicine back,
but he obviously made a copy just in time.
And with that copy, he traveled across Germany
to work as a locum, all those years.
Coburg's criminal police
caught him as he was about to leave the country
with a suitcase full of money
and a penis pump.
If you don’t want to use Viagra,
then you can use that
to wake up your penis.
It was a trial that was
closely followed by the media.
Kalinka, Bamberski’s daughter,
died at the young age of 15
after an injection given by Dr. Krombach.
JUDICIAL AUTHORITIES
Mr. Bamberski was very calm,
he was matter-of-fact, and he was very happy,
that there was finally a trial in Germany
in which Krombach would be prosecuted, even if it was only
about him not having
the right paperwork.
Without a license, you can’t practice.
I thought, "it’s too risky."
"If anything happens and I know what kind of guy he is,
I have to make it public now."
It was at the hearing I attended in July 2007
that it was revealed
that Mr. Krombach had continued his sexual assaults.
Two victims had made the trip to testify at the trial,
and several others
were mentioned in the ruling.
Mr. Krombach, was sentenced to 28 months in prison.
At least he got two years.
At least.
Something like that should not happen.
And then he was released early.
I felt frustrated, because…
I may have gotten some results but I hadn't achieved my ultimate goal,
obtaining justice for Kalinka’s death.
It’s ridiculous to think, as Mr. Bamberski does,
that I made love to her.
That you raped her!
I didn’t need to, I was married,
I was happy with Kalinka’s mother.
Besides, she did stay with me
for another five years, I believe. We got divorced.
But it wasn't because of this,
it was because I cheated on her
with another woman, a friend of hers.
Well, it happens.
SCHEIDEGG GERMANY
Mr. Krombach stayed in prison until June 2008.
He came back to Sheidegg.
Scheidegg is very close to Lindau.
So, I was following Krombach.
I went to Scheidegg three times,
in September and in early October.
And there, I found a little sign,
in front of the house where Mr. Krombach lived, that read:
"House for sale."
So he had an opportunity to elude the authorities.
I panicked a little, I wondered:
"Where is he going to go?"
I’d reached a dead-end,
I had no other options.
I could do nothing with this conviction in absentia.
I made the decision in September 2009.
Something had to be done.
There was only one solution.
That's what motivated me
to abduct him,
to abduct Mr. Krombach,
to bring him voluntarily, or against his will,
to France.
In my mind,
justice had to go all the way.
So…
it may have been a gamble,
but at least it was something concrete.
Did you think of murdering him?
No, I never thought of murdering him.
Justice would never have been done,
so for everyone, for me,
some doubt would have remained.
Bregenz, in Austria, is very close to Scheidegg and Lindau.
So, I let it be known in all the cafes,
in all the restaurants, in all the hotels and chalets of Bregenz,
that I was looking for someone to help me
transfer Mr. Krombach
from Germany to France.
I gave them documents written in German
with a picture of him and the header "Interpol."
It was on a Friday.
The hotel's reception called my room and said:
"A man is asking for you."
That’s when I met Anton.
My name is Anton Krazniqi.
I was born in Kosovo, raised in Austria.
As a father,
I’m fascinated by this guy's grit.
He’s a father who is very strong-willed!
It’s interesting, it moves you.
It moves you, and you think what if that happened to you?
What would you do as a father?
What are you willing to do for your child?
What would you have done?
A short trial.
Tidy. Short, quick.
I gave him a ride in my car.
We drove to Lake Constance
I offered to help him.
He said to me:
"What I suggest to you is just out of humanity"
"I don’t want any money."
Yes, he said, "How much do you want?"
I looked at him and laughed.
I said, "No, no money."
I argued, "There are still costs to incur."
He said, "OK, yes, but after it's done."
So, I didn’t risk anything.
Had you ever been to prison?
Oh, yes.
If we think about consequences,
about what can happen,
I don't even care about that.
If he'd been a gangster,
he would have asked for money in advance.
Yes, I know a Russian gang, Georgians.
I brought two of them with me.
What was the price?
The price was 10,000 euros per head.
Did you discuss how it would go down?
No, not at all. He told me:
"The less you know, the better."
So, I agreed to it.
It was a glimmer of hope.
If you don’t believe in anything,
you don’t get anywhere.
I went back to Toulouse.
I waited. No updates.
I took my sister’s car.
There was enough room at the back,
it had a tinted rear windshield,
which was ideal.
The plan was: when you see him,
you pick him up and put him in the car.
You bring him to France. Primitive, simple.
Krombach wasn't home.
Around nine p.m.,
I saw the car entering the garage,
and I went, "OK, he’s here."
A light was on inside the house.
I knocked.
I walked away from the door,
three or four meters away.
He came out.
"Good evening, are you Mr. Krombach?" I asked in German
He said, "Yes. What do you want?"
The two Russians walked over from both sides and jumped him.
He started pleading:
"Help, help me!"
We dumped him in the car and gagged him.
And that’s what we did.
He knew what was going on.
He was screaming, asking questions:
"Are you taking me to France?"
"Are you going to kill me?"
I told him, "No one’s gonna kill you."
He said, "Take me home
and I’ll give you 500,000 euros."
No, no, we’re not going back and we don’t want money.
I was the driver.
The two Russians and Dr. Krombach were in the backseat.
I heard a Russian say:
"No, don’t do that, don’t do that."
I turned my head around, I saw that one
of the Russians had pulled a knife.
Apparently, he wanted to cut off his genitals.
I pulled over.
I told the guy, "Get out!"
It was too risky for me to drive 400km,
with a guy who's carrying a knife.
The guy went, "OK, I want my money."
"OK, take your money. Ciao!"
For me, it was important to bring Krombach
across the French border.
Suddenly, I saw a sign, "Exit: Mulhouse"
Yeah, awesome.
It was the first city across the border
with legal buildings: it has a police station…
and the courthouse is nearby.
In front of the courthouse,
there were a few police cars.
I couldn’t dump him there.
I went to the first back alley.
Krombach was sobbing.
"Help, help!"
We opened the gate completely.
I left him there.
At 3:20 in the morning,
I got an anonymous phone call:
"Call the police
in Mulhouse,
to tell them that Krombach
is on the sidewalk in front of the customs office."
I called them, I told my story.
Well, the guy thought I was nuts.
He’s wanted for voluntary manslaughter.
Voluntary manslaughter?
For a while now.
Rue du Tilleul?
Yeah, rue du Tilleul, near the customs building.
-Is there an arrest warrant? -Yes, it says "dangerous individual."
"What I am telling you is very serious."
"There's a European arrest warrant out for him."
"Look it up, you’ll see."
This guy is wanted…
Wait, there's a guy who is gagged, with his hands and feet tied.
We are rue du Tilleul.
His hands are bound. Wait.
He's with a guy who's been gagged.
We are rue du Tilleul, he's been gagged. His hands and feet are tied.
Ten minutes later, he said:
"We did find him,
but you beat him up quite badly."
I said, "I didn’t beat him up since I’m in Toulouse."
Sir?
Yes?
Is your first name Dieter?
Yes.
His first name is Dieter.
He says he was abducted in Germany.
Is he conscious?
Yes, so far, he is but he's in really bad shape.
They promised me they would bring me back home.
They promised him they would bring him back home.
What nationality did you say they were, Russian?
They spoke Russian.
-They spoke Russian. -OK.
Did you imagine you would be arrested?
No, not at all.
That’s why I told you I was surprised.
I booked a hotel room in Mulhouse.
I booked a flight.
When I got to the hotel,
it was already five or six p.m.
The police knocked on my door.
They asked me if I was Mr. Bamberski.
"Well, we’re taking you into custody."
And they took me to the police station.
Where the interrogations began.
When I was driven by two policemen
to present me to the prosecutor of the court,
they formed a send-off line for me
on my way out of the police station.
They all stood up?
Well, they were all on their feet,
clapping.
And they had uplifting news for me.
They told me that Krombach was there,
that they hadn't released him.
In a pinch, I would say that…
he'd reached the end of his legal rope.
André Bamberski, indicted for kidnapping, faces up to ten years of imprisonment.
My name is Laurent de Caunes,
I am a lawyer at the Toulouse bar.
I learned of Mr. Krombach's abduction
when I was informed that Mr. Bamberski
was in custody in Mulhouse.
That’s the moment when it freaked me out.
I should have researched
the consequences beforehand
for instigating a kidnapping.
The media love headlines
with a little hyperbole, a little drama,
the revelation of a scandal.
That's when we entered a peculiar phase
where Mr. Bamberski was both the injured party
suing Mr. Krombach
and a future defendant
in his own upcoming trial.
At 11 p.m.,
André Bamberski was released,
but he's been indicted on charges of kidnapping
and criminal association.
I gave my consent
on October 9, 2009,
for Krombach to be brought to France.
My name is Philippe Ohayon. I am a lawyer.
And I defended Dieter Krombach, over the course of two criminal trials.
Dieter Krombach was jailed.
His face is swollen, he was beaten to a pulp.
You can imagine the catastrophic state he’s in.
He's traumatized. He claims to be innocent.
He's been screaming his innocence, he’s angry.
The abduction was extremely violent.
And Mr. Bamberski said: "It’s not my fault,
I never ordered them to beat him up or assault him."
Mr. Bamberski, in my opinion, is someone
for whom the end will always justify the means.
We argued that André Bamberski
had acted under moral compulsion,
since he knew that if Krombach were arrested
the trial would start,
a genuine adversarial trial,
a trial to obtain justice.
The goal of justice
is never revenge.
Since the dawn of time,
justice doesn't equal revenge, it's the opposite of that.
After Dieter Krombach was abducted,
I contacted Diana Krombach.
The interview took place in front of her father’s house,
where he had been abducted.
And she was still convinced of her father’s innocence.
I am 100% convinced of my father’s innocence.
Over the years, these things have put
a tremendous emotional burden on our family.
Can you show us where it happened?
I just know from my dad’s account.
I know this is his parking space, and he said, it happened
just before he could reach the car.
The police saw a huge puddle of blood here.
Initially, the police assumed that he’d been murdered.
Did Germany ask for him to be repatriated?
Obviously.
In fact, they were very surprised that they even had to ask for it.
Obviously, it was a huge surprise.
That’s what we fought for over months on end.
But it didn’t happen.
EQUALITY
At the Assize Court in Paris,
Mr. Krombach was once again facing the same charges
from his trial in absentia circa 1995:
the aggravated murder of Kalinka.
Emotions were running high at the start of Dieter Krombach's trial
this morning at the Assizes Court.
This is the first face-to-face confrontation
between the man who is accused of killing young Kalinka
and her father, André Bamberski.
My first thought and my first words
are for Kalinka.
The atmosphere of the trial was more like a trial by media
of a German man who had been eluding
justice all these years
and would finally pay.
That's what it was like.
Mr. Krombach is in a terrible condition
thanks to Mr. Bamberski’s friends.
It’s a surreal situation.
We have a man who's in the defendant's box
because the accusing party brought him to France
after violently assaulting him.
This Germanophobic climate,
this conspiratorial climate
by which the German justice system was accused
of protecting a random family doctor
in Lindau makes no sense.
What is the truth?
The truth is my father didn’t do anything.
He’s not guilty. It’s the act of a crazy man, a maniac.
Dr. Krombach,
was a good father to his children.
But he was double-faced.
He was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Mr. Bamberski embodied moral fortitude.
He’s no vigilante or masked avenger,
but he's combative.
He's a fighting monk.
Mr. Bamberski, as always, is determined.
Is it a relief for him to finally get him to face justice?
It’s a relief because that has always been his objective:
to put Krombach on trial.
Ms. Gonnin is a very calm woman, very sweet,
who was really pained by what happened:
the abduction, Krombach's arrest,
the media circus.
It reopened a wound,
this whole situation, since she did not believe
Dieter Krombach was guilty.
I think she felt like a victim of what she considered a form
of judicial violence and aggression from Mr. Bamberski.
It was Bamberski suing Krombach,
Bamberski's revenge against Krombach.
They asked me to follow the hearings,
to write articles about the trial.
The people in the courtroom were holding their breath,
and when Krombach walked in…
quite quickly,
he started losing his grip:
because when the questions suited him,
he understood them right away
and answered them pretty well.
But when a question was slightly bothering to him,
he'd go like this.
And then, there was a rather shocking moment,
at the end of the fifth or sixth day:
we learned that he had had a heart attack.
A man's life is at stake, he has heart problems.
An expert confirmed it.
Dieter Krombach is no longer able to appear in court.
Facing justice, the German cardiologist
has invoked a medical issue…
It was a fabrication, pure and simple!
Many journalists reporting on the trial
have contacted Mr. Levano and Mr. Ohayon,
prior to the trial,
and they always said the trial wouldn’t happen.
Turns out, they were right once again.
Curiously, the medical issue matched his specialty, cardiology.
SIX MONTHS LATER
Kalinka, whom he believes was killed by her stepfather Dieter Krombach…
Why didn't he think to call the police so they could freeze the scene?
Danielle Gonnin, Kalinka's mother.
The former spouses do not even make eye contact.
What is your state of mind?
I am…
far more confident
and more serene than the last time around.
Meaning?
Meaning…
over the past few weeks, everything has been done
to prevent Mr. Krombach from having another episode.
Of course, it needs to end.
Of course he wants to prove his innocence.
Because he is innocent.
Testifying against him, for me…
it was really tough to be in front of all those people
and describe the whole ordeal again.
I first met Mr. Krombach
in the summer of 1993.
I was 29 years old.
And he was older, I’d say in his late 50s.
Someone had recommended him to me:
"He’s nice and a very good doctor."
He said I had an iron deficiency
and he had to give me an iron injection.
I had the injection a few times
and everything was fine at that point.
My husband and I had money problems,
and he offered me a job at his practice.
I just needed to sweep the floors and wipe them up.
I had to come in during the lunch break.
No staff, no patients either.
I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
Then, one day, I went to the hallway
and heard some noises.
I called out.
"Hello! Who’s there?"
And there he was in the back lab.
He asked me
if he could give me the injection
so that I wouldn’t have to come back for my appointment later that day.
I didn’t think anything of it, and I said "Yeah."
It was a completely different substance.
I remember that I was sort of paralyzed.
And I remember wanting to stand up,
and he gently forced me back down
with two fingers, and then it happened.
He raped me, yeah.
-Can we have a break? -Of course.
OK.
I couldn’t think clearly enough to go to the police.
I just felt so scared
and shameful.
Mr. Krombach was very rich and very influential,
and I thought, "I don’t stand a chance."
I was never able to defend Dieter Krombach
against these charges.
That is to say "non-evidence"
relevant to other charges.
Krombach claimed that he didn’t know me,
that he’d never seen me before,
and that I was only there to make myself look important.
Justice has rules.
The first rule is that you have to prove the accusations.
ASSIZE COURTROOM N°3
I heard that he was scared of me testifying.
And the courtroom was full.
And his two lawyers were like fierce hounds.
The Mauer sisters never went to trial. I was never able
to defend Mr. Krombach
against the Mauer sisters' accusations.
How did Danielle Gonnin react
to the victims' testimonies?
With disgust,
the feeling of having been wrong for 28 years.
I remember Danielle Gonnin turning to me and saying,
"He actually is a pervert!"
"I lived alongside a pervert
all those years without realizing it."
Everything shocked her, the victims' age, the MO.
Young girls who were minors at the time,
how he sedated and sexually abused them.
Danielle Gonnin didn’t… didn’t check
the labels on the vials of medicine
he injected into Kalinka’s body.
She didn’t go and check. She trusted him.
Since Dr. Krombach was a cardiologist,
everybody agrees that his attempts to resuscitate Kalinka,
both in terms of procedure and of the substances he injected,
run completely contrary to all the rules of medicine.
She found out about how he cheated on her in her own home.
Her husband drugged her to have sex with a 16-year-old neighbor.
That neighbor
explained that, when she started having sex
with Dieter Krombach, it happened in his house,
the very house he shared with Mrs. Gonnin,
on the living room couch,
and that, so as not to be disturbed, he drugged his wife.
He’d pour a few drops
of a soporific drug in his wife's glass
so she would sleep very deeply
and not notice
him having sex in the next room.
Danielle Gonnin told the court that she had slept abnormally
on the night of the crime.
It has raised doubts. She says she could have been sedated
by Mr. Krombach on the night of her daughter’s death.
I had my doubts, now it's more than doubts.
I’m almost certain that he is lying.
That hurts.
And now, I have to live with that.
I would have appreciated if Dieter Krombach had told me:
"It was an accident, I panicked
and I lied."
I would have understood,
I may have forgiven him.
But now, I can't forgive him.
It was very complicated for Mrs. Gonnin, having to deal with the feeling
of being considered by many people as being the one who knew
but who did not want to say, believe, or hear anything.
And it’s this image she couldn't stand.
Obviously, we were satisfied,
because I was finally able to tell the mother,
everybody, all the media:
"See, I wasn't wrong."
Dr. Krombach was sentenced
to only 15 years imprisonment
for violent acts.
Obviously, my first thought is for Kalinka.
Justice has been done in her honor
and I’ll now be able to grieve for her.
DIETER KROMBACH WAS SENTENCED TO 15 YEARS IN PRISON
FOR "BODILY HARM LEADING TO UNINTENTIONAL DEATH."
HE'S ALWAYS CLAIMED HIS INNOCENCE
DESPITE ANDRÉ BAMBERSKI'S PROTESTS,
HE WAS RELEASED ON FEBRUARY 22, 2020 FOR MEDICAL REASONS.
HE DIED ON SEPTEMBER 12, 2020 IN GERMANY
TO DATE, 16 WOMEN HAVE COME FORWARD WITH SEXUAL ABUSE CLAIMS
What was your sentence?
One year in prison.
When I was in prison in Austria, my father visited me.
He said, "Boy, you know what you did?"
I said, "Yes, Dad."
They are proud of me.
Everyone is proud of me.
During the kidnapping trial in Mulhouse
I learned that I was given,
as the perpetrator of the kidnapping,
a one-year suspended sentence.
As for Kalinka, I hope she's in Heaven,
and that she knows everything l've done for her.
I think she deserved it.
What would you say to a father who lost his daughter?
Well, I would tell him, since it’s been 39 years for me,
"Don’t waste your life."
I fought like Don Quixote de la Mancha,
against windmills.
I obtained justice for her,
but those are really…
extreme battles.
Subtitle translation by: Thomas Isackson