#thomas schmid

Holiday house in St. Moritz St. Moritz, Graubünden, Switzerland; 1957

Thomas Schmid (photography by Walter Binder)

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(Klaus and Bettina)

(Left: Schelkle, Right: Schmid)

On a Tuesday morning on 28th of July 1987, three students, 20 year old Klaus Schelkle, his girlfriend 22 year old Bettina Taxis and their mutual friend 21 year old Thomas Schmid were on a interrail trip from West Germany. Schmid has later told that they didn’t really plan the trip for long, it was just a sudden idea. They saved money for the trip for a while though.

Schelkle and Schmid had known each other for years. Both were members of a football club called VfB Stuttgart, and that is where they had originally met. They both were studying to be mechanics and had been on interrail trips together before. Schelkle had met Taxis at a nightclub, almost a year ago before their trip. Shortly after that they started dating.

The trio wanted to go to Finland quickly. When the journey started they traveled straight to Stockholm and spent a night there. The next evening shortly before 10 pm they got onboard M/S Viking Sally. The ship in itself was an experience even if it wasn’t exactly luxurious. The ship would arrive to Turku the next morning. They had plans to go to Ruisrock, a festival located there. After the festival their plan was to continue their journey to Finland's Lapland, from there to Norway’s Bergen, and finally down the coastline to Oslo.

The couple had purchased on deck seats and had reserved an area from the upper deck to sleep on. Schmid didn't want to disturb the couple so he reserved a place from the lower deck, inside the ship. Schmid wasn't really a cruise kinda person, but he had had some fun during the cruise. Schelkle and Taxis on the other hand were very social. They had told Schmid that while they were socializing with other passengers, they had met a "fun Finn speaking excellent German". The fun Finn was a Finnish businessman who was returning home from Germany. He had car parts with him and he had tried to show them to Schelkle who apparently was interested about them. They tried to visit the car deck but the door leading there was locked. They made plans to try again in the morning so they changed contact info.

Schmid was already asleep when Schelkle and Taxis fetched their sleeping bags from their backpacks that Schmid guarded. It was around 1 am. The place where they went to sleep was quiet and at the back of the deck. There was no light since it was broken. 

On the deck there had been a lot of people walking during the day. The ship had passengers from at least 9 different countries, including boy scouts from Denmark and Sweden who were heading to international Nordic LDS Jamboree camp in Sauvo, Finland. Many of these teenage boy scouts had been walking on the ship's deck during the entire night and some other passengers had been disturbed by this. Around 3:45 some of the boy scouts found their way on the helicopter deck.

They saw no one there especially since it was dark, but soon one of the boy scouts saw something moving. He saw two people moving close to the air vents. The boys first thought that the two people were just some heavily intoxicated people, because when they tried to stand up it wasn’t successful so they collapsed back on the floor. The boy scouts watched this for a while, until one of them decided to move closer. According to newspaper articles published in 1987, he was a 18 year old boy scout from Denmark. The two others were from Sweden.

The two people trying to stand up were a man and a woman. Their faces and clothes were covered in blood. Now the boys noticed that the entire helicopter deck was covered in blood as well.

An unknown person had attacked Schelkle and Taxis while they were sleeping. They were seriously injured but they managed to move a bit. It is unknown if they understood anything from the situation. The 18 year old Danish boy has told that he did know some first aid, but he wasn't certain what to do when the injuries were this serious.

Some of the boy scouts went to inform the scene to the ship's information and they called the ship's security. The security officer has told to the police that he noticed injuries on the heads of both victims that were clearly caused by something heavy. The perpetrator had used a blunt object. The Danish boy who found the victims has told that Taxis' finger was cut off, but the police have never commented on that.

Schelkle and Taxis were taken to the ship's infirmary. They were speaking something but nobody could understand what they were saying. The reason could've been the severity of their injuries, or because no one present didn't speak German. The nurse in the infirmary tried to stop the bleeding with towels, but immediately understood that the victims had serious intracranial injuries.

The ship contacted Turku's maritime rescue center who sent a helicopter immediately. It arrived around 5 am. The rescuers didn't really know what was the case about, they only knew it was an ambulance mission. When they landed on the deck they noticed how it was covered in blood. The staff of the ship were carrying  bloody people on stretchers. They were lifted on board of the helicopter and it left to Turku. The ship's nurse had left with them and she tried to help mostly Bettina; it was very soon revealed that their injuries were too severe and especially on Klaus' head. Taxis was somewhat awake during the flight but she was delirious. She apparently thought the people helping her were trying to attack her, and this led to her constantly trying to protect herself. The noise from the helicopter and the helmets made it impossible to hear if the victims said anything.

The helicopter landed to Kupittaa (a district in the city) in Turku, from where the victims were transported to Turku University hospital. They arrived there around 5:48 am and soon after arriving there a doctor declared that Schelkle had passed away.

Bettina Taxis was later transferred to a hospital in Germany. The Finnish police got the chance to question her after some years had passed, with the aid from Germany's police. Taxis didn't remember anything. “We laid down and apparently I fell asleep immediately. From that moment my memory is completely lost for 10 days. I fell asleep and woke up in Stuttgard. I can’t remember anything else.”

According to some sources she however managed to recover from her physical injuries well, though not entirely.

The investigation

Turku criminal police had gotten an alarm about the case at 4:28 am. When the ambulance mission was over, the same helicopter took three police officers to Viking Sally. The ship's security officer had done everything he could: secluded parts of the crime scene and gathered some information from the people who were present at the scene. There were no eye witnesses though. Schmid had been woken up by the sound of the helicopter, but he had then just continued sleeping. Early in the morning two men woke him up and asked whose backpacks were in Schmid's care. When he had told who owned the backpacks the two men asked him to come with them. They were crime scene investigators from Turku.

Schmid was taken to a secluded place where the police started to question him. Hours passed and Schmid was questioned over and over again. Finally he became so frustrated and worried that he denied answering any more questions, if the police didn't tell him what was going on. Then the police told what had happened.

At the very beginning of the investigation, the police took an interest in one man from England. He was 26 years old and he had been sleeping on the floor of a parlor. His clothes were bloody, but the man assured the police that the blood came from his nose. The man had met a Finnish woman in Kibbutz, Israel and he was on his way to meet her in Finland. The man had first tried to land in Helsinki, but according to the police he had seemed like a "shabby junkie" so he was turned back to Sweden. This was his second try to land, this time in Turku. During the investigation it was revealed that the man had spent a rakish evening with some Finns, two men from Kotka and three men from Kangasala. The young men from Kangasala had spent the day in Stockholm and lost all their money. Now they were returning to Finland with tickets given to them by Stockholm's social welfare office. During the night, the group had enjoyed barbecue in the restaurant and drank alcohol in various bars. When the ship arrived in Turku, the police was waiting in the harbour. The man from England, and the Finnish men were taken to the police station.

Police boats were guarding the ship from the ocean's side, and on land other investigators videotaped every person exiting from the ship. At first the police tried to take everyone's names down as well, but it took too much time. The police changed their plans and decided to leave elderly, children and parents travelling with children out from the list. Every person was still videotaped. With another video camera the police separately taped all young men. 

The people from Kotka and Kangasala were soon released because there were no evidence against them. There weren't many investigators who could speak English but one was found. They interrogated the man from England and he assured he was innocent. The crime lab did all they could with the gathered blood samples from the man's clothing, and it was revealed to be his own. The man was released as well.

The investigation wasn't easy. In 1987 the police couldn't really gather DNA, there wasn't surveillance footage and ship's sailing between Finland and Sweden didn't really have passenger lists that would've had the names of all passengers. It was possible that onboard was people whose identity wasn't known to anyone.

The crime scene was covered in blood so it made it hard to find the perpetrator’s possible blood sample from there. A lot of blood samples however were able to be collected.

The police found a bloody handprint from the ship’s wall. They compared the print to everyone that had been near the crime scene, all passengers and all staff members. It didn’t belong to anyone. Some of the investigators at some point started to think that what if they accidentally had left the print, but when it was compared, it didn’t belong to them either. It is still a mystery to whom the handprint belongs to.

Underneath Schelkle’s fingernails the police found a small piece of wood. The crime lab analysis revealed that it was possibly from a spruce. In September 1987 the investigators carved a piece from the ship’s kitchen’s meat cleavers handle: they wanted to find out if a meat cleaver could’ve been the murder weapon. Later in 2015 the police got interested in the piece of wood again, but now the sample and the information about the investigation had went missing.  The murder weapon was never found.

The police did all they could to get in contact with every passenger they got on video. Many people however didn't turn themselves in because they thought it would’ve been useless since they didn't know anything about the attack. Two examples of the people who didn't turn themselves in were "Jocke" and "Perra", who were later found when a Swedish newspaper published their pictures. Some people were avoiding the police because their voyage on Viking Sally wasn't exactly good to be known by police.

Interviews

Many different newspapers interviewed the 18 year old Danish boy scout. His name was Thomas Nielsen.

Turun Sanomat:

On Wednesday 29th of July 1987 Turun Sanomat interviewed him when he was attending the camp in Sauvo. It is not known in which language the interview was done nor is it known how well the interviewer and Nielsen understood each other. According to Turun Sanomat, Nielsen had seen Schelkle and Taxis sleeping in their sleeping bags under the staircase that led to the helicopter deck. He saw them three hours before anything had happened. According to Nielsen he didn’t see Schmid at all.

He had been walking with two Swedish boy scouts. When they noticed the victims they tried to pull them up, only then noticing that they were seriously injured. After this all three boy scouts hurried to get help. Nielsen however changed his mind and returned to the victims. According to him he waited about 10 minutes before the help arrived. During this entire time the victims were unconscious.

Apu:

Apu magazine also interviewed Nielsen in Sauvo, but it is not known when it occurred. In the interview Nielsen told that the victims were inside their sleeping bags when they were discovered. According to the interview, Nielsen did notice them but he thought they were sleeping. Nielsen told that he had wondered why they were sleeping in such weird positions. After this he went to take a closer look and noticed they were seriously injured. Apu doesn’t inform how and who called for help, or if Nielsen even helped to move the bodies. 

In the same interview there was the scout leader interviewed as well who had the same last name as Nielsen. According to Apu, both of them thought that the perpetrator(s) surprised the victims while they were sleeping. They thought there were multiple perpetrators, or the one perpetrator was “very strong and had been raging like a madman”. According to Nielsen, Taxis also had an injury on her hand, which resulted Nielsen and the other boys to think she had been fighting back.

Seura:

Nielsen gave the most information to Seura on 7th of August 1987. According to the interview Nielsen had seen Schelkle and Taxis sleeping on the helicopter deck around midnight. Before that he hadn’t seen them. About the time of the discovery, following was told:

“I was walking on the helicopter deck when suddenly I saw three other boys near sleeping bags. At the same time I noticed that something was wrong. When I went closer I noticed there were blood everywhere and the young people laying inside the sleeping bags were covered in blood. The boy tried to stand up, because he was outside the sleeping bag but he couldn’t do it. The girl was still partly inside the bag and tried to say something. Near them was empty and full beer bottles.”

According to the interview all three went to get help. Nielsen however changed his mind and thought someone should stay with the victims, so he returned. He told he knows some first aid but the he couldn’t help the victims. While he was waiting for the help, Schelkle was sitting and the girl was trying to stand up.

“I went and looked if the help was coming, but then someone from the ship’s staff came. Then all we did was to try to keep the attacked youths to stay still.”

“Their faces hadn't been hit or kicked and I don’t think the attacker had used a knife either. Their faces were kinda like slush, like they were beaten with a hammer-like object. I didn’t see any other injuries on their bodies. One finger had been cut out from the girl's hand.”

Nielsen told he was helping with the moving of the victims to the infirmary. Schelkle was walking supported, but Taxis needed to be carried.

“To me the girl seemed to be more injured at the time. I can’t believe the boy is now dead.”

According to Nielsen the staff asked him to help and that is what he did.

“When we helped the boy to move inside the ship, the girl got wild. She wanted to come along. We carried her inside and my clothes and hands were bloody.”

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Later it was revealed that in 1987 the police had also interrogated the leader of the Danish boy scouts. The leader told that one boy scout had came and woke them up covered in blood. The boy scout told that he had been helping the victims so the leader and the boy went to find some new clothes for him. After this they went to the ship’s information and asked the staff to wash the bloody clothes. Shortly before the ship arrived to Turku, staff gave back the clothes, all washed up and dried.

Suspects

Two suspects got nicknamed as a "beanie man" because they were seen wearing striking beanies. One of the men was later found from West Germany, but it turned out he had nothing to do with the murders. The other beanie man was never found. According to the police the man was spotted at night walking on the fifth deck, near cafeteria. He was around 30 years old, 175 cm tall (5'9) and he had dark hair. He seemed unclean and he was talking to himself in English. He wore a dark or greenish beanie with rolled edges. He also had dark, homemade wool shirt on and boots. Some eye witnesses told the police the hat was light, some say it was dark.

In August 1987 two fishermen had landed on a small island called Lilla Björnholm, located in Korppoo. The island is deserted and it's covered with trees. It's located exactly where the ship’s route went. The fishermen saw a black plastic bag on the shore and when they peeked inside they noticed it contained clothing. They left the bag as it was. In the next summer the fishermen returned to the island and noticed that the bag was still there. Then they decided to take it to the police in Nauvo. From there it was taken to Turku. Inside the bag was found an Umberto Loofer brand shoe made in Finland, and the police was able to find out that one shop in Maariankatu, Turku had sold the shoes between the years 1985 to 1986. From the bag the police also found light colored shorts and red acrylic shirt. There was also a grey work glove that had initials H.K. written on it. According to the police they thought the clothes might have come from Viking Sally.

2016 and the revelation

In 2000 the name of the crime was changed from manslaughter to murder and the attempt of murder. In 2015 Danish police contacted the police in Finland and told about threatening text messages that were sent from one man's phone to his ex wife. On the messages the man, named Herman Himle claimed he had killed people. Finnish police got interested about him, because they had a reason to believe he could be connected to the attack. When the Finnish police interrogated Himle in 2016 he told some very interesting things. Himle had been onboard Viking Sally when the attack happened, and he told that he had found a hammer from the ship. He continued and said, that it would’ve been handy to use in a murder, and it would’ve been easy to get rid of by simply tossing it over the railing to the ocean. When the police asked if he had hit Schelkle and Taxis with the hammer, he denied it and told that his life situation isn’t fit for a long sentence. To Bettina Taxis, Himle wanted to say that she no longer needs to be afraid. He told the police that they can now tell Taxis that “they have been talking to the right man”. 

On the next day Himle said he is not going to confess because now the police knows who committed the attack. Himle told that before the cruise something had happened in his home that had cornered him and made him explosive. According to Himle, Schelkle and Taxis just were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Himle told that during the cruise he had been mad because he hadn’t gotten money from home and proper scout gear. He had noticed the Germans sleeping and fetched the hammer. He beat them with it so that he could rob them. While he was beating them, the Swedish boy scouts came there and he had only a moment to toss the hammer away and then return there. 

He told that he now understands how lucky he was that the Swedes came there. This made him and the boys heroes. If the boys hand’t came, he would’ve later been caught having the victim’s possessions with him.

When the police were interrogating him, Himle was in prison for threatening his ex wife. In the text messages he had said that he was a killer who hasn't been caught. 

"I can be bad because I've killed twice before." 

"Yes, I am a killer and I can prove it. But if I did that, I would be in prison for a long time, and I don't want that, because then you would run from my revenge, which is coming when you least except it."

In 2019 Himle was interrogated again, this time with a lawyer. Now he told that in earlier interrogations he had been mad at the police and had only been provoking them. Nothing he had said was true.

Himle has used many different aliases in his life. When he was onboard Viking Sally in 1987, his name was Thomas Nielsen. He was the same 18 year old Danish boy scout who discovered the bodies.

Himle has been in prison in total for 19 years of his life. His crimes have been talked about even in Finnish newspapers. In 1998 Helsingin Sanomat wrote about him as the "inventive Danish runaway" because he had escaped from Danish prisons many times. According to the paper he had escaped from the prison twice using a self made ladder. Earlier from other prison he had escaped by digging a hole with a tea spoon. Himle has been convicted of theft, gun crimes, financial crimes and threats. In the early 1990 he stole a valuable Viking jewel. 

Himle got charged.

Trial

The case was taken to trial at the end of May 2021. Prosecutors saw that Himle was the only one present when the attack happened and therefore he was the only one who could’ve committed the crimes. Himle’s interviews in 1987 were also very interesting, because he was able to tell very specific things about the injuries, that even the nurse hadn’t noticed (the finger thing). He also had told things to different papers that were in contradictory. In general, Himle was able to tell very specific things about the night. Himle’s interview to Seura in particular interested the prosecutors. As stated previously, he had said:

“Their faces hadn't been hit or kicked and I don’t think the attacker had used a knife either. Their faces were kinda like slush, like they were beaten with a hammer-like object. I didn’t see any other injuries on their bodies. One finger had been cut out from the girl's hand.”

The prosecutor asked Himle whether he had said these things. Himle was very agitated and said that the information the article had was false.

At the very beginning of the trial, Himle immediately gained an advantage. The court ordered all his previous interrogation stories to not be used during the trial. They couldn’t be used as an evidence. According to the court when crimes this serious are in question, the suspect should’ve had an assistant. The police told that they had offered Himle one, but this didn’t help. Everything he had said in the interrogations in 2016, weren’t used as an evidence.

On many occasions Himle has said that he doesn’t wanna confess because he can’t go to prison. He was certain that he could talk himself out from the situation if it ever went to trial. Himle denies he had anything to do with the attack. To Yle he told during the break, that he’s not at all worried and that he’s sure the charges against him will be dropped.

And he was right.

On 30th of June 2021 all charges against Himle were dropped and he was released. According to the district court there were no evidence supporting the fact that Himle would’ve been the only possible person to be the perpetrator. Himle also didn’t have any more knowledge about the murder weapon than any other person. The district court thinks it’s very possible that Himle was simply just one of the helpers. The Swedish boy scouts told that they had discovered the bodies and shortly after, Himle had came there as well. The court also points out that since so much time has passed it has effected everyone’s memory. They said that nobody saw Himle close to the bodies before they were discovered. There is also no eye witnesses seeing him with bloody clothes before he started to help the victims.

The victims’ family members aren’t satisfied with this. They have told that there is a big chance they will complain to the court of appeals. If they want the investigation to continue they will have to leave a complaint and a plea to continue investigation not later than 30th of September 2021.

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Single family house at Badistrasse Ebnat-Kappel, Toggenburg, St. Gallen, Switzerland; 1957

Thomas Schmid, Felix Stöckli (photography by Walter Binder)

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