Pod Insights Casefile True Crime Case 310: Kalinka Bamberski About this episode *** Content warnings: Sexual assault, child victims ***
After 14-year-old Kalinka Bamberski is found dead in her own bed in the German town of Lindau, her French father, André Bamberski, refuses to accept that she died of natural causes. The further he digs, he starts to suspect that foul play was involved and that the person responsible was none other than Kalinka’s stepfather, Doctor Dieter Krombach. Will André’s suspicions be taken seriously, or will he be forced to take matters into his own hands?
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Narration – Anonymous Host https://www.instagram.com/caseys.snaps/
Research & writing – Elsha McGill
Creative direction – Milly Raso
Production and music – Mike Migas http://mikemigas.com/
Audio editing – Anthony Telfer
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Transcript 12,392 words · 5 speakers
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1:56 Speaker 00 Our episodes deal with serious and often distressing incidents. If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local crisis center. For suggested phone numbers for confidential support and for a more detailed list of content warnings, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website.
2:24 Speaker 00 1982 was shaping up to be a good year for Andre Bamberski. The 44-year-old accountant lived in Peschbusk, a small village just outside Toulouse in the southwest of France. A bitter divorce seven years prior had resulted in Andre losing custody of his two children, Kalinka and Nicholas, who had gone to live with their mother and her new husband in the German town of Lindau. This put a distance of over 1,000 kilometers between Andre and his children, which was an ongoing source of pain for the doting father, as he continued to simultaneously grapple with the harsh reality that his wife had left him for another man.
3:08 Speaker 00 Andre missed his children terribly, and he was therefore relieved when it was decided that 14-year-old Kalinka and 11-year-old Nicholas would return to France to live with him at the end of the summer of 1982. Kalinka had always been a very intelligent girl, but she’d been struggling academically at the boarding school she attended in Germany, and she was missing her old life back in France. It was agreed that the children would spend the summer vacation with their mother and stepfather in Lindau before moving back to Peschbusk with Andre that September. This was welcome news for Andre,
3:49 Speaker 00 who had recently started a new relationship for the first time since his divorce. After a difficult few years, everything seemed to be falling into place for a fresh start. That all changed on the morning of Saturday, July 10, 1982, just two months before Kalinka and Nicholas were set to return to France. That day, the phone rang at Andre’s house. It was his ex-wife, Danielle Krombach. She was beside herself.
4:25 Speaker 00 “Kalinka’s dead,” she sobbed.
4:53 Speaker 00 Andrej Bamberski listened in shock as Danielle explained that Kalinka had spent the previous day of Friday, July 9 windsurfing on Lake Constance, the crystal-clear bay located behind the Krombarks' home in Lendao.
5:09 Speaker 00 Danielle, Kalinka and Nicholas lived there with Danielle's husband, a respected cardiologist named Dito Krombark, as well as Dr. Krombark's two older children from a previous marriage. Danielle said that Kalinka had returned home at around 5pm. She remarked that she was feeling tired and a little unwell, but, other than that, she'd been her typical happy self. The family ate dinner together around 7.30pm, after which Dr. Krombark's children went out and the others soon retired to bed for the night as normal. Danielle explained that the next morning Dr. Krombark went to wake Kalinka up so they
5:52 Speaker 00 could go horseback riding together, only to find her lying in her bed, unconscious. He administered various injections in an attempt to revive her, but it was too late, she was already dead.
6:08 Speaker 00 With no physical explanation as to how Kalinka had died, Dr. Krombark suspected that she'd most likely suffered from heatstroke after overexposure to the sun the previous day, and had gone into shock as a result. Paramedics were called, but there was nothing they could do. Kalinka's body was taken straight to the funeral home.
6:33 Speaker 00 Andrej Bamberski couldn't believe what he was hearing. Kalinka was a healthy, athletic teenager who lived an incredibly active lifestyle and had no underlying medical conditions. How could she have possibly died in her sleep, and from heat stroke no less?
6:53 Speaker 00 Furthermore, it had only been around 29 degrees Celsius in Lindau, yet Kalinka was used to much hotter temperatures than that in France. To Andrej, it simply didn't make sense.
7:08 Speaker 00 His head still spinning, Andrej immediately travelled to Lindau.
7:14 Speaker 00 He hoped that his son Nicolas could shed some further light on the situation, but the 11-year-old said there was nothing out of the ordinary about the way Kalinka had behaved on the night that she died. She didn't exhibit any of the major signs of heat stroke such as dizziness, confusion, slurred speech, or profuse sweating. Nicolas didn't even recall Kalinka mentioning she was tired.
7:45 Speaker 00 In Germany, it was protocol that police be notified and an autopsy be conducted for any death that wasn't directly attributed to natural causes. Two days after Kalinka's death, two pathologists performed an autopsy on the teenager's body. Given the summer heat, her body was already in an advanced state of decomposition, yet they noted Kalinka's overall good health and hygiene. An examination of Kalinka's airways and lungs revealed the presence of aspirated stomach contents, which indicated that she'd likely vomited in her sleep and subsequently choked to death.
8:25 Speaker 00 The pathologists estimated Kalinka had died around 7 to 8 hours after eating dinner, putting her time of death sometime between 3 and 4am on Saturday, July 10, 1982.
8:40 Speaker 00 On the same day that the autopsy was conducted, a police officer questioned Dr. Dieter Krombach about the events leading up to Kalinka's death.
8:50 Speaker 00 Krombach explained that when Kalinka returned home from Lake Constance on Friday, she complained that she hadn't gotten much of a sun tan. Just before the family sat down for dinner at around 7:30, Krombach said he gave her an injection of cobalt folicet, an iron supplement that he claimed would help her tan more easily. Dr. Krombach recalled that Kalinka went to bed early, but then got up to get a glass of water at approximately 10:30pm. Around midnight, he noticed that Kalinka's bedroom light was still on. He peered in and saw that she was reading in bed. Krombach asked her to turn the light off before going to bed himself.
9:37 Speaker 00 The next time he saw Kalinka was when he went into her room at around 9:30am, only to discover that she was unconscious in her bed.
9:48 Speaker 00 In a desperate attempt to revive her, Dr. Krombach grabbed his doctor's kit and injected her with a narcotic as well as a neurotransmitter.
9:58 Speaker 00 Realizing it was hopeless and that she was already dead, he phoned emergency services who came to the house and removed Kalinka's body. They noted no signs of violence apart from the injection marks on her thorax and right arm.
10:17 Speaker 00 A local prosecutor reviewed the case and determined that no foul play had occurred. They closed Kalinka Bamberski's file, leaving her family to grieve as they came to terms with this unforeseen tragedy.
10:35 Speaker 00 Back in France, Andre Bamberski tried to accept that his daughter was gone, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right.
10:46 Speaker 00 At Kalinka's funeral, he'd overheard whispers that she had died as a result of the iron injection that Dieter Krombach had given to help her tan. This was the first Andre had heard about any such injection. His ex-wife Danielle had made no mention of it. Danielle had also promised to send Andre a copy of the autopsy report, yet one week passed, and then another, and still there was no sign of it.
11:16 Speaker 00 Andre called Danielle and demanded to know what was going on.
11:22 Speaker 00 It was a difficult situation to navigate, given that the pair already had a complex history between them. The two had met in the Moroccan city of Casablanca in the early 1960s, where Andre was overseeing a large accounting company that specialized in international taxation. They got married and had Kalinka shortly after, followed by Nicholas a few years after that. Life was good for the family of four. That was, until Dieter Krombach came along.
11:57 Speaker 00 At the time, Krombach worked as a doctor for the German consulate in Casablanca and lived just a few doors down from the Bamberski. Widowed with two young children who attended the same international school as Kalinka and Nicholas, the two families would occasionally cross paths. But, over time, Andre noticed that Dr. Krombach seemed to show up wherever they went. When the Bamberski family had a serious car accident in 1974, he was the first person to arrive on the scene. Andre started to suspect that something was going on between his wife and Dr. Krombach.
12:40 Speaker 00 Eventually, Danielle admitted that the two were having an affair. Andre confronted Dr. Krombach, who refused to end the relationship with Danielle.
12:53 Speaker 00 Desperate to save his marriage, Andre moved his family back to France.
12:59 Speaker 00 As he and Danielle worked to mend things between them, Danielle got a job in real estate that required her to travel frequently to the city of Nice, which was on the other side of the country. She decided it was easiest if she rented an apartment there during the week and then returned home on the weekends. Andre was a little suspicious of this. One day, he followed Danielle as she left for work and found that she drove straight to a nearby apartment.
13:32 Speaker 00 It turned out that Dr. Dieter Krombach had moved to France so he could continue his affair with Danielle.
13:40 Speaker 00 Andre filed for divorce, and Danielle married Krombach shortly after. Things had been bitter between the exes ever since, with Kalinka's death marking yet another source of contention. When Andre called Danielle demanding to know what was going on with their daughter's autopsy, Danielle thought he was overreacting.
14:05 Speaker 00 She encouraged Andre to make peace with the tragedy as best as he could by accepting that Kalinka's time had simply come. But Andre wasn't ready to let her go.
14:19 Speaker 00 After numerous requests, three months after Kalinka's death, he finally got his hands on her autopsy findings.
14:28 Speaker 00 The 16-page report was written in German, so he immediately had it translated into French. When Andre finally sat down to read the findings, he couldn't believe his eyes.
14:45 Speaker 00 The first thing Andre noticed was that the pathologists had concluded that the exact cause of Kalinka's death couldn't be determined. While she had choked on her own vomit, they didn't know what had caused her to throw up in the first place. They had studied the multiple injection sites on Kalinka's body, and although they found no sign of poisoning, they noted it as odd that Dr. Krombach had attempted to revive Kalinka with various injections. Her body had already been in a clear state of rigor mortis when these drugs were administered, which meant she was already dead at the time. As a medical doctor, it should have been obvious to Krombach that any attempt to resuscitate
15:29 Speaker 00 her would be futile. More alarmingly, the pathologists noted the presence of fresh blood around Kalinka's genitals, as well as a superficial tear in her labia and a white substance inside her vagina. Yet, they hadn't conducted any tests to identify what the substance was, nor had they done any analysis to determine whether sexual intercourse had taken place before Kalinka's death. In fact, they hadn't conducted any toxicology tests at all, seemingly taking Dr. Krombach's word for the various medications she'd been given. Andre was gobsmacked.
16:12 Speaker 00 In his view, it didn't sound like Kalinka had died of natural causes at all. It sounded like she'd been drugged, raped, and possibly murdered. If this was true, there was only one person who could be responsible: the last person to have seen her alive: Dr. Dida Krombach.
16:34 Speaker 00 In the autopsy report, Dr. Krombach was quoted making medical observations. To Andre, it seemed as though he was there during the examination, which went entirely against protocol, as family members were not allowed to be present. In Andre's view, it sounded like Krombach was providing his version of events, and the pathologists were simply writing their report to suit. Krombach was a well-known and revered doctor in Lindau, and Andre suspected this could explain why further testing wasn't done, and why the pathologists had been willing to overlook the suspicious findings. He knew these were big allegations to make,
17:17 Speaker 00 but for his daughter, it was a risk he was willing to take.
17:25 Speaker 00 Three months after Kalinka's death, Andre Bamberski contacted the German prosecutor who had closed her file and demanded that the case be reopened. He requested that proper forensic and toxicology testing be conducted on the samples that had been taken from Kalinka's body.
17:44 Speaker 00 The prosecutor denied the request. The German authorities said that Dr. Dieter Krombach hadn't been present during the autopsy, but had simply entered the room momentarily to officially identify Kalinka's body. They trusted the pathologists and saw no reason to reinvestigate the matter.
18:06 Speaker 00 Andre called his ex-wife to voice his suspicions.
18:11 Speaker 00 Danielle claimed she hadn't even looked at Kalinka's autopsy report. She said she trusted her husband implicitly and had no reason to doubt his medical explanation for her daughter's death. Andre accused Danielle of covering up for her husband, and in turn, she accused Andre of seeking revenge against Krombach for the affair.
18:35 Speaker 00 She also suspected anti-German sentiment had something to do with Andre's allegations. Although Andre was born in France, his father's family was originally from Poland, and Andre had been deported to both Poland and Germany by the Nazis during World War II.
18:55 Speaker 00 Danielle told Andrej as much, saying that his attempts to have Kalinka's case reopened dishonored her memory.
19:05 Speaker 00 Undeterred, Andrej Bamberski hired a renowned lawyer who convinced the German prosecutor to order a review of Kalinka's autopsy report. In November 1982, four months after the teenager's death, three experts from the Munich Forensic Institute were assigned to the task. They tested samples from the injection sites on Kalinka Bamberski's body and confirmed there was no evidence of poison. However, like the original pathologists, they agreed that Dr. Krombach's resuscitation attempts on a body in rigor mortis were crude and outright strange.
19:46 Speaker 00 The forensic experts also had questions about Krombach's use of kobold phalacet as a tanning aid, as they'd never known it to be used for such a purpose.
19:57 Speaker 00 They pointed out that the only reason this medication should be administered intravenously is in cases of severe iron deficiency anemia, and only then under close medical supervision. If not, it had the potential to be dangerous, causing serious side effects such as headaches, dizziness, nausea, loss of consciousness, and even cardiac arrest. They therefore suspected that Kalinka had an adverse reaction to the iron injection, went into shock, and then choked on her own vomit. However, the initial autopsy report estimated that Kalinka had died sometime between 3 and 4 a.m.
20:40 Speaker 00 The Munich pathologists noted that an adverse reaction would have happened immediately after the injection was administered, not several hours later. Dr. Krombach claimed he had given Kalinka the iron infusion before dinner on Friday, July 9, sometime around 7 and 7:30 p.m. Traces of undigested food in Kalinka's stomach also indicated that she'd died shortly after eating, leading the reviewing pathologists to question the time of death on the original autopsy report.
21:15 Speaker 00 The original autopsy stated that various organs had been removed from Kalinka's body during her post-mortem exam, such as her kidneys, rectum, and genitals. The reviewing team questioned one of the original pathologists about the tear on Kalinka's labia. He claimed that the damage had occurred post-mortem because of how badly decomposed Kalinka's body had been. The team from the Munich Forensic Institute requested access to these organs for further analysis, but the prosecution's office brushed off their request and the matter wasn't pursued further. Without all the evidence, the team therefore produced an inconclusive report, stating that
22:00 Speaker 00 while they were unable to determine Kalinka's exact cause of death, they suspected it had something to do with the Cobalt Felicid injection. For Andrej Bamberski, these findings were significant. If Kalinka had died shortly after receiving the iron shot, then it called into question Dr. Krombach's claim that he'd seen Kalinka around midnight when he'd asked her to turn off her light. While this wasn't enough to convince German prosecutors to reopen the case, the discrepancy between the two reports only made Andrej Bamberski more certain that Dr. Krombach was covering something up.
22:43 Speaker 00 He visited Kalinka's gravesite and made a vow: he'd discover the truth and get justice for her, no matter what. As word spread about Dieter Krombach's potential involvement in Kalinka's death, Andrej wasn't the only one whose suspicions were raised. In 1969, Krombach's first wife, 24-year-old Monica, had been rushed to hospital after suffering from a mysterious illness that had rendered her unable to see, speak, or move. Krombach, who had recently graduated with honours from the University of Frankfurt,
23:25 Speaker 00 had apparently pushed aside Monica's attending physician and injected her with what he claimed to be snake venom. A few hours later, Monica suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and passed away.
23:39 Speaker 00 The doctors had attributed Monica's death to an overdose of the contraceptive pill. But when her parents heard about what happened to Kalinka Bamberski, they suspected that Krombach could have poisoned Monica too. They claimed that Krombach had treated Monica terribly when she was still alive, beating her and threatening to kill her. In 1983, Monica's parents reported their suspicions to the German police and an investigation was launched, but no evidence was found to support their theory.
24:16 Speaker 00 As the one-year anniversary of Kalinka's death approached, Andrej's lawyer finally convinced the Lindau Police Commissioner to interview the other family members who were present at the Krombach home on the night Kalinka died.
24:30 Speaker 00 Danielle Krombach told the police that the household had eaten dinner at around 8:30pm, not 7:30 like her husband had originally reported. According to Danielle, it was actually after dinner that Dr. Krombach gave Kalinka the iron infusion, and it wasn't to help her suntan, but to treat her anemia.
24:54 Speaker 00 Danielle explained that both she and Kalinka received these iron injections regularly and had never had an adverse reaction before. On the contrary, Danielle found them to be restorative.
25:09 Speaker 00 While she hadn't been present when the injection was administered, Danielle said she remembered it because Kalinka had a Band-Aid on her arm and mentioned that she'd just had her iron shot. Danielle recalled that she and Dr. Krombach then took their dog out for a walk, after which Krombach did some work in his office while Danielle went to bed. She didn't recall what time her husband came to bed that night.
25:38 Speaker 00 He woke her up the next morning, his hands shaking and eyes bulging as he told Danielle something had happened to Kalinka. Danielle rushed to her daughter's bedroom, finding her lying in the fetal position, her face blue and her body cold to the touch.
25:57 Speaker 00 Dr. Krombach's daughter Diana claimed that over dinner Kalinka had complained of being sunburnt but seemed otherwise fine. Diana recalled having seen her father prepare the Cobalt Felicid injection for Kalinka afterwards, which she said was a standard procedure in their household. Diana went out with friends and returned home around midnight, at which point she didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.
26:26 Speaker 00 The next morning, she found her father trembling in Kalinka's room, shouting to Diana to fetch his medicine bag.
26:34 Speaker 00 Kalinka's younger brother Nicholas said his sister showed no signs of poor health on the night that she died. He didn't remember Kalinka having her iron infusion, nor did he recall seeing a Band-Aid on her arm. All Nicholas remembered was that he and Kalinka squabbled over something trivial while their parents were out walking the dog.
26:57 Speaker 00 The siblings went to bed, and the next thing Nicholas knew, he woke up to the sounds of ambulance sirens and his mother crying.
27:07 Speaker 00 When the police commissioner tried to question Dr. Dida Krombach, he insisted he was too busy. The commissioner therefore agreed to give him a list of five questions that he could answer at his own leisure.
27:22 Speaker 00 Krombach eventually responded to the questions via post. In contrast to his original statement, he claimed to have given Kalinka the iron injection after dinner at around 8:30pm, and not for tanning purposes, but to treat anemia. He also added a new detail for the first time. He claimed that after his wife and the children went to bed, he did some work before going into the kitchen.
27:53 Speaker 00 Kalinka was there complaining that she was unable to get to sleep, so he gave her a sleeping pill.
28:02 Speaker 00 When Andre Bamberski caught wind of these witness statements, he was convinced that Dr. Krombach had changed his version of events to fit with the results of the autopsy review. The detail about the sleeping pill was no doubt his attempt to cover for the fact that he'd intentionally drugged and raped Kalinka. Krombach's answers matched Danielle's to a T, and Andre was certain that the two had corroborated their responses. It was the first that Andre had ever heard of Kalinka being anaemic, and no blood tests had been done to confirm such a diagnosis.
28:43 Speaker 00 Andre and his lawyer requested that Kalinka's case be officially reopened, but, once again, their request was denied on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to warrant a new investigation. Andre was at a loss. He felt like he'd exhausted all possible avenues and feared that Krombach was going to get away with what he'd done to Kalinka and go on living his life like nothing had ever happened. Refusing to let that happen, Andre had to think outside the box.
29:17 Speaker 00 On Friday, September 30, 1983, almost 15 months after Kalinka's death, Andre travelled to Lindau during Oktoberfest, an annual beer festival that attracted upwards of 30,000 people. Andre walked the crowded streets and stopped into the bustling cafes and restaurants, handing out a two-page leaflet that began: "You should know that a criminal lives in Lindau. It is Dr. Krombach who practises at 23A Briganza Street. On the evening of Friday, July 9, 1982, he killed my splendid daughter Kalinka at his own home by injecting her with kobold folicet."
30:04 Speaker 00 The flyer went on to detail all of Andre's allegations against Krombach and his perceived flaws in the investigation. He provided the Krombach's home address, listed the names of the police commissioner, prosecutor, and the pathologists involved, and claimed that a rapist was being protected by powerful locals. Someone told Dr. Krombach's daughter Diana about the leaflet, and she immediately called the police. Two hours later, officers found Andre handing them out and placed him under arrest for disturbing public order, defaming Krombach, and injuring the reputation of the prosecutor. After sharing his side of the story,
30:49 Speaker 00 Andre was free to go, but Krombach sued him for defamation of character. Krombach's lawyer denied the allegations against him, arguing that so-called signs of sexual assault on Kalinka's body had occurred when the pathologists were redressing her fragile and badly decomposed body after their examination.
31:13 Speaker 00 Krombach won the lawsuit, with a German judge ordering that Andre Bamberski pay him 500,000 German marks in compensation, the equivalent of around 255,000 euros in today's money. Andre was also warned that if he did such a thing again, he'd face up to six months in jail.
31:39 Speaker 00 Andre was completely undeterred. Not only did he refuse to pay the money, he also got a copy of the Lindau phone book and started mailing the leaflet to as many people as he could, including 250 Bavarian officials. The reaction was lackluster, with less than a dozen of those officials agreeing that the case warranted further attention. However, it was enough to get the Bavarian Minister of Justice involved, and finally, a new investigation was ordered.
32:14 Speaker 00 A fresh team of German forensic experts reviewed Kalinka's autopsy report, and agreed that her death had likely been caused as a result of the iron injection Dieter Krombach had given her.
32:27 Speaker 00 They determined that Krombach's crude resuscitation attempts had happened about 10 hours after Kalinka had died, indicating that he had either tried to cover up his medical error, or foul play. However, the investigation hit a standstill after German officials told Andre they wouldn't be able to reexamine or forensically test Kalinka's genitals for evidence of sexual assault, as these and the other organs had been returned to France with her body.
32:59 Speaker 00 Given that Kalinka was a French citizen, Andre discovered that he was also able to lodge a criminal complaint against Dieter Krombach with the French courts. If magistrates uncovered enough evidence to press murder charges, Krombach could also be tried under French law. A French investigation was simultaneously launched, but German officials refused the French magistrate from investigating on German territory. This prevented them from interviewing Krombach or the witnesses who were home on the night Kalinka died.
33:35 Speaker 00 Krombach and Danielle had since separated, yet they remained on good terms, and Danielle was disgusted by Andre's ongoing accusations. Andre's lawyer attempted to summon Krombach to France, but he declined in a letter which read: "The files of the German authorities are certainly at your disposal. I see no reason for me to go to Paris for an interview. Such a journey would be a considerable burden for me, in every respect."
34:08 Speaker 00 Things progressed at a snail’s pace, and it took three and a half years after Kalinka’s death before Germany agreed that the French investigators could exhume Kalinka’s body for additional examination.
34:22 Speaker 00 In December 1985, Andre gathered at Peschbusk Cemetery with a team of French police officers and forensic experts as Kalinka’s coffin was pulled from its gravesite. It turned out that the teenager’s body had been incredibly well-preserved. But to the dismay of those gathered, the organs that had been removed during Kalinka’s autopsy, including her genitals, weren’t in the coffin as German officials had claimed.
34:53 Speaker 00 The German forensic lab who had handled Kalinka’s remains could provide no trace of them. It appeared they were gone forever.
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39:18 Speaker 00 By supporting our sponsors, you support Casefile to continue to deliver quality content. Without access to the sex organs that had been removed from Kalinka's body, the German court ruled there was insufficient evidence to press any charges against Adida Crombach, and the German officials made it clear they would not be investigating the case any further. Andrei Bomberski was horrified by the way Kalinka's body had been treated during the autopsy.
39:57 Speaker 00 He later remarked: "Kalinka got carved up like a pig in a slaughterhouse, but nobody wanted to know how and why she died." The only hope Andrei had left was with the French investigation, but German officials refused to extradite Krombach to France on the grounds that he'd essentially already been acquitted by the German courts. The Germans claimed that undergoing prosecution in France would go against the European Union's double jeopardy principle, which prevented individuals from being tried for the same offence after they had already been acquitted.
40:38 Speaker 00 With no new evidence to examine, the French magistrates requested access to the original samples taken from Kalinka's body. They had to be manually retrieved from Munich, a process two years in the making. In 1988, a team of three French forensic experts were finally able to examine the available evidence for themselves. They were given skin, lung, heart, and tissue samples from Kalinka's body, yet test tubes filled with her blood had been inexplicably discarded by the first reviewing team at the Munich Forensic Institute.
41:18 Speaker 00 The lack of blood meant they were unable to find a definitive link between any intravenous substance and Kalinka's death. However, the trio highlighted various gaps in the previous autopsy reports, concluding that Kalinka Bamberski had died as a direct result of the iron injection Dr. Krombach had given her. With nothing in her medical records to indicate that Kalinka was anaemic, the injection would have put her body into shock, in turn causing her to lose consciousness and choke on her own vomit. She would have died shortly after receiving the injection, once again calling into question
42:00 Speaker 00 Krombach's timeline of events. The drugs Krombach had injected her with hours later weren't known to be used for resuscitation purposes, and, given together, they formed a dangerous combination. Therefore, the experts concluded the only reason Krombach would have administered these drugs was to make it look like he'd made a genuine attempt to revive Kalinka, or to cover up another drug that he'd given her earlier on, possibly to enable a sexual assault.
42:35 Speaker 00 It took another few years until the French magistrates believed they'd built up a solid case against Krombach. While they didn't have enough evidence to proceed with any sexual assault charges, the courts decided that Kalinka's death was caused by a direct result of an intravenous injection or a solution that might or might not have been cobalt folicet. It wasn't enough to uphold a murder charge, but it was enough to indicate voluntary assault resulting in unintentional death. In April 1993, Andre Bamberski received the news he'd been waiting for for almost 11 years.
43:19 Speaker 00 The Paris Court of Aces had just charged Dr. Dieter Krombach with killing Kalinka. An indictment for Krombach's arrest stated that in order to justify the injection he gave Kalinka, Krombach furnished conflicting and untrue accounts. It further stated that he "also lied about the chronology of the events when he affirmed that the injection had taken place several hours before the death. Lastly, the faked attempt to revive her and the use of mutually incompatible products on a living being can only be explained by an intention to conceal the cause of death."
44:04 Speaker 00 These factors taken as a whole constitute sufficient grounds for suspecting that Dieter Krombach gave the fatal injection not as a cure, but with the intention of causing death. Given Kalinka's age, the maximum penalty Krombach faced was 30 years in prison. The trial was set to take place in Paris, but Krombach successfully postponed it several times. When the date was finally set for early March 1995, Krombach was protected by a law that prevented German citizens from being prosecuted outside of their own country.
44:47 Speaker 00 He therefore wasn't legally required to attend his own trial, and it went ahead without him in what's known as a trial in absentia.
44:57 Speaker 00 There were no defence attorneys present, nor were there any witnesses or jury members. Instead, a judge reviewed the available evidence, which excluded the sexual assault allegations, and concluded that Dieter Krombach was guilty of willful violence leading to death without intent, or, in other words, manslaughter.
45:21 Speaker 00 Without the sexual assault motive, the court concluded that Krombach was responsible for Kalinka's death, because he'd given her the injection without then monitoring her for possible adverse reactions.
45:35 Speaker 00 Krombach was sentenced to 15 years in a French prison, the maximum sentence for manslaughter at the time.
45:44 Speaker 00 Despite this conviction and sentence, Germany remained under no legal obligation to extradite Krombach. He was ultimately a convicted killer, allowed to walk free, provided he steer clear of France.
46:00 Speaker 00 Andrej Bamberski wasn't the only one outraged by this technical loophole. After an article about the case appeared in a major French newspaper the following year, pressure was placed on the Paris Public Prosecutor, and eventually Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for Krombach.
46:20 Speaker 00 This meant that if he attempted to leave Germany, he'd no longer be protected by German laws, and would be extradited to France to see out his sentence.
46:33 Speaker 00 In March 1997, two years after the trial, Andrej Bamberski's phone rang. A German journalist was on the other line with some information they thought might be of interest to him. Sixty-one-year-old Adita Krombark had just been arrested.
46:54 Speaker 00 Andrej's immediate thought was that Krombark was finally being held accountable for Kalinka's death, but what the journalist told him next was even more astonishing. Sixteen-year-old Laura Stihler was a Russian immigrant living in Lindau. On the morning of Tuesday, February 11, 1997, she attended Dr. Krombark's practice to undergo a gastroscopy, a diagnostic procedure that involves an endoscope being passed through the mouth and into the esophagus, stomach, and bowel. As per standard practice, Laura was given an anesthetic and a sedative to make the procedure more comfortable.
47:38 Speaker 00 The gastroscopy was completed without incident, but when Laura woke up, she took longer than usual to recover from the anesthetic. Dr. Krombark and his assistant left Laura to recover on the couch in their post-treatment room.
47:55 Speaker 00 As Laura lay there, barely able to move or speak, Dr. Krombark returned. He began kissing her and touching her breasts. Laura tried to push him away, but her body felt completely paralyzed from the anesthetic, and she could barely lift her arms.
48:15 Speaker 00 Dr. Krombark locked the door from the inside and removed his pants.
48:21 Speaker 00 He took Laura's clothes off and proceeded to rape her. After he was done, he wiped them both down with a paper towel, helped Laura get dressed, and then drove her home.
48:34 Speaker 00 Laura reported the incident to the police straight away, and an examination confirmed the presence of semen. Adita Krombark was subsequently charged with the sexual abuse of an individual unable to resist.
48:50 Speaker 00 He denied the allegation and was jailed pending trial, but he changed his plea after learning that the semen had tested positive for his DNA.
49:01 Speaker 00 Андрей Бомберски путешествовал в Германию, чтобы быть в руках слушания Кромбака. Его присутствие явно удивило Кромбака, который начал кричать, что французский был там, чтобы убить его. Наконец, порядок был восстановлен в суде, Кромбак заявил, что он был under impression, что Лора согласилась с сексом, даже если она не explicitly сказала так.
49:26 Speaker 00 Многие, которые были в руках, были отвращены по casual way, в котором он говорил о том, что он сделал. Он казалось, что не имеет remorse, а вместо этого, он утверждал, что это какое-то развлечение синантическим. Психиатр утверждал, что Кромбак был нарциссом, который считал себя над правом, описание, которое многие считали подходящим, после того, как ему было дано два года спускной sentence.
49:54 Speaker 00 Ситиенты Линдай были расстроены. Сотни聚集在一起，抗议 sentence 的 leniency， а протесты разговаривали, просят, чтобы лицензия медицинского личности была отменена.
50:08 Speaker 00 Хоть бы выразить свой сторону истории, Кромбак согласился на эксклюзивную интервью с Барбара Феркл, журналистом для германского телевизионного транслятора ZDF. Отвечая на предваренные вопросы в руках его адвоката, Кромбак сел комфортно в своей палатке, когда он объяснил, что он не считал своих действий как сексуальный ассольт.
50:32 Speaker 00 Он заявил, что он просто выражал свою любовь к Лоре, идя до того, чтобы назвать свои действия любовным.
50:42 Speaker 00 Пока Кромбак признал, что Лора не была энтузиастичной, он объяснил: "Я believed, she was consenting. She didn't say yes, but she didn't say no either. When I kissed her, she kissed back."
51:00 Speaker 00 Кромбак вспомнил, что был момент во время ассольта, когда он сказал Лоре: "I love you" в русском. Он улыбался, когда он это вспомнил, промотав Барбара Феркл, чтобы сказала: "But you drugged her." Кромбак смеялся, отметив: "Как они сказали в древнем Риме, "Those who remain silent seem to agree."
51:28 Speaker 00 A woman named Sfwayna Mauagunta was watching the interview and couldn't believe what she was seeing. Not only was she sickened by the way that Krombach seemed to mock his victim, Sfwayna remembered Dr Krombach well. As a teenager living in Lindau in the early 1980s, she had visited his medical office regularly as her mother had been sick at the time. Sfwayna and her sister Yana were also diagnosed as anaemic and required regular iron infusions. 1985 had been a hard time for the Maua sisters.
52:09 Speaker 00 Their parents had been going through a brutal divorce and their mother struggled with health problems. Dr Krombach became a much-needed source of support, providing positive distractions for Sfwayna and Yana by taking them horse-riding and out to fancy dinners. Then, when the girls were around 14 and 16, Dr Krombach invited them to join him on a long weekend to the south of France without their mother. Sfwayna and Yana were thrilled. After the turmoil they'd been witnessing at home, a few days away with the charming and sophisticated doctor seemed like a dream.
52:51 Speaker 00 They'd come to view Krombach as a type of substitute father figure and were excited to travel to a beautiful location.
53:00 Speaker 00 The trip started off well, until it came time to check into their motel. The trio arrived late at night, only to find they would all be sharing a room which contained only one double bed with a single fold-up bed alongside it. Dr Krombach told the sisters he was too big to take the fold-up bed. He said he would sleep in the double bed and the girls could choose which one of them would join him. Jana begged Svania to take the double bed. She had only packed a small nightgown and she was too self-conscious to sleep alongside the fifty-year-old man.
53:43 Speaker 00 Svania agreed, and as they climbed into bed, Dr. Krombach told the sisters that they were due for their iron infusions. Given that he had his doctor's kit with him, he figured this was as good a time as any.
53:58 Speaker 00 He retrieved his doctor's bag and proceeded to give them both their injections. Svania dozed off almost immediately. She woke up sometime later, only to find Dr. Krombach sexually assaulting her. Terrified, she didn't dare move or speak. As the assault continued, she played dead, to the point that Krombach started shaking her to make sure she was still alive. Svania found the only way she could get through it was to disassociate entirely, telling herself, "This isn't happening."
54:37 Speaker 00 The next day, Svania felt as though the whole thing had been a horrible nightmare. She knew how highly respected Dr. Krombach was in Lindau, and felt that nobody would believe her if she spoke up about what happened. She told her sister Jana, who had nodded off as soon as Krombach injected her and slept through everything. Jana didn't know whether the doctor had assaulted her too, but if he had, she felt it was best that she didn't know. The girls eventually told their mother, who scolded them for making such an allegation against the good man.
55:22 Speaker 00 Following the interview about Laura Steeler with Barbara Furkel, the public backlash against Dieter Krombach was immense. By the end of 1997, his medical license was revoked and he had to sell his practice. In addition to the Mauer sisters, at least two other patients came forward claiming they too had been sexually assaulted by the doctor in the past. None of the alleged survivors were able to press charges due to the lack of evidence, but the public condemnation reignited discussion about Kalinka Bamberski's death, and the case started getting media attention outside of Germany.
56:04 Speaker 00 Andre Bamberski quit his job so that he could devote all of his time to pursuing Dieter Krombach. Knowing that he frequently travelled to Austria and Switzerland, Andre visited police and custom posts throughout both countries, handing out dossiers containing photos of Krombach, newspaper articles detailing the allegations against him, and judicial warrants for his arrest.
56:30 Speaker 00 The reactions were mixed. Some treated Andre as though he was crazy, while others were willing to listen to his story.
56:40 Speaker 00 Either way, his efforts paid off in early January 2000, when a police officer in western Austria recognised Dieter Krombach from one of Andre's photos and placed him under arrest. He was detained as per the terms of the European Convention on Extradition that was in place at the time. German officials called for his release, arguing that Krombach had been cleared of any wrongdoing in his home country, and that the French arrest warrant was therefore a violation of his rights.
57:15 Speaker 00 French officials didn't argue against this, and Krombach was subsequently released and free to return to Germany.
57:24 Speaker 00 Krombach and his legal team had been arguing against his manslaughter conviction in France ever since the sentence was handed down back in 1995.
57:35 Speaker 00 They petitioned to the European Court of Human Rights, asserting that France was wrong to conduct a trial without Krombach, or a legal representative there to defend him.
57:47 Speaker 00 En 2001, la Cour a conclu que en essayant Krombark en absentia, la France avait violated plusieurs stipulations établies dans la Convention européenne sur les droits humains.
58:00 Speaker 00 Ils ont trouvé qu'il avait été refusé une éducation juste et son droit à s'attirer, et que la sentence ne pouvait donc plus être appliquée. La Cour a évité la conviction et a ordonné que le gouvernement français récompense Krombark avec 100 000 francs pour les coûts soumis, qui étaient environ 15 000 euros à l'époque.
58:24 Speaker 00 C'était une grosse défaite pour André Bamberski, dont les accusations contre Krombark étaient enfin pris en considération après des années de denial. Il a demandé aux officiers français d'attirer la décision à la Chambre suprême de la Cour européenne des droits humains, mais sa demande a été refusée. Ils ont aussi refusé sa demande de reexaminer le procès de Krombark en 1995. Tout le processus juridique avait été incroyablement déroutant pour André, soit émotionnellement, soit financièrement, mais il refusait de cesser. André était convaincu que les autorités françaises préféraient prioriser leur relation avec la Allemagne sur la justice pour Kalinka.
59:10 Speaker 00 Cette suspicion a augmenté seulement après qu'il s'est rendu compte d'un rapport de l'équipe juridique de Krombark qui prétendait que les procureurs publics à Paris lui avaient assuré que la sentence de Krombark ne serait pas appliquée. À l'avis de André, les Français avaient échoué dans leur devoir de cacher Krombark, qui vivait maintenant librement comme un rapiste condamné dans son pays.
59:34 Speaker 00 En 2002, il a fait une complaint contre plusieurs magistrats français et procureurs qui prétendaient avoir corruption et obstruction de la justice. Comme explique le procureur nouvellement nommé à la télévision française, "Brings in the accused", c'était une tentative de réveiller une machine en dormant par l'application d'une explosion.
59:59 Speaker 00 A judge ruled there were no grounds for Andre's complaint, and that the allegations wouldn't be investigated further. The entire Kalinka Bamberski case was transferred back to Germany, where a new prosecutor determined yet again that no charges would be pressed against Adida Krombach in relation to the teenager's death.
1:00:22 Speaker 00 Andre was aware that he'd earned a particular reputation within the French legal circles as an annoyance. As much as this hurt him, it made him all the more determined to continue with the fight.
1:00:36 Speaker 00 In 2004, the European Union implemented a new system known as the European Arrest Warrant. This aimed to simplify and streamline the extradition process for suspects within the EU, so that they could be transferred from one EU state to another without the need for specific extradition treaties. As a result, French prosecutors issued a fresh European Arrest Warrant for Adida Krombach. German officials denied it again, on the grounds that the case was closed.
1:01:13 Speaker 00 Although Andre seemed to hit a dead end at every turn, he wasn't alone in his quest for justice. By this point, a concerned citizen had created a group in support of Andre's cause titled “Justice for Kalinka”, which soon amassed over 1,000 members from all walks of life. Members held rallies, wrote letters to people in positions of power, and created a website detailing all the available information about Andre's legal struggles. German filmmaker Hilke Zingling was among those following Kalinka's case. In 2006, she released a documentary dedicated to the allegations
1:01:55 Speaker 00 against Adida Krombach titled “Kalinka’s Last Journey”, which featured interviews with the Mauwa sisters.
1:02:04 Speaker 00 After the documentary aired, Hilker received a letter from Krombach in which he claimed that the sisters were lying about being drugged and sexually assaulted during their trip to the south of France. Krombach said he barely knew the girls and had never taken them on a holiday. Yet, the Mauer sisters had provided Hilker with photographs that proved the trip had taken place and these had been broadcast in the documentary.
1:02:34 Speaker 00 Speaking about Krombach to The Guardian, Hilker later said: “I have no idea if he has problems with reality.”
1:02:45 Speaker 00 Around the same time that the documentary aired, a German librarian named Petra Steffen sat down at her computer. Petra lived approximately 400 kilometres from Lindau in the German town of Rodental. Her regular doctor had recently passed away and she’d been given the name of his replacement. A curious person by nature, Petra typed the name of the new doctor into Google. One of the first things that popped up was the Justice for Kalinka website, followed by Hilker Zingling’s documentary. Petra was stunned as she learned about the crimes Dr. Dieter Krombach had been convicted of
1:03:29 Speaker 00 and discovered that he’d been banned from practising medicine entirely. She booked an appointment to see if the new doctor in town was indeed the same Dr. Krombach she was reading about. After confirming that it was, Petra wasted no time in reporting him.
1:03:49 Speaker 00 Further investigation revealed that Dieter Krombach had been working as a locum doctor all over Germany ever since his medical licence was revoked after his rape conviction back in 1997. He’d gotten away with it by producing a photocopy of his old medical licence, claiming that the original had been stolen.
1:04:11 Speaker 00 Krombach was charged with 28 cases of fraud and 19 cases of illegally practising medicine. He was placed under arrest just as the authorities suspected he was about to flee overseas.
1:04:26 Speaker 00 According to the Netflix documentary My Daughter's Killer, police found him with a suitcase containing clothing, cash, and a penis pump used to treat erectile dysfunction. He was subject to a psychiatric assessment, with two psychiatrists concluding that he was a chronic liar, sexual predator, and a narcissist who believed he was outside the law. Krombach was subsequently convicted and sentenced to two years and four months in a German prison. He served eighteen months before being released early for good behaviour in June 2008.
1:05:09 Speaker 00 By this point, twenty-six years had passed since Kalinka Bamberski's death. Under French law, a thirty-year statute of limitations meant there were only four years left in which legal action could be taken against André Krombach in relation to Kalinka's death. After that, not only would he be free from facing any punishment, but he could also choose to sue André Bamberski for defamation.
1:05:38 Speaker 00 Following Krombach's early release from prison, the Paris Court of Appeal admitted that his 1995 trial in absentia had been distorted under pressure from Germany.
1:05:51 Speaker 00 The French warrant for his arrest was still in place, but, other than that, in the eyes of the law, André Bamberski had exhausted all possible options when it came to getting justice for his daughter. It was important to André that Krombach knew he hadn't been forgotten. André travelled to Germany and tracked Krombach down to Schiedag, a small market town twenty kilometres inland from Lindau, near the Austrian border. He visited every once in a while to keep an eye on Krombach and to make his presence known.
1:06:29 Speaker 00 Then in September 2009, Andre noticed a for sale sign at the front of Krombach's apartment. He spoke to some neighbours who told him that Krombach had accepted a job in West Africa.
1:06:44 Speaker 00 With the clock ticking and Crombach on the move again, Andre knew it was now or never. "I had enough in my head", he later told The Guardian. "I knew that the French government would do nothing. I knew that the German government would do nothing. I decided that I had to do something."
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1:10:19 Speaker 00 It was just after 3:15 on the morning of Sunday, October 18, 2009, when a call came through to police in the French city of Malus. "Go to the Rue de Tiel across from the customs office," an anonymous caller said. "You'll find a man tied up."
1:10:39 Speaker 00 The police station was only four blocks away.
1:10:43 Speaker 00 Two squad cars raced to the narrow street near the centre of town. There, in a courtyard nestled between two buildings, they found an elderly man lying on the ground behind an iron gate.
1:10:57 Speaker 00 It was Dieter Krombach. He was curled on the pavement, his hands and feet bound together, and his mouth gagged with duct tape. His face was barely recognizable, battered, bruised and covered in blood.
1:11:14 Speaker 00 One of the police officers removed the tape from his mouth. "Bamberski is behind it", he said.
1:11:23 Speaker 00 Krombach was rushed to hospital, where he received treatment for a fractured skull. He told the police that the previous evening he'd been at his home in Shydek when there was a knock on the door. He answered it, only to find an unfamiliar man standing there. "Are you Krombach?", the man asked with a thick Russian accent. When Krombach answered "yes", the man punched him in the face.
1:11:53 Speaker 00 Two other men appeared and launched a violent attack. They managed to bind and gag Krombach before throwing him into the backseat of their car. As the man drove along, Krombach struggled and begged for his life. He offered to pay the trio fifty thousand euros if they'd just let him go. Then, one of the men pulled out a knife and threatened to chop his penis off. Suddenly, the driver pulled over and ordered the knife-wielding man out of the car. He said they had over three hundred kilometers to go and couldn't risk doing the drive with a dangerous man with a weapon.
1:12:36 Speaker 00 The car eventually crossed the border into France and stopped in Malus, the first town they came upon that had its own police station and courthouse. The men dumped Krombach, called the police, and fled.
1:12:52 Speaker 00 Andrei Bamberski wasn't with them, but Krombach had no doubt that he'd orchestrated the whole thing.
1:12:59 Speaker 00 The police looked into Andre's whereabouts the night before and confirmed he'd been in Toulouse the entire time. However, they soon received word that Andre had booked a flight to Malus that was scheduled to arrive that evening. At 5pm, they drove to the hotel he'd booked in and placed him under arrest. Andre seemed genuinely shocked. He denied having anything to do with Krombach's abduction, and claimed that he'd only travelled to Malus because someone had informed him that Krombach was there.
1:13:36 Speaker 00 However, a search of his hotel room turned up nineteen thousand euros in cash, leading investigators to suspect that he'd paid someone to carry out the attack on his behalf.
1:13:51 Speaker 00 Investigators visited Krombach's home in Schiedeg and found a utility bill near the scene. On it was the address and phone number of an individual named Anton Krasnici, a Kosovan who lived in the Austrian town of Brigance. Andre Bamberski had recently spent time in Brigance, which was right near the German border, just twenty kilometres from Dieter Krombach's home.
1:14:19 Speaker 00 Police looked into Anton Krasnici and discovered that his brother-in-law had worked as a German translator for Andre as he spread the word around Brigance about Krombach's crimes.
1:14:31 Speaker 00 He wanted the townsfolk there to be aware of Krombach in case he crossed the border, at which point his international arrest warrant could be enforced. He'd been putting up posters in cafes, bars and restaurants, appealing for assistance. At the police station in Malus, Andre Bamberski admitted to knowing Anton Krasnici, but he continued to deny having anything to do with the kidnapping plot. He said that Krasnici had shown up at his hotel in Brigance and offered to help transport Dieter Krombach to France. Krasnici said he wasn't interested in money, but just wanted to do what he believed to be the right thing.
1:15:15 Speaker 00 As a father himself, he felt compelled to help. Krasnichy explained that there were two Russian mobsters who would help him do the job for 2,000 euros apiece. He didn't provide any more details, simply telling Andrei: "The less you know, the better."
1:15:37 Speaker 00 Andrei told the police that he insisted on paying for any expenses involved, but asked no further questions. He claimed he didn't know when or how it was going to go down, and that he only learned about it when Krasnichy called him from Malus to let him know that it was over. Anton Krasnichy confirmed Andrei's version of events. Having served prison time before, he said he didn't care about the consequences. Appearing on My Daughter's Killer, Krasnichy said he was moved by the battle fought by Andrei Bamberski. "This is a father who never gave up," Krasnichy remarked.
1:16:21 Speaker 00 "He knew where his daughter's killer was living, and I had a plan to help him, hands-on. As a father, I was fascinated by the strength of this man. He's a really great dad. It moves you, and you think if that happened to you, what would you do as a father? What are you capable of doing for your child?"
1:16:47 Speaker 00 For their role in the violent kidnapping, Anton Krasnichy and one of his accomplices, Karcha Boblavani, were also arrested. Andrei Bamberski was hit with various charges, including kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, and complicity in causing violence, charges which came with the possibility of 15 years in prison. Andrei's lawyer argued that his client had acted under moral duress, knowing that if he could just get Dita Krombach to France, then the legal saga regarding Kalinka would finally be over.
1:17:23 Speaker 00 Andre was free to go, but under judicial supervision, awaiting trial.
1:17:30 Speaker 00 When he left the Malus police station, several officers gathered in the lobby and gave him a standing ovation.
1:17:38 Speaker 00 As he waited for his day in court, he told the Guardian: “If I should have to go to prison, I will go to prison. Most important is that Krombach is judged, even if he is not found guilty. For me, it was necessary to do justice. I think I will find some peace. This is my last fight, and I shall dedicate it to the memory of my daughter.”
1:18:07 Speaker 00 He told La Depeche newspaper:
1:18:11 Speaker 00 “I can now smile. After 27 years of fighting, I can finally say in my prayers to Kalinka that the promises I made her are beginning to be kept. The biggest part of my fight is finished. But I will not be completely at peace until Krombach is in front of the court to answer for the death of my daughter.”
1:18:37 Speaker 00 Dieter Krombach recovered from his injuries in hospital under police custody. Regardless of how he’d ended up in France, the arrest warrant for Kalinka’s manslaughter was still valid, and it was announced that Krombach would face a retrial in Paris, this time with both himself and his legal counsel required to be present. Krombach's defence team tried to have him repatriated to Germany or to have his trial heard by the European Court of Human Rights, but their requests were denied. They argued that the case should be thrown out entirely, as the rules of the European Union declared that an individual could not be tried twice for the same crime.
1:19:23 Speaker 00 Krombach's lawyer told reporters the whole situation was a farce, remarking: “How can he be cleared in one EU country and then tried in another? And how can he face trial after being illegally kidnapped?”
1:19:40 Speaker 00 Avec la France refusant de libérer Dieter Krombach, le département allemand de justice a publié une warrant internationale pour André Bamberski. Les autorités françaises ont refusé de l'extraditer, ce qui n'a eu qu'un peu de surprise pour ceux qui ont suivi le cas depuis le début. Beaucoup étaient sympathiques à André's plainte et sentaient qu'il ne méritait pas de être puni, alors d'autres parlaient contre la justice vigilante et la violence extrême utilisée pendant le kidnapping. Quand il a été annoncé que André voulait libérer un livre sur le cas et sa lutte pour obtenir justice pour Kalinka,
1:20:19 Speaker 00 les avocats de Krombach ont essayé de le faire sans succès, disant qu'il n'y avait pas de moyen que leur client reçoive un bon procès si la publication avançait. L'avocat de Krombach a blâmé l'antigérien sentiment pour le soutien que André a reçu, disant au BBC : "La façon dont cette affaire a été couverte en France est choquante. Bien sûr, c'est épuisant pour Mr. Bamberski, mais seulement une partie de la histoire a été racontée. Naturellement, Mr. Krombach proteste de son innocence, mais ce n'est même pas le point. Mon client était pur de la culpabilité dans son propre pays.
1:20:58 Speaker 00 Il a été ensuite kidnappé et emmené illégalement à un autre pays européen où il va maintenant être jugé pour le meurtre.
1:21:07 Speaker 00 Seulement en France pourrait cela être autorisé à se produire."
1:21:16 Speaker 00 Bien que le manque d'évidences physiques ait toujours mené Dieter Krombach à ne pas être jugé pour violer Kalinka, une analyse pré-précision de l'évidence a conduit un équipe de professeurs médicaux à déterminer que l'injure à la labeur de Kalinka pouvait se produire seulement pendant qu'elle était encore vivante. Ils n'ont trouvé aucune autre explication pour la substance blanche trouvée dans sa vagina autre que le semen. Utilisant des technologies avancées qui n'existaient pas à l'époque du crime, ils ont analysé le tissu cardiaque et les poumons de Kalinka et ont découvert la présence d'un benzodiazépine, un sédative puissant qui a conclu que Kalinka avait été droguée la nuit où elle est morte.
1:22:00 Speaker 00 In the lead-up to Crombarck's trial, several survivors of his sexual assaults came forward from Germany willing to testify against him. One of these women was a former patient of Crombarck's, who in 1993 had been given a part-time job working as a cleaner for his medical practice. According to her testimony, one day, she arrived at the practice around lunchtime to find nobody there except Dr. Crombarck.
1:22:29 Speaker 00 Crombarck said she was due for her iron infusion, and he might as well do it there and then to save her coming back later. The woman agreed, at which point Crombarck allegedly drugged and raped her. Knowing he had money and influence in town, the woman had been too afraid to report what he had done.
1:22:51 Speaker 00 But the most surprising witness was a woman named Isabel, who had been a patient of Dr. Crombarck's during the time he was married to Andre's ex-wife Danielle. Isabel, who had been just 16 at the time, claimed that she began an affair with Crombarck, who was around 20 years her senior.
1:23:12 Speaker 00 According to Isabel, Crombarck would drug an unsuspecting Danielle by slipping drops of sedatives into her drinks. Once she passed out upstairs, he would call Isabel over and the two would have sex in the downstairs living room.
1:23:30 Speaker 00 Up until this point, Danielle and Crombarck had remained on good terms following their divorce in the late 1980s. They kept in contact, even when Danielle moved back to Toulouse, and she continued to support his innocence in Kalinka's death. If anything, she felt that Andre's campaign against Crombarck had only served to bring the two of them closer together. Danielle had even appeared at a pre-trial hearing in 2010 to attest to Crombarck's good character, telling the court that he would never rape anyone because he had no trouble attracting women on his own.
1:24:09 Speaker 00 She explained that she only left him because he was cheating on her, and she'd come to accept that it was part of his personality to be attracted to anything that was forbidden. But when Isabelle's story came to light, a French prosecutor advised Danielle to file a civil claim against Krombach so she could join the prosecution party and get full access to the case file. Danielle followed this advice and, for the first time ever, learned about the true extent of the allegations against her ex-husband.
1:24:44 Speaker 00 It was also the first time she'd read the reports that described cobalt folicid as a dangerous drug. Krombach had never warned her of any side effects, despite administering it to herself, Kalinka, and hundreds of his patients regularly.
1:25:02 Speaker 00 Furthermore, it was only through reading the case file that Danielle heard Isabelle's story about Krombach sedating her so she wouldn't know he was having sex with a 16-year-old downstairs.
1:25:15 Speaker 00 Danielle's world came crashing down. She thought back to the night of Kalinka's death and realised she'd slept very deeply. As she began to view everything through a different lens, she wondered whether Krombach could have drugged her then too. She later told the courts: "When you've done it once, you can do it again."
1:25:44 Speaker 00 Dida Krombach's trial was delayed multiple times as his legal team exhausted all possible avenues attempting to have the case thrown out. It was finally set to go ahead in late March 2011, almost a year and a half after the kidnapping and just shy of 29 years since Kalinka Bamberski's death. 75-year-old Krombach tried one last time to have the case thrown out, telling the court:
1:26:15 Speaker 00 "I did not kill Kalinka. I want to stress that I am not guilty, that I did not kill Kalinka, and that I did not rape Kalinka."
1:26:25 Speaker 00 The trial commenced, but, five days in, Crombarck’s lawyers announced that he’d suffered a heart attack and ordered that the trial be called off indefinitely.
1:26:36 Speaker 00 They accused the French legal system of contributing to the stress of the ailing man, who they said was still suffering from the injuries sustained during the kidnapping.
1:26:47 Speaker 00 The trial was put on hold, but resumed again five months later in October 2011. Danielle listened in disgust as various witnesses testified to the sexual abuse they’d suffered at Crombarck’s hand. She couldn’t believe this was the same man she’d lived with and defended for so many years. Now convinced he was lying about what happened to Kalinka on the night she died, Danielle told one journalist: “I would have appreciated it if Dida Crombarck had told me it was an accident. I panicked and I lied. I would have understood. I may have forgiven him.
1:27:30 Speaker 00 But now, I can’t forgive him.” A parting gift Crombarck had given her after their separation took on a whole new meaning: figurines of the Three Wise Monkeys symbolizing the proverb: “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”
1:27:50 Speaker 00 The trial ran for three weeks before the verdict was delivered. Just like the Paris Court sixteen years earlier, Dida Crombarck was found guilty of willfully causing violence towards Kalinka that resulted in her unintentional death. Again, he was sentenced to fifteen years in a French prison, a sentence that could now be enforced. Andre Bamberski's thirty-year crusade had finally come to an end.
1:28:22 Speaker 00 Outside court, he told reporters: “Of course, my first thought is for Kalinka. I have achieved what I promised: a complete and fair trial. Justice has been done in her memory, and I will be able to mourn for her.”
1:28:41 Speaker 00 He visited the cemetery shortly after and placed a bunch of flowers on Kalinka’s grave, saying out loud: “I promised that I would give you justice. Now, you can rest in peace.”
1:28:59 Speaker 00 But, the saga still wasn’t over for Andrej. Seven months later, in May 2014, he faced his own trial in the Malus Magistrates Court for the role he played in Krombark’s kidnapping.
1:29:14 Speaker 00 Bamberski's lawyer argued that his client shouldn’t be convicted for essentially enforcing a decision that had already been handed down by the French court, stating: “He acted that way to fulfill his duties as a father. He also acted so that justice could fulfill its duty.”
1:29:34 Speaker 00 Andrej Bamberski was found guilty of criminal conspiracy and complicity in aggravated assault, but cleared of orchestrating the abduction. He was given a one-year suspended sentence, while the men who carried out the attack, Anton Krasnicji and Karcha Bablavani, were both sentenced to one year behind bars. Meanwhile, Dieter Krombark spent the next few years appealing his sentence on medical grounds. He asked to be transferred to a nursing home, claiming he was suffering from life-threatening cardiovascular disease. His appeals were rejected until February 2020,
1:30:16 Speaker 00 when the courts agreed to suspend his sentence due to the state of his health. After serving just six of his 15-year sentence, 84-year-old Krombark was returned to Germany, a decision that infuriated Andrej Bamberski. But, six months later, in September 2020, Dieter Krombark passed away at the age of 85.
1:30:43 Speaker 00 According to an article written by Joshua Hammer for the Atavist magazine, “German officials have long denied that anything was done to protect Adida Krombach.” In Hammer’s opinion, “What seems more likely is that sloppy forensic work, bureaucratic inertia, and, at some level, a desire to close ranks against foreign interference in a domestic matter had caused the Germans to resist pursuing the case.”
1:31:14 Speaker 00 Andre has spoken openly about the mixed feelings he has about his campaign for getting justice for Kalinka. He told a French radio station that many people, his father in particular, “always told him to drop the case and live a normal life.” He explained: “But personally, if I had dropped it, I don’t think I could have lived a normal life.”
1:31:40 Speaker 00 Opinions remain divided about the lengths Andre went to secure Krombach’s conviction. Some view him as a hero, while others argue that violence should never be condoned and it wasn’t Andre’s place to take the law into his own hands. His lawyer told the documentary “My Daughter’s Killer”: “Mr. Bamberski is a moral force. He isn’t a vigilante. He isn’t the master avenger, but a warrior. A warrior monk.”
1:32:14 Speaker 00 Andre isn’t phased by public opinion. To him, all that matters is that he fulfilled his promise to his daughter. In 2022, the producers of “My Daughter’s Killer” asked Andre what he would say to a father who found themselves in a similar situation. Andre responded: “I would tell him, as it’s been 39 years, ‘Don’t waste your life.’ ‘I fought like Don Quixote de la Marcha against windmills.’ ‘I got justice for Kalinka.’ ‘But honestly, these battles are extreme.’
1:32:56 Speaker 00 Andre said he no longer trusted anyone, but remarked, "I hope that Kalinka is in heaven and that she knows about everything I did for her. I think that she deserved it."
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