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[phone connect tone drones]
- [man 1] Hello. - [man 2] Yeah?
[man 1] Big Mäck?
Yes, I don't believe it!
[laughs]
Hey, Falko!
Hey, Big Mäck.
Ah, I'm so happy.
Oh man, you won't believe how happy I am.
Why did they tell me that you had died?
No. Who told you that?
The slammer.
What?
Do you know how many letters I sent? Telegrams and everything.
I didn't get anything.
First thing I did was look on Facebook.
I looked everywhere for you.
Nothing. I found nothing.
I would never have given up on you.
They're now making that movie. A documentary on Netflix.
That's great.
I've always been a fighter. Always.
How are you, really?
[man 1] This is a hypothetical story.
[quirky bass guitar playing]
Hypothetical. Nothing to do with me.
[funky music playing]
[man 3] Sometimes life is crazier than a film.
I was on a stellar rise to the top in my career.
[man 4] What's fascinating about Donald is he can capture people.
Fully legal.
[man 3] Two robberies, almost 20 years apart,
and supposedly Donald Stellwag played a role in both.
[woman] He was always a bit of a rascal.
[man 3] If something like that happens once, it's weird.
All a lie.
[man 3] Twice, that's just really strange.
All hypothetical.
BIG MÄCK GANGSTERS AND GOLD
[music fades]
[interviewer] Don't you find it unusual that two big events happened in your life?
Not at all.
No.
SPARKASSE FINANCIAL GROUP
["Jingle Bells" playing]
ROBBERY 1
NUREMBERG 19 DECEMBER 1991
["Jingle Bells" continuing over speakers]
[woman 1] It was in the afternoon, before half past 3:00.
AUDIO BASED ON COURT DOCUMENTS
[woman 1] He came in. He was tall and fat.
He was wearing a hat, coat, scarf and glasses.
And he pulled the weapon and said, "Give me the money, quickly."
[ominous music playing]
He threatened customers and my coworkers.
So I opened the cash register.
Swiss Francs, Italian currency. I gave him everything.
Fifty-four-thousand deutsch mark.
[woman 2] I was waiting for him there.
He said he would be right back.
I had no idea what happened in the bank.
He got in and told me to drive,
so I did.
[man] Go, drive!
[mysterious music playing]
[sirens wailing]
[woman 2] I wanted to turn right at the end of the street.
-You were only allowed to go right. - [man] I said left!
But then he had a gun in his hand,
20 centimeters from my head,
and then he said...
[man] Go left, or I'll shoot you.
So I drove down the one-way street, the wrong way.
I kept going, running a red light.
[man] Just drive! Damn it.
[woman 2] Then he got out and was gone.
Of course I remember what he looked like. Very tall.
At least 1.9 meters, about 35 years old, and very corpulent.
[quirky music playing]
[man] I met Mr. Stellwag almost 30 years ago.
He came to the law office where I worked at the time.
I remember it clearly.
He came in with 500 deutsch mark, put them in my hand and said...
MANFRED NEDER CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYER
...the police were looking for him and he had to sort something out.
CASE NUMBER XY UNSOLVED
[in German] At the end of today's program, we'd once again like to show you photos
which were taken by automatic cameras during bank robberies.
In December 1991,
this man robbed a Sparkasse branch in Nuremberg city center.
CRIMINAL POLICE NUREMBERG (0911) 21 11
[in English] That was the beginning of this story.
[reporter in German] Description, 35 to 40 years old,
very tall, at least 1.95 meters, and strikingly obese.
The man robbed a bank...
[Neder in English] A police officer recognized him from a TV show and said,
"That's Stellwag, I know him."
[line connect tone droning]
[Stellwag] They were looking for me for a bank robbery? It wasn't me at all.
It didn't matter if it was a bank robbery or something else.
I wasn't afraid.
I knew I hadn't done anything.
[Neder] "It didn't look like a big deal."
"Pay a short visit to the police and clarify this."
"I'm not aware of anything wrong."
A lot of clients say things like that when you go with them to the police.
That's impossible, I'm innocent.
[Neder] He seemed totally calm.
You have to find out what kind of person you're dealing with.
So you talk, and in that context, he told me he had nothing to do with it
and that he was sick.
We then went into a room.
You were presented with things, and among them, this photograph.
I knew him, so I didn't have to look over.
I just thought, "This doesn't look good."
[tense music playing]
It's a poor quality photo, but it looks like him.
The size of the body.
Then comes the charge.
[Stellwag] I still remember when the inspector said
it was about a bank robbery with the taking of a hostage in Nuremberg.
I said, "I don't even know what you want from me."
At that time I was not even in Nuremberg.
A bank robbery is severe criminal extortion
with a minimum sentence of five years.
You can't just go home, no matter how good your social prognosis.
You will stay there to clear up whether it was you or not.
No matter what you say.
He insisted it wasn't him and that he had an alibi.
Of course, he had to think hard to remember where he'd been.
The policeman, the criminal investigator at the time, believed him.
That was my impression.
[Stellwag] So he said, "Let's do a lineup. Would you agree to that?"
I said, "Yes. Of course."
You have to picture the following.
I come into an empty room,
with a huge pane of glass,
and stand there.
But since there were no other big fat guys like me,
I was the only one standing there, all by myself.
Six or seven people came in who'd been customers in the bank.
And what did they say?
"He's tall, he's fat, it's him."
More than 16 people said I was the perpetrator.
It floored me.
I thought, "This is a really bad horror film."
[door slams shut]
[ominous music playing]
[Neder] The criminal investigator came up with the idea
of commissioning an expert assessment,
also known as an anthropological report.
It's intended to determine
if the person in the photo is identical to the alleged perpetrator.
These are assessments that are done
when there are traffic violations or when people are caught by speed cameras
and say it wasn't them.
So he had his picture taken.
[shutter snapping]
Then the expert compares these photos with the image.
[in German] Right, I'll look and see what we can make out.
DR. CORNELIUS S. EXPERT WITNESS IN THE DONALD STELLWAG CASE
[in English] The expert is controversial in many places.
Many people think less of him.
[reporter in German] The expert is being evasive today.
The expert did not want to comment. But his colleague was willing to speak.
[man in English] If you look at the anthropological literature,
there are around 250, 280 characteristics
that can be defined on the head alone.
PROF. FRIEDRICH RÖSING FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGIST
So wherever there's something to be stated
about human beings in the legal sense,
we come into play.
The court expert must present the findings
in the simplest and clearest language possible,
and then in the end give a probability of how certain their conclusions are.
And the expert did a good job in creating parallel images.
There was a series of extremely good pictures of the bank robber,
so that we always had pictures next to each other
that were easy to compare.
[cryptic music playing]
[Neder] We were anxiously waiting,
because the expert was our door to freedom.
But he said
he couldn't be ruled out as the perpetrator.
I call it the "ear report."
It was probably the deciding factor,
because you could see it so clearly in the photo.
He would not be released any time soon.
[Stellwag] Every week, every day was hell.
I was at the mercy of the judiciary.
Dealing with this mentally is perverse.
I spent almost two years in detention awaiting trial.
That was a terrible time for me.
[Neder] That's a long time. That would be absurd today.
it just wouldn't be possible.
Nothing happened during that time, because nothing new came up.
Then there was the trial.
COURT HOUSE
25 JANUARY 1994 START OF TRIAL
Five judges sat there.
Three full-time professionals, two on jury duty.
[man] I think I found out two weeks before that this trial was about to start.
And the "ear report" was obviously the perfect gimmick to use
as a hook for the reporting.
Even experienced colleagues had never heard of anything like it...
HARALD BAUMER CRIME REPORTER
...and they wanted to know if it would even be possible
to convict a perpetrator with this kind of report.
There was nothing about this
pointing to Donald in the vicinity of the bank.
Nothing.
No evidence or clues.
Instead, there was evidence pointing to his innocence.
[camera clicking]
[Neder] In the photo, the perpetrator wasn't wearing gloves.
So of course you wonder why there were no fingerprints.
There were, but they didn't match Donald's.
[Rösing] Anyone who sees this would say, "Wait, something's wrong."
He touched everything in that car and was the last one to touch it.
The top layer of fingerprints would have to be his.
Nothing. Not one.
[Stellwag] The police inspector said,
"We have 12 fingerprints. Eight can be used for dactyloscopy."
FINGERPRINTS CANNOT BE MATCHED
"It couldn't have been you." What about the witnesses?
CASHIER'S OFFICE WITH VIEW OF TILLS
[holiday music playing over speakers]
[distant siren wailing]
[Baumer] I remember two witnesses who were at the trial.
One was the taxi driver who had driven him to the scene of the crime and back.
She was pretty sure he was the perpetrator.
There was a statement about the nicotine fingers
and a pout like a frog that she said she remembered.
AUDIO BASED ON COURT DOCUMENTS
[witness] I'm very sure of it. He was sitting right next to me.
I was able to get a good look at him.
[Baumer] It was similar with the cashier who had been threatened by him.
WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY
[witness 2] It was him. I'm 95% sure.
No, 99%.
99% PROBABILITY
He was tall. And fat.
A TALL, FAT PERSON
The defendant stood out because of his corpulence and his height.
The second factor,
which had absolutely nothing to do with his appearance,
was the intensity with which he denied the crime.
That differed significantly from many other defendants.
[Stellwag] That's what's so grotesque, you see?
You're going crazy. You don't understand.
The judge didn't believe a word I said.
And back then I said to the lawyer, "They can't just..."
And he said, "Wait and see."
[Neder] At that time, he was in advertising.
You could make a lot of money selling newspapers and things like that.
They were out and about every day.
You could trace that back, step by step. Which was good.
[Stellwag] At the time I was 250 kilometers away.
In Leuna, in a big hotel with my friends.
They could swear that it hadn't been me.
[witness] Leuna, B91, Hotel. I'm sure about that.
We had witnesses, an alibi with evidence. The story he told made sense.
Sitting with the manager...
[Neder] There was a hotel owner who had
the booking confirmation with him on a piece of paper.
RECEIPT NO. 94027
B91 HOTEL LEUNA-MERSEBURG
He was asked if he could possibly be wrong,
whether it was a day before or maybe a day after.
You could really sense that it all seemed a bit suspicious to them.
[Baumer] There were witness testimonies
that he was actually hundreds of kilometers away
in a completely different town.
That was something you'd have to be able to pull off then.
The court didn't think those statements were true.
The public prosecutor used every trick to dismantle this alibi.
Then suddenly, he didn't have one.
[Neder] I have to tip my hat to Donald.
He has always been such a fighter, saying, "We'll prove that I'm innocent."
Then there was the person who decided this war, the expert,
who presented the assessment.
[expert] On the left side of the left ear, for example,
it runs in a round arch and goes without a break into...
He said there were no two identical human ears,
just like with fingerprints.
If he identifies an ear and says it's the same ear as that person's...
DRAWING FROM ORIGINAL REPORT
...then it's 100% certain.
There are no two of the same in the world.
[expert] The contour of the conical edge of the perpetrator as well as the accused...
[Neder] The more they asked him and the more we tried to attack him
and cast doubt on what he was saying,
the more certain he became.
[expert] The protrusion shows evenly...
ANTERIOR CRUS OF ANTIHELIX
...the connective tissue contour of the conical edge,
which is completely identical to that of the suspect...
COMPLETELY IDENTICAL
[Rösing] Being under pressure from so many questions,
and even some incredulous ones,
he moved towards the direction of "Yes, I'm totally sure."
[Neder] At one point Donald couldn't hold back anymore
and accused him of wrongfully incriminating him.
I got up and said, "What are you talking about?"
"What kind of hocus-pocus is this? What kind of crap are you pushing?"
"It could not have been me. I have alibi witnesses."
Because of this dispute,
the expert addressed the defendant directly,
which is totally unusual.
[Stellwag] "Mr. Stellwag, admit to it. It's hopeless, you're the culprit."
That's when I reached my limit. How can you make such a statement?
That was the point they could use to convict me.
[tense music playing]
[judge] In the name of the people, we reach this verdict.
VERDICT
MAIN TRIAL 16 FEBRUARY 1994
[Stellwag] I can still hear the words.
THE DEFENDANT
[judge] The defendant is guilty.
[Stellwag] Guilty.
Nine years.
Nine years is a lot of time.
[Stellwag] It was insane.
I thought this was the end.
How could they ignore so much exonerating evidence?
I just can't understand.
It was not me.
DUE TO CORPULENCE AND LEFT EAR
"GUILTY"
You have to remember, I was in isolation. That's different from normal prison.
It was clear to me.
I'm not the perpetrator, so I can't admit guilt.
And if I don't admit it, I'm not capable of rehabilitation.
If you aren't willing to work towards reintegration into society,
you won't get any privileges.
Further education, canceled.
Vocational training, canceled.
Twenty-three hours in the cell, one in the yard.
If you're in solitary confinement and you have no radio, no TV, it's hell.
Nobody talked to me!
This was torture.
SEVEN YEARS LATER
[pensive music playing]
FEBRUARY 14, 2001 DAY OF RELEASE
[Stellwag] They didn't give me a single day.
ARCHIVE FOOTAGE, 2001
I had to serve my sentence until the last day.
I survived. I served nine years.
I wanted peace and quiet.
Then came the blow. I get a letter
from the district attorney's office in Nuremberg
to urgently contact my lawyer.
It's about a bank robbery with hostages.
Again.
I thought, "Now they'll finish you."
Just like in American thrillers.
[Stellwag] I went to my lawyer and said,
"I'm supposed to get in touch with you about a bank robbery."
He says, "Yes."
I say, "What bank robbery? Don't you see what I look like?"
"I can barely walk."
He says, "I have to tell you something."
I say, "What?"
[suspenseful music builds]
[camera clicks]
[ominous music playing]
A police officer called me to inform me there was a new development in the case.
[man 1] The Nuremberg criminal police are reevaluating the old evidence.
INVESTIGATION, UNKNOWN
[man 2] A fingerprint on a taxi.
TAXI N-DU 337 MIDDLE FINGER
[man 3 in German] A new witness put investigators on the right track.
[man 4 in German] A man with a similar stocky build to Donald Stellwag
had carried out a series of bank robberies following the same pattern,
such as arriving and fleeing by taxi.
[man 3] A comparison with fingerprints secured at the crime scene
led officers to a 38-year-old man who was already in prison.
[man 4 in German] It can now be clearly attributed to him.
IDENTITY ESTABLISHED
[in English] That blew my mind.
As if somebody hit me on the head with a sledgehammer.
That's how it floored me.
[suspenseful music playing]
EVIDENCE OF MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE?
[camera clicks]
JUSTICE AT THE SECOND ATTEMPT
43-YEAR-OLD IN PRISON FOR A BANK\ ROBBERY HE MAY NOT HAVE COMMITTED
[in German] Donald Stellwag had to atone
for a bank robbery in Nuremberg he never committed.
[man 1 in German] Now Donald Stellwag is fighting for a retrial of his case.
But for that to happen,
the real perpetrator must first be convicted.
The real perpetrator's undoing was his own cockiness.
He had boasted to an accomplice
that in 1991 he had robbed a Sparkasse branch in Nuremberg Südstadt.
He had fled undetected and would probably have never been caught
if he hadn't been ratted out by his accomplice.
The defendant, who was heavily shielded in court,
made a full confession today
and apologized repeatedly to his innocent doppelgänger.
VERDICT
[man 2 in English] Frank is sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison
for this and other robberies.
ERROR CONFIRMED
[Stellwag in German] I knew I had
neither committed a crime nor done anything wrong.
I am innocent.
[reporter 1] Innocent in prison.
[reporters] Donald Stellwag...
[reporter 2] An unfathomable miscarriage of justice...
- [reporter 2] Miscarriage of justice... - Donald Stellwag...
Victim of a miscarriage of justice...
I don't want to say it was legal salvation,
but you had been chasing this ghost all this time during the trial.
And then this ghost is right in front of you.
[in German] It feels good to sit there and to realize
that the battle you fought back then wasn't in vain,
but that it was justified.
[in English] And you say to yourself, "We were right after all."
Donald remained composed.
He made it through the whole thing pretty well. At least on the outside.
I haven't managed to look very deep inside of him yet.
He doesn't allow that.
[Stellwag in German] I don't think I'll ever be free.
I spent far, far too long in prison for that.
I think it will take me a very, very long time.
There are a lot of things I have to deal with
before I can block it out.
And I don't want to block it out, I just want to work through it.
[woman in English] The story was shocking to me.
I heard it and thought, "That's crazy. What even is that?"
When we met him, you could tell he was in a depressive state.
ANGELA GRAAS FILMMAKER
I got the feeling that he quickly trusted us
because we really tried to understand him.
We accepted him as he was,
and from that moment on,
he really tried to find a way back to a normal life.
He hadn't been out of prison long at that point.
6 DECEMBER 2001 DAY OF ACQUITTAL
He officially got acquitted after nine years. Name cleared.
It happens in court so it becomes official.
Only then do you get
the compensation payment from the government.
THE DEFENDANT SHALL BE COMPENSATED FOR THE PRISON SENTENCE SUFFERED
THE VERDICT IS REVERSED
AND THE DEFENDANT IS ACQUITTED.
HIS INNOCENCE HAS BEEN PROVEN.
He would get money for every day he'd been in prison while innocent.
He said the amount was a joke.
It clearly wasn't enough to start a new life.
[Stellwag in German] I thought when I was acquitted,
which happened on December 6th,
the state would help me ease back into normal life.
But it did nothing of the sort.
The state just says, "The man gets his 20 deutsch marks per day."
[in English] Board and lodging get deducted,
and the sum is calculated based on the number of days.
The result is the amount he's rewarded.
2186 DAYS OF IMPRISONMENT
24,046.00 EUR
He was shocked.
He'd thought he'd be compensated and be able to live comfortably.
That was not the case.
It wasn't a lot of money for nine years.
I was very disappointed.
STRAUBING PRISON
[Graas] After his imprisonment, he first went to temporary housing.
It was a bit like a flat share for former convicts.
He read a lot, which was something he'd done in prison.
And it was important to him.
He read about management, about business,
maybe thinking about preparing for his professional future after that.
[Stellwag in German] I faced a huge task in prison.
namely, first of all, to fight my illness.
Don't forget that I have two brain tumors.
And then I got extremely fat
due to strong cortisone treatments and other things.
I thought I wouldn't survive prison.
[in English] The tumor in my head is killing me.
I am a high-risk patient.
The doctor says it's a miracle I'm still alive.
But mentally, I'm very fit.
Believe me. I am.
I wanted to prove that it wasn't me.
[quirky, upbeat music playing]
PEOPLE OF THE WEEK
[in German] Hello, everyone. Hello, good evening.
He spent eight years,
I repeat, eight years,
in prison in Germany as an innocent man.
It sounds too unrealistic. You think such a thing can't happen.
Total nightmare.
How blind is our justice system?
This tragedy happened in the Federal Republic of Germany,
a constitutional state.
[reporter] Gross miscarriage of justice?
Donald Stellwag was an innocent man in prison.
For Donald Stellwag, that was the harsh reality.
His life, and he himself, changed in prison.
Welcome, Donald Stellwag.
- [reporter 2] The case of Donald Stellwag. - [reporter 3] Donald Stellwag.
Hello, Mr. Stellwag.
[Stellwag in English] RTL, Bayerischer Rundfunk, SAT 1,
Johannes B. Kerner.
I also went to Fliege.
[in German] We accept that you are innocent
and we want to welcome you back into society.
Donald Stellwag, welcome.
[Stellwag in English] Everything is the same.
At some point it becomes routine. I asked, "Why did you invite me back?"
He says, "That's obvious. You pull good ratings."
[host in German] Now, if you...
[Stellwag in English] I went to Maischberger.
[in German] If he really didn't do it...
[in English] I went with him once, to make sure he wouldn't mess up.
[in German] How did they apologize to you?
They never did.
[Neder] That's not quite correct.
You know that the judge in Ansbach, who presided over the retrial, apologized.
And the public prosecutor. She had nothing to do with the trial.
If you are innocent, you have to pay for your incarceration.
[host 2] Excuse me?
[Neder in English] When he tells a story, he likes to paint a picture.
He uses a lot of colors and puts ornaments here and there.
Then the story becomes more well-rounded and sells better.
He's a salesman.
And 14 days after my release,
I was released in 2001,
the real perpetrator robbed a bank again, in this case, a Postbank in Nuremberg.
He was just unlucky. Technology was more advanced now.
A steel grid came down from the ceiling and they caught him in the act.
Just his bad luck, I'm afraid.
[in English] Never heard that before. Nice.
Sometimes it's the same story, but structured differently.
FRANK VOGEL BUSINESS PARTNER
And it could've been told by two different people.
I'm not saying he knows what works well.
He's just unlucky he has an exciting story.
If he tells it like that, then that's the way it is.
[Stellwag] A journalist once wrote about me,
"He celebrates the fallibility of the Bavarian judiciary."
I have never told a single lie on a TV show.
Always the truth.
ALMOST 5 YEARS IN PRISON AS AN INNOCENT MAN
INNOCENT IN PRISON FOR YEARS EXTREME CASES
"LEGAL HISTORY WRITTEN THE PAINFUL WAY"
VICTIM OF MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE FIGHTS ON
[host in German] With the acquittal,
are you now, so to speak, a free man
in that the matter is settled for you, or is there something to work through?
Yes, I still have a civil case going against the expert witness.
I always thought I was free, but I'm not free. I'm still trapped.
[in English] I was often asked, "How much is Dr. Cornelius [bleep] at fault?"
[in German] I don't feel psychologically free.
I don't feel mentally free.
[in English] He completely destroyed my soul.
His reputation was important to him,
and so was his entire rehabilitation.
His fight was always directed against this expert.
What happened to him was... Well, it was unimaginable.
FALK SIMANG FRIEND
For someone to come along, some clown, plainly speaking,
and say he can identify you by your ear?
Sure, we're laughing now, but imagine being in Donald's shoes.
You wouldn't understand how this could happen.
[Stellwag] My fight's always related to the expert witness.
I believed that if he was wrong in my case,
then he made countless other mistakes.
And there were many people who were innocently imprisoned
and who didn't have my mental strength to get through it.
It was the fourth or fifth expert report [bleep] had given incorrectly.
[reporter in German] Donald Stellwag hopes the man who caused his conviction
with an inaccurate expert report will be forced to pay damages.
[Neder in English] He sued the expert, and that set some sort of precedent.
[Stellwag] Before I sued the expert,
no judge or expert had ever been convicted.
Can you imagine that in our legal system? Never!
We established a precedent with that.
[reporter 1 in German] The higher court in Frankfurt agrees,
and forces expert witness Cornelius S. to pay damages.
[reporter 2] Cornelius S. has to pay 150,000 euros in damages
for the suffering caused to Donald Stellwag.
I didn't think it was possible.
And this is not about money at all. The money is completely irrelevant.
[reporter 2] It's the first case in Germany
in which an expert witness is held civilly liable
for an inaccurate court report.
[in English] That was deeply satisfying. Man, did I cheer.
The Anthropological Society, with Professor Rösing,
established these rules on how the job needs to be done.
The Stellwag scandal was the trigger
for the fact that now there are finally standards.
[Neder] I haven't seen him since,
but I know he's still working and still does expert statements.
Surprisingly, he's already given his incorrect statements in the courts.
The talk shows went from the end of 2001 to 2008
[pensive music playing]
That wasn't what I wanted to do.
I didn't want to be on shows like that and tell my story.
- [in German] Mr. Stellwag's first life. - Exactly.
Now let's have a look at Mr. Stellwag's second life.
[Stellwag in English] I thought, "You're mobile, you have a passport."
"They can all kiss your ass."
Everything was possible.
The probability of two big public stories happening in one lifetime is very low.
The second story is actually better than the one about the bank robbery.
It didn't surprise me that he had issues again.
For most people, nothing like this ever happens during their lifetime.
And he got implicated twice.
Fascinating.
[Stellwag] All I wanted was a better life.
But no.
ROBBERY 2
15 DECEMBER 2009 A81 NEAR LUDWIGSBURG
[DJ] And for all the drivers out there at the Weinsberg interchange,
there is once again a...
[man 1] It was in the morning, just before 10:00.
Two of us were driving on the A81 near Ludwigsburg
AUDIO RECORDING BASED ON COURT DOCUMENTS
A BMW with blue light appeared.
A sign reading "please follow."
What do you do?
You think they're cops and you follow them.
I thought, "Well, I was going pretty fast."
We stopped under a highway bridge.
There were three police officers in the car.
Two stepped out.
[man 2] From our side it went...
"Vehicle documents and ID please."
Vehicle documents, please.
ID as well.
[man 2] Then something crazy happened.
The passenger's papers said he used to be a policeman.
I thought to myself, "Fuck. What if he notices something?"
Let's go. Get out of the car.
[man 1] At that moment I noticed something about the BMW.
A barcode on the license plate holder.
It was just a normal rental car.
- [officer] Police. - [driver] Tax investigators?
You're under arrest for tax evasion.
[man 2] They put up no resistance.
It was that simple.
Handcuffs on and done.
"The van is being confiscated."
The two guys with us were in the back seat of our car.
One said, "Lots of Turks in the police."
[laughter]
[suspenseful music builds]
[man 1] They left us in the woods. In that moment I thought, "That's it."
There's over a-million-and-a-half Euros' worth of gold in that van.
Now that's worth killing someone for.
DONALD HOME DONALD CELL
[engine revving]
[in German] Such spectacular robberies don't happen often, the police say.
1.8 million euros in gold and jewelry.
[reporter] Two hundred pounds of scrap gold from a Nuremberg jeweler
on its way to be melted down in Pforzheim.
The goods were not insured.
[mysterious music playing]
[in English] The story itself is completely crazy.
TIM HÖHN JOURNALIST
There's no other way to put it.
Five people disguised as cops and tax investigators
ambush a gold truck on the highway.
They must have acted like tax investigators.
[reporter 2 in German] A major raid in Brüser Berg.
[reporter 3] A 24-year-old man was arrested in the Cologne-Bonn area.
He is said to be one of the masterminds of the robbery.
But four other men are still at large, including rapper Xatar.
A gangster rapper as a real gangster?
[rapping in German]
[Höhn in English] It was a group of friends.
Men in Xatar's circle.
The name was certainly familiar in the hip-hop gangster rap scene.
He'd already made a name for himself in Bonn, but not yet in all of Germany.
[reporter in German] He likes to pose as a criminal, uncompromising ghetto star.
[Xatar] Xatar literally means "danger" in Kurdish, Arabic and so on.
[reporter 2] Internet videos were probably Xatar's most important platform.
He spent years building his image as a brutal gangster.
[in English] Hottie Alessandra Mendes has just recently dropped the lawsuit
against a German rapper named Xatar
who supposedly punched Alessandra in the face
after having too much to drink during a party at the Playboy Mansion.
[reporter 3 in German] At a party, he breaks a model's nose
and has to pay $50,000 bail.
[reporter 4 in German] Gangster music and gangster life
were increasingly merging into one.
[reporter 5 in German] Some might have thought him capable of dodgy deals,
but a million-dollar heist?
Xatar and his accomplices make a spectacular escape.
First, they fled to Moscow via Abu Dhabi.
[reporter 6] They are arrested in Iraq in February 2010.
[reporter 5] Xatar now has the opportunity to face up to Germany's laws,
as he has been caught and this week has been on trial in Stuttgart.
[hip-hop music playing]
I had been a court reporter
for the Stuttgarter Zeitung for a long time,
and followed the trial of the gold robbery with great interest.
There were situations where you got the impression
that this wasn't a trial, but a staged play.
I thought it couldn't be true.
Xatar was the driving force behind the raid.
He organized it, recruited the men.
He got a tip, so they knew when the van was leaving and where it was going.
And then they set off.
He was struggling financially,
which is why he was open to the idea of hijacking this gold delivery.
They grinned at each other when they came into the courtroom.
They were thrilled when they saw
acquaintances or relatives in the audience.
[judge in German] Be quiet! I'm talking to him, not to you.
[in English] The lawyers yelled, insulted each other and made accusations.
Most of all, I remember Malte Höch.
He's someone who brings a bit of color to such a trial.
He was a well-known television lawyer at the time.
JUDGE BARBARA SALESCH
DEFENSE LAWYER MALTE HÖCH SUMMATION
[in German] The prosecutor's right. My client must be acquitted.
[in English] He has a distinctive hairstyle
and his demeanor is very interesting.
He argued aggressively with lawyers who followed a different strategy.
They didn't talk about the matter at hand.
For them, the trial was
a welcome distraction from everyday life in jail.
They only started talking later in the trial.
Then the question was, how is that possible?
We have an alcohol seller in Nuremberg.
We have a robbery in Ludwigsburg.
Then a few hundred kilometers north, Bonn.
Now you connect those somehow.
[in German] So for once, I agree with you.
Because there is another name.
[Höhn in English] Xatar said the tip came from Donald Stellwag.
The next story,
it's almost unbelievable.
VICTIM OF MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE BACK IN THE DOCK
DID HE PLAN THE BIG GOLD HEIST IN LUDWIGSBURG?
[Höhn] So we have this TV lawyer.
We have Xatar.
Now we also have Donald Stellwag.
That doesn't sound plausible.
That's just a made-up story.
He's supposed to have been the mastermind?
I still don't believe it.
[scoffs]
I don't think so. How would he even do that? [laughs]
The question looming is,
"Where is the gold?"
Many people in the auditorium,
including myself,
were hoping that Stellwag would show up.
There's a trial going on
and there's a dark figure in the background
that everyone's waiting for.
WAS STELLWAG THE MASTERMIND BEHIND A GOLD HEIST?
Stellwag knew how it went down and also how it ended.
He didn't show up.
[Stellwag] I never fled. My lawyer always knew where I was.
I only had a phone number. I didn't know where he was.
[Stellwag] I'm lying here. I have a very hard time moving.
I can't go to the bathroom because my legs can't support me anymore.
The other side, face it here.
Or I wouldn't have given the interview lying down.
Yeah, that's good.
I wouldn't have been scared of that confrontation
because I couldn't have been the perpetrator.
[Xatar] The tip came from Donald Stellwag.
Everyone in Stuttgart testified that I was the boss.
Do you believe that I could be the boss of a Kurdish clan?
They should realize they're nuts.
[interviewer] But were you innocent?
Innocent about the gold heist?
Of course, without a shadow of a doubt.
I wouldn't be crazy enough
to have serious money and still pull a bullshit stunt like that.
What would be my motive?
I've got nothing to do with that.
He can adapt to any situation. That's what's fascinating.
[Stellwag] In 2001, I immediately began to rebuild my life.
I knew how to sell myself.
Thank God I studied marketing behind bars.
[reporter in German] A unique victim of a miscarriage of justice.
The freedom Donald Stellwag talks about is worth 10,000 deutsch marks.
That's the sum for which he sold his story to a commercial TV station
and now gives interviews only to them.
If I told you how much I made through the media, you wouldn't believe me.
Lots of money.
-Donald Stellwag. - Donald Stellwag.
Donald Stellwag.
Donald Stellwag, welcome.
NINE YEARS IN PRISON AS AN INNOCENT MAN
[in English] You don't think the 500 or 1,000 Euros I got
for each appearance were my only earnings?
No.
My earnings came from product placement for a brewery.
[in German] Welcome, Donald Stellwag.
WOLFSHÖHER BEER
[in English] "Do you want to advertise on the Johannes B. Kerner show?" "Yes."
"How much are you willing to pay?"
Lots of money.
I had large T-shirts with the brewery's logo on them.
The second or third time, Kerner wanted to outwit me.
He said, "Mr. Stellwag, are you wearing product placement again?"
"That's tricky business here."
"We'll sew you a new shirt without anything on it."
So I said,
"Too bad."
Of course, I also had a baseball cap with the brewery's logo with me.
He went, "Oh, you are such a sly dog."
He didn't really need the money.
He got compensation from the expert witness.
It wasn't like he didn't have enough now.
[interviewer] What did you do with the money?
What did I do with the money? Invested it in different businesses.
[in German] These are the new designs. The black looks great.
[in English] It started with advertising trucks for breweries.
I'm an excellent salesman.
[bell dings]
Then I was in Hesse and got into watches in a big way. Collectors' watches.
I was given two watches once. I still have them.
Here.
Great piece.
Unfortunately it's broken and I can't afford the repairs. It's 300 to 400 Euros.
[Stellwag] Then I moved back to Lauf
and opened up the antique shop the Gold Oasis.
GOLD OASIS WE'RE BUYING!
For watches and antiquities.
The bank accounts were full. We always had a lot of cash in the shop.
COMPETENT, REPUTABLE, FAST, RECOMMENDED
In Lauf we lived like gods.
In luxury.
High-end.
- [funk music playing] -♪ Money, money, can't get enough ♪
I was the Donald Stellwag.
The sales director, the distribution director,
the marketing director.
We dealt in gold, in diamonds.
I knew where you could sell it.
The profit was all right.
And Frank had the connections.
While I didn't have anything to do with gold, I was in Ghana.
I was trustworthy. And that's how we met.
Stellwag isn't stupid.
He hears about Ghana,
knows it's the country
that's the second-largest producer of gold at the time.
Everyone thought you could buy gold at a low cost there.
The first time I met Frank was in Ghana,
when he was offering me diamonds.
- [interviewer] You were in Ghana? - Frank was.
I was in the Gold Oasis.
I bought gold for him, bought him a couple of diamonds and so on.
That's where the idea to open a mine came from.
So that's what we did.
There are great pictures of us online opening the mine,
with an excavator that had all the bells and whistles.
That was just the way things worked in Ghana.
You had to grease a hand or two to make things move.
Things didn't move fast enough for him.
We're experts in rough diamonds.
"We can't wait that long. We already have the excavator there."
So I told him, "You can't do that. It's going to collapse." He didn't listen.
I can count on him for sure.
He then said, "It's my money. Do what I tell you." So I did.
That's how it came to a halt.
Buying gold, melting it down, those are typical Donald ideas.
He's a communicative person.
I won't say he's glued to the phone all day,
but he talks a lot and knows a lot of people.
You make connections that way.
SIM CARDS SAVED UNDER "DONALD CELL"
[Höhn] During the gold heist trial, it became clear
the defendants and perpetrators were in regular contact with Stellwag.
COMMUNICATED WITH STELLWAG UNDER THESE NUMBERS
DONALD HOME DONALD CELL
[phone ringing]
DECEMBER 8, 2009 ONE WEEK BEFORE THE GOLD HEIST
[Höhn] It's conspicuous that Xatar and Stellwag met
a week before the crime, in the town where he lived.
It's also proven that during this meeting,
they looked at the online presence of the scrap gold dealer in Nuremberg.
They looked at his website.
[Stellwag] Hanauer is one of the largest gold buyers in Germany.
Xatar and the Kurds, I know them.
They're customers of mine.
That's true, they bought watches from me.
Yeah. He attracts that stuff.
He's done a lot of business with many people,
especially in the gold sector.
So it's no surprise to me that he knows someone who just got robbed
by someone he also knows.
It's possible that I told Xatar at some point,
"You can buy lots of watches from that guy."
I'd be lying if I didn't say that.
[interviewer] But you never said there's a truck on a specific day?
I didn't have that information! How would I?
You'd only know that if you'd staked him out for weeks.
They came and questioned me.
At that point, I knew who had committed the gold heist.
Of course, I didn't talk to the police about that.
Why would I talk about it today? They were sentenced and did their time.
[Höhn] All the defendants knew.
"They have too much on us. We're not getting away with it."
There was a deal.
PRISON SENTENCE
8 YEARS
Eight years max if they confessed.
So, it was clear that that would be the sentence.
The trial ended in a verdict, like every trial does.
Xatar went to prison.
Donald Stellwag didn't.
He denied any involvement to the investigators.
[Stellwag] They searched for valuables...
and found nothing.
I ask you, did I need to commit a gold heist like that?
It's ridiculous.
There's only one reason the gold heist was committed.
For the rappers to be the big guys in their scene.
If you're a gangster rapper, that gets you all the cred.
[rapping in German]
[Höhn] It's gangster rap.
So for your reputation and credibility, a gold heist isn't exactly a bad thing.
[in German] It's a real, if you like, a real gangster story, so to speak.
Look, Rus, I'm a motherfucker, you know?
I'll do anything, man.
[Höhn in English] His label is Goldmann Entertainment.
He appears in music videos dressed entirely in gold.
And now there's also a movie.
[Xatar in German] If you want to make it to the very top, there is no shortcut.
Or maybe there is. But if you take it, you'll pay a huge price.
How much gold are we talking?
- [in Kurdish] Where is the gold? - Nobody knows.
[Höhn in English] The title is Rhinegold, and it depicts his life's journey.
He markets the gold heist incredibly well.
It's a fundamental part of his career.
[in German] And now, at the age of 34, he's even written an autobiography.
It's the story of a criminal hero.
[Xatar rapping in German]
[Xatar] Here it is. Xatar, All or Nothing.
And what can I say about the book? Stories will be told.
What gave you the idea to write a book?
I was behind bars. I had too much time and a typewriter.
- [typewriter bell dings] - [classical music playing]
"ALL OR NOTHING" (2015) EXTRACT FROM XATAR'S BOOK
[book narrator in English] "We only called him the big guy."
"The big guy was a quirky figure."
"When he talked, he didn't really speak. He panted."
"He suffered from cancer and was almost blind."
"Although he was a real wreck of a guy...
he was also a gangster."
[music ends]
- [projector whirring] - [bell tolling]
"FUCHSTADT,OUR VILLAGE" AMATEUR DOCUMENTARY 1971-1973
[Stellwag] My path in life was predetermined.
I didn't have a childhood like a normal person.
Most people said he was a crook.
Others said a real mafioso,
because he did quite a few things that weren't okay.
I mean, he's unscrupulous.
[Stellwag] Inside me was a bad guy.
Inside this sheep, coming from a small village,
was a bad wolf.
They made me into a wolf.
[pensive music playing]
I didn't know what it was like to live.
WELCOME
I didn't know what love was.
[camera clicks]
[man] I've only known him under the name "Donald"
from coverage on TV about the bank robbery he didn't commit.
RUDOLF THORWARTH NEIGHBOR FROM FUCHSSTADT
Before that, in Fuchsstadt, I only knew him as "Harald."
His grandmother called him that, as well as all of us.
DONALD STELLWAG'S GRANDMOTHER
[camera clicks]
DONALD STELLWAG WITH HIS GRANDMOTHER
He grew up in the poorhouse, so to speak.
He didn't have a lot of worldly possessions.
DONALD STELLWAG WITH HIS GRANDMOTHER AND TWO UNCLES
He had what he needed to live, but nothing more.
In the '60s, Fuchsstadt was essentially a real farming village.
It didn't have a population of 500 yet.
And in the village, everyone pretty much knew everyone.
[faint marching band music playing]
[Stellwag] I was born out of wedlock,
and on top of that, I was the child of a US soldier.
To them, I was the Yankee bastard.
[Thorwarth] We basically grew up with the Americans.
Some saw them as liberators,
others as occupiers.
If a girl got involved with one of the Americans,
that was really bad news.
Then it would be like,
"There goes the Yankee whore!"
DONALD STELLWAG'S MOTHER
[Stellwag] Because my mother and my father died very young,
I grew up with my grandparents on my mother's side.
[pensive music playing]
Other than that, I had no parental figures in my village.
As an American child, you were a pariah.
There was a football club, a youth club, a musical society.
All the things a Bavarian village usually has.
Those were forbidden to me.
[crowd cheering]
There's a picture of him in the soccer team.
He's there as the goalkeeper in the middle of the picture.
- [camera clicks] - [quirky electronic music playing]
He was pretty much integrated into village life.
[man] Harald is one year my junior.
So in primary school,
we spent three years together...
JOHANN MEYER SCHOOLMATE
...in the same classroom.
We were passionate card players.
We had gatherings.
He was there every day on weekends.
When he came to the pub,
he showed up in a pinstripe suit and played the big man.
"Hey, I'm not the little asshole you all thought I was."
[camera clicks]
Just to show people that even as a Yankee bastard,
you could make something of yourself.
Fuchsstadt was too small for him.
[Stellwag] I wanted to see something new.
So I went out into the world.
[upbeat music playing]
[Stellwag] There was nothing Frankfurt didn't have.
And everything was appealing to me.
It also offered opportunities to make money.
There was so much going on. I just had a lust for life.
It was fun.
I made great money.
Nothing but freedom.
If someone is rich and not stupid,
in Germany,
they can only grow richer.
There is no other way.
They'd have to be complete idiots.
[interviewer] Or you get sick.
Or you get sick.
[somber music playing]
I woke up and was like,
"I feel this kind of pressure. I don't know what's going on."
So I went out on the balcony.
I can't see!
I'm blind!
X-rayed.
"You have a brain tumor. You need surgery immediately."
He told me,
"You'll never live like a normal person again."
I must've been 25 at the time.
I had no libido at all.
I never had the chance to live like a man again.
When you become a monster like that,
you don't care about anything anymore.
At that point, I lost everything quickly.
I became addicted to drugs, like hardcore heroin.
[ominous music playing]
I wasn't expected to live long. That's why I played with fire.
The criminals were in Frankfurt as well.
I knew everything.
Where to buy LSD, where to buy weapons.
I got involved in many things.
[funky music playing]
I bought a lot of drugs and sold them to street-level sellers.
I made good money.
We also set up illegal casinos.
[machine jangles]
That's where the gamblers went.
They took out loans from us at horrendous rates.
I also did various scams and stole items.
I had run-ins with the law.
It wasn't a clean slate. There was a file.
THEFT - TWO CASES OF FRAUD - EXTORTION
FRAUD - FRAUD - DRUG DEALING
12 FRAUD OFFENSES
EMBEZZLEMENT
Ridiculous.
Then I had a lucky break.
[upbeat electronic music playing]
[crowd cheering]
In November of '89, the Wall came down.
In December, I was in the new eastern states.
[reporter in German] Borders come down for the beautiful world of Western goods.
[in English] Honestly speaking, the East Germans were totally duped.
[interviewer] By you as well?
Obviously.
[reporter in German] Drücker are what we call aggressive magazine salesmen
that go from door to door and make money by exploiting people's gullibility.
My name is Guloff.
[in English] That's when I realized the Drücker business was profitable.
[reporter in German] Their methods aren't always the most subtle.
They plead some sob story to evoke pity.
And using this pity, they collect signatures
on long-running magazine subscriptions.
[Stellwag in English] It wasn't well-regarded,
but at the publishers, I was the big man.
Officially, I was a janitor.
Unofficially, the head of the Drücker.
We made an insane amount of money.
Insane.
If they hadn't locked me up,
you'd be in front of a mogul today.
That's how much money we made.
But unfortunately I got dragged in there.
[host in German] In December 1991,
this man robbed a Sparkasse branch in Nuremberg...
[expert in English] The scapha doesn't flow
into the connective tissue area of the ear.
The contour of the external ear rim...
[Baumer] I definitely didn't see it as an innocent man getting convicted.
THE NÜRNBERGER NACHRICHTEN NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE
There were a number of factors that counted against him.
HEAD OF THE DRÜCKER GANG
The Drücker is already someone who exhibits a pretty tough demeanor,
so of course the boss of a Drücker gang
is someone who can't be particularly fragile,
because otherwise, he wouldn't be able to conduct his business.
In dubio pro reo doesn't exist.
The state doesn't have to prove that you were the perpetrator.
You have to prove that you weren't.
BANK ROBBERY TRIAL
The title "bank robbery trial" suggests there was nothing else going on,
which is wrong.
That wasn't the only offense he was accused of.
It also concerned an offense against property.
ACCUSATION OF EMBEZZLEMENT
The bank robbery accounted for 90% of the trial.
They also added smaller things
like him squandering money
or not passing it on.
I can't tell you exactly.
GUESTHOUSE OWNER
230,000.00 DEUTSCH MARKS
[Baumer] It would be wrong to say
that the second charge was just a minor offense.
If I remember well,
it was a matter of this person losing their entire wealth.
I would say this second charge put him in a considerably worse position.
Because he's obviously willing to commit material violations of law to make money.
And make lots of money.
I remember that there were quite a few previous convictions.
THE DEFENDANT'S CONSIDERABLE PREVIOUS CONVICTIONS HAVE TO CARRY WEIGHT
[Stellwag] I was no angel. I had prior convictions.
But I believed, as an old crook with a code of honor,
that if you didn't do something, you didn't get convicted.
IMPRESSION OF LACK OF CREDIBILITY OF THE ALIBI WITNESSES
[Neder] Some of the witnesses for the alibi were
people who were advertising magazines for him.
The court always looks at those witnesses with some kind of suspicion,
because they're on the side of the defendant,
THE STATEMENTS SOMETIMES CONTRADICT EACH OTHER INEXPLICABLY
and as we know, their résumés aren't exactly perfect.
That sort of suggested, and it happens from time to time,
that there were collusive agreements.
At the end, the court was of the opinion that this was exactly the case here.
That a couple of buddies provided a criminal with an alibi.
[judge] The defendant is guilty.
[indistinct clamoring]
[Neder] It's always better to present an innocent person and say,
"Justice system, you got it wrong again,"
instead of saying he was in fact guilty in the past.
People on the street would say,
"Well, it didn't actually affect an innocent person."
I believe that this legend of
"the innocently convicted with a completely clean slate"
mostly emerged due to this idea that the only way to have a chance
is reasonably selling it well to the media.
You often don't have that much airtime,
which means you work with a certain amount of black-and-white thinking.
Here's the victim of a miscarriage of justice
who's going to tell us how it could come to that.
[Graas] In such a case,
you really have to paint a black-and-white picture
to communicate it clearly.
If you really want to tell the story of what happened to him,
it makes no sense to shine a light on his past as the head of a Drücker gang,
because that just creates the wrong mood.
We realized that back then too.
We also had this predicament during filming,
and decided it wouldn't work.
Because of his type, he's not exactly the most sympathetic person.
No one would perceive him as the victim of a miscarriage of justice, which he is.
There were also facts added that I couldn't remember,
and I said to myself,
"What is he talking about? That maybe happened differently."
It gained a certain momentum of its own.
I think there's a battle going on inside him.
Like good versus evil.
I think he arranges certain things and stories
so that he's put back in the limelight.
I believe that.
[funky music playing]
[Vogel] No matter what he tells you,
it's always difficult to find out if it's true or not.
So I don't even look into most things anymore.
Because I've known this behavior as long as I've known him.
- It's no use. - [interviewer] Because he's a liar?
[chuckles]
A normal person would say he's a liar.
An exaggerator, a fraud.
Drücker boss.
[foreboding music playing]
[Stellwag] If you're in solitary confinement
and you have no radio, no TV, it's hell.
I was incarcerated...
FALK SIMANG FELLOW INMATE
...and got sent to Straubing Prison, to the sick ward.
That's where Donald Stellwag was.
[Stellwag] Nobody talked to me!
[in German] You are isolated from everyone, from all prisoners.
Because you didn't confess?
Because you won't confess. You say, "I didn't do it. Do what you want to me."
So that's what they did.
[in English] It wasn't isolation in that sense.
He was just in the sick ward.
Because he really was sick.
[medical monitor beeping]
[interviewer] So he wasn't in isolation for not admitting to this crime?
[repeating] No, no, no.
It's possible that they tried preventing groups from forming in prison.
Donald is someone who can sway people to his side.
When you spend 24 hours a day in your cell, of course you start talking.
It was just a good match. We became real friends.
[medical monitors beeping faintly]
[Stellwag] Falk had a great story.
Almost as extraordinary as mine.
[audience applauding]
[in German] Good evening.
In the studio with us is Falk Simang.
He is a trained roofer and bricklayer from Dresden.
He did his military service in the East German army.
He's been a mercenary for a year.
Up until Friday, he was fighting house-to-house in Mostar.
[in English] It's quite a story.
I was incarcerated for quote-unquote murder
during the Yugoslav Wars.
[in German] It's not just Serbs, Croats and Muslims fighting each other.
There are also foreign mercenaries fighting on all fronts.
Germans too.
[in English] Of course, some I had fought didn't like that at all.
As a result, I was bothered a lot from all sides.
So I had to go to the sick ward.
He gave me a nickname.
Big Mäck.
I think there will be quite a few people still thinking about him.
[chuckling]
He was a legend in Straubing. They won't have another like him again.
I established certain structures in that prison.
Falk had military training.
He knew exactly how to go about recruiting people,
and what their jobs would be.
It was grand.
- [medical monitors beeping] - [upbeat music playing]
In front of the sick ward door was where they always gathered.
That was always the contact point.
They'd push notes under the door...
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
...then hand over bank notes or what was needed.
[cash register dings]
They had to make sure they got transferred to the sick ward
or guarantee that the stuff made its way there
via laundry shop workers or something.
[suspenseful music playing]
That fits. [laughs] I believe that straightaway.
That's exactly the kind of thing this... isolation, so to speak,
was supposed to prevent.
[in German] They said I had to be put in isolation
because I had to be separated from other inmates.
That means you couldn't talk to anyone for six years during your incarceration?
No, I couldn't.
[Stellwag in English] Should I say we lived in prison like God in France?
Is that anyone's business?
[upbeat music playing]
It was like in Goodfellas.
[TV in German] When you think of prison, you picture
all those old movies with rows and rows of guys behind bars.
But it wasn't like that for wise guys.
It really wasn't that bad, except that I missed Jimmy.
He was doing his time in Atlanta.
[Simang in English] There was also a small kitchen in the sick ward.
I would always cook for us there.
Spaghetti, meat, cutlets. I mean, we had everything.
[Stellwag] Life like a pig in clover.
In thick clover.
Big Mäck was the man. He could do anything.
[in German] Believe me.
[Simang in English] If it was available, we had it.
[in German] If DeVito doesn't do anything soon,
things will come to a standstill.
[in English] He's a Pied Piper of sorts. He can win people over
and make them go around running his errands.
He needs to do that, because he can't do it himself.
Others have to do it for him.
Women are a dime a dozen.
But real, true friends are something you rarely find.
Donald was a lucky find for me.
[in German] Innocent behind bars...
[Simang in English] I saw every TV show he appeared on. It was simply magnificent.
[in German] Now he uses his newly found freedom
to pray in a chapel near his home in Nuremberg.
[Simang in English] Always about being innocent.
And at some point, that thing with the gold heist...
I don't know. If he'd done it, good.
It would be well-deserved.
Someone is innocently imprisoned for a very long time.
So much went wrong there.
That could be a reason to say,
"I've been behind bars for such a long time."
"Now, at the very least, I can go and do something unlawful."
[Graas] To have anger brewing inside you after all that time and think,
"I'm owed one on the house."
I could imagine that.
I'm not sure what I would have done,
spending nine years imprisoned, falsely accused.
What happened to him was terrible, but he doesn't get a free pass.
You can't weigh that against a new crime and say,
"Okay, I'm entitled to this now."
He's owed one, but it's not right.
He is a victim of a miscarriage of justice. Period.
In this case, anyway.
[book narrator] "Although he was a real wreck of a guy,
he was also a gangster."
"The boss of a Drücker crew..."
EXTRACT FROM XATAR'S BOOK
"...forcing men to sell magazine subscriptions door to door."
ANTIQUE & JEWELRY MARKETS
"He was dealing in jewelry now. Officially."
"He wanted to sell me something else."
"Information."
[tense music playing]
[Stellwag in English] You'd only know that if you'd staked him out for weeks.
[Höhn] He had built up trust with an employee
of this scrap gold merchant from Nuremberg,
and questioned him over several months, more or less, about the company.
The guy apparently answered him naively.
That way, Stellwag learned there was
this transport that wasn't particularly well-secured,
and eventually convinced himself to do it.
FACTS
DONALD STELLWAG SUGGESTED AMBUSHING A GOLD TRANSPORTER
[Höhn] The court determined that he was involved in planning the crime
and was the one to give the tip-off.
He couldn't tell the story of the victim of the justice system. That was done.
There were no clues to contradict this.
He never defended himself. He didn't have to.
[Neder] There was a warrant. They wanted to lock him up.
We didn't do anything to prove his innocence.
The man couldn't be put on trial. He couldn't be charged.
In this case with the gold, the strategy was his health.
Nothing else.
Neder said,
"I immediately want to arrange a detention review hearing
to see if he's even fit for prison."
Here's the story.
[dramatic music playing]
[Stellwag] There was a medical director,
a pathologist for the district court in Nuremberg.
Head of pathology in Nuremberg.
He comes in, opens the file.
I swear to you on all I hold dear...
he looks at me, looks at the file.
Looks at me again and says,
"I can't believe it. You're Donald Stellwag?"
"Yeah."
"What my court and the state did to you,
we will never be able to atone for."
"Unfit for prison."
UNFIT FOR PRISON
[upbeat music playing]
[Stellwag] Later, when we sat together,
Neder says to me, "I'm a lawyer."
"In law circles, that's what we call a carte blanche."
"Something like that doesn't even exist in Germany."
"Unfit for prison? You'd have to be dead for that."
Unfit for prison.
[Neder] You're not allowed to say it.
The justice system doesn't like to hear it.
It's due to the actual state of his health.
In effect, it is carte blanche.
That's what it is.
He isn't doing anything bad.
Theoretically, he can do whatever he wants.
[suspenseful music playing]
It's understandable that people who have been caught, are on trial,
and potentially facing a long prison sentence,
would try and shift the blame
to a person who could likely not be prosecuted.
He is unfit for prison, after all.
That could be a defense strategy.
[book narrator] "As for the gold...
we made it so we could blame it on him."
"He was seriously ill and had nothing to fear."
"In that way, he saved our asses."
Has that trial uncovered the truth?
In parts, yes, I'm convinced of that. But not all of it.
As we know, it's not known where the stolen goods are now.
Who profited and to what degree? We don't know.
[Vogel] Everyone here is a neat freak. I just don't get it. It's a little much.
There's nothing on the streets.
Our property is the messiest by far. People get worked up about it.
[birds twittering]
They're watching the street from their windows
so they have something to report.
Just normal countryside stuff in Germany.
DRIVE CAREFULLY! IT COULD BE YOUR CHILD TOO
I tell myself, "They don't know you."
[pensive music playing]
[Vogel] My name is Frank Vogel.
I'm almost 53 years old,
and I take care of Mr. Stellwag.
[Stellwag] Good food!
- Thank you. - Here's your sandwiches.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Vogel.
From the bottom of my heart.
But I can't eat it without salt.
I know why you keep hiding it.
[Vogel] The reason is simple. I'm also fat.
Maybe someday, I'll be in this situation too.
I hope somebody will do for me what I'm doing for him now.
It's as simple as that.
I live off of whatever comes in.
Antiques
or whatever comes my way.
But nothing illegal.
- [quietly chuckles] - [interviewer] Why are you laughing?
Because everyone assumes since I live with him,
I must be doing something illegal.
[Höhn] In the trial, it didn't become clear who has the gold.
Many could have it.
[phone dialing]
[in German] I still have a bit of gold, and it has to go.
ORDER NOW!!!
STARTING TODAY THERE IS A NEW INTERNATIONAL CURRENCY! #NOJOKE
You now have the opportunity to get real gold from Xatar
with the limited Xatar coin.
[Höhn in English] The Xatar coin is a gold coin with his face on it.
And the references to the gold heist are more than obvious.
[in German] You better act fast.
[in English] There isn't a lot of effort put into denying the rumors
that maybe they do have the gold after all.
[in German] During all that time,
has anyone revealed what happened to the loot in the end?
No. Because none of us know.
[whimsical music playing]
But the gold is hidden somewhere and you know where?
That's what you're saying.
If you had gold, where would you bury it?
[audience laughs]
Come on, you would bury it. I would bury it.
After ten years, I'm still getting asked, "Bro, where is your gold?"
[interviewer in English] So where's the gold?
Look around you. I'm in the house of a friend who takes care of me.
There's no gold here. Never was nor will be.
- [loud ringtone playing] - Sorry.
Hey, [bleep]. I don't have time. There's a TV crew here.
What about the Dom Pérignon and all that wine?
[bleep]
How many?
A thousand bottles?
You're crazy.
Where is it supposed to go? I'll have to ask the suppliers.
All right.
We'll talk later, okay?
Ciao.
[funky outro music playing]