Draft:Sittensen murders
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Last edited by Rubintyrann (talk | contribs) 11 days ago. (Update) |
| Sittensen murders | |
|---|---|
  Sittensen Sittensen (Lower Saxony)  Sittensen Sittensen (Germany) | |
| Location | Hamburger Straße 6 Sittensen, Lower Saxony, Germany |
| Coordinates | 53°17′N 09°30′E / 53.283°N 9.500°E |
| Date | 4 February 2007 – 5 February 2007 23:03 – 0:09 (CET) |
| Target | Lin Yue workers |
Attack type | Shooting |
| Weapon | .22 LR handgun |
| Deaths | 7 |
| Motive | Robbery |
On the night of 4–5 February 2007, seven people were shot and killed during a robbery at the Lin Yue restaurant in Sittensen, Lower Saxony, Germany. A two-year-old girl, the daughter of the two murdered owners, was left alive. Five Vietnamese immigrants were arrested and sentenced for the murders.
The killings are considered one of the worst mass murders in post-war German history and have been dubbed the "Seven-fold murders of Sittensen" and "Sittensen massacre". The investigation was marred by sensationalist reporting focusing on speculative involvement of Asian crime syndicates, which persisted well into the trial of the perpetrators.[1]
Background
[edit]The Lin Yue Restaurant (Chinese: 年余酒樓) was a Chinese restaurant located on Hamburger Straße in the centre of Sittensen, 20 km from Rotenburg and 50 km from Hamburg. The town had around 5,500 residents at the time of the crime.[2]
The restaurant name means "Year's Surplus", also translated to "One who had a lot of money left at year's end".[3] It opened in December 1997 and was situated in a three-story mixed-use development. The restaurant, consisting of the dining area, kitchen, pantry, and employee room, was situated on the first floor. The top floor housed apartment spaces with one being rented as an office for the Lin Yue. A driving school was operated out of the ground floor.[4] The Lin Yue was run by married couple Danny Fan and Anny, who immigrated from Hong Kong. The Fan family was described as well-off and popular in town.[5]
Murders
[edit]A local couple were the last customers of the Lin Yue at around 22:30.[6]
At 23:03, five armed men entered the establishment. One of the cooks attempted to flee and was shot five times in the back and shot in the back of the head while on the ground. The owners were forced at gunpoint to open the safe with the restaurant's earnings and salaries upstairs. Then, the owners, their daughter, and the four other staff, two waitresses and two cooks, were blindfolded and forced to the ground. The adults were shot in the back of the head with a suppressed small-caliber handgun.[7] Owner Danny Fan was shot twice and was bruised from blunt strikes with a wooden board, reportedly when he attempted to lunge at one of the assailants for attacking his wife. Anny Fan was also choked before being killed. Their faces were covered with pink napkins from the tables to hem the flow of blood. A total of 14 shot had been fired. Five of the victims were moved, two behind the counter, one in a pantry and two into different rooms on the upper floor.
The child was covered with a blanket and left cradled in the arms of one of the waitresses. It's presumed that the robbers didn't kill the child because she would not be able to identify them due to her age. The robbers got away with 5,105 euro, two computers, and 13 mobile phones. The scene was found at 0:20 when the husband of one of the victims came to fetch his wife. He called police at 0:29, with officers arriving five minutes later. Six of the victims died at the scene while a seventh died in a hospital the following morning.[8][9][10]
Victims
[edit]Three men and three women were killed, including the proprietors, Wing Hung "Danny" Fan (designated Body 2) and Siu Wai "Anny" Fan (designated Body 5). They were British citizens. Their ages are contradictorily given as either 36 and 32, or 32 and 28 respectively.[11]
They employed five staff members who commuted from nearby cities:
38-year-old Thi Kim Oanh Nguyen Janßen waitress since 2004. She first studied to be a teacher, but then worked as a weaver in her native Vietnam, then in the Soviet Union between 1986 and 1990. She immigrated illegally to newly formed Russia in 1998 but was deported a year later. Nguyen again illegally entered Russia in January 2001, this time to meet with a human trafficking ring in Moscow that smuggled her and others to Prague via truck. On 30 January 2001, she crossed the Czech-German border and applied for asylum, but only received toleration status. To prevent her deportation, she paid 10,000 euro for a sham marriage with a German citizen. Designated Body 4.
36-year-old Wai Heng Foong, waitress. She illegally immigrated to Germany with her husband for financial reasons, leaving their two children in Malaysia with relatives. Foong's monthly income was unusually high for her work at 1000 euro and was known to spent several thousand euros at casinos as well as jeweler shops. The couple lived in Soltau. Designated Body 3.
57-year-old cook Wan Wong Li, cook. He immigrated from Hong Kong but kept a low profile. Like the Fans and Foong, he was known as a gambling addict. He was the first fatality. Designated Body 1.
31-year-old Rojasit Jitloed, assistant cook. Born in Thailand, he immigrated to Germany at age six with his mother and adoptive father, who was a German national. He received German citizenship, graduated Hauptschule, served mandatory military duty in the Bundeswehr and was a trained painter. He lived in Wolfenbüttel at the time of his murder. Designated Body 6.
32-year-old Ngoc Son Dao, assistant cook. Known mostly by the nickname Sonny, he used several false identities to avoid a deportation order. For this reason, Dao's background is entirely unknown, though friends confirmed that he was of Vietnamese origin.
Only the Fans, Jitloed, and Foong were immediately identified, as the rest did not carry documentation on them. Contrary to initial assumptions, none of the dead were Chinese citizens.[6]
Investigation
[edit]After the crime, there was a curious discovery about the tenant of an apartment on the same floor as the Lin Yue restaurant. The 25-year-old man had been awake at the time of the murders, yet was completely unaware of the events next-door because he had been playing a first person shooter video game with head phones on, with any noise muffled further by his television playing the Super Bowl XLI. Even more baffling was the fact that the assailants had actually checked the apartment floor and forcefully kicked in two of the three doors. These apartments were empty. He only found out about the murders when police asked to check his flat to ensure none of the murderers were still in the building. The only information the neighbour could provide was that he ordered food from the Lin Yue the prior evening, less than an hour before the arrival of the robbers.[12]
At aroun 13:10 on 5 February ,14 hours after the murders, police in Wildeshausen stopped a rented car containing Trong Duong Dao and Van Hiep Vu for a traffic violation on B281. Dao did not have driver's licence and a search of his person found 0,4 grams of cocaine and 3340 euro in banknotes. His passenger Vu had four phones and 1765 euro on him. A search of the car for more drugs found a torn book page that had a building plan drawn on, with the flipside having an address, phone number, the words "Zittensen" and "10d", and mixed number-letter codes written down. Dao and Vu were taken to The remaining three accomplices were arrested within the coming months.[13][6]
Due to pre-existing rumors about Danny Fan's possible connection to the criminal underground, media immediately suspected involvement of Chinese triads, heavily running headlines for two days about the murders possibly being the result of failure to pay protection money. Two days after the murders, the identities of two Vietnamese suspects were published,[14] after which media speculated that the murders were instead related to Vietnamese cigarette smugglers, human traffickers, or even a broad non-descript "Asia-Mafia", as part of a drug rivalry, revenge killings, or otherwise gang-related. Police considered the possibility, but refused to confirm rumors of organised crime involvement. It was posited that the robbers had intentionally staged the murders as gangland killings to lead away suspicion.[15][16]
Perpetrators
[edit]The perpetrators were identified as two pairs of brothers and a shared friend, all living in Bremen and working for Chinese-style restaurants. Phong Dao Cao had previously been convicted of assault while the Vu brothers were connected to a prior armed robbery at a Vietnamese restaurant in Essen.[17]
It was found that the Cao and Dao had gambling debts of 10,000 euro. Related to this, a Vietnamese language interpreter identified the writing "10d" as referring to Vietnamese đồng, with it being a common practice among Vietnamese diaspora in the European Union to equate one đồng with 1000 euro.
- Trong Duong Dao, 33, led and planned the killings
- Phong Dao Cao, 29, fatally shot the victims
- Van Phuong Vu, 40, acted as getaway driver
- Van Hiep Vu, 31, helped tie up victims and carry the stolen goods
- Quoc Thanh Nguyen, 40, helped tie up victims and carry the stolen goods, former employee of the Lin Yue who informed his accomplices of the layout and shifts
Trial
[edit]The trials were held in Stade district court and ended in 2009. The main perpetrators were both given life sentences. Van Phuong Vu received four years and nine months for aiding robbery. Van Hiep Vu received 14 years imprisonment for robbery; 14 years are the second-harshest sentence short of life imprisonment, which may always be paroled after 15 years. Quoc Thanh Nguyen was sentenced to five years imprisonment for robbery. It was initially announced that the perpetrators would be deported after serving their sentences, but this did not occur.[18][19][20] As of 2017, only brothers Trong Duong Dao and Phong Dao Cao remained incarcerated, but had the possibilty of being freed on parole in 2024.
Aftermath
[edit]The surviving Fan daughter was put into witness protection and eventually adopted by a Chinese family living in Germany.
In July 2014, celebrity cook Steffen Henssler received criticism for featuring Van Hiep Vu on his television show "Henssler hinter Gittern" ("Henssler behind bars"), a cooking program which claimed to have the goal of resocialising inmates and teaching them gastronomy skills for work upon release. Van Hiep Vu, a former restaurant cook, appeared in its first episode filmed at JVA Bremen-Oslebshause.[21][22][23]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Schmid, Anna (16 January 2025). "Polizist wird aus dem Schlaf gerissen - wegen eines China-Restaurants voller Leichen". FOCUS.
- ^ "年余酒楼惨案审判：谋杀罪没有足够证明". Deutsche Welle (in Chinese). 28 October 2008.
- ^ Dahlkamp, Jürgen; Meyer, Cordula; Röbel, Sven (2007-02-11). "Extrem brutal". Der Spiegel (in German). ISSN 2195-1349. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ "7 dead in shooting at Chinese restaurant". www.chinadaily.com.cn. 2007-02-07. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ "Nur ein kleines Mädchen überlebte". n-tv.de (in German). 4 February 2017. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ a b c "Siebenfach Mord: "Böse Menschen waren da"". FOCUS. 13 November 2013.
- ^ "Blutbad von Sittensen: Täter schossen mit kleinkalibriger Waffe". Der Spiegel (in German). 2007-06-18. ISSN 2195-1349. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ Spanner, Elke (2008-01-01). "Morde im China-Restaurant: Es durfte keine Zeugen geben". Die Tageszeitung: taz (in German). ISSN 0931-9085. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ "Blutbad im China-Restaurant: Siebtes Todesopfer nach Massaker in Sittensen". Der Spiegel (in German). 2007-02-06. ISSN 2195-1349. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ Jüttner, Julia (2007-02-06). "Massaker in Sittensen: Kleines Mädchen überlebte Blutbad im Restaurant". Der Spiegel (in German). ISSN 2195-1349. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ "German village reels as police probe restaurant slayings". South China Morning Post. 2007-02-09. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ "Vor zehn Jahren starben im Sittenser Restaurant "Lin Yue" sieben Menschen". www.kreiszeitung.de (in German). 2017-02-04. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ "Siebenfacher Mord: Angeklagter im Sittensen-Prozess sagt gegen Hauptangeklagten aus". Der Tagesspiegel Online (in German). ISSN 1865-2263. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ "Morde im China-Restaurant: Zwei Vietnamesen nach Massaker von Sittensen festgenommen". Der Spiegel (in German). 2007-02-07. ISSN 2195-1349. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ "Blutbad in Sittensen / Asia-Mafia , Das Blutbad im China-Restaurant - B.Z. – Die Stimme Berlins". www.bz-berlin.de (in German). 2007-02-07. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ Schneider, Kerstin (14 February 2007). "Ahnte Danny F. die Bedrohung?". Stern.
- ^ "Siebenfach-Mord: Neue Ermittlungen gegen Angeklagte von Sittensen - WELT". DIE WELT (in German). Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ "China-Restaurant "Lin Yue": Hohe Haftstrafen für Mörder von Sittensen - WELT". DIE WELT (in German). Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ "Lebenslange Haft für Sittensen-Täter". www.fr.de (in German). 2019-01-25. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ "Siebenfacher Mord: Sittensen-Prozess offenbart grausame Details - WELT". DIE WELT (in German). Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ ""Henssler hinter Gittern": Polizei Niedersachsen kritisiert TV-Show". Der Spiegel (in German). 2014-07-16. ISSN 2195-1349. Retrieved 2025-01-24.
- ^ Wachter, Denise Snieguolė (5 August 2014). "Was nach "Henssler hinter Gittern" bleibt: So kochen Schwerverbrecher". Stern.
- ^ ""Eine Geschmacklosigkeit"". www.rotenburger-rundschau.de (in German). 2014-07-17. Retrieved 2025-01-24.