The Unsolved Murder of Peggy Knobloch

On 7 May 2001, nine-year-old Peggy Knobloch vanished while walking home from school in Lichtenberg, Bavaria. Last seen just 50 metres from her house, her disappearance would grip Germany for decades, earning comparisons to the Madeleine McCann case. Yet despite two major arrests and extensive investigation, Peggy's killer has never been conclusively identified—and the case was officially shelved in 2020.

Peggy's remains were not discovered until 5 July 2016, when a mushroom forager found them in a wooded area between Nordhalben and Rodacherbrunn, less than ten miles from her home. Her mother identified the child through a watch found with the remains, with DNA tests later confirming the identification.

The investigation's first major development came just days after Peggy's disappearance. An intellectually disabled man confessed to molesting the girl four days before she disappeared, claiming he then suffocated her after she tried to run when he approached to apologize. He was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital on 6 September 2001 and arrested in October 2002.

In 2004, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. But the conviction would not stand. Upon retrial in 2014, the court determined his confession had been coerced through an extraordinary interrogation process—he had been questioned more than 40 times without legal representation. His conviction was overturned, and after spending roughly ten years in psychiatric hospital and prison, he was released.

With the first suspect's conviction vacated, investigators turned their attention elsewhere. In 2018, a 41-year-old man was arrested after claiming another individual had led him to Peggy's body at a bus stop. According to his account, he removed the remains and hid them in the forest after attempting unsuccessfully to resuscitate her. He admitted to burning her bag and jacket but denied involvement in her death. However, he later retracted this confession. Police discovered matching peat and paint flecks at his home, but without a sustained confession or conclusive forensic evidence directly linking him to the crime, he too was released.