The investigations in regard to possible accomplices continue. The 34-year-old already has a certain legend status in Bonn’s police headquarters. To have caught the „pane stacker“ - as the officers call him - is considered one of the greatest success stories in the fight against break-in crime. „And that’s all thanks to our investigators“, praised police president Ursula Brohl-Sowa. 42 burglaries can be proven to be committed by the man through DNA proof. Every day, that list grows: Experts of the state criminal police agency (LKA) keep checking the genetical fingerprint of the 34-year-old with other finds.

When the investigation team „Pane“ began its work last summer, there were several break-ins following the same pattern. „The culprit always got in via the back of the house, concealed from view“, says Mark Patrick Lück, who is heading the investigation team. Every time the man destroyed the window pane nearly without making any sound, to get into houses. „He worked very accurately“, says Lück. The broken glass pieces he carefully set aside and piled them neatly - which gained him the nickname „pane stacker“.

He fine-tuned his method with every break-in. He built tools with which he opened shutters and others to break glass without making a sound. He was climbing obstacles of up to five meters. Balconies he reached by using a grappling hook.

„We started at zero, and had no clues at first“, says Lück. That’s why the Bonn team asked the LKA experts for help - highly specialised profilers, who usually work on murder cases. The guess of the investigators was right: DNA traced found at crime scenes in Bonn, Rhein-Sieg-Kreis and Kreis Neuwied were matching, stemmed from one person.

But who? „We spoke with residents and possible witnesses, but nobody had any hint towards the identity of the culprit“, reports Lück. Thanks to the burglary radar, in which the police mark all previous crimes, they knew all the areas the culprit was using for his break-ins. „We knew he would strike again, but not when.“ So it happened that undercover police officers mounted surveillance at an area in Ippendorf while the „pane stacker“ struck in Bad Honnef. For weeks, the investigation team was moving in the dark. Until they decided to go for a radical measure: For 12 days they mounted surveillance at locations where he broke in before.

Over 800 police officers were working in different shifts in December. But not a sign of the „pane stacker“, far and wide. „We had almost given up hope when a plain clothes patrol unit noticed a guy distributing brochures at 4am in Ippendorf“, explains Lück. The officers had already seen him in a residential area in October but the suspicion did not suffice to take any measures. Now they followed him, watched his environment and could match his saliva sample to DNA traces at several crime scenes. „At the same time we found out about possible accomplices“, says Lück. The 34-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday, the prosecution has motioned the court to issue an arrest warrant. Original text: Nicolas Ottersbach Translation: Mareike Graepel