The Scholl Case

On a cold December morning in 2011, a woman’s body is found in a forest near Berlin, hidden between tall trees under dry leaves and moss. She has been strangled in cold blood. The victim’s husband, Heinrich Scholl, is devastated. He is well respected in the community, a former mayor, and had been happily married—or so it seemed—for almost fifty years. Three weeks later he is arrested, and after an eighteen-month trial is sentenced to life. To this day he pleads not guilty.


Can this charming, courteous man possibly be a killer? Journalist Anja Reich-Osang followed the case from its beginning and talked to family, friends and Heinrich Scholl himself. She tells an utterly gripping story of marriage, sex and politics, in which nothing is as it seems. 


Anja Reich-Osang, a Berlin native, has written for Die Zeit, Die Welt and Berliner Zeitung. She was awarded the German Reporter Award in 2012 and is currently working as senior editor at Berliner Zeitung.


‘Reich-Osang tells this story in wonderfully simple language, full of sympathy for the people involved, but without any pathos, and with restrained but steadily growing tension as death draws inevitably closer.’ Süddeutsche Zeitung