Day 10: Gunther Stoll

This case is known as the Autobahn Riddle case and it is one of the most mysterious unsolved cases in German history. Gunther Stoll was a normal food engineer, or he was seemingly normal. It later came out that he was often followed and plagued by what he labeled, ‘them.’

Gunther Stoll was unemployed but had gone to school to be a food engineer. It seems he was a food engineer for a while but it is unknown what exactly caused his unemployment at the time of his death. Some believe that his ever growing case of paranoia was to blame for this unemployment, but it has never been confirmed.

Around the time before his death he would often talk to his wife about ‘them.’ According to Gunther, ‘them’ was a group of people who wanted to harm him, he was trying to stay away from these people with every fiber of his being. The most notable time he talked to his wife about ‘them’ was on October 25, 1984.

On this night he was sitting with his wife in his home and randomly shouted “Now I’ve Got it!” After shouting this and startling his wife he wrote six letters on a piece of paper, these 6 letters were YOGTZE. Then, as quickly as he wrote them he crossed them out. His wife was unsure of what these letters meant or what Gunther had meant when he shouted “Now I’ve Got It!” and she, just like us, would never really find out the answer to that.

After this oddity took place Gunther went to a pub in Wilnsdorf. While there he ordered one beer and before he had even finished it he fell face first into the ground, this gave him a notable injury on his face. It is important to know that he had not finished his beer at this time because that means alcohol influence could not have contributed to his falling. It was stated he essentially just passed out and fell, then woke up once again.

After he got up from this unexplained fall he took off in his car. For two hours he is unaccounted for. He could’ve been driving around, stopping at different places, etc. your guess is as good as mine, but there were no witnesses to him being anywhere populated during that time. The place he ended up at next was only 6 miles from this pub so it would not have taken him the two hours he was missing.

By 1 a.m. the next day he was in the area he grew up in. Here he conversed with a woman that he had known as a child and she became worried when he mentioned a horrible accident. She told him it was best that he went to his parents because of the time and how he was acting. So Gunther left and his whereabouts were unknown for another two hours. This puts the time at around 3 a.m. on October 26, 198.

At this time two truck drivers were going off the road. They saw a bad car wreck and wanted to check it out to see if anyone needed help. They found Gunther still inside of his car, bloody, naked, and barley conscious. This was 60 miles from where Gunther was last witnessed to be. Help was called and in the time before their arrival Gunther stated that he had been with four other people, four strangers, and they had beat him loose. Then without answers he died on the way to the hospital that night.

That may have been the end of Gunther’s role in the case but that was not the end of the oddness of the case. Both truck drivers who had gone to help Gunther stated that a man in a white jacket was running away from the scene when they arrived. This man has never been identified.

From the evidence that police found at the ‘car wreck’ scene they stated that Gunther was not injured while in his own car. His injuries were not consistent with the car wreck. Their theory was that at some point Gunther got naked, got himself hit by another car, and then someone placed him back in the car. This could be tied to what he said about four strangers beating him loose. Did they beat him and place him back in his car?

Because of this theory of events German police stated that this was a homicide investigation but nothing would ever come of it. However, this is a very theorized about case across internet forums.

The note is the most confusing part of this entire case. What does YOGTZE mean? Well, many people have theorized that it is actually not 6 letters but a license plate. O could have been 0, 2 Z could’ve been 2, and G could’ve been 6. If this is in fact true then it comes out to Y06T2E. Who’s plate could that be? Could it be the plate of the car that would later fatally injure him? This would suggest some interaction with the car before the fatal night or some type of psychic power, neither of which have really been mentioned where I could find.

Others have theorized that this was a call sign, apparently for a Romanian radio station YO6TZE is a call sign and it could’ve been connected in some way. However, this theory, like many others, didn’t really end up going anywhere.

There are theories that range all the way to these letters being an anagram for zygote and that Gunther discovered a secret genetic modification project in Germany and was killed because of it. I find no substance to this theory, the simplest theory is probably the right one, but this one was interesting to read about.

So let’s entertain a crazy theory for a minute. Maybe Gunther was not mentally ill, maybe some people were actually out to get him, but why? Well he had been a food engineer so maybe he stumbled across something that had to do with the food source for Germany or some secret project going along with it. When he was at home he suddenly figured out what they were doing and that is why he wrote down these letters. However, not wanting to leave a paper trail he crossed it out. He then left so his wife would not be hurt.

While at the bar maybe someone had followed him because they knew what he had seen or discovered. Because of this they put some type of drug in the beer. He then takes a sip and falls and passes out. When he wakes up he knows something is wrong and he has to get out of there. Two hours later when he talks to his childhood friend he tells her his theory and everything he saw so that if he is killed it can still get out to the public somehow. She thinks he is going crazy and tells him to leave. Still not wanting to endanger his family at all he goes off on his own for two hours. At some point he crashes his car where it was later found. The effects of the drug make him far too warm so he gets naked. At this point the four unknown men grab him and run him over with a separate car to try and kill him. They then place him back in his car to make it look like an accident.

When the truck drivers come into view these men scatter.

However, that is not what I believe. I think that Gunther Stoll was mentally ill and was being plagued by paranoia. This would mean that the six letters have absolutely no meaning, they are just the scribbles of a man at his wits end. He leaves and goes to the bar to try and forget. While there his sleep deprivation catches up with him and he passes out. Then he goes out for four hours, at some point talking with a childhood friend to pass the time.

He then crashes his car in his paranoia, undresses due to a perception that he is either too hot or a hallucination that something is wrong with his clothes. After this the same truck drivers that called for help accidently hit him while he was standing in the road. To cover it up they put him in his car and called for help.

This is a case that can make your mind go wild and while the fantasy of this case being part of something bigger and containing codes is attractive it is most likely not true. Often cases of mentally ill people are blown up into something they are not, and I think this was one of those cases. However, I do not know this for sure, so could this be a government cover up with codes involved? Yes.

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