German police find abducted boy’s body

THE body of the kidnapped 11-year-old heir to a German banking fortune was found yesterday

Jakob von Metzler's body was discovered four days after he was abducted and after his parents had paid a 1m ransom for his safe return.

His body had been bundled under a dock at a small lake 38 miles from the banking capital.

Jakob disappeared on Friday morning on his way home from school. His parents, Friedrich and Silvia von Metzler, received a ransom note an hour after he was expected home saying nothing would happen if the ransom was paid.

Police, who had kept a news black-out on the abduction, went public with the case on Monday after the family paid the ransom, but Jakob was not released.

A 27-year-old law student who was acquainted with the family was being held as the lone suspect and faces possible murder charges, said prosecutor Rainer Schilling.

He said three others detained had been released and were no longer considered suspects. Police initially said a 24-year-old man, a 16-year-old girl and two brothers had been held since Monday.

Police found tens of thousands of euro believed to be part of the ransom money while searching the law student's apartment. The man, whom police said had tried to befriend the von Metzler children, tipped police to the location of the body.

Police chief Harald Weiss-Bollandt said Jakob, the youngest of three children, was probably killed on Friday, the day of the kidnapping. The other children are a 17-year-old boy and 16-year-old girl.

"I can't tell you of the dismay of the other children that the 27-year-old had tried to befriend them," Weiss-Bollandt said.

Jakob was last seen at about 10:30 am when a schoolmate said he saw him get off a bus near the family's home in the wealthy Frankfurt neighbourhood of Sachsenhausen. A letter containing a ransom demand was in the driveway of the Metzler home.

More than 1,100 policemen using 20 sniffer dogs searched the woods surrounding a lake south of Frankfurt after one of the four people detained indicated he was being held in a cabin at a public recreation area.

But authorities refocused the search after the suspect said the body was north of the city. The family-owned Metzler Bank, headquartered in Frankfurt, is one of Germany's oldest banks and has been in business for 325 years.

Friedrich von Metzler belongs to the 11th generation of the founding family, which still owns and runs the bank.

There have been several high-profile kidnappings in Germany over the past decade, including the 1991 abduction of six-year-old Peter Fiszman and a schoolmate in Cologne. They were released unharmed two days later after a ransom was paid.

The boy's uncle, Jakub Fiszman, who ran an export and electronics business, was kidnapped and found murdered in October 1996, even after his family paid a ransom of £1.65m.

In March 1996, Hamburg tobacco heir Jan Philipp Reemtsma was kidnapped and held for a month before his captors released him for £8m.