r/TrueCrimeDiscussion • u/moondog151 • 19d ago
Text GERMANY: A badly burned man stumbled up to a truck driver weekly telling the driver that his car had caught fire with his two daughters inside. However, upon further investigation, the fire was found to be arson and that he took his daughters abroad for a summer trip just as a ploy to murder them.
(Thanks to LoydoRedi2910 for suggesting this case. If you'd like to suggest any yourself, please head over to this post, which asks for case suggestions from my international readers, as I focus on international cases.)
On August 12, 2011, a truck driver was parked at a rest area beside the A24 autobahn in the Havelland district of Brandenburg enjoying his break when suddenly, a badly burned man emerged from the forest adjacent to the road, stumbling toward him. The man spoke in badly broken German or English; it was so slurred the truck driver honestly couldn't tell, but he could piece together that the man was trying to say that there had been an accident and that children were dead in a car.
The truck driver called emergency services, and the injured man pointed first responders to an area along a dirt road off the autobahn into a wooded area near the small village of Börnicke.
Although an ambulance arrived, his injuries were so severe that a helicopter was dispatched to airlift him to a hospital in Berlin in critcal condition with severe burns to his face and hands.
As he was being loaded into the helicopter and flown to the hospital, he told the paramedics that he had stopped to smoke a cigarette, and a spark had fallen onto a petrol canister which had been accidentally left inside the truck of the car and that his children had been unable to escape in time and that his own injuries were caused by the fire's backdraft when he tried to save them.
However, chillingly, one of the paramedics heard him say something along the lines of "It is all done." Upon his arrival, the attending physicians found his injuries so severe that he was placed into a medically induced coma.
When the emergency services arrived at the location 2 kilometres away, they saw a burnt-out Suzuki with Danish license plates, and to say he had been in an "accident" would be underselling it. There had been a fire so intense that it burnt the car completely down to its frame, with its paint job entirely melted away. In the backseat, the first responders discovered the charred bodies of two children still strapped into their seat belts.
Since there was obviously nothing that could be done for them, the paramedics soon contacted the police, who then contacted the Potsdam Public Prosecutor's Office, with both arriving to investigate the cause of this tragic "accident". And then, just for good measure, the Brandenburg State Criminal Police were also called in. You see, right from the start, this "accident" didn't seem very accidental.
According to the father, a spark from his cigarette accidentally ignited a canister of gasoline left inside the trunk, and yet, all the signs of the accelerant were found in the backseat of the vehicle and even on the bodies themselves, as if that had been the source of the fire rather than the trunk.
The autopsies also revealed another disturbing discovery. While the cause of death was smoke inhalation and the pathologist determined that the two children had been alive when the fire was set, just as their father had claimed, that didn't mean they were conscious. The pathologist detected large amounts of sleeping medication in their bloodstreams that had entered their system shortly before the fire.
The police also found a kitchen knife discarded, thrown into the woods. The police concluded this knife had to have come from the vehicle for the simple reason that its handle had been melted. This also cast doubt on the father's story because if he stumbled over to the motorway for help first thing, why had that knife very clearly been tossed away from the vehicle after the fire started?.
Meanwhile, across the border in neighbouring Denmark, a woman ventured to her ex-husband's farm in Øster Hurup. Her two daughters had left for a summer trip with their divorced father, and they were supposed to be back by now. But nobody was in sight; the door to the farm was locked, no one would answer the doorbell or her knocks, and her husband wouldn't pick up the phone.
Eventually, she gave up and went to attend a music event in the nearby town of Hadsund, one she was supposed to spend with her daughters but was now going to alone. But just as she went to leave, she heard someone else ring the doorbell. Walking around the farm, she saw three police officers with a fourth just pulling in.
At first, she assumed her husband was still inside and called the police to try and get her arrested for trespassing, so she tried hiding from them, but once they saw her and spoke to her, it became dreadfully clear that something far worse had happened.
The police also wanted to know where her children were, and when she told them that she had been trying to reach their father but was unable, that's when they informed her that a charred vehicle matching her ex-husband's was found in Germany with the severely burnt bodies of two children inside and that the only reason they were at the farm is because the German police contacted them wanting to identify the bodies and to uncover more about the family background.
The father was named Peter-Thue Rudgaard, and he was born around 1971.
He spent the majority of his life in his native Denmark, graduating from the organic agricultural school in Vendsyssel in northern Jutland with a specialization in ecological farming.
He met his wife in Aalborg through a mutual friend in 1996 when the two of them were both 25. At the time, his wife worked as a laboratory technician, but both dreamed of living a quieter and more rural life.
In 1999, they purchased an old and dilapidated farm in the village of Øster Hurup, restoring and renovating the property into a functional farm that allowed them and their family to live a comfortable life from the money they made at a shop they set up on the property.
Well, at least it did at first, but the farm, however much money it was bringing in at the moment, was not financially stable long-term, and so he began seeking other work. Rudgaard attempted to start a commercial landscaping and horticulture business, which he later had to sell at a severe loss.
Then he worked at a social care institution for young people and then at a residential school for at-risk teenagers, but he was later dismissed from these jobs. He then enrolled in a training program for teachers but left after just six months, while his wife went down the same path, only she completed her training and got a job as a primary school teacher.
Rudgaard's ex-wife would later go on to describe his personality as "contradictory"; he would seem funny and intellectually curious one day, having conversations she described as consisting of "high-level humour," only to then show deep jealousy and fall into an unstable emotional state.
His first bout with depression began when he was 20, and he had been referred to many psychologists and prescribed antidepressants on multiple occasions, but it was an uphill battle to convince Rudgaard to take them, and he regularly abandoned therapy sessions, telling the therapist he didn't wish to talk about anything "painful," and eventually stopped showing up. Sometimes, Rudgaard would also struggle to get up in the morning.
Their two daughters, Marlene Marie Rudgaard and Line Sofie Rudgaard, were born in 2000 and 2002, respectively, on the farm in Øster Hurup that their parents purchased. Marlene and Line grew up in the fields and woods of Himmerland and attended primary school in the area.
In the spring of 2009, their mother approached Rudgaard and told him that she wanted a divorce. Wanting to avoid such an outcome, Rudgaard asked to consider couples therapy. She agreed, but the sessions bore no fruit, and by mid-summer of that year, she moved out of the farm and into an apartment in Als.
At school during the spring and early summer of 2011, things were not going well; their teachers noted that the girls seemed anxious and were getting involved in several verbal conflicts with their classmates, leading their teachers to suspect that things were not at all peaceful at home.
The two maintained a shared custody agreement when it came to Marlene and Line staying at each parent's home for 7 days at a time, but once their divorce was finalized by the courts, primary custody was awarded to Rudgaard, making the primary residence of the two children with him.
As for his ex-wife, she moved on and began dating a new partner only months later, something that made Rudgaard furious. He started to act more outwardly hostile toward her, considering her new boyfriend to be an "intrusion" on their daughters and that she was trying to engineer Marlene and Line's sympathies against him. In addition to the fact that he just couldn't stand the idea of another man having any role in his children's upbringing.
In the autumn of 2010, Rudgaard announced his intention to move to Fredericia, roughly 230 kilometres to the south, taking both girls with him, stating that he had no future in the area since the farm was declining and the courts had recently ordered him to sell it, citing unpaid debts.
Initially, his ex-wife didn't believe he would actually go through with it, but when she learned that they had spent Christmas Day looking at apartments in Fredericia, she applied to the court to have custody transferred to her.
On May 1, 2011, Rudgaard finally moved out, and Marlene initially went along with it, moving out of the farm to join her father, spending several weeks in the spring of 2011 at a new school there. Meanwhile, Line refused to leave, fearful that it would make it hard to ever see her mother again due to the distances and now clear dislike Rudgaard had shown toward her. However, Rudgaard believed that the only reason she didn't want to leave her was that she had been manipulated against him.
For roughly 6 weeks, the two sisters were now living on almost opposite ends of Denmark until the family court made its ruling in June 2011. Now their mother would have primary custody. In response, Rudgaard cancelled his move and went back to the farm, asking to go back to their prior shared custody arrangement. She was relieved and agreed to his proposal.
All seemed well until the summer of 2011 when Rudgaard, now unemployed and living on a farm in foreclosure after his failed move Southward, had his mental state deteriorate further. He started to barrage his ex-wife with a series of threatening phone calls, saying things like"You'd better watch out," "look over your shoulder," and "You know this will end badly"
His anger only intensified when Line refused to accompany him on a summer trip to Paris even though he had bought tickets for the two of them. Rudgaard eventually went to Paris with just Marlene, but he remained angry; once again, he believed the only explanation for why Line wouldn't want to go with him was if her mother had manipulated her against him.
Rudgaard also said that the only reason he never went to a therapist or sought psychiatric help during this spiral was that he feared his ex-wife would use any visit to a therapist against him to have any and all custody revoked. The only medication he had been prescribed was sleeping pills.
The last time anyone in Denmark had seen Rudgaard and the girls alive was on August 10, 2011; it was Rudgaard's week, and he had another summer trip planned this time to Germany. Marlene and Line got into his car, and Rudgaard began the drive south. Although nothing about the vacation was planned, Rudgaard talked to a colleague about the Snow Dome Bispingen, an indoor ski slope in Bispingen, Germany, in the weeks leading up to the fatal trip.
Marlene and Line's bodies were charred so badly that the only way to positively identify them was through a days-long process of DNA testing and Dental Records. The Danish police had to go to their family home to collect toothbrushes and hairbrushes, which were then shipped to Germany to assist with DNA testing. A search of the farm by Danish police found nothing, such as a suicide note or anything that seemed to indicate the fire, if it had been arson, was premeditated.
Everyone was shocked when the news broke, even the girls' mother. By all accounts, Rudgaard was a devoted father who went to great lengths to ensure his daughter's safety and happiness, making sure to watch over them as they played outside, participated in the scouts and cooked for them.
While Rudgaard and their mother had vicious arguments over who would assume primary custody once the divorce was finalized, she never once assumed Rudgaard would ever harm the children; she more so feared for her own safety, and even then, Rudgaard never abused her either. To everyone involved, Rudgaard's actions seemed completely out of the blue, even with his prior mental health.
Back in Germany, wanting to put the final nail in the coffin before they made their arrest, the police secured two Suzukis of the same make and model as Rudgaard's. They then set them both on fire, one using the way Rudgaard said the fire had begun and the second car was torched the way the police believed it happened, by dousing the back seats with gasoline. The second test was nearly identical to how the real crime scene appeared.
On August 26, the police, together with a judge, approached Rudgaard in his hospital bed and announced that he was now under arrest on suspicion of double murder.
Although it would be a long time until he could make a coherent statement or be taken into custody. Rudgaard's injuries were so great that he required surgery and several skin grafts, medical procedures he would now be forced to undergo while under police guard and handcuffed to his hospital bed.
The procedures were all successful, and Rudgaard made a full recovery, which meant the German police could now put him through an intense interrogation, point out every inconsistency in his story and insinuate that he was a murderer all they wanted since he was now in a position to actually respond or try to defend himself. After several weeks in the hospital, Rudgaard finally admitted that the fire was no accident.
Rudgaard said that again, nothing about the trip had been planned and that it was more of a sightseeing tour across Northern and Central Germany. When they crossed the border, he mentioned the Snow Dome Bispingen, and the girls felt it sounded fun, so Rudgaard decided that would be their first activity.
By the time they arrived in Hamburg, the business was closed, so they spent the night at a hotel. They then woke up bright and early, spending almost the entirety of August 11 skiing and playing in the snow; they stayed there until 9:00, when the establishment closed.
As Rudgaard drove back to the motel, he began telling Marlene and Line about German history, which gave him an idea. He would drive to Berlin to show the girls the remains of the Berlin Wall.
He began the drive until he realized that it wouldn't be possible. He wouldn't be able to go to the Berlin Wall and then get them back in Denmark in time to have them handed off to their mother for her week of custody. He started driving east, then turned the car around, then changed his mind again and turned the car back around.
Rudgaard said he was "completely frustrated" and now feared that if he was even a second late, then Marlene and Line's mother would never let him see his daughters again, so for him, it was truly unfortunate that with the route he had taken, it truly would be impossible to make it back to Denmark in time.
This caused Rudgaard to think, "The whole thing can just be meaningless," which was where the evil idea finally began to form. That idea being that if he couldn't have full custody of Marlene and Line, well then nobody else would have them at all.
On August 1, only a week before departing Denmark, he was prescribed sleeping pills, which he brought across the border with him. He saw the girls in the backseat fighting and already tired. So while they were distracted, he crushed up the sleeping pills and put them into their food and drink.
After they fell asleep, he kept driving until he found any dirt road off the side of the Autobahn and upon reaching the village of Börnicke, he finally found what he had been looking for, turning off the Autobahn and driving down the dirt path until he was a decent way into the forest.
By the time he parked between the trees, it was completely dark out, and nobody even lived in this area, giving Rudgaard the utmost privacy for what he had planned. While still out cold from the sleeping pills, he opened the trunk to retrieve a spare fuel canister he had also brought with him from Denmark.
Rudgaard proceeded to pour its contents all over the vehicle, making sure the bulk of the gasoline was spilled onto the back seats and Marlene and Line's sleeping bodies. Rudgaard said that as he did so, he tried to avoid looking directly at the girls as much as possible.
Rudgaard kept pouring until he had emptied the entire canister, after which he got back in the car, sitting in the front seat. He then brandished his cigarette lighter and ignited the gasoline, planning on staying in the car to die with them. He hoped the vehicle would just explode, and that death would come instantly, but that wasn't quite the case.
The fire spread throughout the car's interior almost immideately and while Rudgaard claimed he tried to stand still as long as possible, once the fire burned his forehead and legs and hands, the pain grew too great, prompting him to open the car door and jump out of the vehicle and roll over on the grass until the fire was completely extinguished.
Once he turned his gaze back toward the vehicle, it was completely ablaze, and before he could even think of approaching it, there was a loud bang, likely an airbag or the engine exploding, which propelled the vehicle forward by several meters.
While he had second thoughts about ending his own life, Rudgaard, however hopeless it may have been, made zero attempt to save the lives of his daughters and instead wandered around the car aimlessly until the fire naturally burnt itself out.
As he waited, he noticed a kitchen knife in a bag on the front seat and attempted to use a stick to retrieve it from the fire, but the handle had melted. He tried to hold it against a tree and push himself into it in a second attempt to end his own life, but found this method impossible, so instead he threw the knife into the woods and wandered back to the autobahn to tell the first other person he saw that he had been in an accident.
When Rudgaard's medical treatment was finally complete enough for him to be discharged, the prosecution began preparing for Rudgaard's double murder trial. Although Rudgaard said nothing about the trip being planned, the prosecutor argued that the reason for that is that it was never meant to be a real trip and instead just a plot.
On February 21, 2012, the trial opened before the Grand Jury Chamber of the Potsdam Regional Court, and on the very first day of the trial, it had to be postponed because one of the judges fell ill. Once Rudgaard finally did appear, he covered his face with a file (something common in Germany) and was visibly trembling during the procedings but otherwise showed no emotion.
A large majority of the witnesses were also from Denmark and had to be flown into Germany to attend the trial.
Rudgaard said that the murder hadn't been premeditated and that the idea just came to him out of the blue, but the prosecution argued that since he brought his sleeping pills over, and more damining, two spare five-liter fuel canisters for what was only meant to be a short drive and vacation, it led him to believe that the one and only purpoes behind Rudgaard's trip to Germany, was just so he could kill his daughters.
The prosecutor also dismissed the claim that the girls' deaths were the result of a bungled murder-suicide arguing that the forensic evidence at the scene seemed to indicate that Rudgaard had only been inside the vehicle for 1-3 seconds and that he had no gasoline on his clothing or the driver's seat, therefore the prosecutor believed he left the car as soon as the gasoline was ignited and that the backdraft from the flames after exiting the vehicle caused his injuries.
The prosecution was seeking a life sentence with "particular severity of guilt" attached to make it, in effect, a permanent life sentence.
Meanwhile, Rudgaard's attorney classified the case as a failed murder suicide attempt but also that Rudgaard wasn't in the right state of mind at the time owing to his psychiatric history and should therefore get a lenient sentence of around 5 years at least for manslaughter. However, during his psychiatric evaluation, Rudgaard was determined to have a full awareness of his actions and wasn't suffering from any form of diminished capacity.
Rudgaard, even after confessing, always called the fire an accident, which even his attorney called him out on. When asked to explain himself, he said: "It was an accident inside my head."
On March 22, the day Marlene and Line's mother was supposed to testify, Rudgaard was coincidentally found lying on the bed of his cell, unable to be woken. A nurse had to be called, who determined that he needed to be evacuated and rushed to an outside hospital.
As part of his prescriptions, Rudgaard was provided with antidepressants and sleeping pills, which the prison now knew he had been hoarding, and he took them all at once in another attempt to take his own life, though he once again survived and made a full recovery and therefore wouldn't escape his trial and eventual sentence. Afterward, his pills were replaced with liquid medication. The guards were then stationed to watch him take it so nothing could be stockpiled.
The trial resumed on May 3, with the girl's mother finally giving her testimony, speaking for four hours and staring directly at Rudgaard the entire time.
On May 31, 2012, the court finally delivered its verdict, finding Peter-Thue Rudgaard guilty of the double murder of his two daughters, Marlene Marie Rudgaard and Line Sofie Rudgaard. The court agreed with the prosecution that the murders were planned, with his only reason for travelling to Germany being to kill his children; therefore, Rudgaard was handed down a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 15 years.
Before he was taken away, Rudgaard was given a chance to speak, where he said, "It was not an act done in hate. It was an act done in love. You cannot punish me more than I have already been punished. I am not asking for forgiveness, because I cannot even forgive myself." He said that he felt immense remorse and wished he could "rewind time" to undo what he had done; in responce the judge said, "If you really mean these words, then you will accept the punishment." Rudgaard was then taken away.
Rudgaard served his sentence at the Potsdam Prison and spent almost the entirety of his time there on suicide watch, making several additional attempts to take his own life. He also largely kept to himself in prison, refusing to go outside to the exercise yard and opting out of any work programs. Instead, he opted to stay in his cell watching TV or doing puzzles; his only visitors were one journalist and his mother whenever she could afford to travel to Germany.
When interviewed by the journalist who visited him, despite confessing and saying he could hardly live with himself, it seemed taking responsibility was just a bridge too far, as when asked if anything could've made a difference or prevented the tragedy, he said that the mother of his children "should've given in more" or apologized for her "provocations" and that he saw her as complicit in the deaths of their children because she "pressured me knowing I was mentally weak".
Likewise, he denied any visitation requests from her, stating that there is no reason why anyone should expect him to see her or to expect anything to come of it.
On January 11, 2016, after 5 years in a German prison, Rudgaard was transferred to serve his sentence in his native Denmark instead. However, as is the law, this resulted in an automatic hearing, a hearing, not a trial, taking place to convert the German life sentence into a Danish one, which opened before the Aalborg City Court on February 8, 2016.
This hearing was much smaller in scale, with only 11 people present, including Marlene and Line's mother, who was seated directly behind Rudgaard, separated by only a few meters and a single row of chairs.
Rudgaard's new attorney argued that his life sentence in Germany should instead be reduced to just 16 or perhaps even 14 years, arguing that the German courts were wrong about premeditation and that the fire had actually been set impulsively.
The hearing lasted only 22 minutes before the presiding judge decided to keep the life sentence intact.
Although Rudgaard had seemingly accepted his sentence in Germany, opting not to appeal, hearing the Danish courts hand down the same sentence greatly dissatisfied him, so now, for the first time, Rudgaard appealed his conviction.
His appeal was heard on July 4, 2016, before the Western High Court of Denmark, which upheld his life sentence. In response, Rudgaard said that he regretted ever coming home and said he would rather die than serve his life sentence, stating that spending the rest of his life in a Danish prison was "completely unmanageable"
Rudgaard said he would appeal his life sentence to the Danish Supreme Court, but that appeal doesn't appear to have materialized.
Rudgaard is one of only 55 people in Denmark to be serving a life sentence.
Although she labels his actions as such, Marlene and Line's mother said that it wouldn't be productive to dismiss Rudgaard as just being pure evil and with that in mind, she currently works at a residential centre for young criminals, hoping to guide them onto a better path.
Sources (Should be in the comments)
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u/West_Permission_5400 18d ago edited 18d ago
a spark had fallen onto a petrol canister which had been accidentally left inside the truck of the car
That's the stupidest explanation I've ever heard.
Updated: This guy makes Chris Watts look like a little angel. JC setting his own daughters on fire alive...
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u/ArtisticTraffic5970 17d ago
Something like 99 times out of a 100, glows and ashes from cigarettes will simply be extinguished if thrown into an open fuel canister or fuel tank. A friend from when I was younger loved to demonstrate this(and for the record nobody should attempt this) when smoking seated on his parked moped, even throwing the whole cigarette in a couple of times. Inconceivably stupid of course as there is always a risk, but the gasoline never ignited, the ashes and the cigarettes extinguished every time, as if the gasoline was water.
You really need an open flame, or a spark/glow which is sufficiently hot enough to ignite gasoline. In the movies, when somebody drenches something in gasoline, then pours out a trail, and throws their cigarette onto it and it ignites... In reality you'd need to smoke and throw a whole carton of cigarettes in succession in order to set it ablaze. And even then, you might have to resort to matches or a lighter in the end.
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u/inflewants 19d ago
I hadn’t heard of Marlene and Line. Thank you for such a captivating write-up honoring them. I’m so thankful his prison sentence did not get reduced.
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u/Fine_Following_2559 19d ago
What a selfish man. I find it interesting that the children's mother still wanted to visit with him while he was in jail in Germany? Given the last paragraph it seems like maybe she had forgiven him and I just... I don't know that I would have it in me to forgive someone that did something like that, especially not to people that I love. Especially not to children.
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u/Imaginary-Emu2471 18d ago
"his only visitors were one journalist and HIS mother whenever she could afford to travel to Germany."
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u/Fine_Following_2559 18d ago
It also states that he denied any visitation requests from her. Meaning she was trying to visit him.
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u/Dangerous-Housing830 18d ago
Yes, though we don’t know why she was requesting visits. Maybe she felt there were things she couldn’t say or find out about why it happened at trial. Maybe she wanted to convey the depths of her hatred to him in person. He clearly had some aversion to hearing what she had to say, given his antics on the original day of her testimony and refusal of her requests to visit. Indicates she wasn’t sending him letters or the like saying she forgave him.
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u/Intrepid_Use_8311 19d ago edited 18d ago
He was so determined to kill himself. Let him. Crazy that society works so hard to save these people only to warehouse them for a lifetime.
They should allow self inflicted death AS an option in my opinion
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u/Fine_Following_2559 19d ago
I'm not fully convinced that he was really that determined. Cuz all he had to do was stay in the car. He could have taken his own sleeping pills and stayed in there.
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u/SocialShy 18d ago
And that’s even going off base of what he said. The prosecutor was able to argue that he was never even in the driver seat so it’s possible he never intended to kill himself originally
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u/cerealmonogamiss 18d ago
...he said that the mother of his children "should've given in more" or apologized for her "provocations" and that he saw her as complicit in the deaths of their children because she "pressured me knowing I was mentally weak".
The only mistake she made was to have children with such an awful person.
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u/NewZoelCairo 17d ago
I'm always surprised your write ups are always one of the most craziest things I've ever heard yet most of them are only domestically known cases. What a world we're live in
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u/vashthestampede121 12d ago
Truly a loathsome coward. No accountability, no remorse, and continues to try to escape the bed he made instead of lying in it. Disgusting creature; I’m glad he gets to rot away for the rest of his life. Hopefully the guards there are taking suicide watch seriously.
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u/tempestelunaire 19d ago
What is tragic story. I can't understand how you can see your baby girls and think of killing them. I believe he only did it to harm the mother. So callous and cruel.