LOTS OF ENEMIES AND NO HONOR

If you are a police officer, then you have your oath of office. And because you have it, you seek the truth. Nothing but the truth. And that was your mistake, Peter Reichard

With this text and picture, Playboy introduced the reportage about me that was published in the May 1984 issue. By then I had 18 years of police work in the worst criminal swamp behind me. I used the time after that for further research, now as an investigative journalist, and went to where the figureheads of international crime moved. Their characters, which I have traced in detail, are more exciting in their complexity than a gifted novelist could come up with.
It is my story that I am telling in a book manuscript, experienced first-hand and not from the distance of a historian, even if the respective historical events of national importance are embedded in it. In essence, it deals with the times of prostitution, sex on stage, scams that no longer exist today, violence, the collection of protection money, the infiltration of the mafia into Germany, foul play, corruption - the alliances between the milieu, police, politics, showbiz and the media - and all this under the watchful eye of the secret services.
My journey through time starts in Hamburg's red-light district of St. Pauli, takes me to Monaco to the casino and the royal court, to Washington D.C. directly to the White House, continues to the Cosa Nostra domains of Boston, Florida and Las Vegas, to Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg) to the Soviet secret service KGB and the state security of the GDR, to the St. Pauli branch in Costa Rica's capital San José, runs across Europe to the gambling tables in the casino in Velden on Lake Wörth in Austria and ends back in St. Pauli.
In this male-heavy, colorful world of international crime, two German women play strong roles, one as a female mafia boss living on Hamburg's Lake Alster and partner of the leading heads of La Cosa Nostra in the USA, the other as the boss of a call girl ring in Washington D.C., and they are all closely networked with each other. Right into the St. Pauli milieu.
I only had a handful of clean colleagues at my side, an upright journalist and Hamburg's future First Mayor Henning Voscherau. It wasn't just us, he also had to fear for his life. Since the police, infiltrated by corruption, were a total failure, it was underworld agents, of all people, who also helped me.
This largely undercover investigation took me over six years until we finally smashed the gang. And my goal, which I had fought for from the very beginning, was achieved: the first specialist directorate in Germany to combat organized crime, FD 65, was founded in Hamburg.

My best friend had proved to be one of my most committed companions during all those bitter years. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, he was taken into custody as an agent of the GDR state security service.

WE MUST SHOW OUR FACE...

There is no justification for terror, whether for political or religious reasons. No matter whether from right or left. Because we are all foreigners as soon as we leave Germany - for a vacation in Thailand or a business appointment in Dubai. Our history obliges us to fight for our values, our still young democracy. We must never forget: The unbelievable atrocities in the Third Reich, the precise administration of a gigantic killing machinery with subsequent bureaucratically instructed utilization of the corpses down to the last fingertip - that too was "Made in Germany". This gives us a very special responsibility.

...AND RAISE OUR VOICE!

The Kidnapping Case Natascha Kampusch

The whole shameful Truth

by Peter Reichard with a foreword by Stefan Aust
Riva Verlag (German publisher, hardback edition - 21 March 2016)

Since Natascha Kampusch's escape in 2006 Peter Reichard researched together with his Austrian wife Evelyne in the case. He was the author of the German ARD documentary "Natascha Kampusch - 3096 Days captivity" and described the shooting with her in the German ZEIT MAGAZIN. For the movie "3096 Days" he and his wife worked closely with Bernd Eichinger.

Documentary filmmaker Peter Reichard stands for almost ten years in close contact with Natascha Kampusch and has worked its way through intensive research deep into the details of the kidnapping case. He has scoured all essential files meticulously, has spoken with witnesses, participants and investigators and also with Natascha Kampusch herself and her family. He has encountered insights that no one has so clearly worked out before him. The result is a detail-researched analysis of a case. His research brings new, harrowing and previously undisclosed findings about Natascha Kampusch kidnapping time to light and he reported for the first time in the history of this case, after all the media speculation and political scandals, what really happened.

Available at Riva Verlag (German hardcover book) and Amazon.co.uk (for now only as German eBook).