00:00:09
[Music] Our episodes deal with serious and often distressing incidents. If you feel at
00:00:18
any time you need support, please contact your local crisis center. For suggested phone numbers for confidential
00:00:25
support and for a more detailed list of content warnings, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on
00:00:33
our [Music] website. 1982 was shaping up to be a good year for Andre Bomberski. The 44year-old accountant lived in
00:00:49
Peshbusk, a small village just outside Too in the southwest of France. A bitter divorce 7 years prior
00:00:58
had resulted in Andre losing custody of his two children, Kolinka and Nicholas, who had gone to live with their mother
00:01:04
and her new husband in the German town of Linda. This put a distance of over 1,000 km
00:01:12
between Andre and his children, which was an ongoing source of pain for the doting father as he continued to
00:01:19
simultaneously grapple with the harsh reality that his wife had left him for another man.
00:01:26
Andre missed his children terribly, and he was therefore relieved when it was decided that 14-year-old Kolinka and
00:01:33
11-year-old Nicholas would return to France to live with him at the end of the summer of
00:01:39
1982. Kolinka had always been a very intelligent girl, but she'd been struggling academically at the boarding
00:01:46
school she attended in Germany, and she was missing her old life back in France.
00:01:52
It was agreed that the children would spend the summer vacation with their mother and stepfather in Linda before
00:01:59
moving back to Peshbusk with Andre that September. This was welcome news for Andre who had recently started a new
00:02:07
relationship for the first time since his divorce. After a difficult few years, everything seemed to be falling into
00:02:16
place for a fresh start. That all changed on the morning of Saturday, July 10, 1982, just 2 months
00:02:25
before Kolinka and Nicholas were set to return to France. That day, the phone rang at
00:02:32
Andre's house. It was his ex-wife, Danielle Crombark. She was beside herself. "Kinka's dead," she sobbed.
00:02:45
[Music] [Music] [Music] Andre Bomberski listened in shock as Danielle explained that Kolinka had
00:03:15
spent the previous day of Friday, July 9, wind surfing on Lake Constants, the crystal clearar bay located behind the
00:03:23
Crombark's home in Linda. Danielle Kolinka and Nicholas lived there with Danielle's husband, a
00:03:30
respected cardiologist named Diet Crombark, as well as Dr. Krombark's two older children from a previous marriage.
00:03:39
Danielle said that Kolinka had returned home at around 5:00 p.m. She remarked that she was feeling tired and a little
00:03:47
unwell, but other than that, she'd been her typical happy self. The family ate dinner together
00:03:54
around 7:30 p.m., after which Dr. Krombark's children went out, and the others soon retired to bed for the night
00:04:02
as normal. Danielle explained that the next morning, Dr. Crombark went to wake Kolinka up so they could go horseback
00:04:10
riding together only to find her lying in her bed unconscious. He administered various
00:04:18
injections in an attempt to revive her, but it was too late. She was already dead. With no physical explanation as to
00:04:28
how Kolinka had died, Dr. Crombark suspected that she'd most likely suffered from heat stroke after
00:04:34
overexposure to the sun the previous day and had gone into shock as a result. Paramedics were called, but
00:04:42
there was nothing they could do. Kolinka's body was taken straight to the funeral
00:04:49
home. Andre Bomberski couldn't believe what he was hearing. Kolinka was a healthy, athletic teenager who lived an
00:04:58
incredibly active lifestyle and had no underlying medical conditions. How could she have possibly
00:05:05
died in her sleep and from heat stroke no less? Furthermore, it had only been around 29° C in Linda, yet Kolinka was
00:05:16
used to much hotter temperatures than that in France. To Andre, it simply didn't make
00:05:23
sense. His head still spinning, Andre immediately traveled to Linda. He hoped that his son Nicholas
00:05:33
could shed some further light on the situation, but the 11-year-old said there was nothing out of the ordinary
00:05:39
about the way Kolinka had behaved on the night that she died. She didn't exhibit any of the
00:05:46
major signs of heat stroke, such as dizziness, confusion, slurred speech, or profuse sweating.
00:05:53
Nicholas didn't even recall Kolinka mentioning she was [Music] tired. In Germany, it was protocol that
00:06:04
police be notified and an autopsy be conducted for any death that wasn't directly attributed to natural
00:06:11
causes. 2 days after Kolinka's death, two pathologists performed an autopsy on the teenager's body.
00:06:19
Given the summer heat, her body was already in an advanced state of decomposition. Yet, they noted Kolinka's
00:06:26
overall good health and hygiene. An examination of Kolinka's airways and lungs revealed the presence
00:06:34
of aspirated stomach contents, which indicated that she'd likely vomited in her sleep and subsequently choked to
00:06:41
death. The pathologists estimated Kolinka had died around 7 to 8 hours after eating
00:06:48
dinner, putting her time of death sometime between 3 and 4:00 a.m. on Saturday, July 10,
00:06:56
1982. On the same day that the autopsy was conducted, a police officer questioned Dr. Da Krombark about the
00:07:03
events leading up to Kolinka's death. Crombark explained that when Kolinka returned home from Lake Constance on
00:07:11
Friday, she complained that she hadn't gotten much of a suntan. Just before the family sat down
00:07:18
for dinner at around 7:30, Crombark said he gave her an injection of cobalt fleset, an iron supplement that he
00:07:26
claimed would help her tan more easily. Dr. Krombark recalled that Kolinka went to bed early, but then got
00:07:33
up to get a glass of water at approximately 10:30 p.m. Around midnight, he noticed that
00:07:40
Kolinka's bedroom light was still on. He peered in and saw that she was reading in
00:07:47
bed. Crombark asked her to turn the light off before going to bed himself. The next time he saw Kolinka was when he
00:07:57
went into her room at around 9:30 a.m. only to discover that she was unconscious in her
00:08:04
bed. In a desperate attempt to revive her, Dr. Crombark grabbed his doctor's kit and injected her with a narcotic as
00:08:12
well as a neurotransmitter. [Music] Realizing it was hopeless and that she was already dead, he phoned emergency
00:08:20
services who came to the house and removed Kolinka's body. They noted no signs of violence
00:08:28
apart from the injection marks on her thorax and right arm. A local prosecutor reviewed the
00:08:36
case and determined that no foul play had occurred. They closed Kolinka Bomberski's file,
00:08:43
leaving her family to grieve as they came to terms with this unforeseen tragedy. Back in France, Andre Bomberski
00:08:55
tried to accept that his daughter was gone, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't
00:09:02
right. At Kolinka's funeral, he'd overheard whispers that she had died as a result of the iron injection that Deda
00:09:09
Crombark had given to help her tan. This was the first Andre had heard about any such injection. His ex-wife
00:09:18
Danielle had made no mention of it. Danielle had also promised to send Andre a copy of the autopsy report. Yet,
00:09:27
one week passed and then another, and still there was no sign of it. Andre called Danielle and demanded to
00:09:36
know what was going on. It was a difficult situation to navigate given that the pair already had
00:09:43
a complex history between them. The two had met in the Moroccan city of Casablanca in the early 1960s
00:09:51
where Andre was overseeing a large accounting company that specialized in international taxation.
00:09:59
They got married and had Kolinka shortly after, followed by Nicholas a few years
00:10:04
after that. Life was good for the family of four. That was until Da Crombark came
00:10:13
along. At the time, Krombark worked as a doctor for the German consulate in Casablanca and lived just a few doors
00:10:20
down from the Bomberskis. Widowed with two young children who attended the same international school
00:10:27
as Kolinka and Nicholas, the two families would occasionally cross paths. But over time, Andre noticed that
00:10:36
Dr. Krombark seemed to show up wherever they went. When the Bombers family had a
00:10:43
serious car accident in 1974, he was the first person to arrive on the scene. Andre started to suspect that something
00:10:53
was going on between his wife and Dr. Crombark. Eventually, Danielle admitted that the two were having an
00:11:02
affair. Andre confronted Dr. Crombark, who refused to end the relationship with Danielle. Desperate to save his
00:11:11
marriage, Andre moved his family back to France. As he and Danielle worked to mend things
00:11:18
between them, Danielle got a job in real estate that required her to travel frequently to the city of Nice, which
00:11:25
was on the other side of the country. She decided it was easiest if she rented an apartment there during the
00:11:32
week and then returned home on the weekends. Andre was a little suspicious of this. One day he followed Danielle as
00:11:42
she left for work and found that she drove straight to a nearby apartment. It turned out that Dr. Da
00:11:50
Crombark had moved to France so he could continue his affair with the Danielle. Andre filed for divorce and
00:11:59
Danielle married Crombark shortly after. Things had been bitter between the exes
00:12:06
ever since, with Kolinka's death marking yet another source of contention. When Andre called Danielle
00:12:14
demanding to know what was going on with their daughter's autopsy, Danielle thought he was
00:12:21
overreacting. She encouraged Andre to make peace with the tragedy as best as he could by accepting that Kolinka's
00:12:28
time had simply come. But Andre wasn't ready to let it go. After numerous requests, 3 months
00:12:38
after Kolinka's death, he finally got his hands on her autopsy findings. The 16-page report was written
00:12:47
in German, so he immediately had it translated into French. When Andre finally sat down to
00:12:54
read the findings, he couldn't believe his eyes. [Music] The first thing Andre noticed was that
00:13:05
the pathologists had concluded that the exact cause of Kolinka's death couldn't be
00:13:10
determined. While she had choked on her own vomit, they didn't know what had caused her to throw up in the first
00:13:17
place. They had studied the multiple injection sites on Kolinka's body, and although they found no sign of
00:13:23
poisoning, they noted it as odd that Dr. Crombark had attempted to revive Kolinka
00:13:29
with various injections. Her body had already been in a clear state of rigor mortise when
00:13:35
these drugs were administered, which meant she was already dead at the time. As a medical doctor, it should
00:13:43
have been obvious to Krombark that any attempt to resuscitate her would be futile.
00:13:50
More alarmingly, the pathologists noted the presence of fresh blood around Kolinka's genitals, as well as a
00:13:56
superficial tear in her labia and a white substance inside her vagina. Yet, they hadn't conducted any
00:14:04
tests to identify what the substance was, nor had they done any analysis to determine whether sexual intercourse had
00:14:11
taken place before Kolinka's death. In fact, they hadn't conducted any toxicology tests at all, seemingly
00:14:20
taking Dr. Krombark's word for the various medications she'd been given. Andre was
00:14:28
gobsmacked. In his view, it didn't sound like Kolinka had died of natural causes
00:14:33
at all. It sounded like she'd been drugged, raped, and possibly murdered. If this was true, there was only one
00:14:42
person who could be responsible. The last person to have seen her alive, Dr. Da Crombark. In the autopsy report, Dr.
00:14:53
Crombark was quoted making medical observations. To Andre, it seemed as though he was there during the
00:15:01
examination, which went entirely against protocol, as family members were not allowed to be present.
00:15:07
In Andre's view, it sounded like Crombark was providing his version of events and the pathologists were simply
00:15:14
writing their report to suit. Crombark was a well-known and revered doctor in Lindal. And Andre
00:15:22
suspected this could explain why further testing wasn't done and why the pathologists had been willing to
00:15:28
overlook the suspicious findings. He knew these were big allegations to make, but for his daughter, it was a
00:15:36
risk he was willing to take. 3 months after Kolinka's death, Andre Bomberski contacted the German
00:15:46
prosecutor who had closed her file and demanded that the case be reopened. He requested that proper
00:15:54
forensic and toxicology testing be conducted on the samples that had been taken from Kolinka's body.
00:16:01
The prosecutor denied the request. The German authorities said that Dr. Da Crombark hadn't been present
00:16:09
during the autopsy, but had simply entered the room momentarily to officially identify Kolinka's
00:16:15
body. They trusted the pathologists and saw no reason to reinvestigate the matter. Andre called his ex-wife to
00:16:25
voice his suspicions. Danielle claimed she hadn't even looked at Kolinka's autopsy report. She said
00:16:33
she trusted her husband implicitly and had no reason to doubt his medical explanation for her daughter's
00:16:40
death. Andre accused Danielle of covering up for her husband. And in turn, she accused Andre of seeking
00:16:48
revenge against Crombark for the affair. She also suspected anti-German sentiment
00:16:55
had something to do with Andre's allegations. Although Andre was born in France, his father's family was
00:17:02
originally from Poland, and Andre had been deported to both Poland and Germany by the Nazis during World War
00:17:11
II. Danielle told Andre as much, saying that his attempts to have Kolinka's case
00:17:17
reopened dishonored her memory. Undeterred, Andre Bomberski hired a renowned lawyer who convinced the German
00:17:27
prosecutor to order a review of Kolinka's autopsy report. In November 1982, 4 months after
00:17:35
the teenager's death, three experts from the Munich Forensic Institute were assigned the task.
00:17:42
They tested samples from the injection sites on Kolinka Bomberski's body and confirmed there was no evidence of
00:17:50
poison. However, like the original pathologists, they agreed that Dr. Crombark's resuscitation attempts on a
00:17:58
body in rigor mortise were crude and outright strange. The forensic experts also had questions
00:18:05
about Crombark's use of cobalt fleset as a tanning aid as they'd never known it to be used for such a
00:18:13
purpose. They pointed out that the only reason this medication should be administered intravenously is in cases
00:18:19
of severe iron deficiency anemia and only then under close medical supervision. If not, it had the potential to be
00:18:29
dangerous, causing serious side effects such as headaches, dizziness, nausea, loss of consciousness, and even cardiac
00:18:37
arrest. They therefore suspected that Kolinka had an adverse reaction to the iron injection, went into shock, and
00:18:45
then choked on her own vomit. However, the initial autopsy report estimated that Kolinka had died sometime
00:18:53
between 3 and 4:00 a.m. The Munich pathologists noted that an adverse reaction would have happened
00:19:01
immediately after the injection was administered, not several hours later. Dr. Crombark claimed he had given
00:19:10
Kolinka the iron infusion before dinner on Friday, July 9, sometime around 7 and
00:19:16
7:30 p.m. Traces of undigested food in Kolinka's stomach also indicated that she'd died shortly after eating, leading
00:19:25
the reviewing pathologists to question the time of death on the original autopsy report.
00:19:32
The original autopsy stated that various organs had been removed from Kolinka's body during her post-mortem exam, such
00:19:39
as her kidneys, rectum, and genitals. The reviewing team questioned one of the original pathologists about
00:19:46
the tear on Kolinka's labia. He claimed that the damage had occurred postmortem because of how badly
00:19:54
decomposed Kolinka's body had been. The team from the Munich Forensic Institute requested access to these
00:20:01
organs for further analysis, but the prosecution's office brushed off their request and the matter wasn't pursued
00:20:10
further. Without all the evidence, the team therefore produced an inconclusive report stating that while they were
00:20:18
unable to determine Kolinka's exact cause of death, they suspected it had something to do with the cobalt flesid
00:20:26
injection. For Andre Bomberski, these findings were significant. If Kolinka had died shortly
00:20:35
after receiving the iron shot, then it called into question Dr. Krombark's claim that he'd seen Kolinka around
00:20:42
midnight when he'd asked her to turn off her light. While this wasn't enough to convince
00:20:48
German prosecutors to reopen the case, the discrepancy between the two reports only made Andre Bomberski more certain
00:20:56
that Dr. Crombark was covering something up. He visited Kolinka's grave site and
00:21:02
made a vow he'd discover the truth and get justice for her no matter what. As word spread about Da Krombark's
00:21:16
potential involvement in Kolinka's death, Andre wasn't the only one whose suspicions were
00:21:22
raised. In 1969, Krombark's first wife, 24year-old Monica, had been rushed to hospital after suffering from a
00:21:31
mysterious illness that had rendered her unable to see, speak, or move. Krombark, who had recently graduated
00:21:39
with honors from the University of Frankfurt, had apparently pushed aside Monica's attending physician and
00:21:45
injected her with what he claimed to be snake venom. A few hours later, Monica suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and
00:21:54
passed away. The doctors had attributed Monica's death to an overdose of the contraceptive pill. But when her parents
00:22:03
heard about what happened to Kolinka Bomberski, they suspected that Crombark could have poisoned Monica
00:22:10
too. They claimed that Crombark had treated Monica terribly when she was still alive, beating her and threatening
00:22:18
to kill her. In 1983, Monica's parents reported their suspicions to the German police,
00:22:25
and an investigation was launched, but no evidence was found to support their theory.
00:22:33
As the one-year anniversary of Kolinka's death approached, Andre's lawyer finally
00:22:38
convinced the Linda police commissioner to interview the other family members who were present at the Krombark home on
00:22:44
the night Kolinka died. Danielle Crombark told the police that the household had eaten dinner at
00:22:51
around 8:30 p.m., not 7:30 like her husband had originally reported. According to Danielle, it was
00:23:00
actually after dinner that Dr. Crombark gave Kolinka the iron infusion, and it wasn't to help her suntan, but to treat
00:23:08
her anemia. Danielle explained that both she and Kolinka received these iron injections regularly and had never had
00:23:17
an adverse reaction before. On the contrary, Danielle found them to be restorative. While she hadn't been
00:23:27
present when the injection was administered, Danielle said she remembered it because Kolinka had a
00:23:33
band-aid on her arm and mentioned that she just had her iron shot. Danielle recalled that she and Dr.
00:23:41
Crombark then took their dog out for a walk after which Crombark did some work in his office while Danielle went to
00:23:49
bed. She didn't recall what time her husband came to bed that night. He woke her up the next morning, his
00:23:57
hands shaking and eyes bulging as he told Danielle something had happened to Kolinka. Danielle rushed to her
00:24:05
daughter's bedroom, finding her lying in the fetal position, her face blue and her body cold to the
00:24:13
touch. Dr. Krombark's daughter, Diana, claimed that over dinner, Kolinka had complained of being sunburnt, but seemed
00:24:21
otherwise fine. Diana recalled having seen her father prepare the cobalt file injection for
00:24:28
Kolinka afterwards, which she said was a standard procedure in their household. Diana went out with friends
00:24:36
and returned home around midnight, at which point she didn't notice anything out of the
00:24:42
ordinary. The next morning, she found her father trembling in Kolinka's room, shouting to Diana to fetch his medicine
00:24:49
bag. Kolinka's younger brother, Nicholas, said his sister showed no signs of poor
00:24:56
health on the night that she died. He didn't remember Kolinka having her iron infusion, nor did he recall seeing a
00:25:03
band-aid on her arm. All Nicholas remembered was that he and Kolinka squabbled over something trivial while
00:25:10
their parents were out walking the dog. The siblings went to bed and the next thing Nicholas knew he woke up to the
00:25:19
sounds of ambulance sirens and his mother crying. When the police commissioner tried to question Dr. Da Crombark, he
00:25:28
insisted he was too busy. The commissioner therefore agreed to give him a list of five questions
00:25:35
that he could answer at his own leisure. Krombark eventually responded to the questions via
00:25:43
post. In contrast to his original statement, he claimed to have given Kolinka the iron injection after dinner
00:25:50
at around 8:30 p.m. and not for tanning purposes, but to treat anemia. He also added a new detail for
00:26:00
the first time. He claimed that after his wife and children went to bed, he did some work before going into the
00:26:09
kitchen. Kolinka was there complaining that she was unable to get to sleep, so he gave her a sleeping
00:26:19
pill. When Andre Bombers caught wind of these witness statements, he was convinced that Dr. Crombark had changed
00:26:26
his version of events to fit with the results of the autopsy review. The detail about the sleeping pill was
00:26:33
no doubt his attempt to cover for the fact that he'd intentionally drugged and raped
00:26:39
Kolinka. Crombark's answers matched Danielle's to a tea, and Andre was certain that the two had corroborated
00:26:47
their responses. It was the first that Andre had ever heard of Kolinka being anemic,
00:26:54
and no blood tests had been done to confirm such a diagnosis. Andre and his lawyer requested that
00:27:02
Kolinka's case be officially reopened, but once again, their request was denied on the grounds that there was
00:27:08
insufficient evidence to warrant a new investigation. Andre was at a loss. He felt like he'd exhausted all possible
00:27:18
avenues and feared that Crombark was going to get away with what he'd done to Kolinka and go on living his life like
00:27:25
nothing had ever happened. Refusing to let that happen, Andre had to think outside the
00:27:33
box. On Friday, September 30, 1983, almost 15 months after Kolinka's death, Andre traveled to Linda during October
00:27:44
Fest, an annual beer festival that attracted upwards of 30,000 people. Andre walked the crowded streets and
00:27:52
stopped into the bustling cafes and restaurants handing out a two-page leaflet that
00:27:58
began, "You should know that a criminal lives in Linda, it is Dr. Krombark who practices at 23A Brigenza
00:28:08
Street. On the evening of Friday, July 9, 1982, he killed my splendid daughter, Khalinka, at his own home by injecting
00:28:17
her with cobalt fleset. The flyer went on to detail all of Andre's allegations against Crombark
00:28:26
and his perceived flaws in the investigation. He provided the Crombark's home address,
00:28:32
listed the names of the police commissioner, prosecutor, and the pathologists involved, and claimed that
00:28:38
a rapist was being protected by powerful locals. Someone told Dr. Crombark's daughter, Diana, about the leaflet, and
00:28:48
she immediately called the police. Two hours later, officers found Andre handing them out and placed him under
00:28:56
arrest for disturbing public order, defaming Crombark and injuring the reputation of the
00:29:03
prosecutor. After sharing his side of the story, Andre was free to go, but Crombark sued him for defamation of
00:29:11
character. Crombark's lawyer denied the allegations against him, arguing that so-called
00:29:18
signs of sexual assault on Kolinka's body had occurred when the pathologists were redressing her fragile and badly
00:29:26
decomposed body after their examination. Crombark won the lawsuit with a German judge ordering that Andre Bomberski pay
00:29:35
him 500,000 German marks in compensation, the equivalent of around €255,000 in today's
00:29:45
money. Andre was also warned that if he did such a thing again, he'd face up to 6 months in
00:29:52
[Music] jail. Andre was completely undeterred. Not only did he refuse to pay the money,
00:30:02
he also got a copy of the Linda phone book and started mailing the leaflet to as many people as he could, including
00:30:09
250 Bavarian officials. The reaction was lackluster with less than a dozen of those
00:30:17
officials agreeing that the case warranted further attention. However, it was enough to get the
00:30:24
Bavarian Minister of Justice involved and finally a new investigation was ordered. A fresh team of German forensic
00:30:33
experts reviewed Kolinka's autopsy report and agreed that her death had likely been caused as a result of the
00:30:40
iron injection DA Crombark had given her. They determined that Crombark's crude resuscitation attempts had happened
00:30:48
about 10 hours after Kolinka had died, indicating that he had either tried to cover up his medical error or foul play.
00:30:58
However, the investigation hit a standill after German officials told Andre they wouldn't be able to
00:31:04
re-examine or forensically test Kolinka's genitals for evidence of sexual assault as these and the other
00:31:11
organs had been returned to France with her body. Given that Kolinka was a French
00:31:18
citizen, Andre discovered that he was also able to lodge a criminal complaint against Adida Krombark with the French
00:31:24
courts. If magistrates uncovered enough evidence to press murder charges, Crombark could
00:31:31
also be tried under French law. A French investigation was simultaneously launched, but German
00:31:38
officials refused the French magistrate from investigating on German territory. This prevented them from
00:31:46
interviewing Crombark or the witnesses who were home on the night Kolinka died. Crombark and Danielle had since
00:31:54
separated. Yet they remained on good terms and Danielle was disgusted by Andre's ongoing
00:32:01
accusations. Andre's lawyer attempted to summon Crombark to France, but he declined in a letter which
00:32:09
read, "The files of the German authorities are certainly at your disposal." I see no reason for me to go
00:32:16
to Paris for an interview. Such a journey would be a considerable burden for me in every respect.
00:32:25
Things progressed at a snail's pace and it took 3 and 1/2 years after Kolinka's death before Germany agreed that the
00:32:33
French investigators could exume Kolinka's body for additional examination. In December 1985, Andre
00:32:42
gathered at Peshbusk Cemetery with a team of French police officers and forensic experts as Kolinka's coffin was
00:32:49
pulled from its grave site. It turned out that the teenager's body had been incredibly well
00:32:56
preserved. But to the dismay of those gathered, the organs that had been removed during Kolinka's autopsy,
00:33:03
including her genitals, weren't in the coffin, as German officials had claimed. The German forensic lab who had
00:33:12
handled Kolinka's remains could provide no trace of them. It appeared they were gone
00:33:19
forever. Without access to the sex organs that had been removed from Kolinka's body,
00:33:32
the German court ruled there was insufficient evidence to press any charges against Adida Crombark and
00:33:38
German officials made it clear they would not be investigating the case any further.
00:33:45
Andre Bomberski was horrified by the way Kolinka's body had been treated during the autopsy. He later remarked, "Kolinka
00:33:54
got carved up like a pig in a slaughter house, but nobody wanted to know how and
00:33:59
why she died." The only hope Andre had left was with the French investigation, but German
00:34:08
officials refused to extradite Crombark to France on the grounds that he'd essentially already been acquitted by
00:34:14
the German courts. The Germans claimed that undergoing prosecution in France would
00:34:21
go against the European Union's double jeopardy principle, which prevented individuals from being tried for the
00:34:28
same offense after they had already been acquitted. With no new evidence to examine, the
00:34:35
French magistrates requested access to the original samples taken from Kolinka's body. They had to be manually
00:34:43
retrieved from Munich, a process 2 years in the making. In 1988, a team of three French
00:34:51
forensic experts were finally able to examine the available evidence for themselves.
00:34:57
They were given skin, lung, heart, and tissue samples from Kolinka's body. Yet, test tubes filled with her blood had
00:35:05
been inexplicably discarded by the first reviewing team at the Munich Forensic Institute. The lack of blood meant they
00:35:14
were unable to find a definitive link between any intravenous substance and Kolinka's death.
00:35:21
However, the trio highlighted various gaps in the previous autopsy reports, concluding that Kolinka Bomberski had
00:35:29
died as a direct result of the iron injection Dr. Crombark had given her. With nothing in her medical records
00:35:37
to indicate that Kolinka was anemic, the injection would have put her body into shock, in turn causing her to lose
00:35:44
consciousness and choke on her own vomit. She would have died shortly after receiving the injection. Once again,
00:35:53
calling into question Crombark's timeline of events. The drugs Crombark had injected
00:36:00
her with hours later weren't known to be used for resuscitation purposes, and given together, they formed a dangerous
00:36:08
combination. Therefore, the experts concluded the only reason Krombark would have
00:36:15
administered these drugs was to make it look like he'd made a genuine attempt to
00:36:19
revive Kolinka or to cover up another drug that he' given her earlier on, possibly to enable a sexual
00:36:28
assault. It took another few years until the French magistrates believed they'd built up a solid case against
00:36:36
Krombark. While they didn't have enough evidence to proceed with any sexual assault charges, the courts decided that
00:36:44
Kolinka's death was caused by a direct result of an intravenous injection or a solution that might or might not have
00:36:51
been cobalt fleset. It wasn't enough to uphold a murder charge, but it was enough to
00:36:59
indicate voluntary assault resulting in unintentional death. In April 1993, Andre Bomberski received
00:37:08
the news he'd been waiting for for almost 11 years. The Paris Court of Aiz had just
00:37:15
charged Dr. Da Crombark with killing Kolinka. An indictment for Crombark's arrest stated that in order to justify
00:37:25
the injection he gave Kolinka, Crombark furnished conflicting and untrue accounts.
00:37:32
It further stated that he quote also lied about the chronology of the events when he affirmed that the
00:37:40
injection had taken place several hours before the death. Lastly, the faked attempt to
00:37:47
revive her and the use of mutually incompatible products on a living being can only be explained by an intention to
00:37:55
conceal the cause of death. These factors taken as a whole constitute sufficient grounds for
00:38:02
suspecting that Dita Crombark gave the fatal injection not as a cure but with the intention of causing
00:38:13
death. Given Kolinka's age, the maximum penalty Krombark faced was 30 years in prison.
00:38:21
The trial was set to take place in Paris, but Crombark successfully postponed it several
00:38:27
times. When the date was finally set for early March 1995, Crombark was protected
00:38:34
by a law that prevented German citizens from being prosecuted outside of their own country.
00:38:41
He therefore wasn't legally required to attend his own trial and it went ahead without him in what's known as a trial
00:38:48
in absentia. There were no defense attorneys present nor were there any witnesses or jury members.
00:38:58
Instead, a judge reviewed the available evidence which excluded the sexual assault allegations and concluded that
00:39:05
Ded Crombark was guilty of willful violence leading to death without intent or in other words,
00:39:14
manslaughter. Without the sexual assault motive, the court concluded that Crombark was responsible for Kolinka's
00:39:21
death because he'd given her the injection without then monitoring her for possible adverse
00:39:28
reactions. Crombark was sentenced to 15 years in a French prison, the maximum sentence for manslaughter at the time.
00:39:38
Despite this conviction and sentence, Germany remained under no legal obligation to extradite
00:39:44
Krombark. He was ultimately a convicted killer allowed to walk free, provided he
00:39:50
steer clear of France. Andre Bomberski wasn't the only one outraged by this technical loophole.
00:39:59
After an article about the case appeared in a major French newspaper the following year, pressure was placed on
00:40:06
the Paris public prosecutor and eventually Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for
00:40:13
Crombark. This meant that if he attempted to leave Germany, he'd no longer be protected by German laws and
00:40:20
would be extradited to France to see out his sentence. In March 1997, 2 years after
00:40:30
the trial, Andre Bomberski's phone rang. A German journalist was on the other line with some information they
00:40:39
thought might be of interest to him. 61-year-old Adida Crombark had just been arrested. Andre's immediate thought was
00:40:50
that Krombark was finally being held accountable for Kolinka's death. But what the journalist told him next was
00:40:57
even more astonishing. 16-year-old Lara Stila was a Russian immigrant living in Linda. On the morning of Tuesday,
00:41:07
February 11, 1997, she attended Dr. Krombark's practice to undergo a gastroscopy, a diagnostic procedure that
00:41:16
involves an endoscope being passed through the mouth and into the esophagus, stomach, and
00:41:22
bowel. As per standard practice, Lara was given an anesthetic and a sedative to make the procedure more
00:41:31
comfortable. The gastroscopy was completed without incident. But when Lara woke up, she took longer than usual
00:41:38
to recover from the anesthetic. Dr. Crombark and his assistant left Lara to recover on the
00:41:45
couch in their post treatment room. As Lara lay there barely able to move or speak, Dr. Crombark
00:41:55
returned. He began kissing her and touching her breasts. Lara tried to push him away,
00:42:01
but her body felt completely paralyzed from the anesthetic, and she could barely lift her
00:42:08
arms. Dr. Krombark locked the door from the inside and removed his pants. He took Lara's clothes off and
00:42:16
proceeded to rape her. After he was done, he wiped them both down with a paper towel, helped Lara get
00:42:24
dressed, and then drove her home. Lara reported the incident to the police straight away, and an examination
00:42:33
confirmed the presence of seaman. Da Krombark was subsequently charged with the sexual abuse of an
00:42:40
individual unable to resist. He denied the allegation and was jailed pending trial, but he changed his plea
00:42:49
after learning that the seaman had tested positive for his DNA. Andre Bomberski traveled to Germany
00:42:57
to be present for Crombark's sentencing hearing. His presence clearly rattled Crombark, who began yelling that the
00:43:05
Frenchman was there to kill him. Once order was restored in the court, Crombark claimed that he'd been under
00:43:12
the impression that Lara had consented to sex, even if she hadn't explicitly said
00:43:19
so. Many present were takenback by the casual way in which he spoke about what he'd done. He seemed to have no remorse,
00:43:28
instead testifying with what some viewed as a kind of amused cynicism. A psychiatrist testified that Crombark
00:43:37
was a narcissist who considered himself above the law, a description many found apt after he was handed a 2-year
00:43:45
suspended sentence. The citizens of Lindau were outraged. Hundreds gathered to protest
00:43:53
against the leniency of the sentence while a petition circulated demanding that Crombark's medical license be
00:44:00
revoked. Wanting to voice his side of the story, Crombark agreed to an exclusive
00:44:06
interview with Barbara Furklur, a journalist for the German TV broadcaster ZDF. Answering prevetted questions in
00:44:16
the presence of his lawyer, Crombark sat back comfortably in his chair as he explained that he didn't view his
00:44:23
actions as sexual assault. He claimed that he'd simply been expressing his fondness for Lara, going
00:44:31
so far as to call his actions love making. While Krombark admitted that Lara hadn't been enthusiastic, he
00:44:41
explained, "I believed she was consenting. She didn't say yes, but she didn't say no either. When I kissed her,
00:44:50
she kissed back." Crombark recalled there was a moment during the assault that he told I love
00:44:59
you in Russian. He chuckled as he remembered this prompting Barbara Furkel to exclaim but you drugged
00:45:08
her. Crombark sighed remarking like they said in ancient Rome. Those who remain silent seemed to
00:45:21
agree. A woman named Swanya Maagunta was watching the interview and couldn't believe what she was
00:45:29
seeing. Not only was she sickened by the way that Crombark seemed to mock his victim, Suena remembered Dr. Krombark
00:45:39
well. As a teenager living in Linda in the early 1980s, she had visited his medical office regularly as her mother
00:45:47
had been sick at the time. Swana and her sister Jana were also diagnosed as anemic and required regular iron
00:45:58
infusions. 1985 had been a hard time for the Maua sisters. Their parents had been
00:46:04
going through a brutal divorce and their mother struggled with health problems. Dr. Crombark became a
00:46:12
muchneeded source of support, providing positive distractions for Svena and Diana by taking them horse riding and
00:46:19
out to fancy dinners. Then when the girls were around 14 and 16, Dr. Krombark invited them to
00:46:27
join him on a long weekend to the south of France without their mother. Suana and Jana were thrilled after the
00:46:37
turmoil they'd been witnessing at home a few days away with the charming and sophisticated doctor seemed like a
00:46:44
dream. They'd come to view Crombark as a type of substitute father figure and were excited to travel to a beautiful
00:46:53
location. The trip started off well until it came time to check into their motel.
00:47:00
The trio arrived late at night only to find they would all be sharing a room which contained only one double bed with
00:47:07
a single foldup bed alongside it. Dr. Krombark told the sisters he was too big to take the foldup bed. He said
00:47:18
he would sleep in the double bed and the girls could choose which one of them would join
00:47:24
him. Jana begged Suena to take the double bed. She had only packed a small night gown and she was too
00:47:32
self-conscious to sleep alongside the 50-year-old man. Agreed, and as they climbed into
00:47:39
bed, Dr. Krombach told the sisters that they were due for their iron infusions. Given that he had his
00:47:46
doctor's kit with him, he figured this was as good a time as any. He retrieved his doctor's bag and
00:47:54
proceeded to give them both their injections. Suena dozed off almost immediately. She woke up sometime later
00:48:04
only to find a Dr. Crombark sexually assaulting her. Terrified, she didn't dare move or
00:48:11
speak. As the assault continued, she played dead to the point that Crombark started shaking her to make sure she was
00:48:19
still alive. Swanya found the only way she could get through it was to disassociate entirely,
00:48:26
telling herself, "This isn't happening." The next day, Sana felt as though the whole thing had been a
00:48:34
horrible nightmare. She knew how highly respected Dr. Crombark was in Linda and felt that
00:48:42
nobody would believe her if she spoke up about what happened. She told her sister Jana, who had
00:48:48
knotted off as soon as Crombark injected her and slept through everything. Jana didn't know whether the
00:48:56
doctor had assaulted her, too. But if he had, she felt it was best that she didn't
00:49:02
know. The girls eventually told their mother, who scolded them for making such an allegation against a good man.
00:49:16
Following the interview about Lara with Barbara Furkel, the public backlash against Dita Crombark was
00:49:24
immense. By the end of 1997, his medical license was revoked and he had to sell his
00:49:31
practice. In addition to the Mau sisters, at least two other patients came forward claiming they too had been
00:49:38
sexually assaulted by the doctor in the past. None of the alleged survivors were able
00:49:44
to press charges due to the lack of evidence, but the public condemnation reignited discussion about Kolinka
00:49:51
Bomberski's death and the case started getting media attention outside of Germany. Andre Bomberski quit his job so
00:50:00
that he could devote all of his time to pursuing Da Krombark. Knowing that he frequently
00:50:06
traveled to Austria and Switzerland, Andre visited police and custom posts throughout both countries, handing out
00:50:14
dossiers containing photos of Crombark, newspaper articles detailing the allegations against him, and judicial
00:50:21
warrants for his arrest. The reactions were mixed. Some treated Andre as though he was crazy,
00:50:30
while others were willing to listen to his story. Either way, his efforts paid off
00:50:36
in early January 2000 when a police officer in Western Austria recognized Adida Krombark from one of Andre's
00:50:44
photos and placed him under arrest. He was detained as per the terms of the European Convention on
00:50:52
Extradition that was in place at the time. German officials called for his release,
00:50:58
arguing that Crombark had been cleared of any wrongdoing in his home country and that the French arrest warrant was
00:51:05
therefore a violation of his rights. French officials didn't argue against this and Crombark was
00:51:13
subsequently released and free to return to Germany. Krombark and his legal team had been
00:51:20
arguing against his manslaughter conviction in France ever since the sentence was handed down back in
00:51:28
1995. They petitioned to the European Court of Human Rights, asserting that France was wrong to conduct a trial
00:51:35
without Crombark or a legal representative there to defend him. In 2001, the court concluded that by
00:51:44
trying Krombark in absentee, France had violated several stipulations set out in
00:51:50
the European Convention on Human Rights. They found that he'd been denied a fair hearing and his right to appeal
00:51:58
and that the sentence could therefore no longer be enforced. The court avoided the conviction and
00:52:06
ordered that the French government compensate Krombark with 100,000 Franks for costs incurred, which was around
00:52:14
15,000 at the time. This was a major blow for Andre Bomberski, whose allegations against
00:52:22
Crombark were finally being taken seriously after years of denial. He implored French officials to appeal
00:52:30
the decision to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, but his
00:52:35
request was denied. They also refused his request to re-examine Crombark's 1995 trial. The entire legal process had been
00:52:48
incredibly grueling for Andre, both emotionally and financially, but still he refused to give up.
00:52:56
Andre was convinced that the French authorities were prioritizing their relationship with the Germany over
00:53:02
justice for Kolinka. This suspicion only grew after he became aware of a report from
00:53:08
Crombark's legal team that claimed public prosecutors in Paris had assured them that Crombark's sentence wouldn't
00:53:15
be enforced. In Andre's view, the French had failed in their duty to catch Krombark, who was now living freely as a
00:53:24
convicted rapist in his home country. In 2002, he filed a complaint against several French magistrates and
00:53:33
prosecutors, alleging corruption and obstruction of justice. As Andre's newly appointed lawyer
00:53:40
explained to the French television show Bringing In the Accused, it was an attempt to wake up a
00:53:47
sleeping machine by the implementation of an explosion. A judge ruled there were no
00:53:55
grounds for Andre's complaint and that the allegations wouldn't be investigated further.
00:54:01
The entire Kolinka Bomberski case was transferred back to Germany where a new prosecutor determined yet again that no
00:54:09
charges would be pressed against Adida Crombark in relation to the teenager's death. Andre was aware that he'd earned
00:54:17
a particular reputation within the French legal circles as an annoyance. As much as this hurt him, it
00:54:25
made him all the more determined to continue with the fight. In 2004, the European Union implemented
00:54:33
a new system known as the European arrest warrant. This aimed to simplify and streamline the extradition process
00:54:41
for suspects within the EU so that they could be transferred from one EU state to another without the need for specific
00:54:48
extradition treaties. As a result, French prosecutors issued a fresh European arrest warrant for DA
00:54:57
Crombark. German officials denied it again on the grounds that the case was closed. Although Wandre seemed to hit a
00:55:09
dead end at every turn, he wasn't alone in his quest for justice. By this point, a concerned citizen had
00:55:17
created a group in support of Andre's cause titled Justice for Kolinka, which soon amassed over 1,000 members from all
00:55:25
walks of life. Members held rallies, wrote letters to people in positions of power
00:55:32
and created a website detailing all the available information about Andre's legal struggles.
00:55:39
German filmmaker Hilka Zing was among those following Kolinka's case. In 2006, she released a documentary dedicated to
00:55:49
the allegations against Adida Krombark titled Kolinka's Last Journey, which featured interviews with the Maua
00:55:56
Sisters. After the documentary aired, Hilka received a letter from Krombark in which
00:56:03
he claimed that the sisters were lying about being drugged and sexually assaulted during their trip to the south
00:56:09
of France. Crombark said he barely knew the girls and had never taken them on a holiday. Yet, the Mau sisters had
00:56:19
provided Hilka with photographs that proved the trip had taken place, and these had been broadcast in the
00:56:25
documentary. Speaking about Krombark to the Guardian, Hilka later said, "I have no idea if he
00:56:35
has problems with reality." Around the same time that the documentary aired, a German librarian
00:56:44
named Petra Stefen sat down at her computer. Petra lived approximately 400 km from Linda in the German town of
00:56:53
Rodental. Her regular doctor had recently passed away and she'd been given the name of
00:56:59
his replacement. A curious person by nature, Petra typed the name of the new doctor
00:57:06
into Google. One of the first things that popped up was the Justice for Kolinka website, followed by Hilka Zing's
00:57:16
documentary. Petra was stunned as she learned about the crimes Dr. Da Krombark had been convicted of and discovered
00:57:23
that he'd been banned from practicing medicine entirely. She booked an appointment to
00:57:29
see if the new doctor in town was indeed the same Dr. Krombark she was reading about. After confirming that it was,
00:57:38
Petra wasted no time in reporting him. Further investigation revealed that Dera Krombark had been working as a locom
00:57:47
doctor all over Germany ever since his medical license was revoked after his rape conviction back in
00:57:55
1997. He'd gotten away with it by producing a photocopy of his old medical license, claiming that the original had
00:58:02
been stolen. Crombark was charged with 28 cases of fraud and 19 cases of illegally
00:58:10
practicing medicine. He was placed under arrest just as the authorities suspected he was about to
00:58:17
flee overseas. According to the Netflix documentary My Daughter's Killer, police
00:58:24
found him with a suitcase containing clothing, cash, and a penis pump used to treat erectile dysfunction.
00:58:32
He was subject to a psychiatric assessment with the two psychiatrists concluding that he was a chronic liar,
00:58:39
sexual predator, and a narcissist who believed he was outside the law. Crombark was subsequently convicted
00:58:48
and sentenced to 2 years and 4 months in a German prison. He served 18 months before being released early for good
00:58:56
behavior in June 2008. [Music] By this point, 26 years had passed since Kolinka Bomberski's death. Under French
00:59:10
law, a 30-year statute of limitations meant there were only 4 years left in which legal action could be taken
00:59:17
against Adida Krombark in relation to Kolinka's death. After that, not only would he be
00:59:24
free from facing any punishment, but he could also choose to sue Andre Bomberski
00:59:29
for defamation. Following Krombark's early release from prison, the Paris Court of
00:59:36
Appeal admitted that his 1995 trial in Absentia had been distorted under pressure from Germany.
00:59:45
The French warrant for his arrest was still in place, but other than that, in the eyes of the law, Andre Bomberski had
00:59:52
exhausted all possible options when it came to getting justice for his daughter. It was important to Andre that
01:00:00
Crombark knew he hadn't been forgotten. Andre traveled to Germany and tracked Krombark down to Shide, a small market
01:00:09
town 20 km inland from Linda near the Austrian border. He visited every once in a while
01:00:17
to keep an eye on Krombark and to make his presence known. Then in September 2009, Andre
01:00:25
noticed a for sale sign at the front of Crombark's apartment. He spoke to some neighbors who told him
01:00:33
that Crombark had accepted a job in West Africa. With the clock ticking and Crombark on the move again, Andre knew
01:00:42
it was now or never. I had enough in my head, he later told the Guardian. I knew that the French
01:00:50
government would do nothing. I knew that the German government would do nothing.
01:00:57
I decided that I had to do something. It was just after 3:15 on the morning of Sunday, October 18, 2009,
01:01:12
when a call came through to police in the French city of Mealoo. Go to the Rude DTL across from
01:01:19
the customs office. An anonymous caller said, "You'll find a man tied up. The police station was only four blocks
01:01:29
away. Two squad cars raced to the narrow street near the center of town. There, in a courtyard nestled
01:01:37
between two buildings, they found an elderly man lying on the ground behind an iron
01:01:43
gate. It was Dera Crombark. He was curled on the pavement, his hands and feet bound together, and
01:01:51
his mouth gagged with duct tape. His face was barely recognizable, battered, bruised, and covered in
01:02:00
blood. One of the police officers removed the tape from his mouth. Bomberski is behind it, he
01:02:09
said. Crombark was rushed to hospital where he received treatment for a fractured
01:02:15
skull. He told the police that the previous evening he'd been at his home in Shide when there was a knock on the
01:02:22
door. He answered it only to find an unfamiliar man standing there. "Are you Crombark?" the man asked with a thick
01:02:32
Russian accent. When Crombar answered yes, the man punched him in the face. Two other men appeared and
01:02:42
launched a violent attack. They managed to bind and gag Crombark before throwing
01:02:48
him into the backseat of their car. As the men drove along, Crombark struggled and begged for his
01:02:55
life. He offered to pay the trio €50,000 if they'd just let him go. Then, one of the men pulled out a
01:03:04
knife and threatened to chop his penis off. Suddenly, the driver pulled over and ordered the knife wielding man out
01:03:12
of the car. He said they had over 300 km to go and couldn't risk doing the drive with a
01:03:20
dangerous man with a weapon. The car eventually crossed the border into France and stopped in
01:03:27
Mealoo, the first town they came upon that had its own police station and courthouse. The men dumped Crombark,
01:03:35
called the police, and fled. Andre Bomberski wasn't with them, but Crombark had no doubt that he'd
01:03:43
orchestrated the whole thing. The police looked into Andre's whereabouts the night before and
01:03:50
confirmed he'd been in To the entire time. However, they soon received word that Andre had booked a flight to Malus
01:04:00
that was scheduled to arrive that evening. At 5:00 p.m., they drove to the hotel he'd booked in and placed him
01:04:07
under arrest. Andre seemed genuinely shocked. He denied having anything to do with
01:04:14
Crombark's abduction and claimed that he'd only traveled to Me because someone had informed him that Crombark was
01:04:21
there. However, a search of his hotel room turned up €19,000 in cash, leading investigators
01:04:30
to suspect that he'd paid someone to carry out the attack on his behalf. Investigators visited Crombark's
01:04:41
home in Shide and found a utility bill near the scene. On it was the address and phone number
01:04:48
of an individual named Anton Kranichi, a Kosovan who lived in the Austrian town of
01:04:55
Brigance. Andre Bomberski had recently spent time in Brigance, which was right near the German border just 20 km from
01:05:03
Dieter Krombark's home. Police looked into Anton Kresnichi and discovered that his brother-in-law had
01:05:10
worked as a German translator for Andre as he spread the word around Brigans about Crombark's
01:05:17
crimes. He wanted the town's folk there to be aware of Krombark in case he crossed the border, at which point his
01:05:24
international arrest warrant could be enforced. He'd been putting up posters in cafes,
01:05:30
bars, and restaurants appealing for assistance. At the police station in Mealoo, Andre Bomberski admitted to
01:05:38
knowing Anton Krnichi, but he continued to deny having anything to do with the kidnapping
01:05:45
plot. He said that Kranichi had shown up at his hotel in Brigans and offered to help transport Data Crombark to France.
01:05:55
Kranichi said he wasn't interested in money, but just wanted to do what he believed to be the right
01:06:02
thing. As a father himself, he felt compelled to help. Kranichi explained that there were
01:06:09
two Russian mobsters who would help him do the job for €2,000 a piece. He didn't
01:06:16
provide any more details, simply telling Andre, "The less you know, the better. Andre told the police that he insisted
01:06:27
on paying for any expenses involved, but asked no further questions. He claimed he didn't know
01:06:34
when or how it was going to go down and that he only learned about it when Kranichi called him from Me to let him
01:06:41
know that it was over. Anton Kranichi confirmed Andre's version of events. Having served prison
01:06:50
time before, he said he didn't care about the consequences. Appearing on My Daughter's
01:06:56
Killer, Kranichi said he was moved by the battle fought by Andre Bomberski. This is a father who never
01:07:05
gave up. Kranichi remarked, "He knew where his daughter's killer was living, and I had a plan to help him hands on."
01:07:15
As a father, I was fascinated by the strength of this man. He's a really great dad. It moves you and you think if
01:07:24
that happened to you, what would you do as a father? What are you capable of doing
01:07:31
for your child? For their role in the violent kidnapping, Anton Kranichi and one of
01:07:38
his accompllices, Katchcha Bob Lavani, were also arrested. Andre Bomberski was hit with various
01:07:45
charges including kidnapping, criminal conspiracy, and complicity in causing violence. Charges which came with the
01:07:53
possibility of 15 years in prison. Andre's lawyer argued that his client had acted under moral duress,
01:08:01
knowing that if he could just get Da Krombark to France, then the legal saga regarding Kolinka would finally be over.
01:08:10
Andre was free to go but under judicial supervision awaiting trial. When he left the Mealoo police
01:08:19
station, several officers gathered in the lobby and gave him a standing ovation. As he waited for his day in
01:08:27
court, he told the Guardian, "If I should have to go to prison, I will go to prison. Most
01:08:35
important is that Crombark is judged even if he is not found guilty. For me, it was necessary to do
01:08:44
justice. I think I will find some peace. This is my last fight and I shall dedicate it to the memory of my
01:08:53
daughter. He told Lepesh newspaper. I can now smile. After 27 years of fighting, I can finally say in
01:09:03
my prayers to Kolinka that the promises I made her are beginning to be kept. The biggest part of my fight is
01:09:12
finished. But I will not be completely at peace until Crombark is in front of the court to answer for the death of my
01:09:21
[Music] daughter. Diet Crombark recovered from his injuries in hospital under police
01:09:28
custody. Regardless of how he'd ended up in France, the arrest warrant for Kolinka's
01:09:34
manslaughter was still valid. And it was announced that Crombark would face a retrial in Paris. This time with both
01:09:42
himself and his legal council required to be present. Crombark's defense team tried
01:09:49
to have him repatriated to Germany or to have his trial heard by the European Court of Human Rights, but their
01:09:56
requests were denied. They argued that the case should be thrown out entirely as the rules of the
01:10:03
European Union declared that an individual could not be tried twice for the same
01:10:09
crime. Crombark's lawyer told reporters the whole situation was a farce, remarking, "How can he be cleared in one
01:10:18
EU country and then tried in another? and how can he face trial after being illegally
01:10:26
kidnapped? With France refusing to release Da Krombark, the German Department of Justice issued an
01:10:32
international arrest warrant for Andre Bomberski. The French authorities refused to extradite him, which came as
01:10:40
little surprise to those who had been following the case since the beginning. Many were sympathetic to Andre's plight
01:10:48
and felt he didn't deserve to be punished, while others spoke out against vigilante justice and the extreme
01:10:55
violence used during the kidnapping. When it was announced that Andre intended to release a book about the
01:11:02
case and he struggled trying to achieve justice for Kolinka, Crombark's lawyers tried unsuccessfully to have it banned,
01:11:10
saying there was no way their client could receive a fair trial if the publication went
01:11:16
ahead. Krombark's lawyer blamed anti-German sentiment for the support Andre received, telling the
01:11:23
BBC, "The way this affair has been covered in France is shocking. Of course, it is heartbreaking for Mr.
01:11:31
Bomberski, but only one side of the story has been told. Naturally, Mr. Crombark protests his innocence. But
01:11:39
that's not even the point. My client was cleared of guilt in his own country. He
01:11:45
was then kidnapped and taken illegally to another European country where he is now going to be tried for murder.
01:11:54
Only in France could that possibly be allowed to happen. Although the lack of physical
01:12:05
evidence still meant Da Krombark couldn't be charged for raping Kolinka, a pre-trial review of the evidence led a
01:12:12
team of medical professors to determine that the injury to Kolinka's labia could
01:12:16
only have happened while she was still alive. They could find no other explanation for
01:12:22
the white substance found in her vagina other than semen. Using advanced technology that
01:12:30
didn't exist at the time of the crime, they analyzed Kolinka's heart and lung tissue and discovered the presence of a
01:12:37
benzoazipene, a powerful seditive that conclusively proved that Kolinka had been drugged on the night that she
01:12:46
died. In the leadup to Crombark's trial, several survivors of his sexual assault
01:12:52
came forward from Germany willing to testify against him. One of these women was a former
01:12:58
patient of Krombarks, who in 1993 had been given a part-time job working as a cleaner for his medical
01:13:05
practice. According to her testimony, one day she arrived at the practice around lunchtime to find nobody there
01:13:13
except Dr. Crombark. Krombark said she was due for her iron infusion and he might as well
01:13:20
do it there and then to save her coming back later. The woman agreed, at which point
01:13:27
Crombark allegedly drugged and raped her. Knowing he had money and influence in town, the woman had been too afraid
01:13:35
to report what he had done. But the most surprising witness was a woman named Isabel, who had been a
01:13:42
patient of Dr. Crombarks during the time he was married to Wandre's ex-wife Danielle. Isabel who had been just 16 at
01:13:52
the time claimed that she began an affair with Crombark who was around 20 years her
01:13:58
senior. According to Isabelle, Crombark would drug an unsuspecting Danielle by slipping drops of sedatives into her
01:14:06
drinks. Once she passed out upstairs, he would call Isabelle over and the two would
01:14:13
have sex in the downstairs living room. Up until this point, Danielle and Crombark had remained on good terms
01:14:21
following their divorce in the late 1980s. They kept in contact even when Danielle moved back to Tulus, and she
01:14:30
continued to support his innocence in Kolinka's death. If anything, she felt that Andre's campaign against Crombark
01:14:37
had only served to bring the two of them closer together. Danielle had even appeared at
01:14:43
a pre-trial hearing in 2010 to attest to Crombark's good character, telling the court that he would never rape anyone
01:14:51
because he had no trouble attracting women on his own. She explained that she only left him
01:14:58
because he was cheating on her and she'd come to accept that it was part of his personality to be attracted to anything
01:15:05
that was forbidden. But when Isabelle's story came to light, a French prosecutor
01:15:12
advised Danielle to file a civil claim against Krombark so she could join the prosecution party and get full access to
01:15:19
the case file. Danielle followed this advice and for the first time ever learned about the
01:15:26
true extent of the allegations against her ex-husband. It was also the first time
01:15:33
she'd read the reports that described cobalt fleset as a dangerous drug. Crombark had never warned her of
01:15:41
any side effects despite administering it to herself, Kolinka, and hundreds of his patients regularly.
01:15:49
Furthermore, it was only through reading the case file that Danielle heard Isabelle's story about Crombark sedating
01:15:55
her so she wouldn't know he was having sex with the 16-year-old downstairs. Danielle's world came
01:16:03
crashing down. She thought back to the night of Kolinka's death and realized she'd slept
01:16:10
very deeply. As she began to view everything through a different lens, she wondered
01:16:16
whether Krombark could have drugged her then, too. She later told the courts, "When
01:16:23
you've done it once, you can do it again." Da Krombark's trial was delayed multiple times as his legal team
01:16:36
exhausted all possible avenues attempting to have the case thrown out. It was finally set to go ahead in late
01:16:44
March 2011, almost a year and a half after the kidnapping and just shy of 29 years since Kolinka Bomberski's
01:16:53
death. 75-year-old Crombark tried one last time to have the case thrown out, telling the court, "I did not kill
01:17:03
Kolinka. I want to stress that I am not guilty, that I did not kill Kolinka, and
01:17:08
that I did not rape Kolinka. The trial commenced, but 5 days in, Crombark's lawyers announced that
01:17:17
he'd suffered a heart attack and ordered that the trial be called off indefinitely. They accused the French
01:17:24
legal system of contributing to the stress of the ailing man, who they said was still suffering from the injuries
01:17:30
sustained during the kidnapping. The trial was put on hold but resumed again 5 months later in October
01:17:41
2011. Danielle listened in disgust as various witnesses testified to the sexual abuse they'd suffered at
01:17:48
Crombark's hand. She couldn't believe this was the same man she'd lived with and defended for so many years.
01:17:57
Now convinced he was lying about what happened to Kolinka on the night she died, Danielle told one
01:18:04
journalist, "I would have appreciated it if Da Krombark had told me it was an accident. I panicked and I
01:18:12
lied. I would have understood. I may have forgiven him. But now I can't forgive him."
01:18:21
A parting gift Crombark had given her after their separation took on a whole new meaning. Figurines of the three wise
01:18:29
monkeys symbolizing the proverb, "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." The trial ran for 3 weeks before
01:18:39
the verdict was delivered. Just like the Paris courts 16 years earlier, Dita Krombark was found guilty
01:18:47
of willfully causing violence towards Kolinka that resulted in her unintentional
01:18:53
death. Again, he was sentenced to 15 years in a French prison, a sentence that could now be
01:19:01
enforced. Andre Bomberski's 30-year crusade had finally come to an end. outside court. He told
01:19:12
reporters, "Of course, my first thought is for Kolinka. I have achieved what I promised, a complete and fair
01:19:20
trial. Justice has been done in her memory, and I will be able to mourn for her."
01:19:28
He visited the cemetery shortly after and placed a bunch of flowers on Kolinka's grave, saying out
01:19:35
loud, "I promised that I would give you justice. Now you can rest in peace. But the saga still wasn't over
01:19:49
for Andre. 7 months later in May 2014, he faced his own trial in the Mealoo magistrate's
01:19:57
court for the role he played in Krombark's kidnapping. Bomberski's lawyer argued
01:20:03
that his client shouldn't be convicted for essentially enforcing a decision that had already been handed down by the
01:20:09
French court, stating, "He acted that way to fulfill his duties as a father. He also acted so
01:20:17
that justice could fulfill its duty. Andre Bomberski was found guilty of criminal conspiracy and complicity in
01:20:27
aggravated assault, but cleared of orchestrating the abduction. He was given a one-year
01:20:34
suspended sentence, while the men who carried out the attack, Anton Kranichi and Katchcha Bablavani, were both
01:20:41
sentenced to one year behind bars. Meanwhile, Data Crombark spent the next few years appealing his sentence on
01:20:50
medical grounds. He asked to be transferred to a nursing home, claiming he was suffering from life-threatening
01:20:57
cardiovascular disease. His appeals were rejected until February 2020 when the courts agreed to
01:21:05
suspend his sentence due to the state of his health. After serving just six of his
01:21:12
15-year sentence, 84year-old Crombark was returned to Germany, a decision that infuriated Andre
01:21:20
Bomberski. But 6 months later in September 2020, Da Krombark passed away at the age of
01:21:29
85. According to an article written by Joshua Hammer for the Adavst magazine, German officials have long denied that
01:21:38
anything was done to protect Adida Crombark. In Hammer's opinion, quote, "What seems more likely is that sloppy
01:21:47
forensic work, bureaucratic inertia, and at some level a desire to close ranks against foreign interference in a
01:21:55
domestic matter had caused the Germans to resist pursuing the case. Andre has spoken openly about the mixed
01:22:04
feelings he has about his campaign for getting justice for Kolinka. He told a French radio station
01:22:10
that many people, his father in particular, always told him to drop the case and live a normal
01:22:17
life. He explained, "But personally, if I had dropped it, I don't think I could have lived a normal life."
01:22:27
Opinions remain divided about the lengths Andre went to secure Krombark's conviction. Some view him as a hero,
01:22:36
while others argue that violence should never be condoned, and it wasn't Andre's
01:22:41
place to take the law into his own hands. His lawyer told the documentary My Daughter's
01:22:48
Killer, "Mr. Bomberski is a moral force. He isn't a vigilante. He isn't the master Avenger, but a
01:22:57
warrior. A warrior monk. Andre isn't phased by public opinion. To him, all that matters is
01:23:06
that he fulfilled his promise to his daughter. In 2022, the producers of My Daughter's Killer asked Andre what he
01:23:15
would say to a father who found themselves in a similar situation. Andre responded. I would tell him as it's been
01:23:25
39 years. Don't waste your life. I fought like Dong Kiote Deamacha against windmills. I got justice for Kolinka,
01:23:38
but honestly, these battles are extreme. Andre said he no longer trusted anyone,
01:23:46
but remarked, "I hope that Kolinka is in heaven and that she knows about everything I did for her. I think that
01:23:55
she deserved it. [Music] [Music]