Heinz is ninety years old and he lives on the ground-floor flat of a modest three-story apartment building on Hosemannstr. 18 in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg. Every night his lights go on, every morning his curtains open, but nobody has seen Heinz himself for a very long time. People say he is away on holiday or living with family, and all of them say not to worry – all except an eccentric neighbour whom everyone ignores and who is convinced he can smell something terrible emanating from the old man’s rooms.
For a long time I’ve wanted to start a modest true crime podcast series, focussed on famous German cases that a) remain little-known in the Anglophone world, and that b) illustrate something important about German politics and culture. My idea was to call this series Murder in Germany, and finally after much plotting and dreaming and collecting notes and even more procrastinating, I am happy to present the first pilot episode – on The Missing Pensioner and the Terrible Smell.
I promise not to post too many of these. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. My podcasting productivity is severely curbed by my limited patience for scripting and audio editing. I do, however, have a few more episodes mapped out, which (absent a general revolt) I hope to sprinkle into my feed every two or three weeks between now and December. I’ve tried to keep this first episode tightly scripted and short, but that is only because I am still testing the waters. The goal is ultimately for episodes in the 45-minute to one-hour range.
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