The Godfather of Höngg / The Antelope was the only witness (Swiss Press Text 2014, by Ricardo Tarli) - Swiss Press Award

Zeitungsverbund "Die Nordwestschweiz"

Ricardo Tarli

He was a well-known figure: In the 1970s, Hans Ulrich Lenzlinger kept big cats as pets, ran an erotic massage parlor, and helped East German citizens escape to the West. During the Cold War, he smuggled people through the Iron Curtain for a lot of money. When Lenzlinger was shot dead in his house in Zurich's Höngg district on February 5, 1979, suspicion quickly fell on the Stasi, the notorious East German secret service. Files from the Zurich District Attorney's Office, which have only just been released and are exclusively available to this author, allow for the first time a detailed reconstruction of the minutes before the murder. The course of events deduced by the Research Service of the Zurich City Police contradicts the theory of a professional killer working for the Stasi. It seems more plausible that the perpetrator came from Lenzlinger's inner circle, thus making the murder a non-political, private settling of scores.