A true story that took place in France in 2011, which many consider to be rich material for any writer trying to portray it in a novel or on the cinema screen. It is about a grieving father whose daughter was murdered, and although her killer was convicted, he remained free in his homeland, which refused to extradite him. The father, after more than 30 years since the crime, decided to kidnap his daughter’s killer and bring him to the country where he is considered guilty of murder, handing him over to the authorities to be retried and to exact justice, even if it was many years later.
The story began in the summer of 1982 when the teenage girl, Kalinka Bamberski, visited Germany to spend her summer vacation with her mother, Danièle, and her mother’s German boyfriend, Dr. Dieter Krombach, at their home near Lake Constance. Kalinka lived in France with her father, André Bamberski, and her younger brother. On the morning of July 10th, she was found dead in her bed. Krombach, who had called emergency services, claimed that he had injected her with a compound containing iron to help her get a tan faster and that she seemed to have died immediately due to anemia.
Investigations began, and due to insufficient evidence, the German police did not press any charges against Kalinka’s killer, Dieter Krombach. However, after reviewing the autopsy report, the grieving father became convinced that Krombach had given his daughter the injection to make her unconscious so that he could rape her.
As a result, the father filed a case in France accusing Krombach of killing his daughter. The trial sessions ended in 1995, with Krombach being found guilty of “intentional violence resulting in unintentional death” and sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison. The case was referred to the European Court of Human Rights, which declared that the French court had erred in conducting a trial in the absence of the defendant. Meanwhile, the German authorities refused to extradite him to France, arguing that he had already been investigated in that case and cleared of any wrongdoing.
The case seemed to have reached a dead end, but the father apparently had a different opinion, especially since Krombach had admitted his guilt in a German court for drugging and raping a 16-year-old girl in his office. He was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended, and banned from practicing medicine, further confirming the father’s suspicions. In 2009, while Dieter Krombach was leaving his home in Germany, he was attacked by two unknown men. He was kidnapped, bound, and taken across the border to France, where he was left tied and gagged, bleeding outside a courthouse in the city of Mulhouse, eastern France. He was immediately arrested and imprisoned. Germany demanded his return, but Paris refused the request, arguing that he was convicted in a pending case.
After reopening the case and resuming investigations, Krombach was retried for the murder of his daughter in 2011. André Bamberski admitted to knowing about the plan to kidnap Krombach from Germany but denied planning or participating in the operation. The first session of the trial was filled with legal arguments from Krombach’s lawyers about whether the French court had the right to try him. They demanded the suspension of the session and that the case be referred to the European Court of Justice to rule on the validity of the procedures. The dispute moved outside the courtroom, with Krombach’s lawyers arguing that he had been acquitted in his country due to insufficient evidence, questioning how he could be convicted in France. Bamberski’s lawyers countered by saying that since he was now in France, where they were convinced of his guilt, he must be tried.
The trial ended with the upholding of the sentence against Krombach, who served some of his sentence in Melun prison until he was released in 2020 for health reasons. The father was symbolically tried and sentenced to one year in prison, suspended, for the kidnapping of Krombach.
