Police Find Back Stolen Van Containing 12 Coffins with Corpses Inside
Police in Poland looking for a van stolen from Berlin have found it – and the 12 bodies which were in coffins in the back.
Officers who checked the coffins containing bodies were reassured to find they were intact, Polish police said.
This is the result of an intensive police operation since the theft, police added.
The van was found near Krolikow, central Poland, a week after it was stolen from a car park in the Hoppegarten area of Berlin.
Police arrested 2 men aged 25 and 27 in Poznan over the weekend, and are hunting for two others thought to have been involved in the theft of the van and two other vehicles.
Wachowiak said it did not seem as if the thieves had any idea what was in the van when they took it. The bodies had been set for cremation in Meißen.
A week before, car thieves stole a number of vans from a Berlin car park and probably got a shock when they finally opened them up – one was stacked with 12 coffins complete with bodies.
The driver had just loaded the coffins into the van and had gone to wash his hands before driving from the German capital to the crematorium. But when he came back to the van, it was gone.
“The driver did everything right,” a spokesman told, adding that he had even locked the van for the few minutes that he was away.
12 families faced an uncertain wait for the ashes of their loved-ones, while police tried to track down the vehicle.
Several vans were stolen on that Sunday night. One has already been found in the western Polish city of Poznań – but it was not the one with the bodies.