The man sported a stripy Marks & Spencer tie, expensively made but possibly secondhand shoes – and 6 kg of cast-iron weights tied around his body, designed to drag him to the bottom of the North Sea.
Almost three decades after finding the body of what appeared to be a murder victim in the waters off the island of Heligoland, German police have released new information and a first photofit in order to establish the identity of the man who was dubbed “the Gentleman” for his smart attire.
Researchers at Staffordshire and Plymouth Marjon universities, in cooperation with the German Police Academy of Lower Saxony and the missing persons charity Locate International, have been collaborating on the cold case with the intention of uncovering the man’s name and bringing his killers to justice.
After exhuming the man’s body last December, they have managed to isolate the complete DNA profile of the 45- to 50-year-old male and are currently checking it against international DNA databases, police in Wilhelmshaven in northern Germany announced on Thursday.
An ongoing isotope analysis could eventually confirm whether the man had lived on the British Isles before his body was dumped in the North Sea, as investigators suspect.
The body was recovered from the sea by a border guard boat on 11 July 1994, 20 km off Heligoland, but police believe it is possible that the body had travelled in the water for some distance.
“He could have drifted from a ship or even as far as [from] Great Britain, that’s certainly possible,” said Karsten Bettels, of the Lower Saxony Police Academy.
An autopsy at the time showed signs of exposure to blunt violence on the almost 2 metre-tall (6ft 5in) man’s head and upper body, which he had suffered while still alive.
A further telling sign of a criminal act were the two cast-iron shoe lasts, each weighing 3 kg, which had been fixed to the man’s body to weigh him down, as police have revealed for the first time.
Made in the 1920s or 30s, the two female shoe lasts were embossed with the initials AJK, the trademark of Bristol-based company AJ Jackson.
Police have also for the first time released the make of the man’s tie, saying it was produced by Marks & Spencer for the English- and French-language market, which at the time of the man’s disappearance stretched all the way to Canada.
Suspicions that the distinctive green, yellow and blue stripes marked the man out as belonging to a specific organisation had not been confirmed, police said.
German police are seeking further information on the possible identity of the man from the public, having received over 50 pieces of information since appealing to the press in February.
Another reason they have gone public again is to correct the victim’s misleading “gentleman” moniker, which was based on his elegant outfit and expensive shoes.
“Against the backdrop of the latest information this impression has to be relativised,” police said. The M&S tie was a mass-market product and the shoes had been previously repaired and may have been bought secondhand, they said.
“It cannot be necessarily assumed that the dead person was wealthy,” German police said in a statement.
