This is the Guardian.

Before we begin, this audio long read contains descriptions of child abduction and murder.

The Guardian Archive Long Read.

Hello, my name is Zan Rice, I'm a freelance journalist.

I wrote a story called The Girl in the Box from 2019.

So the story is about a crime that happened in Germany just over 40 years ago now.

Young girl was kidnapped, cycling on her way home, was buried in a box underground.

And she ultimately died there before the police found her.

There was no self crime for many years until the early 2000s, when the alleged perpetrator was arrested and put on file.

So on the surface of it, this looked like a cold case which had been solved.

But in fact, the girl's brother came to believe that the man who was accused and convicted of the crime was probably not the person who did it.

I was drawn to this case by a short article I read in the Sunday Times. I think it was in 2018.

With a headline murderer and then in quotes, Too Stupid to Be Guilty says ancient history detective.

And it was a story basically saying that a German academic in London who had looked at this case had come to the same conclusion as the girl's brother and said it needed to be reopened.

But what was interesting for me when I read this was not so much the academic conclusions.

But it was the fact that there was this brother all these years later who was still trying to find justice for his sister and who you thought would have had closure but in fact it had caused him even more trauma.

And to this day, Michael, the brother he doesn't believe that justice has been served and that this gentleman, Vanna Matsarek, who's been in jail for nearly 15 years, was the perpetrator.

Now, as readers will find out from the piece, Mr. Matsarek is not a very sympathetic character.

But for all of that, Michael is still trying to uncover what really happened that day in 1981.

And there is still a possibility at some point that the truth will come out if in fact it's different to what the police believe.

It's just a really, really sad story for me about a terrible crime and the effect it has on a family all these decades later if there's no resolution.

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