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7

The Illuminati Conspiracy

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Karl Koch was last seen alive on 23 May 1989. That morning he had turned up to work as usual at the Hannover office of Germany's ruling Christian Democratic party. Just before twelve o'clock he drove off alone to deliver a package across town. He never arrived. In the late afternoon, his employers notified the police of his disappearance.

Nine days later the police went to a wood on the outskirts of the small village of Ohof, just outside Hannover, on a routine inquiry. They were investigating a report of an abandoned car, its roof, hood and windscreen thick with dust. In the undergrowth near the car, the police stumbled on a charred corpse lying next to an empty gasoline can. The vegetation around the body was scorched and burned. The police noticed that the corpse was barefoot - but no shoes were found in the car or in the surrounding area.

The investigators were perplexed. There had been no rain for five weeks and the undergrowth was as dry as matchwood. But the scorched patch around the body was contained, as if the fire that consumed the victim had been carefully controlled.

The body was later identified as that of the twenty-four-year-old Karl Koch. The police assumed he had committed suicide. But still there were questions: principally, if Koch had killed himself, how had he been able to control the fire? Why had it not spread outside the confined perimeter?

Then there were the shoes: Koch had obviously been wearing shoes when he left his office. If he had taken them off, what had he done with them? They weren't in the car; they weren't found in the surrounding area. It was as if someone had taken them.

But there were no clues to a killer. The death was deemed to be suicide.

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