Sister of German backpacker murdered in North in 1988 has ‘hope’ fresh inquest will bring answers

The sister of a young German backpacker who was murdered in Northern Ireland 36 years ago has said she places “considerable hope” in a fresh inquest to deliver answers, a coroner’s court has heard.

Friederike Leibl (Hauser) listened via video link on Monday to a preliminary hearing into the death of her younger and only sibling, Inga Maria Hauser (18).

In what has become one of the most high-profile unsolved murders in the North, the body of Ms Hauser was discovered dumped in a remote part of Ballypatrick Forest close to the seaside town of Ballycastle, Co Antrim, in April 1988.

She was last seen alive on a ferry from Scotland to Larne a fortnight earlier. In her final postcard to her family in Munich, she wrote she was leaving England to travel to Ireland.

Dublin was the next stop on her inter-railing trip across Europe.

“Tomorrow I go to Dublin and I look forward to this most,” Ms Hauser posted in a diary entry of her travels on April 6th, 1988.

No one has ever been charged with the killing.

Last week Ms Leibl was informed by the coroner’s office that an inquest was to proceed following her family’s decades-long campaign for the truth. Her nephew, Viktor, is also part of the campaign.

Ms Hauser’s father died in 2006 and her mother in 2019.

During Monday’s brief hearing at Belfast Laganside Court, a legal representative for Ms Leibl said she was “very grateful” for the decision to hold the hearing.

The family made an application for an inquest to the Attorney General’s Office in the summer.

“She and her family have obviously sought answers for decades and they place their trust and considerable hope in this process,” barrister Malachy McGowan said.

Coroner Joe McCrisken agreed they had endured a “long” wait.

“We will do everything we can to facilitate an investigation of this lady’s death,” he said.

Mr McCrisken noted the “considerable amount” of material due to be disclosed by the Police Service of Northern Ireland and “perhaps even the PPS (Public Prosecution Service), perhaps other agencies”.

In 2020 the family were left “deeply disappointed”, following a decision by the PPS not to press charges against two individuals – a 60-year-old man and a 57-year-old woman – who were arrested in 2018. A file was submitted by the PSNI to prosecutors in 2019.

The male suspect was reported in connection with Ms Hauser’s murder while the woman was reported for withholding information from police.

Following the preliminary hearing, Ms Leibl thanked her legal team for what she described as “precious work”, according to the family’s solicitor, Claire McKeegan of Phoenix Law.

“Her parents never recovered after getting the news about Inga’s death. Her mother went into an all-consuming depression,” Ms McKeegan told The Irish Times.

“All of her friends said Inga was this bright star, and was so popular. Her trip to Europe was ‘an adventure’.”

Ms McKeegan said the family have “so many questions” in their desperate search for “truth and justice”.

DNA was recovered from Ms Hauser but police failed to identify a suspect despite screenings of more than 2,000 samples – one of the largest in the North’s policing history.

“When I was first instructed by the family in 2018, there were periods of 10 years when there were no police updates to the family, so in my opinion the case certainly didn’t seem active for long periods of time,” added Ms McKeegan.

“This inquest will be the first full public examination of the facts in the tragedy of her murder.”

The next review hearing has been listed for January 22nd.