The file has long been closed, the offence was committed almost 29 years ago, and in 2006 the investigation was finally closed when the extradition request for the two English co-sailors was rejected. "For a long time, we still hoped that a main trial would be held," Ursula Ebber tells YACHT. She and her husband Clemens owned the "Pan Tau" at the time. However, as these proceedings were not initiated, the couple did their own research and came across numerous inconsistencies in the official account - summarised: it was "wrong from A to Z". The truth is still waiting to be revealed."
The death of the skipper from Wedel in November 1982 made international headlines, a mysterious and gruesome story. Nagel was supposed to ferry the Wibo 930 for the couple to Australia, where they had emigrated. Contrary to the agreement, however, the then 42-year-old did not complete the voyage single-handed. He took three fellow sailors on board for the Atlantic passage in Gran Canaria: the German Hubert Müller, 42, and the two Englishwomen Kate Brenchley, 25, and Angela Thomson, 27. The agreement between men and women seemed clear: sex in exchange for a berth.
Soon after setting sail, however, the mood on board must have deteriorated dramatically. The women describe how things escalated: Nagel tries to rape Angela Thompson on the night watch, she fights back with a knife, her friend comes to her aid with a second one, Nagel is stabbed and the women throw his body overboard. The "Pan Tau" arrives in St. Lucia on 15 December 1982.
The authorities in the Caribbean and Scotland Yard believe the women's version: self-defence, no further investigation. Ebbers received the artefacts back, studied them intensively - and now believed that they had found a lot of evidence in the logbook and nautical charts that contradicted their account: "It's not true that everything fitted together."
In YACHT, Ursula Ebber expresses and justifies doubts about both the course of events and the time of the crime: "After careful analysis, everything points to the fact that Nagel's date of death was moved from the 20th to the 28th (November 1982, ed.)."
Furthermore, she continues, "the timings did not match, the courses and weather data could not have been correct, many things had obviously been manipulated". In a detailed interview, Ursula Ebber explains how the former owner came to these conclusions and why she is making serious accusations against the German law enforcement authorities.
Now in the current YACHT 15/2011
