Bank heir 'strangled soon after abduction'

The kidnapped 11-year-old son of a prominent German banker whose body was found in a lake on Tuesday was probably strangled, a post-mortem examination showed yesterday, after it was revealed that the boy's suspected killer had been arrested while trying to board a flight to the Maldives.

State prosecutors in Frankfurt said that police had found Jakob von Metzler, the heir to the private Metzler banking dynasty, tied up in a blue plastic rubbish sack in a lake north-east of the city. His body was found less than 48 hours after his parents paid a €1m (£630,000) ransom to his kidnapper for his release.

Police said an initial post-mortem examination had shown that the boy's neck bore marks indicating that he had been strangled either on the day of his abduction on Friday or on the next day. "There was no indication that Jakob had been sexually abused," Rainer Schilling, the chief state prosecutor, said.

State prosecutors and forensic scientists were continuing their investigation into what is one of Germany's most brutal kidnappings.

Jakob was abducted while returning from school a few yards from his home in the wealthy suburb of Sachsenhausen. On Sunday night, the boy's parents paid the ransom demand to a 27-year-old law student, believing their son would be released unharmed. When he failed to appear, police launched a full-scale search.

Police said yesterday that the student had been arrested at Frankfurt airport while trying to buy a ticket to the Maldives. Referred to as "Magnus G" by police, he was formally charged with murder and kidnapping. Prosecutors said that he had refused to give evidence on the advice of his lawyers.

Police were still assuming the student was the sole kidnapper. He was said to be known to the Metzler family and had given after-hours coaching to pupils at Jakob's school, the Carl-Schurz grammar school.

They said he came from a middle-class family and had attended the same school as Jakob before going on to study law. He was said to have met the Metzlers' other teenaged children at local discotheques and tried to befriend them but they had rejected his advances.

On Tuesday, police found about €10,000 in notes in the student's flat, which is believed to have been part of the ransom.

State prosecutors said that "Magnus G" lived opposite the bus stop where Jakob was kidnapped and that the boy might have simply accepted what he unwittingly assumed was a lift home.

Criminologists remained baffled about the motive for the killing. Rudolph Egg, a psychologist at Wiesbaden's Institute for Criminal Science, said: "The prime suspect was neither hard up nor was he known to police. He does not fit the image of the average kidnapper."

Friedrich von Metzler, 59, Jakob's father, is chairman of the 300-year-old Metzler private bank. He is a well-known art lover and his family supports a number of charities, museums and universities in the Frankfurt area.

He recently gave €1.5m to a home for disabled children.

Messages of condolence and flowers were left near the family home yesterday. Residents said that it was typical of the Metzler family to send their son to a state-run grammar school. "They are not ostentatious and they wanted their son to be educated in a normal environment," one remarked.