Mallorca tragedy

“We won’t rest until we learn the truth”

Heinrich and Hannelore K. on an evening walk by Lake Mattsee: "In the silence here, we sometimes manage to switch off our bad thoughts a little."

(Bild: Wenzel Markus)

A 17-year-old apprentice from Upper Austria is on vacation in Mallorca. Then he suddenly lies dead in the backyard of a hotel. His parents have been searching for the truth for over a decade. "We finally want to know," they say, "why our son had to die."

Heinrich K. is a handsome man with friendly features and kind light brown eyes. From an early age, he says, he has known exactly what he wants from life. An existence in peace and security. Quiet happiness.

For a long time, everything went according to plan for him. He met Hannelore, the love of his life, early on. The wedding, two sons, a daughter. With diligence, the Upper Austrian succeeded in gradually turning the metalworking business in Mattighofen that he had taken over from his grandfather into a flourishing metal construction company; he built a spacious house on a plot of land next door, "because I didn't want my family to want for anything".

"If you start something, you have to finish it." That has always been his guiding principle, "I have often achieved my goals with it. And that's why I've also tried to instil it in my three children." But now, for the first time in his life, he feels that he is running out of energy. In the most important task he has ever set himself.

His expression is sad, infinitely sad, as the 55-year-old sits there on the comfortable sofa in his living room. In front of him, on a glass table, are thick folders. "A lot of files have piled up," his wife explains in a low voice: "Since our Andreas died." Since the terrible drama that changed everything ...