Word: stoll
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Four weeks ago Düsseldorf police were summoned to a restaurant by a diner who had recognized Willy Peter Stoll, a suspect in the Schleyer case. Stoll was killed in a shootout with plainclothesmen. A few days later suspicious neighbors called police to an apartment where they found Stoll's crudely coded diary, an arsenal of weapons (including a homemade "Stalin Organ" capable of firing primitive missiles) and fingerprints of six of Stoll's RAF comrades...
This recent police performance is a welcome contrast to the occasional bungling previously displayed by terrorist hunters. In September a Bundestag committee disclosed that antiterrorist police had allowed Stoll and the other RAF suspects, Adelheid Schulz and Christian Klar, to get away after keeping them under close surveillance for two weeks. The cops had even photographed the trio boarding a rented helicopter to make aerial reconnaissance surveys of the homes of potential victims. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt ordered a shake-up of the antiterrorist force...
...June, for example, a gunshop owner and his wife sat paralyzed with fright in a Frankfurt restaurant as Stoll and a woman companion dined at a nearby table. The witnesses were sure of their man: a year before, Stoll had knocked the gun dealer unconscious and had stolen 20 pistols from his store. Finally overcoming his fear, the dealer alerted the police, but when investigators arrived, Stoll had melted away in the crowd...
Perhaps the police could not be blamed for failing to pick up the trail on that occasion. But in August, in an unparalleled display of ineptness, the authorities allowed Stoll and his comrades to slip through their fingers. As an outraged Bundestag investigating committee revealed last week, the suspects had been virtually handed over to the federal crime police antiterrorist squad by an observant helicopter pilot in Michelstadt, Karin Rieger. She reported that the three fugitives, equipped with a camera and video-tape equipment, had chartered her chopper for several flights over the Rhine Valley, ostensibly to film historic castles...
Finally last week, on the day after the Schleyer memorial services, Willy Peter Stoll's luck ran out. A woman recognized him as he sat sipping a beer in a nondescript Chinese restaurant near the Düsseldorf railroad station. She alerted the police. Minutes later, two plainclothesmen walked into the restaurant, sat down, studied their quarry for a couple of minutes. Then they rose, approached Stoll and ordered him to surrender. Dropping his hands like a Western gunfighter, Stoll reached for a 9-mm. pistol concealed in his jacket. Before he could draw...