Poisonous snakes displaced residents in fear

"hand grenade served as a paperweight": The message caused a stir recently. The Winterthur city police found in a old town house is an intact hand grenade. As the "country messenger" found out, she was laying on the meeting table in the office of Bruno Stefanini. The real estate entrepreneur and art collector, who died in December at the age of 94 years, in the Winterthur, many of the old, partly in need of renovation properties. One of these houses is located on the town house road 91 and has a special story.

In June 1995, a Fund is the eerie kind of hit the headlines. The apartment is on the fourth floor of the old residential house rented at that time, a 35-year-old man in the city under the name of "King". "His life was the venom of snakes. They meant everything to him, he spoke and played with them when he came back in the evening after the beer in the small apartment," reported the TA at the time, on the Winterthur. For years the King kept in his apartment up to 50 of which are highly poisonous snakes, as well as 30 tarantulas. In the screed, he bred rats and mice as food animals. The 35-Year-old wanted to make his snake collection available to the Public, but found no support.

note on the doors

at the end of may 1995, and the tragic turn: The single man's life took. Prior to that, he had destroyed however, multiple terrariums, the poison of snakes released, and the apartment window is open. The rest of the tenants only found out about it days later from the incident. The city police had attached to their doors piece of paper. The residents on the fourth floor was different, you've found some terraria corrupt, as a result, some snakes, even poisonous to be escaped"",. Specialists have captured the animals, but it could not be said "with absolute certainty, that could not remove the snakes."

"That was an incredible story," says Roger Keller, at that time, TA-Editor and today a spokesman of the Finance Director Ernst Stocker. He reported at the time as the first about the unusual incident. A neighbor told him that he had made after reading the Police handout "on the doorstep right to repent". He knew that "King" had held in his terrarium, several rattlesnakes, a gaboon Viper, two cobras and a green Mamba. The snake room was authorities and the police in front of unfamiliar problems. "We were too Scared and waited until the specialists came in," admitted the competent district Prosecutor against a Journalist cellar. Specialists moved in with loaded firearms, and gripping pliers. He heard of the rattlesnakes from the fourth floor to down the street, told the district attorney. "This has been incredibly toned."

"flushed"

The specialists of the veterinary police, they finally managed 35 live snakes, including a 24-poisonous snakes, to capture. Four animals, including two cobras, found he dead. The reptile specialist spoke of a "dangerous extreme situation". More poison snakes might have entered through the window or the process, wanted also must vacate the apartment no one exclusive. The sanitary System is, however, "have been heavily rinsed", so no animals should have survived, as the authorities emphasized. The neighbors lived, however, for weeks with a queasy feeling, as a local resident says. The owner of the shop in the attached neighbor's house no longer have the courage for days on your own toilet.

The owner of the shop did not have the courage for days on your own toilet.

The fears were not unjustified. Eight days after the eviction, was found in the room of the deceased a more poisonous snake. This time, the police immediately hit the Alarm and called on the tenant to "stay away". In a further and more thorough search of the house and the neighboring building was found, but no animals. "According to human judgment," said the district attorney at the time, there should be no serpent in the houses. "All say, there is no danger, however all of to give that you don't want to live in this house," lamented a resident.

"A big drama"

"It was really a big drama, the story spread back like wildfire in the old town," says the former neighbor, the "King" as a strange guy. What springs to mind: the police and the fire brigade would not only back even out with the truth. "For fear of causing panic." Another local resident at the town house road recalls, "the King" shortly before his death two snakes in a private house of Stefanini, allegedly out of revenge, because of the want to throw him out of his apartment.

In the course of time, the fear grew, and eventually they got the all clear, and the case was forgotten. At the competent real estate company Terresta of Stefanini, the former incidents at the town house road 91 "so far, none of the today people responsible were known," says Stefan Angele, head of real estate management. Also, no property is subject to documents from this time. Today, a hairdressing salon is on the ground floor of the house rents. In the floors above, a total of five simple rental housing. Concrete renovation plans do not exist, according to Angele at the moment. Of the then tenants, and no one lives today, more in the "house of snakes".

(Tages-Anzeiger)

Created: 14.04.2019, 20:41 PM