The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Manuel Schadwald.md

category	tags	summary	born	location	updated
Victims & Witnesses	Person OrganizedCrime	Manuel Schadwald was a 12-year-old German boy who disappeared from Berlin in July 1993, becoming one of Europe's most infamous missing child cases and a pivotal figure in exposing international child trafficking networks.	1981	Berlin, Germany	2026-10-09

Manuel Schadwald was a 12-year-old German boy who disappeared from Berlin on July 24, 1993,¹ becoming one of Europe's most infamous missing child cases and a pivotal figure in exposing international child trafficking networks. Born in 1981, Schadwald lived in Berlin with his family until his mysterious disappearance, which would eventually reveal connections between German, Dutch, and British child trafficking operations and implicate senior government officials in these criminal networks.²

Initial Investigation and Police Response

When Manuel Schadwald was first reported missing in July 1993, German authorities initially treated him as a runaway, a common response that delayed serious investigation for over a year.²

The case gained traction in 1994 when three teenagers came forward to Dutch police with stories of being trafficked into the Rotterdam sex trade. These teenagers, who had been prostituting themselves on the streets of Hamburg, reported being approached by two Dutchmen who offered them large sums of money to travel to Rotterdam to film pornography. Upon arrival, their passports were seized, and they were forced to work off exorbitant travel costs in a brothel owned by Lothar Glandorf. While working there, they met a boy who identified himself as Manuel Schadwald.³

Witness Testimony and Identification

Multiple witnesses provided consistent testimony about seeing Manuel Schadwald in Glandorf's Rotterdam brothels. The teenagers from Hamburg were not the only witnesses; a third teenager from Berlin also came forward with a similar story, confirming he had been taken to Rotterdam and forced to work in Glandorf's brothel, where he identified Schadwald among the children being exploited there.³

The HIK Investigation and Surveillance Evidence

The Schadwald case became the focus of the HIK Investigation launched by Dutch authorities in September 1994. This investigation placed wiretaps on Glandorf's phone and assigned surveillance teams to monitor his movements. The surveillance produced crucial evidence when team members observed Glandorf in the company of a boy they identified as Manuel Schadwald but inexplicably took no action. This observation was never reported to German authorities and was deliberately omitted from the final HIK report.⁴

International Trafficking Network Connections

The investigation into Schadwald's disappearance revealed extensive connections between different trafficking networks operating across Europe. The Guardian reported on July 31, 1998 that Warwick Spinks's name had been found among details of child pornography customers in a police raid on the Amsterdam flat of Gerrit-Jan Ulrich and among the possessions of Robbie Van Der Plancken; Spinks, who managed the Gay Palace on Spuistraat in the late 1980s,⁵ told the paper he had known two men called Robbie and denied involvement.⁶

Government Connections and Official Protection

Wiretap evidence from the HIK Investigation captured conversations between Glandorf and a senior Dutch government official referred to as "Joris." In these conversations, "Joris" sought Glandorf's advice on smuggling children across borders and inquired about the availability of boys for sexual exploitation.⁷

Subsequent Developments and Theories

As the investigation continued, various theories emerged about Schadwald's ultimate fate. Some witnesses suggested that Schadwald had been sold to British child pornographers in Amsterdam, specifically to Warwick Spinks' operation. Nick Davies found that, in an unbroadcast section of his interview with Dutch television, Robbie Van Der Plancken, a former boy prostitute of Glandorf's who later became an exploiter himself, had claimed that some time after being taken from Berlin by Lothar Glandorf, Manuel had been sold to Warwick Spinks in Amsterdam.¹

Dutch and German police later set about finding him, some four years after his disappearance, and failed. Davies wrote that Manuel Schadwald has never been found.⁵

Davies reported that a bar owner on Spuistraat told him he was "pretty sure he had seen Manuel once with the Englishman Warwick Spinks," and then said he could easily have been mistaken.¹ Davies wrote that Frank said Spinks had once hinted to him that a German boy named Manny had been murdered, and that Frank told police of Spinks's monthly trips to Berlin, often with boys from Amsterdam.⁵

On May 2, 1998 the Algemeen Dagblad reported that the boy, who had disappeared in Berlin in 1993 aged 12, was thought to have reached the boys' brothel of Lothar G. and Henk S. in Rotterdam through a German identified as Ludwig A. (44) and a Briton identified as Warwick S.⁸ The paper gave no surname for either man. The records found do not establish whether Warwick S. is Warwick Spinks.

Intelligence agencies from various countries began providing information about Schadwald's case, though much of this information appeared to be conflicting or potentially disinformation. German intelligence sources suggested connections to Stasi operations, while Dutch intelligence provided specific details about Schadwald allegedly being killed on a yacht called "der Apollo" owned by Gerrit-Jan Ulrich and his business partner Leo Van Gasselt.⁹

The Zandvoort Connection and Apollo Network

The Schadwald case became further complicated by its connection to the Apollo Bulletin Board Service investigation in Zandvoort. Gerrit-Jan Ulrich, who administered this major child pornography distribution network, was found murdered in Italy in June 1998. The discovery of the Apollo Bulletin Board Service and its connections to various trafficking operations suggested that Schadwald may have been exploited through this extensive distribution network for child pornography.¹⁰

The Apollo investigation revealed a list of 300 names described as "an international Who's Who of suspected paedophiles."¹⁰

Footnotes

---

1. Nick Davies, "Paedophile networks traffick young boys across Europe," dated October 1, 1998 and marked "Previously unpublished," https://www.nickdavies.net/1998/10/01/paedophile-network-trafficks-young-boys-across-europe/ ↩︎

2. 'Paedophile network trafficks young boys across Europe', Nick Davies, Previously unpublished, October 1 1998; Dutch police investigation files on HIK case, 1994-1995 ↩︎

3. 'When sex abuse can lead to murder', The Guardian, November 27 2000; HIK investigation witness testimony, 1994 ↩︎

4. Dutch police surveillance reports and HIK investigation files, 1994-1995; 'Dutch Joris Demmink Affair Reveals Heroin, Cocaine and Pedophile Entrapment Affairs', ISGP-Studies, October 31 2014 ↩︎

5. Nick Davies, "Paedophilia is easy 2: how a paedophile murder inquiry fell apart," The Guardian, November 27, 2000, https://www.nickdavies.net/2000/11/27/paedophilia-is-easy-2-how-a-paedophile-murder-inquiry-fell-apart/ ↩︎

6. Kate Connolly and Owen Bowcott, "Fugitive Briton linked to Dutch child porn hits at 'witch-hunt' from Prague refuge," The Guardian, July 31, 1998, page 15. ↩︎

7. Wiretap transcripts from HIK investigation, 1994; 'When sex abuse can lead to murder', The Guardian, November 27 2000 ↩︎

8. Algemeen Dagblad, "Politie onderzoekt 'politieschandaal'," May 2, 1998, Delpher KBPERS01:003153002:mpeg21:a00051, https://resolver.kb.nl/resolve?urn=KBPERS01:003153002:mpeg21:a00051 Original: "Vermoed wordt dat de scholier daar terecht is gekomen via de Duitser Ludwig A. (44) en de Brit Warwick S." [It is suspected that the schoolboy ended up there via the German Ludwig A. (44) and the Briton Warwick S.]; "Diverse getuigen hebben hem kort daarna gezien in het jongensbordeel van Lothar G. en Henk S." [Several witnesses saw him shortly afterwards in the boys' brothel of Lothar G. and Henk S.] ↩︎

9. Intelligence agency information on Schadwald case, 1998-2015; 'Die verlorenen Kinder'('The Lost Children'), Welt, July 12 2015 ↩︎

10. 'No kind of Hero', Tim Hulse, The Independent, September 13 1998; Apollo investigation files, 1998 ↩︎