Ines Falk

In August 1988, two armed bank robbers keep German police at bay for 54 hours during a hostage-taking drama that ends in a shootout and three deaths.

About the the hostage-taking/bank-robbing gangster Dieter Degowski and a recap of the crimes he committed with Hans-Jürgen Rösner during the Gladbeck hostage drama in August 1988. Some of the relatives of Degowski, along with his Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, plus the actual hostages and friends of those killed talk about the trauma they were involuntarily involved in.

About a dramatic bank robbery on August 16, 1988, where the criminals escape with two hostages and the media is right in the middle of their chase. Two days later the hostage situation was put to an end in a police operation on the A3 motorway. Three people were killed during this crisis - two teenage hostages and a policeman involved in a vehicle crash. The whole episode became a media circus in Germany and the Netherlands.