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Unsolved Murder of German Yachtsman in Madagascar

In the animated movie “Madagascar” one of the main characters is “Alex” the Lion. In this story Alex is the suspected machete murderer of Hans Michael Klein, a German yachtsman.

The brutal murder took place around March 30, 2006 in the anchorage at Hellville on the island of Nosy Be, off the Madagascar coast. The first I heard of this gruesome incident was last May from a South African couple, on “Deja Vu”, who were anchored with me at Kudat on Malaysian Borneo. The news had come to them from other cruising friends in Nosy Be. More details came to me when I became friends with Roland Vitella, a Frenchman of the yacht “Samarcande”, while we were together in Victoria, Seychelles. Roland makes Hellville his temporary home, for most of the season, in the last 17 years.

He knew both Michael and Alex and some more of the details on the back ground of the murder. I stopped off at Hellville in the beginning of November on my solo circumnavigation, I commenced in February 2005, from Gig Harbor,Washington .

Nosy Be has become a popular stop for boats crossing from Asia to South Africa. It is one of only three West Coast Madagascar ports for clearing in and out. And for a group of other yachtsmen it has also become a semi permanent home, a better name would be “center of operation”, for the more mysterious of these characters. Hellville is a colorful old town where little has changed since the heydays of French colonialism, in the 18th century. Madagascar is the fourth poorest country in the world and little is spent on the upkeep of these old buildings. The average age of the automobiles has to be above 25 years. Most cars are shipped in, second hand, from France. The standard taxi is a Renault Quatre from the seventies and the drivers skillfully navigate the potholed and often unpaved roads. The visiting and semi permanent cruising folk gather with the resident ex-patriate Frenchmen in a few popular watering holes, like the “Nandipo” run by “Jeep” a young Barcelonean.. You will always find an assortment of young Malgache ladies at these spots looking for a paying siesta pick up. Michael’s boat, “Douala” was next to my anchor spot. The boat is in Bristol condition with the best paint job I have seen in the last two years. “Douala” is a 53 feet long “Gallant” van de Stadt design from the seventies. “Ice”, an aluminum ketch, belonging to Alex(ander) Klar is anchored in the same Hellville bay. The only occupants of “Ice” were two small dogs. Alex was reportedly in Mahajanga, on the main island of Madagascar. Michael Klein’s body was found at the bottom of the companion way of “Douala” with his head severed and resting in his lap, sometime in the last week of March of this year. Michael brought his wife ashore at 8.30 on the fateful morning. His body was discovered less than three hours after she left. Mrs. Klein, a local from Nosy Be, was held as a possible suspect by the authorities but soon released. Alex was sailing away from Hellville at he same time and the Madagascar president’s helicopter was used by the police to pursue him and order him back to Nosy Be. Alex was arrested as the prime suspect and held in the Hellville jail from April till September. He was conditionally released after a Swiss police team came and found no traces of Alex’s DNA on Michael. The first thing Alex did, after his release, was to stop at the “Nandipo”. Al the patrons heads turned when he walked in, the place fell silent when he unbuttoned his shirt and offered to sell a collection of large knives he had strapped to his body. The local police, without a clue of who the real killer might be, is now apparently offering the possibility that Michael committed suicide by hanging himself with a nylon wire from the boom. Both men are part of a group of yachtsmen whose ability to support their lifestyle is open to much speculation. It has happened to me more than once when I mentioned to fellow cruisers that I started working at 17 and quit at 67 that their response would be : “I quit working when I was 17”. They often have very nice boats and have been cruising for many years without any apparent need to work for a living. Little seems to be known about Michael Klein. Other than that he was German, possibly from Hamburg and that he might have worked in Cameroon, hence the yacht’s name, before ending up on Nosy Be. He told one fellow cruiser that he had no family other than an aunt who had recently passed away and left him some money. He kept to himself and could be seen on the docks here in South Africa with his sewing machine doing sail repairs. He was quick to lend a helping hand to other sailors. His common law Madagascar wife took possession of the boat and has it well looked after. A prospective German buyer of the boat told me that most all the equipment and electronic gear have been stripped and sold for cash by the widow; she offered him Michael’s German books. The one certain detail I found, in the port records, is that both boats returned from a side trip to Kenya six days apart; “Douala” on March 13 th and “Ice” on March the 7th. They reportedly had an argument just before Michael was killed. But most of the people who know Alex comment that Alex just isn’t the kind of guy to ever hurt a soul. The local police discovered a box filled with rubber stamps, on searching “Ice”, which Alex was using to do his own clearing in and out of the many ports in his trading range. He is a bear of guy. He was born and grew up on the family’s Chinese Junk, "Maria Jose", cruising all through Asia and the Indian Ocean. His father, Ernst Klar, was born in Germany and his mother is Swiss giving them all dual passport privileges. Ernst served in the French Foreign Legion. He earned a comfortable cruising existence by recovering antique ship gear and cargo from wrecks on the reefs between Mayotte and Madagascar. One of those wrecks is the “Santiago” a Portuguese galleon wrecked in 1585 laden with a cargo of gold and silver bound for Goa from Portugal. The Klars discovered the wreck on the reefs of Bassas da India in the Mozambique Channel. He donated several of the old guns of this ship to the museum in Pieter Maritzburg, South Africa. Alex is known as an adventurer, also diving for treasures on wrecks. He hauls cheap Madagascar rum in bulk in his boat’s water tanks for resale in Mayotte, a two day sail from Nosy Be. His older brother Hans Klar followed a similar life style. Hans was born in Switzerland and was six years old when the family set out in to the cruising world. He sailed an engineless 51 ft Wharram catamaran from Europe and used to fill it with trading merchandise in Durban and work his way down the African coast and Madagascar. He changed the schooner rig to the Polynesian style Crab Claw rig. All the Klars are highly praised by anyone who has had the opportunity to sail with them for their sailing and navigating skills. A Durban young lady hauled Hans into court on a rape charge. The expert witness at the trial told me that he convinced the judge that it was just a physical impossibility to have forced sex in a six foot rowing dinghy. Between Hans and Alex is a sister Ingrid. When Inge was about 16 years old and the family was spending time in Richards Bay, South Africa, the father, Ernst, made a family project out of getting a coil of manila rope for free. He had Inge change into her bikini and distract the crew of a navy vessel while her two brothers swam to the stern of the vessel and made off with the rope. Another story I heard was that both Alex and Michael were shipping, without government license, blue sapphires from Madagascar. I stopped in Mahajanga on the Madagascar main island. The locals directed me to where I would be able to find Alex. But when I got to a number of beach cottages just outside of town, called “Chez No No”, Alex had left for Hellville the day prior... He had come to Mahajanga to obtain custody of his two daughters. This did not go the way he wanted and he ended up with his ex-wife’s arrangement to spend another month in jail in Mahajanga. She and the daughters left Madagascar, reportedly for Reunion. If Michael was murdered by a Malgache it is highly unlikely that the police will ever be able to bring their own to justice, according to those who have spent time in this country. For pictures of Nosy Be, “Ice” and “Douala” go to www.cometosea.us/albums/Madagascar

A detailed story of my experiences on the sail from the Seychelles to South Africa, via Madagascar and Mozambique can be seen at http://www.cometosea.us/albums/log-Madagascar.htm

Other related links : www.atomvoyages.com/articles/hansklaar.htm