Günther Tschanun

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Günther Tschanun is a Swiss spree killer. Today, Tschanun lives somewhere in Switzerland under a false name.

[edit] Previous history and circumstances

The then-45-year old was chief of the Zurich building inspection department. This office was going through a phase of changes, and suffered under a lack of employees and discord between Tschanun and his leading clerks (even the media reported about this situation). The working atmosphere was tense and rife with arguments between Tschanun and his colleagues. Tschanun felt he wasn’t able to stand this pressure longer.

On April 16th, 1986, he shot to death four of his colleagues and perilously wounded another, all within ten minutes.

[edit] Court order and social echo

First level of jurisdiction: "only“ found guilty for murder (intentional killing). The court thought the victims were guilty, too; the victims didn’t accept the killer as a chief and criticised him constantly.

This "mobbing“-theory (at that time, the word wasn’t even in Swiss linguistic usage) was afterwards overthrown. It was found that the victims couldn’t be guilty for Tschanun’s personal, familial and professional misery,according to the judges of Lausanne court. Tschanun had been very unqualified for his leading position, overextended, but always denied that to himself and his employees.

Second level of jurisdiction: found guilty for murder and attempted murder in 1990, sentenced to 20 years of jail. In 2000, he was set free on parole. Peter Vonlanthen, as a mobbing expert and manager of the Zurich Alliance of Commercants ZKV, calls the case of Tschanun "Switzerland’s most spectacular mobbing story”. When in 2004 deadly shots were fired off by a finances specialist against his two bosses at the "Zürcher Kantonalbank ZKB “ (literally: "Bank of the Canton of Zurich”), the media remembered Tschanun's story and crime.