http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russian-escapee-held/283065.html
BERLIN — Four days after escaping from a Potsdam prison using bedsheets tied together, a Russian accused of kidnapping a man and leaving him to die in a pit was rearrested Wednesday.
Sergei Serov, 38, was arrested in an apartment in Berlin just as he was shaving his head – apparently for a disguise, police said. The person living in the apartment had found Serov shivering on the street the night before and invited him in out of pity, police said. The next morning the renter became suspicious that his house guest might be Serov, whose picture was all over the media.
He called police, who surrounded the building and sent a special commando team in to arrest the man.
Serov and Vyacheslav Orlov, 28, are to go on trial early next year on charges of kidnapping leading to death. Authorities said the two had made partial confessions in the case of Matthias Hintze, 20, who was kidnapped Sept. 14, 1997, and buried in a pit, where he suffocated.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/two-charged-with-murder-1.114281
Berlin – Two Russians were charged with murder yesterday after German police found the decomposed corpse of Mr Matthias Hintze (20), an east German who was kidnapped almost a month ago, Denis Staunton reports. Mr Hintze, who was found in a forest in Mecklenburg, north of Berlin, had apparently died of hunger and thirst.
Mr Sergei Serov (37), a lawyer, and Mr Viacheslav Orlov (27), a lorry driver, were charged with the murder after they gave police a precise description of the body’s whereabouts. The two men were arrested on Tuesday after police found documents in their Berlin flat outlining plans for a ransom demand.
Mr Hintze was abducted near his parents’ restaurant in the village of Geltow, near Berlin, on September 14th, after he surprised some men as they attempted to steal the family’s Mercedes.

http://totalcrime.co.uk/2014/06/21/murderbook-1900-1999/
Oct 5 – Matthias Hintze, 20, a German soldier, was kidnapped and left to die in an underground pit in a wood near Lake Muritz in Mecklenburg, Germany. Sergeri Serov, 37, a lawyer, and Vyatcheslav Orlov, 27, a lorry driver, were both jailed for 14 and a half years in Potsdam in 1999. They were Russians who seized Hintze from outside his wealthy parents’ home in Geltrow, near Berlin, and demanded a £350,000 ransom. Four handovers failed and they abandoned him to his fate. Serov escaped from jail in Nov 1998 while awaiting trial but was recaptured in Berlin. In Nov 2001 they were also jailed for  15 years (maximum penalty allowable in Germany) for kidnapping computer dealer Alexander