A corpse found in southern Germany is the body of a banker's wife, Maria Boegerl, 54, who was kidnapped for ransom more than three weeks ago, police said Friday.
The body was found by a man walking his dog near the town of Heidenheim late Thursday, DPA repored.
It was lying under a pile of branches at the edge of a forest in an area that police had intensively searched on May 16. The police could not explain why it was missed the first time round, but have been interviewing the officers involved.
Boegerl had been stabbed to death, said Volker Lueck, the area police chief, during a nationally televised news conference.
She was abducted from her home and driven away in her own car on May 12. Her kidnapper phoned to demand a 300,000-euro (367,000-dollar) ransom for her release, but never collected the money from an arranged motorway spot and was not heard from again.
The corpse was discovered near the arranged ransom spot. Lueck said the Boegerl family did leave a ransom there, but they could not obtain the money fast enough to deposit it at the side of the autobahn before the kidnapper's deadline.
"The caller appeared to be a middle-aged man who spoke the dialect typical of this area," a police spokesman said. Heidenheim is 50 kilometres east of Stuttgart.
The woman's car was also found in the area, but investigators lacked further significant clues, despite hundreds of tips from members of the public. Police have issued an identikit picture of an unidentified man seen in the area the same day.