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Yet the Bossert story raised almost as many questions as it answered. "Why would anyone keep such incriminating letters or identity papers?" asked French Nazi Hunter Serge Klarsfeld, referring to the documents found in the home of the Bosserts as well as in Sedlmeier's. Why had the Mengele family not announced Josef's death six years ago, and so freed itself of all the negative publicity thrown up by the case? What about the many sightings over the years of Mengele in Paraguay, even as recently as last summer? And why had the Bosserts taken up with an infamous mass murderer in the first place? "If the Bossert account is true," said West German Mengele Researcher Otmar Katz, "then it contradicts all the information about Mengele for the past 20 years."
As the forensic examination got under way last week, the medical investigators worked in strict secrecy. Outside the third-floor multiroom lab at the Instituto Medico Legal, armed military policemen stood guard around the clock. Within days, the original five-man team of examiners had grown to seven; early on, they discovered signs of an injury in the pelvic area that might correspond to a broken hip Mengele reportedly suffered in a wartime accident (though Rolf Mengele said he knew of no such injury). After preliminary tests on the 208 bones before him, Coordinator Wilmes Roberto Teixeira reported that he had found nothing to suggest that the body was not Mengele's.
Initially, the Brazilians' handling of the remains had been attended by some controversy. The circus atmosphere in which the corpse had been exhumed, with TV cameras broadcasting live from grave-side and remains passed casually out for public inspection, prompted foreign observers to charge Brazilian officials with negligence. Fears mounted when the experts in Sao Paulo initially declined assistance from abroad. Last week, however, the Wiesenthal Center supplied the Brazilians with the dossier it had assembled on Mengele and prevailed on them to allow three U.S. experts to observe the forensic process. "I understand that it is Brazil's national pride that is in question," said Rabbi Hier, "so it is difficult for them to say that American experts are going to be the ones at the table. But that is exactly what is going to happen." West Germany also sent over three forensic specialists to watch the proceedings.
In the doctor's homeland, meanwhile, where Federal Prosecutor Hans Eberhard Klein had nearly despaired of ever getting cooperation from the close-mouthed Mengele family, Rolf Mengele's unexpected statement about his father's fate stirred worldwide interest. It also revealed the eccentric ways of the secrecy-loving clan. As reporters gathered outside the office of Munich Architect Jens Hackenjos, young Mengele's stepbrother, Hackenjos sent his wife Sabine, accompanied by Herbert Bauermeister, a free-lance journalist, to inform newspeople that her husband had already handed over Rolf's statement to German wire-service agencies. At his own apartment Hackenjos opened his door just a crack, checked identifications, prohibited photographs and demanded that the handful of journalists he admitted give him receipts for copies of the statement.