Anneli was taken at 7.30pm last Thursday evening and at 7.57pm one of the kidnappers rang her father with a one million euro ransom demand on her mobile telephone. In the background, her businessman father could hear her screams.

They did not contact the family again and police believe she was killed the same day.

Police said she was not chosen randomly, that at least one of her kidnappers knew her by sight and had studied her Facebook page. 

Jobless cook Markus B., 39, and gold dealer Norbert K., 61, are said to have confessed to the kidnap and murder since their arrests on Monday, Bild has reported.

Markus B., married with two sons, bought a house last year near Bamberg in Bavaria for £250,000. 

Police used sniffer dogs and a heat-seeking helicopter to find the body of Anneli-Marie R who was snatched off the street last week

A murder squad in Dresden said her corpse was discovered in an abandoned farmyard in Klipphausen

He is the son-in-law of the owner of farmland near Dresden where a sniffer dog found Anneli on Tuesday morning.

His DNA was found on the body, police said. He has one criminal conviction for fraud.

In 2006 he founded a firm called Rent-a-Cook he thought would make him rich, but it went bust within three years. He was heavily in debt by the time he was arrested.

Norbert K. from Dresden trained as a forestry worker and owned a flower shop in the port city of Wilhelmshaven before it went bust. He later became a dealer in precious metals.

A string of ex wives have called him a ‘professional liar’ and someone ‘greedy for money’. He too was in debt.

The defendants met in 2014 and dreamed of the ‘the big one’ that would change their lives. They read about Anneli on her Facebook page and plotted the kidnapping that would end in tragedy.

In accordance with German law, the full name of the victim and her alleged killers have not been revealed. One man was arrested in Bamberg, Bavaria, the other in Dresden.

HOW KIDNAPPING ECHOES THE VIOLENCE OF 1970S WEST GERMAN GANG

The kidnap and murder of Anneli-Marie R. has chilling echoes of the regular abductions carried out 40 years ago by left-wing gang Baader-Meinhof.

The West German group sparked terror across the country as it launched a brutal campaign of assassinations, kidnappings and bombings against the nation’s elite and US military.

Also known as the Red Army Faction, the group was formed by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof amid student protests in the late 1960s and the anti-Vietnam war movement. 

Baader-Meinhof sparked terror across the country as it launched a campaign of assassinations, kidnappings and bombings against the nation’s elite and US military

In 1975, members seized the German Embassy in Sweden before shooting dead two of the hostages, both attachés, during the 11-hour siege after Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had refused to give in to demands that all the suspects be released.

Activity peaked in 1977, leading to a national crisis that became known as the German Autumn. It was in this year that the head of Dresdner Bank, Jürgen Ponto, was shot and killed in front of his house in Oberursel in a botched kidnapping.

Later that year, Hanns Martin Schleyer, a former officer of the SS and the then President of the German Employers’ Association was abducted in a violent kidnapping. 

Schleyer’s convoy was stopped by kidnappers before five masked assailants immediately shot and killed the three policemen and the driver. One of the group produced her weapon from a pram she was pushing down the road.

A letter then arrived with the Federal Government, demanding the release of eleven detainees. But a month later, the group announced that it had executed the industrialist. 

The gang is suspected of killing 34 people in a series of attacks between 1972 and 1991 before finally disbanding in 1998.

The prosecutor assigned to their case warned they face the possibility of life behind bars for murder, kidnapping and blackmail. 

Germany has been plunged into grief at the brutal crime. Anneli’s family has been inundated with messages of goodwill, including one from Chancellor Angela Merkel.

A police blackout on the abduction was lifted on Monday after weekend negotiations with the kidnappers broke down. 

Her parents begged for her safe return and pledged to pay the men who took her whatever they wanted.

They said in an open letter to their daughter’s abductors: ‘The kidnappers should know that we will fulfill their demands in order to be able to take our child in our arms again soon.’

Following her death, her parents said in a statement: ‘Anneli, we miss you, we are with you.’

They are now both in the care of police psychologists.

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