A mobile phone belonging to a woman who disappeared on her way to IKEA three years ago has been recovered by police.
Investigators found the device next to bones identified as the remains of 23-year-old student Yolanda Klug on 2nd March.
When Yolanda disappeared from Leipzig, Germany, on 25th September 2019, police established she had last used her phone at 2pm.
Now they are trying to reconstruct where she had been with the device before her death and who might have been trying to contact her.
A walker in a forest near the town of Freyburg, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, found her bones last month (February).
But despite intensive investigations, the Leipzig Public Prosecutor’s Office says it still has not discovered how Yolanda died.
The authorities said: “How the young woman died has not yet been finally clarified.”
Yolanda was a former follower of the Scientology sect but is understood to have fled the group two years before she disappeared.
Investigators are understood to be looking at her connections to the notoriously secretive organisation.
Her father – named as Peter Klug – her mother and her sister have all held senior roles within the sect.
Local media reports that her father took courses on a Scientology cruise ship and her mother was a press officer for the Swiss branch of the organisation.
Her sister was a member of the SeaOrg, also known as the Sea Organization, a Scientologist group.
Investigators are said to have followed one trail of clues to Denmark, where Scientology’s European head office is based.
Before her disappearance, Yolanda reportedly had dinner with her father and told him about her plans for the following day.
The next morning she reportedly told her flatmates she was taking a bus to IKEA and would meet up with a pal in the evening.
But she was never heard from again.
After officials took a hold of the remains, they carried out forensic tests which confirmed that they belonged to her.
They said: “The forensic examination of the bones revealed that they are human bones and that they come from Yolanda Klug.”
There was also reportedly EUR 8,000 (GBP 7,000) in Yolanda’s bank account, which was untouched and which led investigators to rule out theft as a motive for her death.
Revealing that further investigations are needed to establish how she died, investigators added: “There are currently no indications of third-party negligence.”
The investigation is ongoing.