Remembering an Old Homicide in Germany

 

In my recently published memoirs (“My years in DEA and beyond: The drug war, anti-Semitism, and Islamist extremism”), I described an event that occurred in the late 1960s when I was a US military policeman stationed in Germany. While spending a month TDY in the US Army Field Training area at Grafenwoehr, I was assigned to act as an investigator at the MP station, basically doing interviews and following other leads for the Criminal Investigation Division (CID). At that time, I was paired with one of the MPs regularly stationed at Grafenwöhr, whose name I don’t recall. This was in December 1967. 

During the evening of December 17, two American soldiers were spending the evening drinking in the nearby town of  Amberg. They hailed a taxi, and while being driven by Walter Datzko, a 32-year-old taxi driver, one of the soldiers, Thomas Stanton Overko, 23, of New York State, pulled a gun and shot the driver to death with two bullets in the back of the head. The motive was apparently robbery. The other GI, Larry Allen Miller,19, of Junction City, Kansas, tried to drive the taxi away, but an automatic alarm in the vehicle prevented that. Overko made his escape on foot while Miller was shortly arrested by German police wandering not far from the cab. Miller identified Overko as the shooter, and the German and American military police began a massive search for Overko. 

Early the next morning, Overko made his way to the Grafenwoehr caserne weather station, where he called the MPs and told them where he was. The MPs, including my assigned partner, responded to the location, arrested Overko and seized the murder weapon.

So it was that around 8 am, that same morning, I reported for duty at the MP station and saw my partner and other MPs in the holding cell with Overko. He was being administered a paraffin test for gunpowder residue. I also recall the CID officer at the station arriving and instructing the MPs not to advise Overko of his rights or ask him any questions, that he would do that personally. 

Recently, I was going through old pictures from those days in Germany, and I came across an article I had cut out from the Overseas Weekly* dated December 24-31, 1967, describing the killing and providing much more detail than I had written in the above book (in which I had incorrectly described the incident as happening in 1968.) 

Heretofore, I had never followed up on the story of the judicial disposition of the case or whatever had happened to Overko and Miller. Turning to the Internet, I was able to determine that the two had both been convicted in a German court and sentenced to life imprisonment.

But what became of them?

I was able to determine that Overko died in Brooklyn, NY in 1999. 

Here is Overko’s entry from the Overko Family History page:

OVERKO, THOMAS STANTON, also known as THOMAS S OVERKO, was born 9 August 1944, is listed with the following 3 birthplaces: BEACON, New York; BUFFALO, New York; BROOKLYN, New York, son of ALEXANDER M (father) and JANE ANUSZKIEWICZ, was assigned Social Security number 072-34-3709 (indicating New York) based on interview documentation establishing he was a U.S. citizen or alien allowed to work, with evidence other than a birth record submitted, is listed as a U.S. citizen, and died 28 June 1999, while residing in Zip Code 11235-6204.
Check the Source file [free] and Archives.com for THOMAS STANTON OVERKO. [$]

Miller proved to be a tougher nut to track down with his common name. No longer privy to law enforcement criminal records, I was forced to resort to open-source documents, and, as you may imagine, many of those sources involve subscription fees. It appears certain that both were released by the Germans at some point, but when? 

I am still trying to determine when Overko and Miller were released and what ensued in their lives. I will update this story as more information becomes available.

*The Overseas Weekly was an English-language newspaper out of Frankfurt published by former US servicemen who had remained in Germany after discharge. Their focus was on sensational stories like these involving GIs and various scandals on the US military posts. I even subscribed to it for a while after returning stateside and civilian life. Opened in 1950, it closed down in 1975.

Source: http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2026/06/remembering-old-homicide-in-germany.html