This nice old granny is the 'Phantom Killer' police were searching for after her DNA was found at 39 crime scenes across Europe - because she made the cotton buds used to collect evidence!

BILD tracked down Erika S.* (71), and she certainly doesn't look like your average 'killer'. She was pictured in a woolly jumper carrying a basket of eggs through a quiet village in Bavaria in Germany.

The 'Phantom Killer' Phantom killer a myth Police track DNA of a cotton bud maker Germany's 'phantom killer' was revealed as a myth after police tracked the DNA of the maker of cotton buds used to collect evidence for two years.

But she unintentionally caused the biggest murder mystery since the Second World War.

Erika was responsible for packing cotton buds used by police to collect DNA at crime scenes, but her own DNA was somehow left all over the swabs.

Police found the trace at different crime scenes in Germany and all over Europe and believed her to be the culprit.

The hunt for the ‘Phantom Killer’ baffled investigators as her DNA was found at seven different murder sites.

In 2007 a police woman was shot dead in the German town of Heilbronn and the DNA was found at the scene. Detectives couldn’t work out why it showed up time and time again.

The police believed the culprit to be a woman involved in the drug scene. They then decided that it could be a transsexual, or even a woman who looked like a man!

Thousands of saliva tests were taken, and still nothing came up.

While detectives were running out of ideas, Erika continued to diligently and unsuspectingly pack the cotton buds for the company which supplied them to the police.

In March, investigators announced the embarrassing fiasco to the general public: The DNA found at 39 different sites actually belongs to a worker at the cotton bud company!

BILD found the respectable pensioner in a little village in Bavaria. Erika S. no longer works for the company. According to reports, she was not careful enough when she handled the swabs. Her husband told BILD: “My wife is fed up with the whole thing.”

* name changed