2 Confess to Killing Orange Man in Spain : Crime: West Germans in custody on another charge reportedly direct police to missing tourist’s grave. X-rays and medical records have been requested for a positive identification.

The family of a missing Orange man said Tuesday that two West German men have apparently confessed to killing Steve Juggert, who disappeared more than a year ago while vacationing in Europe.

Juggert’s brother-in-law, Bob Oppermann of La Habra, said the State Department informed him that the two West German suspects, already in custody in Spain in connection with another murder, directed police to a shallow grave on Spain’s southern coast where they said the Bell native’s body was buried.

The grave was unearthed and remains of a body were found, Oppermann said. Spanish authorities have since requested Juggert’s X-rays and other medical records from his family to try to make a positive identification.

The grave was outside the coastal town of Huelva, where $1,300 of Juggert’s traveler’s checks were cashed under forged signatures a year ago. .

State Department officials declined to comment on the case, but Oppermann said they told him that Erich Diettmat Dammers, 37, and Hans Jurgen Schelitz, 33, admitted to Spanish police that they killed Juggert, who was hitchhiking through Europe on a yearlong break from his Orange County sales job.

The suspects also admitted responsibility for the murders of a West German and a Belgian between October, 1988, and January, 1989, according to Spanish police officials quoted in last Friday’s editions of Diario 16, a Madrid newspaper.

The two West Germans were originally arrested two months ago on suspicion of killing a British tourist in Spain in November, 1988.

In all, according to Spanish authorities, the West German men are now suspected of killing four people and robbing more than 100 tourists--including at least six other Americans--traveling in southern Spain over the past five years.

Oppermann said he was told by State Department officials that the suspects last month identified Juggert, 30, from a photograph as one of their victims. U.S. officials told Oppermann that their information was based on reports from Spanish police, who are overseeing the investigation.

Oppermann, 31, filed a missing-person report on Juggert last August.

On Friday, Oppermann said he had mailed various X-ray charts to Spain. Spanish authorities had sought dental records, but the family was not able to produce any, hampering the identification effort, according to La Habra Police Detective K. L. Wilson, who is acting as liaison between Juggert’s family and Spanish police.

Oppermann and other family members said Tuesday that they are already convinced that the body found in the grave is Juggert’s.

“It’s all but official,” said Oppermann, who has been leading the family’s investigation into the disappearance. “You think you’re prepared, but it’s still a devastating blow.”

“It hurts like hell,” added Susan Ramage of Orange, Juggert’s former girlfriend and mother of their 5-year-old daughter, Jenni-Sue. “I don’t know what to tell Jenni-Sue. She still thinks her daddy is coming back.”

Ramage said that if Juggert’s body is identified, the family plans to have his remains returned to Southern California for burial.

In Spain, Malaga Police Chief Atiliano Sanchez told Diario 16 that the two West Germans allegedly robbed their victims and abandoned them in isolated areas. Survivors have told police that they were rendered unconscious after drinking wine, which authorities suspect was spiked.

The dead British tourist, Matias Paulmann, 25, whose body was found in a hotel room near Malaga in November, 1988, was believed to have died after consuming the doctored drink. The West German suspects were arrested a year later by Malaga police in connection with Paulmann’s death.

One apparent survivor, Greg Gawlowski, 33, a photographer from the San Francisco area, said that two men matching the description of the West Germans in custody offered him a ride while he was traveling through coastal Spain at the same time as Juggert.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Gawlowski said the men, whom he described as about 30 and speaking English with a German accent, approached him at a rail terminal in Algeciras, Spain, a port city on the southern coast. They invited Gawlowski to accompany them in a private car to Austria.

Returning from a vacation in Morocco en route to Geneva, Switzerland, where he was living at the time, Gawlowski said he accepted the offer after the men warned him that the Spanish train system would be paralyzed by a strike the following day.

“They were real friendly,” he said. “I felt extremely lucky to have run into these people.”

Setting out in a festive mood, the three had journeyed no more than 10 minutes outside Algeciras when one of the men poured three glasses of wine for a toast to their new friendship.

“I took two sips and blacked out immediately,” Gawlowski related. “The next thing I knew, I woke up in a concrete drainage culvert--19 hours later. They had taken my camera, passport, glasses, $300 in Swiss francs and $140 in traveler’s checks.”

Upon hearing last month of Juggert’s disappearance, Gawlowski contacted Spanish police and offered his assistance. They have sent photographs of the Germans in custody for him to identify.

“I do feel lucky that I’m alive,” he said.

Steven Juggert of Orange took a year off from his sales job to hitchhike through Europe; his family last heard from him around Christmas, 1988, while he was traveling through Spain.