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Murdered: The body of a ten-year-old boy, named only as Mirco, was found last week four months after he went missing
German police have arrested a top phone company executive who kidnapped and murdered a 10 year-old boy - because he had a bad day at the office.

'It was all the stress at work. The boss gave me a hard time and I had this overwhelming desire to kill a child,' the murderer told police after a five-month manhunt which led to the arrest.

The man, who has only been identified as 45-year-old Olaf H because of German privacy laws, phoned his wife as he drove home from work near Bonn to tell her about his miserable day and to say he might be late.

'I drove around aimlessly looking for a random victim, a child because I wanted to have power over somebody,' he said in a reported statement.

'A girl or a boy it didn't matter. I needed somebody so I could relieve my frustration.'

His victim was a boy named by police only as Mirco who was cycling home at 10pm after spending the evening at a skating rink.

He made the boy climb into his car before raping and then strangling him.

He dumped the body in a wood at Grefrath, near the Belgian border.

Olaf's career took a turn for the better after the murder. His boss promoted him, gave him a pay rise and put him in charge of a department with 150 workers.

'I had no more worries,' he said in the statement.

Although the boy's disappearance shocked the whole country, nobody suspected the devoted family man with a 26-year-old wife Michaela and two children aged two and 17 from a previous marriage.

Then a member of the public gave the cops a decisive tip. He had seen a blue VW Passat being driven in the area on the night when the boy went missing.

Police traced the owners of 2000 Passat cars, including one leased vehicle which had been sold soon after the killing . The German cops traced the vehicle to Russia and found traces of DNA in the boot and on the back seat.

These matched the DNA of OIaf H, the former leasee of the car, and he made a confession after showing detectives the spot where he had dumped the boy's body.

'Having a bad day at the office is no excuse for murder,' said a detective. 'This man just wanted to exercise his power over a helpless child. It's a case for the psychiatrists.'