How did a young mother from the Bavarian Forest die in October 2016? The question should be clarified in a process in Deggendorf. According to the prosecutor, the 20-year-old was stabbed while she slept – he demanded a conviction for murder.
Deggendorf (dpa / lby) – In the retrial for the killing of a 20-year-old woman from Freyung in Lower Bavaria in October 2016, the public prosecutor at the Deggendorf district court pleaded for the accused to be convicted of murder. He called for the determination of the particular severity of the guilt. He is convinced that the 28-year-old stabbed his ex-girlfriend to death in her apartment while she was sleeping. That means the murder characteristic of insidiousness, prosecutor Stefan Brunner said on Monday. He also proceeded from base motives.
The defendant took advantage of the suspicion and defenselessness of the sleeping person, did not accept the separation and wanted to enforce his will to power and claim ownership, and wanted to ensure that he was “the last one” with postmortem intercourse. In addition, he had consumed vodka before the crime so that he could later argue that he was not guilty and began preparing to escape just a few hours after the crime. The defendant behaved in a particularly indifferent manner towards the victim.
Numerous, essentially congruent witness statements underpin this version of the crime, as well as the results of the expert reports, said Brunner. The victim’s injuries and the traces of blood in the apartment could only have come from a killing in his sleep. The defendant also had no profound disturbance of consciousness. He planned the escape properly and later pretended via cell phone messages to relatives that his victim was still alive.
The presence of the son also speaks against the defendant’s version – that his former girlfriend reached for the knife in the kitchen, the argument shifted to the bedroom and he took the knife from her and stabbed her during the argument. The boy was said to have been lying in his bed in the bedroom and because, according to witnesses, he had been a light sleeper, it cannot be assumed that his mother ran screaming and with a knife in her hand into the bedroom of all places.
In their closing speeches, the co-plaintiffs agreed with the public prosecutor’s claim. Defense attorneys’ pleadings are expected on September 26.
The victim’s mother, who sat in the courtroom on each of the 26 days of the trial so far, found haunting and emotional words. Since the fact, no day has been the same. Her daughter is sorely missed and the pain is unbearable. “This criminal” put himself above everyone, took his daughter’s life and his own son’s mother. With her big heart and her good nature, her daughter repeatedly defended her boyfriend at the time, pulled him out of the mud and even turned away from her family for him.
She spoke of an insidious, unjustifiable and unforgivable act. The accused was too cowardly to take responsibility for his actions. In the little son, for whom the daughter would have liked to be a good mother, the daughter lives on. The co-plaintiff, with whom the boy has lived since then, said his “producer” was a complete stranger to him and should no longer be allowed to have contact with his son. She could not see any remorse from the accused.
In a first trial before the district court of Passau, the accused was finally sentenced to twelve years in prison for manslaughter in 2017. In May 2022, the current retrial began. This had become possible because in the first trial two witnesses had made false statements in favor of the accused. They were finally sentenced to suspended sentences in 2019.
