For the second time, the cruel crime against a young mother from the Bavarian Forest is being tried in court. The ex-boyfriend of the 20-year-old is accused. The statements of several witnesses incriminate him. The procedure is ongoing. An interim.
Deggendorf (dpa / lby) – It is a case of extraordinary brutality. The killing of a 20-year-old woman from Freyung in October 2016 is currently occupying the judiciary in Deggendorf in Lower Bavaria, leaving some of the observers speechless. The 28-year-old ex-boyfriend of the victim is accused in the district court. The key question that the trial seeks to answer is: did he stab his son’s mother while she was already asleep? Killing in his sleep would signify the murder trait of insidiousness. The verdict will not be pronounced on Friday (June 3) as originally planned. Additional trial days were scheduled.
A number of witnesses have already been heard at the trial. Their statements carry weight, and some of them find it visibly difficult to talk about the crime. It’s also about gruesome details. The victim’s mother regularly sits in the courtroom, directly across from the man who took her daughter. The accused was finally convicted in 2017, at that time before the district court of Passau, for manslaughter. Now the German faces a murder sentence.
The focus is on friends of the perpetrator and the victim, some of whom falsely testified in favor of the accused in the first trial. Untangling the sometimes contradictory statements and comparing them with countless chat messages is not easy. In addition: The friendships and relationships between the Witnesses were not always stable, sometimes one said something only to hurt the other and to take it back later. In essence, however, the statements coincide. At the beginning of the trial, the accused had it explained that the testimonies that led to the reopening of the trial were not correct. The defense attorneys doubt the credibility of the witnesses.
The former best friend of the accused was visibly tense. A few days after the crime, his friend told him on the way to a fast-food restaurant what happened that night: that his girlfriend finally wanted to break up with him – the now accused – that he was waiting in the living room until she slept next door while drinking vodka and then he stabbed her in bed. After the first stab in the neck, the woman probably wanted to say something that she was no longer able to say. He put the body in the bathtub to bleed out.
The witness’s ex-girlfriend said he told her about the car ride at the time. The girlfriend of the defendant’s brother also said that the defendant told his brother at the time that he had had sex with the corpse to the point of rigor mortis because he wanted to be the last to have sex with the woman. Even what was once my best friend reported hearing about it. It was obviously difficult for him to even talk about it.
Among the witnesses was a lawyer from Passau, who later questioned her best friend as an investigating judge because of his false testimony. The young man was very credible, she said. It seemed like he was extremely relieved to finally say everything he knew. As for the suspected abuse of the dead by the defendant, the witness seemed disgusted. It was also difficult for him to stab his once best friend in the back.
The prosecutor said she was shocked to learn from the witness that the defendant’s young son had been with the said car ride. He is said to have seemed less happy than usual. Even in the first trial, the question arose as to whether the boy had witnessed the crime himself. In any case, the grandmother, with whom the boy lives, testified that the little one screamed loudly at a birthday party shortly after the crime when a guest cut the cake with a knife.
The ex-girlfriend of the witness, who had also given false testimony in favor of the accused in the first trial in 2017, seemed “finished” during her interrogation, said the investigating judge at the time. The young woman had been in psychological treatment because of the case. The witness was not clear about the difference between manslaughter and murder. It was uncomfortable for her that the subject was brought up again because of her false statement.
What the procedure also makes clear: how much the act also affects the environment of the perpetrator. Friends and brothers, for example, who were presumably taken into their confidence and who had to and still have to deal with this knowledge. He wanted to completely suppress everything and have nothing more to do with it, said the former best friend.
Many questions are still open in the process. For example, whether the accused received help cleaning the apartment and fleeing – and if so, from whom. Some reviews are pending.
The case also caused a stir in 2016 because the perpetrator had hidden his victim in foil in the apartment and fled to Spain with his small son. From there, he used the victim’s cell phone to send messages to their relatives to reassure them. He also had a tattoo with the name and life data of the young woman and the phrase “Thank you for everything” on his arm. The 20-year-old’s mother discovered the body two weeks after the crime.
