Gießen (dpa/lhe) – Two defendants, one missing person and no corpse: The clarification of a suspected murder in central Hesse continues more than a year after the trial began. The Gießen district court has so far negotiated the case for 40 days and questioned more than 40 witnesses and various experts, as a court spokesman said.
The public prosecutor’s office accuses the two men of kidnapping their friend in November 2016 in order to extort ransom. They are said to have killed him in Hungen (Giessen district) and taken the body away. Despite extensive investigations that led to Lake Starnberg in Bavaria, the body of the 39-year-old has not been found to this day. The public prosecutor’s office assumes, among other things, murder.
At the beginning of the trial, one of the men denied any involvement in the crime and charged his co-accused. The second accused has been silent so far, the court spokesman said.
The alleged murder victim was shot dead with a handgun, according to the indictment. The victim’s body was said to have been dismembered and the remains buried in the forest and dumped in “deep water”.
In the course of the process, a search was again made for the missing person. At the beginning of this year, the jury court ordered that the Sachsensee near Hungen be searched for his body. But that was unsuccessful, the spokesman said. The process should last at least until the end of June.
