16.03.2016
The Regional Court in Bonn has sentenced the defendant for manslaughter to an imprisonment of eleven years.
According to the court’s findings the defendant had intentionally killed his wife, who wanted to separate from him after a failed attempt at reconciliation. He firstly pushed her down the stairs. As this suicide attempt failed, he tried to break her neck and finally choked her until death occurred.
The Regional Court in Bonn was unable to produce findings on how the defendant had managed to dispose of the corpse of his wife, which was not found despite extensive search measures by the authorities. The verdict of the court was significantly based on the testimony of a witness who after the broadcast of the case in the TV show "Mystery still unresolved" had speculated on an Internet forum about the perpetrator. She later started an affair with the defendant and it cannot be excluded that the reason for the intimate relationship was her willingness to "figure something out about the murder" in this way. In the course of the relationship the defendant admitted to the woman that he had committed the murder and told her that he had dismembered and disposed of the body of his wife.
With a judgement the German Federal Court annulled the verdict due to error in law, namely in the assessment of the evidence and the case was therefore remitted to a new hearing and decision by the Regional Court in Bonn.
The Regional Court has not critically assessed the information provided by the witness on the alleged "confession" of the defendant, although the defendant had stated that the witness had made it clear the intimate relationship would only continue if he confessed to her he had killed his wife. In addition, the Regional Court has not sufficiently explained why it has taken into consideration the description of the defendant on how he committed the murder but did not take into account his explanation on how he had managed to remove the corpse of his deceased wife.
Source: Bundesgerichtshof Beschluss vom 27. Oktober 2015 in der Strafsache gegen
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