A winter weekend in Mistelbach, Sunday morning, just after midnight. Mistelbach is a small community, seven kilometers away from Bayreuth, with almost 2000 inhabitants. You know each other. You appreciate the quiet. But on January 9 of this year, around 1 a.m., the nocturnal silence is broken. Residents hear cries for help from the house next door and call the police. The officials drive off immediately, and yet they arrive too late. In the basement of the house they find the bodies of their parents. Both have stab wounds. Also present are three of the couple’s four children. But the eldest daughter and her boyfriend, who is said to have stayed regularly in the house, are missing.
With a large contingent, the police are looking for the murderer or murderers. Around four o’clock in Bayreuth, the then 18-year-old boyfriend of the 16-year-old daughter of the stabbed couple turned himself in to the police; the girlfriend accompanies him. In the first interrogation, the young man confesses to the murder of his girlfriend’s parents.
The trial to clarify how Mistelbach’s double murder came about begins this Wednesday before the Bayreuth district court. The trial is intended to clarify why the young man allegedly stabbed the 51-year-old father, a pediatrician known in the region, and his 47-year-old wife, who had worked as a doctor at the Bayreuth Clinic, while they were sleeping. The process should also clarify what role the 16-year-old daughter played in the act.
After the 18-year-old, a trained plumber, turned himself in in January, the public prosecutor’s office initially investigated exclusively against him. Since he was “under strong suspicion,” he was immediately taken into custody. The police initially took care of the eldest daughter of the murdered couple and her three siblings, and later they were also looked after by emergency pastoral care and the youth welfare office. A first statement from the police and the public prosecutor’s office just said one day after the crime that the four children were “in different rooms of the house” during the crime.
While the investigators were still investigating how the “outbreak of violence” could have happened, the excitement in the small community was great. The father wanted to inaugurate a new, 1000 square meter practice with his partner – the opening of “med4kidz” was planned for the week after the double murder. 40 employees, ten paediatricians, and suddenly one of the two bosses, who had also taken over part of the financing, was missing. Since this was not yet completed, money was suddenly missing. The practice partner started a fundraiser, also on Twitter, he collected successfully.
“He lost a great boss and pediatrician,” he wrote, “and a wonderful person.” In “med4kidz” the “cordiality and passion” of the pediatrician should “live on” – “just as he wanted it himself”. The practice partner, but also many other residents who spoke up on television and the local newspaper, also expressed concern about the four children whose parents had been taken away.
The motive for the crime could be “disputes within the family”.
Almost six weeks after the crime, the police and public prosecutor’s office reported that an arrest warrant had been issued against another person, against the 16-year-old daughter. This is said to have been involved as an “accomplice” in the murder of her own parents, and she is now also in custody. The couple “made the decision together”.
According to the investigations at the time, the 18-year-old friend is said to have stabbed his parents with a knife that January night – and the daughter is suspected of having enabled him to “unhindered the execution of the crime”. The police and public prosecutor’s office named “disputes within the family” as a possible motive for the crime. The police and prosecutors refused further information, referring to the young age of the two suspects.
In the trial before the Bayreuth district court, 16 days of trial have been scheduled so far. If no more are needed, the verdict could come in December.