crime
High penalties in the Starnberg triple murder trial
One of the defendants is led into the high-security courtroom before sentencing. photo
© Sven Hoppe/dpa
The act caused widespread outrage. Parents and son are shot in their house in Starnberg. What first looks like an extended suicide was triple homicide. A friend of the son shot the gun.
The two accused wanted to lead a cool gangster life, says the presiding judge Regina Holstein. But there was a lack of money. In order to get hold of a friend’s illegal weapons store and sell it, the main defendant decided to kill the friend. He brought the co-accused on board.
In the end, according to the judge, he not only shot his friend, but also his parents. He then filmed the crime scene. He literally “executed” his victims, the judge said in her five-hour verdict: The son was asleep, the parents were unsuspecting in the bedroom.
After a year and a half of the trial for the triple murder in Starnberg, the Munich II Regional Court sentenced the 22-year-old main defendant to 13 years of youth imprisonment for three counts of murder. The co-defendant got eight years and six months for one murder.
The 21-year-old had only driven the other to the crime scene. The court sees him as an accomplice in the murder of the buddy. The 21-year-old’s defense announced that it would appeal.
The act in January 2020 also made headlines because the investigators initially assumed that the son had shot his parents and then himself. The main defendant had put the murder weapon in his hand to fake a suicide.
Rampage plans and guns
The 22-year-old had made a comprehensive confession a year ago. He also acknowledged that he wanted to get the guns through the murders. In addition, he wanted to prevent a killing spree that his friend was planning, the judge said in the verdict, which lasted several hours.
When his amok plans seemed to become more concrete, he decided that the crime had to be done now – on the one hand to prevent worse things from happening, on the other hand because otherwise he would not have been able to get hold of the weapons.
According to the court, the 21-year-old co-accused was involved in the planning of the murder of the friend and had driven the main perpetrator to the crime scene. It is clear “that he did it as an accomplice”. The young man, who is primarily interested in externals such as cars and expensive clothing, knew that his son was to be killed that night so that his weapons could be obtained. The murder of the parents had not been agreed.
The main defendant spoke of several hundred thousand euros that the sale could bring, the judge said. But selling guns wasn’t easy. To get money, the two committed a robbery. They were arrested a little later.
“I’ve been waiting for the police”
Nothing was noticed after the fact, the judge said. The day after, the main defendant went to a pizzeria with his parents. However, she appreciated his willingness to testify in the process and rated his statements – including those that incriminated the co-defendant – as credible. He had tried to clarify the matter comprehensively. When he was arrested by the police, he was almost free: “I was waiting for the police,” he said.
The co-accused, however, had remained silent. His defense plans the revision. His client’s complicity has been “no longer tenable” since his plea, lawyer Alexander Stevens told the German Press Agency. He justifies this by saying that the murder weapon, which was later found in the hand of the friend who was killed, can be seen in a video from the crime scene. The main defendant says in the video that these are the weapons that he is about to take with him. From this Stevens concludes that his client could not have known about the plan to make it look like a suicide. He had asked for acquittal of the murder charge.
The prosecution had demanded high juvenile sentences for murder for the two accused. In her plea, she spoke out in favor of 13 years and six months in prison and the reservation of preventive detention.
The request was unusual. Because the public prosecutor’s office demanded exactly the same punishment for the 22-year-old German, who had admitted the crime, as for the 21-year-old Slovak, who was not present at the crime scene. In addition, in juvenile criminal law there is a maximum sentence of ten years for murder. If adolescents between the ages of 18 and 21 are convicted under juvenile criminal law, up to 15 years is only possible in rare cases in the case of murder with a particularly serious degree of guilt.
The main defendant’s lawyer had fallen only slightly short of the prosecution’s demand. He spoke out in favor of twelve years in prison for his client. This appeared repentant. “I wanted to apologize to all the family, even though I know that my actions are not excusable,” he said in his last word.