crime
Kalletal murder suspect makes partial confession
The accused next to his defense attorney in the district court of Detmold. photo
© Friso Gentsch/dpa
The motive is jealousy. According to forensic medicine, the defendant acted with tremendous force. The 37-year-old confesses to being attacked with an ax. He is also accused of multiple rapes before the Detmold district court.
He keeps his eyes down all the time. The 37-year-old cannot be looked at in the face. But the so-called ax murderer from Kalletal made a partial confession on Monday at the start of the trial at the Detmold district court, and had his defense attorney Johannes Salmen read a corresponding statement. He admits to the fatal ax attack on his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend on June 18, 2022.
He noticed that the couple had slept together. The two lay naked next to each other on the sofa bed. “I couldn’t stand it,” said the Azerbaijani accordingly. He then took the ax out of the garage. The victim came from Rinteln in Lower Saxony.
According to prosecutors, the accused first killed the sleeping man with an ax while under the influence of drugs while the woman lay next to him. Then he is said to have repeatedly raped his ex-girlfriend in another room in the apartment. The defendant denies this. The sexual intercourse was consensual. This is how the 37-year-old describes it.
The accused gets caught up in contradictions
The man with short dark hair, jeans and a brown sweater then answers questions through an interpreter. When it comes to drug use, he gets caught up in contradictions. For years he claims to have consumed soft drugs and later received those killed in return for undeclared work. When it comes to quantities, however, he sometimes answers like this, sometimes like that. Sometimes he can name the number of grams, sometimes not.
With regard to the motif, the 37-year-old describes how, shortly after the outbreak of war in the Ukraine, he fled with his then-girlfriend and her children from a village about seven kilometers from the front line via Poland to Germany. The later victim helped them here. “He got us an apartment and jobs for me,” the accused read out. But he quickly found out that the man and his girlfriend were a couple. “I was able to understand what the two had written to each other on the cell phone.” He also informed the wife of the later victim about this. Later he was thrown out of the apartment, lived in the forest and fought his way through with odd jobs. The widow is sitting in the courtroom as a joint plaintiff.
The man is a repeat offender
The crime was followed by a week-long search and the accused fled in the direction of Poland. In doing so, he terrified the population in North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Brandenburg. The police called on the population and truck drivers to be careful.
The 37-year-old was previously in prison for a comparable act with an ax. The Detmold district court quoted a judgment from Ukraine. Accordingly, the man without professional training had killed a woman in Ukraine about ten years ago. According to his own statement, he was sentenced to nine years in prison and was released after seven years. Again, the motive was jealousy. According to the verdict, he first attacked his then-girlfriend with a knife while she was under the influence of alcohol. When the blade broke off, he killed the woman with an ax blow.
2022 then in Germany a similar act. According to a forensic doctor who testified as a witness in the trial, the ax could only be removed from the victim in Kalletal in the forensic doctor. The weapon had penetrated the skull nine centimeters deep. “The ax must have been used from above with great force,” said doctor Bernd Karger before the district court.
The defendant’s ex-girlfriend lives in Ukraine again. She refuses to come to Germany to testify as a witness out of fear, according to Chief Public Prosecutor Christopher Imig. Therefore, the court is now examining a survey by video.
The regional court is expected to announce a verdict in early February.