crime
New trial for murdered woman: husband denies murder charges
The defendant holds a piece of paper in front of his face in the courtroom. His lawyers are in the background. photo
© Peter Kneffel/dpa
At first it was said to have been suicide, then the defendant spoke of a scuffle in which a shot was fired. The public prosecutor’s office speaks of a real execution.
In the newly reopened Munich trial against a man for the alleged murder of his wife, the defendant has once again denied the allegations against him. “I have my Woman not shot,” said the 64-year-old on Tuesday in front of the Munich I regional court and repeatedly burst into tears. “I’m still wearing our wedding ring.”
The public prosecutor accuses him of killing his wife, who had separated from him, with a shot in the head. The woman’s death in 2015 had long been treated as a suicide, but after doubts arose, prosecutors finally filed murder charges against the husband years later.
Initially acquitted due to lack of evidence
At the end of a circumstantial evidence trial that lasted more than a year, the Munich I Regional Court acquitted the man in February 2022 due to a lack of evidence.
Even if the chamber had considerable doubts about the defendant’s presentation, the court decided: “in dubio pro reo, in case of doubt for the defendant” and convicted the man only for illegal possession of weapons. However, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe overturned this acquittal of the murder charge. That’s why the defendant is now back in custody.
The public prosecutor’s office assumes that he killed his wife – mother of their five children – after a 17-year relationship “driven by jealousy” because she had recently separated from him and had entered into relationships with other men. The indictment describes a real execution scenario: the man is said to have forced her to kneel and then put the gun to her temple.
The defendant denies the crime scenario
According to the prosecution, the couple’s relationship was difficult and the defendant was jealous and controlling. “The accused, who wanted to have the injured party all to himself, increasingly isolated her from friends and family and controlled her every move,” said the prosecutor. “The injured party had tried several times to escape the stressful and perceived oppressive situation by separating from the accused, but – because they had children together – she had always returned to the accused. The couple’s children were between 4 and 14 years old old when her mother died.
The defendant denies the crime scenario. In court, he reported consensual sex games with the pistol and said, sobbing, that he had tried to take the gun out of his angry and desperate wife’s hands during a scuffle that evening in 2015. Then a shot was fired. “Then suddenly I saw blood.” The 64-year-old said his wife had tried to take her own life several times before that day.
The first trial lasted more than a year, and the court has now scheduled 13 days of hearings for the second. The verdict could therefore come on December 6th.