Justice
Dead woman on A9 – defendants deny involvement in murder
The murder trial begins in Potsdam. photo
© Soeren Stache/dpa
A woman is found dead in her car on a highway. The background has long been completely unclear. Now the murder trial has begun in Potsdam – and both defendants have spoken out.
Eight months after the violent death of a teacher on Autobahn 9, the ex-boyfriend and the suspected shooter have each rejected the accusation of involvement in the murder. “I would never have killed or had my son’s mother killed,” the 42-year-old ex-boyfriend said in court. “I have nothing to do with death (…).” The former school friend and suspected shooter also denied in an hour-long statement that of shooting a woman.
According to the prosecution, the woman was killed in May 2023 on the hard shoulder of the A9 against the background of a dispute with her ex-partner over their son. In the eyes of the father, the woman had increasingly become a disruptive factor in the father-son relationship, said State Secretary Maria Stiller at the start of the trial in the Potsdam regional court. The public prosecutor’s office accuses both Germans of having “treacherously and for base motives murdered the 40-year-old woman using a firearm” on the A9 motorway in Brandenburg in May last year.
The school friend, also 42, admitted that he had spied on his friend’s ex-partner on his behalf with an eye on the child and that he had later burned the vehicle that the woman was said to have forced onto the motorway before the murder. He was asleep at the time of the crime. However, he noticed how the argument between his school friend and his ex-girlfriend was getting bigger. But he didn’t trust him to do the crime. “I couldn’t believe what had happened.”
In May 2023, the police discovered the 40-year-old woman dead in the parked car on the A9 between the Beelitz and Brück junctions (Potsdam-Mittelmark district). More than 160 witnesses are expected in the trial so far.