Initially it was a fire with a tragic outcome: a man died in the fire that broke out in an apartment in Memmingen on May 6th last year. The man left behind a wife and children, but the now 34-year-old’s grief was apparently limited, at least that’s what the public prosecutor’s investigation suggests: The prosecutors are convinced that the wife deliberately set the fire to kill her husband and thus enrich herself, among other things by paying out various life insurance policies. The trial starts on Tuesday before the Memmingen regional court. The public prosecutor accuses the woman of murder out of greed.
The trial begins at nine o’clock in the Grand Criminal Chamber of the Regional Court, meeting room 132. It is an extensive circumstantial trial with numerous trial days until the last week of August, in which interpreters for four languages are needed. Currently 75 witnesses and seven experts have been invited. The fire investigators from the criminal police quickly doubted that it was an accidental fire and that the widow was genuinely mourning, based on the evidence found in the apartment in an apartment building.
In addition to the now 34-year-old wife, her brother was also targeted by investigators, but these suspicions were not confirmed. Instead, the public prosecutor is convinced that the defendant had been planning to kill her husband for a long time and had apparently considered various options until she actually took action in May last year. She is said to have given her husband sleeping pills under some pretext, which is why he dozed off and didn’t wake up as he lay in a burning room.
According to investigations, the woman is said to have set several objects on fire before leaving the apartment and the entire property, leaving her husband and the other residents of the apartment building to their fate. A smoldering fire developed, causing the victim to die as a result of smoke inhalation. The fire department was called and got the man out of the room where he was lying, but the doctors at the hospital were no longer able to help him.
The public prosecutor’s office accuses the defendant of murder out of greed, according to which she is said to have killed her husband insidiously and with means that were dangerous to the public in order to make another crime possible. Her husband apparently had some high-value life insurance policies that she wanted to take advantage of after his death by portraying the fire as an accident.
The 34-year-old, who is in custody, has not yet provided any information about the crime. In this respect, the regional court scheduled 23 hearing dates throughout the summer to deal with the allegations. If convicted, the woman faces life in prison.