In the trial of a triple murder in Starnberg, the accessory prosecutor is demanding the maximum sentence for the alleged main perpetrator. “Anything other than the maximum sentence is inappropriate,” said a lawyer for the relatives on Friday before the Munich II Regional Court. “The three deserve justice.”
After the violent death of a young man and his parents in January 2020, the Munich II public prosecutor’s office had demanded thirteen and a half years in prison for the 22-year-old friend of the killed young man, who admitted in the trial that he had shot his friend and his parents. The maximum sentence would be 15 years. The prosecution also demanded thirteen and a half years in prison for the man’s alleged accomplice.
The representative of the accessory prosecutor lagged behind this demand. She demands ten years for the 21-year-old. Actually, in juvenile criminal law, even murder has a maximum sentence of ten years. However, if adolescents – i.e. people aged 18, 19 and 20 – are convicted under juvenile criminal law, up to 15 years are possible in rare cases of murder with a particularly serious degree of guilt.
The main defendant confessed to the crimes at trial – in contrast to his co-defendant. He also admitted that he also wanted to get his pal’s guns through the murders, in order to sell them for a lot of money. He also wanted to prevent a killing spree that his friend had planned in a shopping center.
The fact also made headlines because the investigators were initially on the wrong track. They had suspected that one of the victims, the young man, had first shot his parents and then himself. “He should be buried as a murderer,” said the family’s lawyer. “It almost worked.”
Fighting back tears, the sister of the dead woman spoke up herself. She spoke of an “emotional stress test that we would never wish on anyone else” and “Three from our family who are simply gone”. Again and again the relatives have “pictures of the last minutes in their lives” in mind. “They had goals, aspirations and a future. That was just taken away from them.” The act was “senseless and cruel”. She hopes that the two young men in prison will understand what they have done: “Really having to endure guilt takes a lot more courage than the act itself.”