Patience, noun. The dictionary explains this as a “calm and controlled endurance of something that is unpleasant or takes a very long time.” This virtue is currently in demand at the 1st Jury Chamber at the Munich I Regional Court, which is trying to clarify the events surrounding the death of the prostitute Luca V. “I didn’t do that,” assures the accused partner Philip O., before continuing to talk verbosely past the court’s questions. But the evidence that public prosecutor Matthias Enzler has compiled and which is gradually being incorporated into the trial seems weighty.
Enzler assumes that the defendant strangled his partner in a Munich hotel. The reason is said to have been arguments about the 25-year-old’s job. O. is said to have brought the woman’s body to Berg in the Starnberg district, set it on fire and buried it.
When it comes to patience, the presiding judge Elisabeth Ehrl deserves a hardworking star. If she ever says, “Now don’t let every word come out of your mouth,” then that means something. Philip O. should comment “on the matter,” as they say in court. But when asked about the days before the woman’s disappearance, he can’t remember anything.
The court is trying to give him a time frame: At the end of November 2021, the couple was in Berlin, where Luca V. was engaged in prostitution. According to the travel details, O. drove from Berlin to Budapest on November 20th and back the next day. “You are said to have met someone in a café in Budapest,” says the judge. “In a café?” asks O., “I don’t drink coffee”.
Answers like this fill the morning. O. is said to have rented a car in Berlin and driven to Munich with his girlfriend, “I have no memory of that.” Here they lived in a hotel on Ottobrunner Strasse while Luca V. pursued prostitution in Haidhausen.
Philip O. denies that he drove her to customers. After what feels like a hundred questions later, he thinks this is “possible”. According to statements from clients, Luca V. seemed “unprofessional, bored and naive,” the court said, and that they wanted to hear the clients as witnesses. “I don’t want that!” shouts the defendant. Unless they were also accused. “We don’t even begin to assume that,” explains Elisabeth Ehrl. Rather, it remains to be seen whether Luca V. pursued prostitution “not entirely voluntarily.”
Luca V. left the hotel on November 25th. “I couldn’t reach her by phone anymore, I thought she had run away,” claims the defendant. The next day, O. called his ex-girlfriend and suggested that they get back together. From November 25th there will no longer be any activity noticeable on Luca V.’s cell phone. Prosecutor Enzler thinks that the woman died that day and O. brought the body to Berg on the 26th. Philip O. claims he met Luca V. in Budapest in December. There are no witnesses for this. The Google Cloud and GPS data in his cell phone were deactivated between November 25th and 27th.
When the police called Philip O. in Budapest in January 2022 and told them about the discovery of the body, O. is said to have immediately reset his cell phone to factory settings and deleted his Google account. And last but not least, a tuft of hair was found on Luca V.’s body. Her light hair mixed with dark hair. An expert will explain whether the hair could have come from the defendant.