“It could have affected anyone,” says judge Stephan Kirchinger, anyone whom Marcel L. (name changed) included in his distorted world of thoughts. In January 2023, his mother was hit, whom the now 21-year-old hit with the ax 23 times “with absolute intent to destroy.” The 1st Juvenile Criminal Chamber of the Munich I Regional Court sentenced Marcel L. to a youth sentence of eight years for murder and ordered him to be placed in a psychiatric hospital. The young man poses “a great danger,” explained Kirchinger. Therefore, after the time has expired, the Large Youth Chamber will decide whether preventive detention is also an option.
It was an “unprecedented crime,” said the experienced juvenile judge in his verdict, and an “incredibly brutal approach.” Fearing that his physical strength would not be sufficient, Marcel L. repeatedly hacked at his mother’s face and head from behind in the living room of the family home in Planegg. He hit her in the wrong places, “unfortunately it has to be said.” The woman lived for two hours and, according to forensic doctor Oliver Peschel, died from blood loss and inhaling blood into her lungs. But how could it come to this?
On the first day of the trial, Marcel L. described his vita extremely eloquently and anything but confused. After finishing school, he began training as a tax clerk in 2020. But this was too strenuous for him, working eight hours, “there wasn’t enough time for me.” He dropped out of school and lounged around in his childhood room at home: computer games, child pornography images, a life in his pajamas, the world limited to a few square meters of children’s room.
He lied to his parents that he was on sick leave due to depression or that he was trying to find work at the job center. The parents received child benefit for him, and when the family fund demanded repayment due to a lack of evidence, L.’s lie threatened to collapse. He grabbed the hatchet that was stored next to his bed and went into the living room where his mother was sitting on the floor packing for the family’s upcoming move.
The chamber saw the letter from the family fund as “the last straw that broke the camel’s back,” but not the decisive motive. When looking for the motives, an attempt was made to get involved in the defendant’s sometimes bizarre thoughts. Marcel L. planned to kill himself “because he couldn’t cope with himself and his relationship or lack of relationship with other people.” He ignored the ongoing move and his room was “his last refuge”. He was in danger of losing it.
He was practicing for an emergency
The chamber saw the second set of motives in the young man’s mental illness. Before he left his life, he wanted to “commit a crime and see what it was like to kill a person.” He chose his parents, with whom he said he got along well. He wanted to kill her and then himself, “so that they wouldn’t be sad about my death.” And he practiced for an emergency: Every Friday evening, says Kirchinger, Marcel L. stood in front of his parents’ room with the hatchet. Once he even crept over to his sleeping father, gun in hand. “And he was wondering whether he should do it now or not.”
The psychiatric expert Franz Joseph Freisleder had certified that the 21-year-old had a combined personality development disorder. The focus is on a schizoid accentuation, which also explains the defendant’s strangely emotionless and empathic behavior. If the situation were to be the same again, Marcel L. said, he would do it again.
Like Freisleder, the youth chamber also saw a “significantly limited ability to control” in L. However, his ability to understand was not impaired, “he knows that you shouldn’t kill his mother with an axe.” L. doesn’t misunderstand reality either; he perceives it rather distortedly. With regard to the murder characteristic of insidiousness, the chamber followed the request of public prosecutor Johanna Heidrich. However, she saw no base motives.
Marcel L., an inconspicuous young man with a long braid of hair, appeared motionless during the verdict, as he always did during the trial. Only when Kirchinger spoke to him directly did he raise his head. “To this day he has not understood what he has done,” said the presiding judge, and he refuses to deal with his potential for violence. In his condition, one could “expect anything” from him.
How Ls. disorder will develop “is completely open”. It can lead to schizophrenia or regress. If the latter occurs, you have to deal with its danger, “as a court you can’t take any risks.” Therefore, at the end of the psychiatric treatment, the chamber will decide on preventive detention.