It should still be known how Charlotte Böhringer died on May 15, 2006, a Monday: someone smashed her skull. 24 hits were identified when the 59-year-old was found the next day in her apartment on Baaderstrasse, at the top of the multi-storey car park that belonged to her and gave the crime a succinct name – the multi-storey car park murder. The case was sensational, the widowed Charlotte Böhringer was considered wealthy, she belonged to the Munich society. In one of the longest trials in the city’s history, after 93 days of trial between May 2007 and August 2008, Böhringer’s nephew Benedikt T. was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder out of greed, aggravated by a particularly severe guilt for malice.
To this day, Benedikt T. maintains his innocence. To date, the files have never been fully closed.
The public prosecutor’s office in Munich I has just taken her out of the closet. “We received a suggestion for a possible investigative approach from a lawyer,” confirms Anne Leiding, spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office: “We are currently examining this suggestion.” Leiding deliberately chose the wording: It is not a formal application, not an official legal remedy, the lawyer has only brought something to his attention, as it is called in legal German. But it could be a lever to start the process again and to rehabilitate Benedikt T. Couldn’t.
The instrument of the crime was never found, there were neither eyewitnesses nor a confession
The verdict was controversial from the start, as there was no proof that Benedikt T. was the murderer: the instruments used in the crime were never found, there were no eyewitnesses, no confession. The judges forged a chain of evidence from 14 individual parts for their verdict. “Every piece of evidence is not enough on its own,” says the 214-page reasoning: “However, the overall view of all the pieces of evidence provides the evidence.”
An example from the chain of evidence: “The fact that the accused is left-handed and the blows were without exception struck with the right hand does not speak against the accused being the perpetrator.” But does that necessarily point to him?
Ermin Brießmann, former presiding judge at the Bavarian Higher Regional Court and specialist in appeal proceedings, saw the verdict as a “compulsive turning to evidence of the accused’s perpetration”. As part of a criminal complaint for perverting the law, the lawyer, who has died in the meantime, fileted the judgment of the Munich district court in an unusually sharp manner. It is based on “fantastic constructions”, “riddled with countless legal errors” and “in many cases uses amateurish arguments”. Brießmann’s conclusion: “The guilty verdict is inconclusive and incomprehensible. The incorrectness of the verdict is evident even without legal knowledge.”
That didn’t help. His ad came to nothing at the time, like so much in this case.
All attempts to obtain a resumption have been rebuffed
Lawyer Peter Witting defended Benedikt T. from the start. He has repeatedly appealed, requested that the proceedings be reopened, and lodged complaints; wrote to the Higher Regional Court, to the Constitutional Court, to the European Court of Human Rights. All objections have been dismissed as unfounded, mostly without further explanation. “The judiciary simply refuses to look into this case again,” says Witting and sighs: “I’ve always had nothing but failure in this matter. I’ve never been successful. Never, never, never! At no time.”
Despite this, Witting never gave up. Now, almost 14 years after the trial, he believes he hopes to be able to prove that a witness at the trial told an untruth. He has given the public prosecutor the details in a document, but he does not want to give any information publicly. Just this much: The witness is not unimportant. It is said to be Charlotte Böhringer’s girlfriend, whom she saw alive on the afternoon of May 15, 2006, shortly before she was murdered.
The time of the crime and the course of events in Charlotte Böhringer’s apartment could only be deduced with a chain of circumstantial evidence.
(Photo: S Jell)
Witting was made aware of the alleged untruth of the testimony by a new support group for Benedikt T., initiated by two Munich residents, the author Marie Velden and the photographer Susanne von Lieven-Jell. Velden had dealt with the case on behalf of a true crime magazine and had such strong doubts about the verdict that she got a second opinion from her friend Lieven-Jell. “I couldn’t let go of the topic,” says Velden. “It just grabbed us,” says Lieven-Jell. The parking garage murder has captivated many people, there are non-fiction books, TV documentaries, audio podcasts; a novel inspired by it has just been published.
Because the women were afraid of getting caught up in conspiracy theories, Lieven-Jell involved her father, Munich’s former mayor Christian Ude, who after all studied law. He too had “more doubts than a criminal conviction can bear,” as he said in a podcast on Radio Gong 96.3: “I think there is a need for investigation.” Christian Ude is now the most prominent face of the support group, which has now grown to almost 200 members.
Marie Velden and Susanne von Lieven-Jell got hold of all the investigation files and looked up who testified when and where, at the police department, in court. “We encountered a lot of inconsistencies,” says Velden. On their website www.doubtful.org. did they list everything.
Killed with 24 blows to the head: Charlotte Böhringer, here is a picture of the requiem in the Heilig-Geist-Kirche.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
The inconsistencies include, for example, that the judges themselves ruled out “the theoretical possibility” that Charlotte Böhringer deliberately did not answer a call – which plays a role in determining the time of the crime and T’s alibi. On the other hand, they thought it more plausible that Böhringer poured himself a glass or two of wine at the time of the crime and then simply threw it away, than that someone else could have drunk the wine – who would then have had to be a suspect.
In any case, Boehringer herself had not drunk the wine, as could be judged from her blood alcohol level; her friend also only wanted to have a sample sip, as she said. Nevertheless, the bottle was almost empty when the police discovered it in the fridge. But the homicide commission did not investigate further in this direction, they had already settled on Benedikt T. The verdict said: “The chamber considers the possibility that the act was committed by another perpetrator to be so remote that it could be ruled out.”
With their initiative, Marie Velden and Susanne von Lieven-Jell want to ensure that the case is no longer kept under the cover by the judiciary. “We’re not saying Benedikt T. is innocent,” assures Susanne von Lieven-Jell: “But the verdict has to be re-examined.”