Srecko S., accused of murdering his wife, is a free man: After more than a year of trial, the second jury chamber at the Munich I District Court only sentenced the 62-year-old to illegal possession of a firearm. The public prosecutor had accused the man of literally executing his 20-year-old wife, who had separated from him, with a shot in the head. He himself said the shot was fired in the scramble for the gun. “This is not an acquittal with garlands,” said presiding judge Norbert Riedmann. The chamber is 85 percent convinced that S. killed his wife. “But doubts remain.” The public prosecutor’s office has already appealed.
In dubio pro reo, that is the Latin principle when the court cannot fully clarify the course of events: in case of doubt for the accused. “This is our legal system,” said defense attorney Benedikt Stehle after the verdict. The trial against Srecko S. began in February 2021. A process that was unusual from the start. Because the alleged act that was being negotiated happened in August 2015 in the couple’s formerly shared apartment in Haar.
Srecko S. had always stated to first responders and the police that his wife wanted to kill herself. In the scramble for the self-loading pistol, a shot was fired and hit his wife in the left side of the head above the ear. The couple’s eldest daughter, then 14, who saw her mother dead in the bedroom, later called homicide herself and said she had doubts about her father’s version. He was brutal, her mother was happy after the separation to have finally freed herself from his slavery. She later revised this statement.
The couple’s five children continued to live with their father in the apartment for four years. Until the public prosecutor’s office had a new report. Accordingly, the killed Diana S. (name changed) only a few particles of smoke on her hand, too few for her hands to have been close to the gun when the shot was fired. Srecko S. was arrested in December 2019 and was in custody until Thursday. The court rejected several requests by the defense to lift the arrest warrant due to the strong suspicion.
How did the cartridge get into the victim’s hand?
“There are two people in a room, in the end one is dead,” prosecutor Johanna Heidrich began her plea. She was convinced that S. had killed the 36-year-old because she had moved to Augsburg with her eldest daughter. An appointment at the family court was imminent, the woman wanted to take care of all five children. On August 3, 2015, Srecko S. drove to Augsburg and took Diana S. and her daughter to Haar because they were planning a trip with the children the next day. According to S., there was consensual sex in the bedroom, and the gun that S. owned was said to have been used as a sex toy. He said he went to the toilet. When he came back, his wife pointed the gun at her and he wanted to snatch it from her.
Diana S. is said to have been sitting on the ground, S. said her right hand had gripped the barrel. He knelt beside her and wanted to loosen her hand. Diana S. was killed immediately by the shot in the head. A cartridge was found in her fist. The defense explained this by saying that the cartridge could have gotten into the hand during ejection. Prosecutor Heidrich concluded that the cartridge was subsequently shoved into the woman’s fist to fake suicide. One of the points for which the court found no explanation.
Srecko S. washed his hands and face extensively after the crime. There were no traces of smoke on him. The matter with Diana S’ mobile phone remained just as puzzling. Shortly before, she had sent another man photos of herself in lingerie. Shortly before the shot was fired and just a minute before the emergency call was made, i.e. at the time of the alleged scuffle, the cell phone was switched on five times. After the fact, the phone was two floors down in the handbag of the already dead. “We can not clarify a lot,” said the judge. The chamber would have to convince itself of a sequence of events, “we can’t do that”.
Two of Srecko S.’s ex-wives had described him as a brutal thug on the witness stand. “If I had stayed, I would have died,” said one of them. Now Srecko S. is free again.