It was almost eleven months ago that the people in Lichtenfels in Upper Franconia were hit “to the core”. The Lichtenfels district administrator Christian Meißner (CSU) chose this formulation at the time in view of what had just happened in the previously peaceful district town: a woman, 50, murdered in a flower shop, found by passers-by. “Such an act stuns me,” Meißner said at the time. On Tuesday, a verdict was handed down in the Coburg regional court against an 18-year-old who confessed to the crime: He has to go to prison for nine and a half years for murder in conjunction with robbery resulting in death, as the court announced.
This was just below the demands of the public prosecutor and the co-prosecution, who had pleaded for ten years in prison. Essentially, however, the court followed the accusation – and not the defendant’s version. After his arrest at the end of March 2023, he initially remained silent, but then at the beginning of the trial, excluding spectators and the press, he made a statement about his defense attorney, which judicial press spokesman Timm Hain then informed.
In it, the young man admitted that he had killed the woman – but not with intent. His version of things: The defendant wanted to take a fishing course when his savings suddenly disappeared. He suspected family members. He then decided to rob a store, but in several cases he hesitated out of fear. The same thing happened in the flower shop. Until he realized that he was running out of time because it was already evening and the shops were closing. Then he returned to put his plan into action: a robbery – not a homicide.
The defense attorney explained why this happened: his client had threatened the woman with a knife. But only after she called for help and blocked the defendant’s exit did he attack her in a panic out of the scuffle. The young man, who apologized to the victim’s family for the crime, was aware of what he had done and that there was no justification for it.
The public prosecutor’s office, on the other hand, argued right up to the end and also in its plea that the young man had “purposefully murdered” the woman in order to get the proceeds. Both the public prosecutor’s office and the lawyer for the co-plaintiff referred to the evidence at the crime scene, which contradicted an emotional act by the defendant and spoke in favor of a planned act.
And that’s how the court saw it, which also pointed out in its reasoning that the young man could have borrowed the 300 euros for the state fishing test from family members, but deliberately did not do so and instead planned the robbery.
Traces of blood on the cash register indicated intent
On the evening of the crime, he pretended to be a customer to the saleswoman “and decided to stab her in order to get possession of the day’s earnings.” And not – as he described – as a short-circuit reaction. But rather intentionally, as evidenced by the traces at the crime scene: At the exit, where he said the fight had taken place, there was no evidence of such a fight. However, blood was found at the checkout. It can therefore be assumed that he stabbed the woman before reaching into the cash register.
In addition, there was an agreement between the victim and his boss that he would not offer any resistance in the event of an attack. The defendant also turned off the radio and lights in the store to “delay discovery” – which speaks against “leaving the store in a panic.”
The court saw three characteristics of murder as being met: greed, treachery and the intention to commit another crime through the killing. For an adult, this would have meant life imprisonment. However, the young man was convicted under juvenile criminal law because he was only 17 years old at the time of the crime. The verdict is not yet legally binding.
The crime caused uncertainty in the city of Lichtenfels and the district of the same name and caused rumors to circulate. For example, that a serial perpetrator is going around. Right-wing populists exploited the murder and fueled xenophobic sentiment. District Administrator Meißner has been following all of this over the past few months and a few hours after the verdict he still doesn’t really know how to classify it. “I have mixed feelings,” he told SZ. On the one hand, it’s good that there is a verdict; for many in the population this is “a final line. But for the relatives it will never end.”