It took a good 90 minutes for the presiding judge Theodor Horstkötter to justify the verdict. Then he turned to the defendant, asked in a friendly manner: “Did you understand all of this?” Ines R. nodded twice quickly. As in the previous days of the trial, she followed the negotiation largely motionless, almost frozen. The criminal chamber at the Potsdam Regional Court imposed a sentence of 15 years for four murders and three attempted murders. The court also ordered the defendant to be placed in a mental hospital. The verdict is not yet legally binding. In his closing remarks, Horstkötter indicated how difficult it was to come to a verdict in this case: “As a jury, we are always aware that we can never fathom down to the last detail what drives a person at such a moment.”
On the evening of April 28, four people were killed in a care facility in Potsdam, the Thusnelda von Saldern House. The severely disabled two women and two men between the ages of 31 and 56 had their throats cut with a knife, another resident was seriously injured, but could be saved by an emergency operation. The incident made headlines nationwide, also because the victims were completely defenseless due to their disabilities. In their closing argument last week, the public prosecutor described the act as “deeply evil”.
After the crime, many flowers were placed in memory of the victims at the Oberlinhaus in Potsdam.
(Photo: Soeren Stache / picture alliance / dpa / dpa-Zentral)
Ines R., 52, was an urgent suspect from the start. The nurse had been working for 30 years in the Oberlinhaus, a diaconal institution that also includes the Thusnelda-von-Saldern-Haus. Ines R. was responsible for the fatalities as a nurse that evening. Later when she got home, she revealed herself to her husband, who called the police. A policewoman who arrested Ines R. a little later reported that the nurse said in the car “without any connection whatsoever”: “I cut four people’s throats”. During the trial itself, Ines R. was silent about the course of events until her closing words last Friday. “When I went to work, I didn’t think I was going to lose control,” she said. “Even if I don’t cry or break down here, the thing is that I still can’t believe what I’ve done. I’m very sorry.”
The main question in the negotiation was whether Ines R. was at all guilty at the time of her act. During the nearly two-month trial, the court tried to get a complete picture of the defendants’ lives. “She is a nurse with body and soul”, colleagues from Ines R. described her as very “loving”, said Horstkötter. On the other hand, there is “brutal and extreme violence” against “the weakest and most helpless people”.
In his reasoning for the verdict, the judge paid tribute to the victims, but also went into detail once again about the life of Ines R., who was diagnosed with a personality disorder of the borderline type. The separation of the parents, the death of the father and her two half-sisters, the attempted suicide. Horstkötter spoke of the “coldness of her childhood”, of the fear of her mother “.
Before she came of age, Ines R. had to temporarily go to a closed psychiatric facility. A series of human catastrophes that never stopped. The defendant had “kept it well hidden from the outside,” said Horstkötter. “She lived a life behind a facade.” The judge named the enormous stress in the day-to-day work of the care facility as a possible “trigger” for the crime. However, since the accused carried out the acts in a targeted and calculated manner, the court finally recognized that there was a considerably reduced culpability.
He hoped that this verdict and the apology of the accused would help the relatives of the victims to conclude the crimes, said Horstkötter in his closing remarks. Addressing Ines R. he added: “I also wish that you find your inner peace.”