Heavily pregnant and dead
Murder without a body? Trial for missing Alexandra R. begins in Nuremberg
39-year-old Alexandra R. from Nuremberg was last seen in December 2022. The public prosecutor assumes murder
© Central Franconia Police Headquarters
A 39-year-old brings her foster child to daycare. Then she will never be seen again. Was it murder? Therefore, two men now have to answer in court. It will probably be a long trial because the public prosecutor has a problem: the body is missing.
It was an inconspicuous morning when Alexandra R. was seen for the last time. The 39-year-old, heavily pregnant in the eighth month, had brought her two-year-old foster daughter to daycare. Since then – it was shortly before Christmas 2022 – the woman has been out Nuremberg missed.
Her relatives received mysterious farewell messages. Your cell phone was located in Italy. Had she really gone abroad? There was still cash, ID cards and the maternity passport in her apartment. The investigators therefore quickly assumed that it was a violent crime. The “Soko Hammer” searched for her body for months. Divers swam in the Main-Danube Canal, sniffer dogs combed the Nuremberg harbor, drones flew over the area. In the end they only found a duct tape with Alexandra R.’s hair and one of her ear studs. But not her body.
As of this Tuesday, two men will still be tried in the Nuremberg Regional Court. They are R’s ex-boyfriend Dejan B., 50, and his business partner Ugur T., 48. The charges include murder and hostage-taking. The two have remained silent since they were taken into custody in September 2023. But the public prosecutor says: It was a lot of money.
Business was going well. But then there was an argument. And finally to murder?
The investigators’ thesis begins with a lucrative business: the defendant B. used the money of his then partner, a senior bank employee, for real estate deals. These ran through co-defendant T’s company. They bought apartments and houses, renovated them and sold them on. This happened almost 30 times.
Until the violent separation between Alexandra R. and her boyfriend occurred in March 2022. She took refuge in a women’s shelter. A court imposed a ban on contact for B. The business was over. Alexandra R. is said to have denied her ex-boyfriend access to her accounts.
Probably under the pretext of still getting their money, B. and T. claimed that the woman still owed them 785,000 euros. They wanted to sue for the sum through enforcement. Alexandra R. defended herself against this under civil law. But there should never be a dispute resolution. She disappeared a week before the decisive hearing in the regional court.
Before her death, R. probably had to write a letter
The public prosecutor’s office assumes that the two defendants followed their future victim on the morning of December 9, 2022 in a rental car to a property that R. later wanted to rent out. There they are said to have overpowered the woman, then taken her to a warehouse in Hilpoltstein, south of Nuremberg, and finally killed her there. They are said to have previously forced R. to withdraw her criminal complaint by sending a handwritten letter to the judicial authorities.
According to investigators, the two men allegedly hid the body and then spread false leads by writing farewell messages to the victim’s relatives and then mounting the cell phone on a parked truck.
It will be a circumstantial trial. The public prosecutor’s office relies on DNA traces, the GPS data from the defendant’s cell phones and witnesses who claim to have observed Alexandra R.’s car on the day of the disappearance. But the most important piece of evidence – the body – is missing. How did Alexandra R. actually die? Where is her body? And why did she ultimately have to die? In order to answer these questions, the criminal chamber has scheduled 37 days of trial. Over 100 witnesses and ten experts will testify. A verdict will not be made until summer at the earliest.