The murderer of the prominent Munich fashion entrepreneur Rudolph Moshammer is free again – but no longer in Germany. As the Bavarian State Office for Asylum and Repatriations confirmed on Thursday, the plane with Herisch A. on board took off from Frankfurt Airport for Baghdad in the afternoon. The 43-year-old will be returned to his native country of Iraq after serving his minimum sentence.
Although that had already expired in mid-January, the deportation was delayed because Iraq initially did not want to issue the man a passport. After the replacement papers were available, he was flown out.
Herisch A., who came from the Kurdish region around Kirkuk, fled to Germany in 2001. An application for asylum had been rejected by the authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia at the time, but he had a residence permit due to the political situation in his home country.
In March 2002 Herisch A. came to Munich, just under three years later he caused the most sensational murder case since the turn of the millennium. On a cold winter’s day, between 15,000 and 20,000 people accompanied Rudolph Moshammer on his last journey from the church funeral service to his grave in the East Cemetery. It was the largest attendance at a funeral since Franz-Josef Strauss’ state funeral in 1988.
From the discovery of Moshammer’s body on the morning of January 14, 2005 until his funeral eight days later, the local tabloids reported page after page about the case, of course also about the dark side of the fashion designer, who was dazzling far beyond Munich.
Moshammer spoke to the assistant cook from his Rolls-Royce
Rudolph Moshammer ran an extravagant boutique called “Carneval de Venise” on Maximilianstrasse, and he was a constant presence in Munich society. Like no other, Moshammer knew how to stage himself; he attracted attention with his highly teased black hair and his constant companion, the terrier lady “Daisy”.
Anyone who didn’t know that Moshammer otherwise preferred the company of young men found out all the details, including and especially the unsavory ones, one day after the murder at the latest. In his black Rolls-Royce, Moshammer regularly scoured the areas around the main and east train stations late in the evening and at night, inviting hustlers with whom he then drove to his house in Grünwald.
On the evening of January 13, 2005, a Thursday, he ran into Herisch A. at the main train station. The little money he earned as an assistant cook at a burger maker he immediately put into slot machines. He was constantly in need of money, and in the process he was later attested to have a gambling addiction.
Herisch A. was not allowed to return to Germany for the rest of his life
When Moshammer spoke to him from the Rolls Royce, A. accepted the offer and got in. In Grünwald, there were sexual acts and then a dispute about the wages, A. later told the police and the court. A. claimed that Moshammer did not want to pay the agreed 2,000 euros; Those familiar with the scene considered the sum to be extremely exaggerated. In any case, the Iraqi took an electric cable and strangled the then 64-year-old Moshammer, insidiously from behind, according to the court.
Forensics officers from the Munich police found skin shreds on the cable, and a DNA analysis led to the identification of Herisch A. on Saturday, and he was arrested the same evening. He had been investigated twice in the previous year, once for assault, once because his former girlfriend and mother had reported him to his daughter for rape. Both procedures had been discontinued, but A. had voluntarily provided a saliva sample during the investigation, which was his undoing.
The trial against the confessing Herisch A. took place as early as November 2005. The conviction to life imprisonment was accompanied by a particularly serious degree of guilt because of the maliciousness established by the court. This ruled out his release after the usual 15 years in prison. Herisch A. can now move about as a free man in his home country, and he has never been allowed to return to Germany for the rest of his life.