The Nuremberg-Fuerth district court has sentenced a 43-year-old man to life imprisonment for murdering the mother of his children. The 5th Criminal Chamber also determined the particular gravity of the accused’s guilt. This means that a release from prison after 15 years cannot be automatically examined – the prison term will probably be extended by years. It is the harshest punishment provided for by German criminal law.
The man killed his ex-wife with a kitchen knife a year ago. Two of their children, aged one and four, and another eight-year-old child no longer have a mother, and the perpetrator, as the father of two of the children, is in prison. The court saw the fact that the man had put his own interests above those of the children as particularly reprehensible and took this as a justification for the particular seriousness of the guilt.
At the beginning of the trial on November 22, the accused admitted in a 20-page statement that he had inflicted the fatal injuries on the 33-year-old woman at the time of the crime a year ago. According to his description, it should have been a mixture of accident and self-defense. A court expert did not consider this representation to be credible. The cuts and stabs were carried out with considerable force.
The motive for the act is said to have been different views on raising children. The man did not consider his ex-wife to be qualified to raise the children, among other things he accused her of having alternating sexual contacts. In their indictment, the public prosecutor’s office assumed that the man wanted to get rid of the woman so that later – in the hope of a lenient sentence – he could take over raising the children himself.
According to witnesses, even before the couple separated, there had been repeated arguments between the couple, some of them violent. The police had to mediate several times, once the wife fled from the man into the street. Even then, the man is said to have threatened to kill her. After his arrest, he is said to have described the crime to a fellow inmate. This was in contrast to the court’s statement that it was a scuffle in which the injuries were accidental.