In the case of Manfred Genditzki, who was convicted of murder, the Munich Regional Court has now set dates for the hearing of witnesses and experts in order to decide whether to reopen the proceedings against the 61-year-old former caretaker. Genditzki was sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2012 because the court considered it proven that in October 2008 he drowned 87-year-old Lieselotte Kortüm in her apartment in Rottach-Egern after a dispute in the bathtub. The court had categorically ruled out the possibility that the old lady could have died in an accident.
In June 2019, Genditzki’s attorney, Regina Rick, filed for a retrial. The application is based on new reports that show that Lieselotte Kortüm could have gotten into the position in which she was found because of a fall and that she could have suffered two bruises on her head from such a fall court as evidence of a violent crime. A witness came forward who confirmed that Lieselotte Kortüm had a firm habit of soaking her laundry in the bathtub, a possibility that the court had also ruled out.
The 1st Criminal Chamber at the Munich I District Court, chaired by judge Elisabeth Ehrl, took 18 months to decide on the application for retrial. In December 2020, the chamber finally rejected the application as inadmissible. The Munich Higher Regional Court overturned this decision in September 2021 and expressly stated that the new expert opinions “seriously called into question” the relevant assumptions of the sentencing court and that an accident could “no longer be ruled out”. In December 2021, a citizens’ initiative appealed in an open letter to Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich to work for the process to proceed quickly.
The fact that the court took so much time to decide whether to retrial has potentially fatal consequences for the establishment of the truth. On January 26, the competent criminal division – it is the same that had already declared the application for retrial inadmissible – decided to hear the witnesses and experts named in the application. A week later, on February 3, 61-year-old Christiane E. died in Ludwigsburg.
The expert hearing is scheduled to start on April 19 and is expected to last until the end of May. It takes place in camera. In addition to the experts appointed by the defense, the court also wants to appoint its own experts, including a forensic doctor from the University Hospital in Essen. A coroner from Munich played a key role in Genditzki’s conviction in 2012 because he convinced the court that Lieselotte Kortüm could not have gotten into the position in which she was found by falling.