process in Rostock
“Victim virtually executed”: Man sentenced to life for murdering parents and sister
The accused (left) is led into the courtroom with his face covered. Now he’s going to prison for life.
© Bernd Wüstneck / DPA
A 27-year-old man has been sentenced to life in half for the triple murder of his parents and sister. The perpetrator had acted in a planned manner and with great cruelty.
The Rostock Regional Court has sentenced a 27-year-old to life imprisonment for the triple murder of his parents and sister. The court also determined on Monday that the man’s guilt was particularly serious, which largely rules out early release from prison after 15 years. The public prosecutor’s office had previously requested both.
The verdict was for triple murder for base motives. Presiding judge Peter Goebels said in his verdict that the accused had acted with “extreme brutality and cold-heartedness” in the murders. “He practically executed the victims.”
Killing tools are garden machete and crossbow
The court saw it as proven that the trained bricklayer had first killed his 52-year-old father, who was sleeping on the living room couch, on February 7, 2022 in his parents’ house in Rövershagen near Rostock with a crossbow and a garden machete. A few hours later he lured his 25-year-old sister to Rövershagen.
Under the pretext of having a surprise for her, he put masked ski goggles and earmuffs on her and had her kneel down in the hallway on the pond liner he had laid out there. After a short wait, he also shot her three arrows in the head with his crossbow and stabbed her with the secateurs.
Four days later, he killed his 48-year-old mother in the same manner as his sister, as she was returning home from a week’s work away from home. A good two weeks after the crimes, he brought the bodies in self-made coffins with a van to a field twelve kilometers away, where he buried them almost three meters deep with a small rented excavator.
The perpetrator can be arrested without resistance
By the end of March last year, the accused managed to block inquiries from relatives and work colleagues of the parents and to mislead them with false information. After the police began to investigate the disappeared due to a missing persons report, he gradually became entangled in contradictions.
The man allowed himself to be arrested at his workplace on March 30, 2022 without resistance. On the same day, he showed investigators where he had buried the bodies.
During the trial, the defense requested an acquittal for the accused “for procedural reasons”. The first interrogation protocols and numerous pieces of evidence could not be used in court because the investigators “total” had made too many mistakes, argued the 27-year-old’s lawyer in her plea.