Processes
Decades after Jutta’s death: Family wants answers
The 62-year-old defendant sits in front of his defense lawyers in the courtroom. photo
© Helmut Fricke/dpa
Almost four decades ago, a girl was killed in southern Hesse. For a long time there has been a lot of ambiguity in the Jutta case. After new evidence was found, a man is now in court.
Parents and children sit in the courtroom Siblings of the young Jutta, who was killed almost 40 years ago, face the alleged murderer of the girl from Lindenfeld in southern Hesse. Their eyes often don’t meet. The 62-year-old defendant, who has a previous conviction, did not comment on the allegations at the start of the trial in the Darmstadt regional court on Wednesday.
This was agreed upon with the client in advance, said his lawyer Andreas Sanders. The German came into the hall in handcuffs, covered in a dark hoodie. He seemed to be following the trial to some extent, but his facial expressions remained almost rigid, even when Jutta’s parents and siblings testified.
The horrible allegations
In her short reading of the indictment, prosecutor Eva Heid described how the crime took place from her point of view. On June 29, 1986, Jutta was on her way back from the outdoor pool to her parents’ house. The defendant pursued them on a steep path through the forest. After a few hundred meters, he pushed Jutta into the forest, threatened her with a knife, wrapped her belt around her neck out of sexual fantasies and then raped her. According to the prosecution, he then stabbed the girl, dug a hole in the ground and buried her there. He is said to have done this so that the 15-year-old could not identify and report him. He really wanted to prevent that, said Heid. The then 24-year-old man was on probation for other sexual offenses.
Parents and siblings want answers
“When a trial like this begins, it is again associated with considerable burdens,” said co-plaintiff representative Angela Gräf-Bösch on the sidelines of the hearing. What has been tried to process in recent years is breaking down again. You can never fully complete it. The question is what exactly happened that day. A statement from the defendant? “That would of course be desirable,” said Gräf-Bösch. But that wasn’t expected at first.
“It’s definitely difficult for you when you see it after all these years,” said presiding judge Volker Wagner, who once again showed the ZDF program “Aktenzeichen XY…Unklöst” about the case. “Jutta isn’t there, something happened,” said the 84-year-old mother about the day of the crime. She was at home, her husband was out with their son.
Jutta was missing for a long time
After the girl’s disappearance, the police and fire department searched the area, without success. “I was there every time. They searched everything,” the 87-year-old father said in court. Finally, in February 1988, a walker with a dog found the skeletal body not far from his parents’ house.
The investigations go nowhere for a long time. The crime ultimately ended up with the so-called cold case units of the LKA and the South Hesse police, which from time to time systematically check unsolved murder cases for new clues and use new forensic technology to examine them for previously undiscovered traces.
Investigators found new leads a few years ago
“This is the first case we have taken on in the unit,” an investigating detective from the cold case unit testified in court. During the new examination of evidence in 2020, new traces were discovered. The evidence included the belt, Jutta’s blue dress and a spade wrapped in foil. There were DNA traces on the films. This is how the trail of the previously convicted defendant was discovered.
The suspect has been convicted several times. He was sent to a special, closed facility for mentally ill offenders. The basis for this was a ruling by the Kiel Regional Court. In the current proceedings before the regional court, only murder is charged because all other criminal offenses are statute-barred.