As a paratrooper, the defendant knows his way around weapons. He knows how urban warfare works. The soldier is said to have used his experience to commit terrible acts.
Verden – Even when planning the series of murders, the soldier is said to have acted as if he were in a military operation. Primary target: his wife’s new partner and best friend. Secondary target: the new partner’s parents. In the barracks, he loaded his weapons and equipped himself with Molotov cocktails and smoke bombs. At night, he entered the victims’ houses as if in house-to-house fighting. Then shots were fired. In the end, four people were dead. That is how the public prosecutor described it at the start of the trial at the Verden district court. She accuses the German of murder – insidious and for base motives.
Defendant remains silent on the allegations
The defendant enters the town hall in Verden, which has been converted into a courtroom for the trial, with his head held high. His hair is neatly parted, without hiding his face from the cameras. When the judges enter the courtroom, he stands at attention. He answers the court’s questions about his personal details with a brief but clearly understandable “Correct”. He doesn’t say a word about the accusations against him.
On the first day of the trial, only the public prosecutor presented the indictment, an excerpt from the more than 50-page indictment. She spent eleven minutes describing the paratrooper’s alleged actions. She reported “marital differences” because the defendant was unemotional and was not often with his wife and four-year-old son because of his work in the German army. He blamed people around his wife for the failure of the marriage: her best friend, her new partner and his parents. He wanted to take revenge on them and prevent them from having any further contact with his son.
Murder for the sake of possession – partner the actual victim
In a so-called proxy femicide, the perpetrator punishes his partner by killing people close to her, explains Johanna Wiest, speaker for domestic and sexual violence at the women’s rights organization Terre de Femmes. The woman is the actual victim, but is left alive. “Proxy femicides are a particularly perfidious form of psychological violence against the ex-partner.” This usually involves supposed claims of ownership based on a patriarchal worldview. “The perpetrator experiences the moment of separation as a loss of control, which he responds to with the highest form of exercising power and control – the annihilation of one or more lives.”
According to the Federal Criminal Police Office, 155 women were killed by their partners or ex-partners in Germany last year. There are no figures for proxy femicides because no data is collected. There are only the findings of a research project funded by the European Union: According to the FEM-UNITED Comparative Report, in 12 percent of the femicides recorded in Germany, other people are killed – such as children or new partners.
Like in urban warfare: Soldier is said to have surprised victims in their sleep
The trained Bundeswehr paratrooper acted as if he were in a military operation, said the prosecutor. He made Molotov cocktails out of four champagne bottles and gasoline and armed himself with a semi-automatic pistol, a self-loading rifle, ammunition and a splitting hammer. He then set out to surprise his victims in their sleep.
According to the prosecution, the then 32-year-old first broke into a family home in Scheeßel, where his wife’s new partner lived with his six-year-old son and his parents. There he is said to have killed the sleeping 55-year-old mother with two targeted shots to the back of the head. The noise woke up the 30-year-old son and he tried to flee. But the defendant shot him at least ten times and the man died immediately.
The accused then drove to the house of his wife’s best friend, in the community of Bothel, just a few kilometers away. According to the public prosecutor, he opened the bathroom window with the splitting hammer and fired five shots blindly. The 33-year-old stormed into her three-year-old daughter’s room in a panic. She took the sleeping girl in her arms and tried to dissuade the soldier from his plans – without success. He is said to have shot the mother and her child at least 14 times from close range. Both died in the child’s bed.
Defendant must expect a long time behind bars
After the series of murders, the accused is said to have driven to a lake in Rotenburg an der Wümme. He once met his wife there, the prosecutor reported. He put down his weapons and drank four bottles of beer. He is said to have later turned himself in front of the barracks in Rotenburg.
It is already clear at the beginning of the trial: the defendant must expect a long prison sentence. In the first half hour, the presiding judge gives the legal advice that a particularly serious degree of guilt could be established in this case. And the public prosecutor is considering preventive detention, which would mean that the alleged perpetrator would not be released even after his prison sentence has been served. The trial is scheduled to last 35 days, and a verdict could be handed down at the end of March. dpa
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