German couple accused of killing two Ukrainian refugees to steal their baby | El Diario Vasco

The “unfulfilled desire” to be parents pushed a German couple a few months ago to break all limits. Absolutely all, including respect for life. The two of them – she was 44 years old and he was 43 – hatched a chilling plan to get a baby by taking advantage of someone else’s drama. Their victims were two Ukrainian refugees, mother and daughter, whom they beat to death in order to keep a child – the granddaughter and daughter of the deceased, respectively – who were just a few weeks old. Now, with the case in the hands of the Mannheim Public Prosecutor’s Office, their executioners have been accused of double murder.

The relationship began to take shape on Telegram, where the alleged killer infiltrated a support group for the thousands of Ukrainian refugees who have arrived in Germany – the EU country that has received the most, around 1.2 million – since the outbreak of the war two years ago. Among them, in January, she contacted a pregnant woman in her twenties who was looking for an interpreter for the birth of her daughter. She was about to give birth, and she was the perfect person to carry out the terrible plan.

Contact between the two women was not lost after the birth of the little girl, and they met again in early March. The couple invited the Ukrainian family (all three women) to a restaurant. This was the last time the two refugees were seen alive. According to the investigators, the accused gave them sedatives there. They just had to wait. The 51-year-old grandmother began to feel ill and the man offered to accompany her to a hospital while the mother and daughter went home. He actually took her to a lake, where he hit her at least four times on the head with an unknown object and threw the body into the water.

By blows

The couple assured the daughter, 27, that her mother had suffered a heart attack and was still in hospital. They picked her up, along with her baby, at home and, still dazed by the effects of the sedatives, they took her to an area near the Rhine River in Hockenheim. The man was again in charge of ending her life, again by hitting her on the head, and then burning her body. The girl was now his, and the three of them – now the family that the killers so longed for – returned to their place of residence in southern Germany.

The couple’s intention was to “pass off” the girl they had just kidnapped “as their own daughter.” Little did they know that just a few days later their plan would fall apart. The discovery of the remains of one of their victims led investigators to the killers and a DNA test proved the link between the minor and the deceased. Social services have taken charge of the little girl.