Stuttgart (AP) – When he stabs and kills the woman in Sindelfingen at night, the word of the year is “multimedia” and Helmut Kohl still has a few years as federal chancellor ahead of him: over 27 years after the nearly two dozen stab wounds at a station of the S -Bahn in Sindelfingen (district of Böblingen), a man who is now 72 years old has to answer to the court again for the same case in Stuttgart.
The pensioner had already been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Stuttgart regional court in July 2021. However, he managed to convince the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) with its revision, which overturned the sentence and remanded the case to a other section of the regional court. In the purely circumstantial trial, the characteristic murder of insidiousness was not sufficiently proven, it was said from Karlsruhe.
The accused is silent
The case is now being reopened. In the first trial, the defendant remained consistently silent and will continue to do so in the retrial, he announced Wednesday. While there is no question of his guilt from the point of view of the BGH, the man could leave the room a free man.
It’s unclear what happened before the then 35-year-old victim died. From the point of view of the BGH, it cannot be clarified what happened before the fatal stabbing. Was there a conversation or argument, could the woman have run away or called for help? Because then it would not necessarily have been a homicide, which is not subject to statute of limitations under German law, but possibly manslaughter. You can’t be punished for something like that after more than 20 years. It is unclear why the man, born in northern Germany, killed the woman.
Only relocated in 2018
In the first trial, there were dozens of witnesses, many testimonies from people who now live abroad, the situation in the case was catastrophic, there was no evidence, and some of the witnesses who had been requested were already dead or were dealing with gaps in memory . A verdict is not expected before the end of March 2023.
“If it comes out like this, the ground will break under my feet,” said Nicola Moser, the victim’s 65-year-old sister, Wednesday, on the sidelines of the new edition of the murder trial.
The man was only transferred in 2018 after traces of DNA were attributed to him under the victim’s nails. A special commission targeted the man, who was born in northern Germany, but the investigation was initially unsuccessful.
In 2007, the district court of Würzburg had convicted him of manslaughter of a hitchhiker from Obersontheim (district Schwäbisch Hall), also on the second attempt after an acquittal in the first trial.
