There are places where you think the world is still there. Rot am See is such a place. It is nestled in the Hohenloher Land, in the east of Baden-Württemberg, surrounded by rolling hills and vast fields. On January 24th Adrian S. tore the community with about 5500 inhabitants and a lot of half-timbered houses out of this tranquility: In the restaurant “Deutscher Kaiser” at the train station, he shot eight family members, six of whom died.
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Adrian S. admits this in a calm tone in the jury court room of the Ellwangen district court. Shortly before, two constables led him to his place on the dock – he is hand and foot tied, a jacket is over his head and hides his face from the photographers present. Adrian S., 27 years old, is single indicted for sixfold murder and twice attempted murder with dangerous bodily harm, and it doesn’t take long for it to emerge that there could have been more deaths.
“I just shot everything”
Adrian S. is an intelligent man. He speaks in an unexpectedly deep voice for several hours. About his childhood, his time after school – and about the act. He chooses his words carefully. It is shockingly sober statements that make a film in the mind of the audience: Adrian S., who is hiding behind a door in his father’s house in Rot am See when his parents come up the stairs. How he first shoots the father and then follows the mother, who runs screaming down the stairs and shoots her in the back. How he aims at the half brother who shouts: “Adrian, no!” But Adrian S. continues to shoot, also at his uncle, at his half-sister, at his aunt. “I just shot everything that moved.”
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Then Adrian S. thinks of it, as he describes in court that his mother could still be alive. He finds her on the floor in the kitchen, she is still moving, he shoots her in the head. In the dining room he hears the son of his half-sister who shouts: “Mama, Mama!” Adrian S. goes to him. The 14-year-old says: “Please don’t do anything to me!” Adrian S. lets him go.
The boy sits next to his father in the jury room. The two appear as co-plaintiffs in the proceedings, like other survivors and survivors. You sit across from Adrian S. and stare at him when he says: “I would have shot everyone.”
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Good Abitur, abandoned studies
The anger that unloads on January 24 has obviously developed over many years. In his childhood he was bed-wetting and the victim of his mother, who lived with him and his two older half-siblings in a row house in Lahr in the Black Forest and worked as a midwife. The parents conducted a television marriage, it is said in court. The mother mocked her son, changed his diaper when he was already at school, intentionally handled it roughly and let him feel how much she wanted a second daughter in his place.
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After graduating from high school with a grade point average of 1.8, Adrian S. left his home in Lahr and thus life alongside a mother, for whom he cannot find a good word in court. He first studied mechanical engineering in Aachen, later business administration in Stuttgart. When he had to leave the student dormitory, he returned to Rot am See, where he spent his first years. It is his father’s home. This operated the restaurant “German Emperor”. Adrian S. struggled with the family to keep up appearances. The father believed until the end that the son was still studying.
He despised his father and hated his mother
In fact, Adrian S. lived in his room on the second floor, which he describes as a “dump”. He says he recently “barely made it into the day” and was no longer able to cope with his everyday life – because of the great strain. “I had ousted half my life before the crime,” says Adrian S., he is now realizing that in custody. “The sheer volume of displacement” a normal person could not imagine.
Adrian S. claims to have suppressed the fact that his mother Sylvia S. tried to poison him with female hormones. The mother took away his masculinity, says Adrian S. and describes his mother as a spiteful, vile woman. Sylvia S. can no longer defend herself against the many allegations that her son makes against her in court. She died at the scene.
Sylvia S. ‘ Father says in the court that his daughter was “mortally unhappy” about the tense relationship with her child. “I don’t know why the boy can’t find me anymore,” she always said. Adrian S. was addicted to computer games and had let his mother know that he hated her “abysmally”.
“I was completely paranoid, distrusted everyone”
The judge, Gerhard Ilg, asked Adrian S. whether he was interested in the opposite sex. “I was already interested in the opposite sex,” replies the latter. “Have there been relationships in your life?” – “No, never.” – “Would you like to deepen that?” – “I think that no relationship could have been established through my mother.”
Did Adrian’s father know about the allegations he was making against his mother? Klaus S. “ironed it off immediately”, dismissed it as “chatter” and said: “Get back in, that’s your mother!” This is how Adrian S. reports it: The father obeyed the mother. “I despised him because of that. I saw him under a duty to protect myself.”
It sounds as if Adrian S. felt defenseless to the woman whom he calls a “poisoner”. “I was completely paranoid, distrusted everyone.” Adrian S. locked his room, even if he only went to the bathroom, as he says. In the end, he mainly fed on UHT milk and dietary supplements.
Adrian S. entrenched himself in his room
Adrian S. admits that he has listened to and recorded phone calls between his parents. In it they talked about the son, about his social isolation, about his one-sided diet, says Adrian S. And about when the mother, who was still dating the father despite the spatial separation, would come to Rot am See. Just knowing that his mother was coming to Rot am See triggered “migraines, insomnia, panic attacks”. In 2013, he finally decided not only to kill his mother, but also his sister.
A co-plaintiff representative asked Adrian S. why he hadn’t moved away from the mother, who allegedly tried to kill him? “How else should I have the opportunity to kill my mother and sister?” Asks Adrian S. “So I was right in the middle.”
He installed two surveillance cameras, a motion detector and an infrared alarm barrier in his room and he pushed a thick wooden beam from the inside out the door.
“I wish I hadn’t done it”
All these devices, even though the mother didn’t live in the same house at all, is astonished by prosecutor Carsten Horn. “When my mother comes to kill me, she doesn’t announce it,” says Adrian S. Horn then asks why he didn’t choose the path that you have in a constitutional state when you feel threatened. “I didn’t want to have the vigilante taken away. My mother wouldn’t have been given the death penalty.”
One might think that the rampage had a liberating effect on Adrian S. But when the prosecutor asks him how he rates the crime today, to the surprise of many in the hall, the 27-year-old says: “I wish I hadn’t done it.” He only planned to kill the mother who had destroyed his life; his sister, who knew about the mother’s attempts to poison her; his father who left him alone. But he did not want to kill everyone else, he regrets these acts in retrospect.
After Adrian S. fired a total of 30 shots at his family, he briefly considered wiping out his own life, he told the court. “But I quickly dismissed the thought and realized: I don’t have the guts to pull the trigger.” He then dialed 110 and waited for the police.
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