The court case began in October.
Leichenfund bei Kniebis: So stellt der Angeklagte die Tötung seiner Lebensgefährtin dar
For anybody who can understand German. I can't translate this evening.
Here goes a rough translation of the article:
Body found near KniebisThis is how the accused portrays the killing of his partner
For a long time, the investigators puzzled over who the dead woman who was found on the Kniebis in September 2021 was. The alleged perpetrator is now on trial in Wuppertal.
Freudenstadt /Wuppertal – Clean up the slate – at least that seems to be the strategy
that the 33-year-old from Solingen , who is currently facing charges of manslaughter before the Wuppertal District Court, is relying on. In his statement before the jury, chaired by Judge Jochen Kötter, the accused made extensive statements about the alleged crime on the first day of the trial.
The public prosecutor's office accuses him of killing his then partner in September 2021 with "blunt and sharp force" in the couple's apartment in Solingen, of having wrapped her body in a paddling pool and brought it
to a forest on Freudenstadt's Kniebis. There he is said to have tried
to burn the body .
The woman's identity was unclear for some time
The investigations in southern Germany
were initially difficult for the police because
the identity of the dead had to be clarified first . The prosecution sees no evidence of
murder in the homicide, but the accused is said to have at least "approvedly accepted" the death of the 36-year-old mother of a small son at the time of the crime.
The defendant had prepared a written statement on his version of events, which he presented to the chamber himself. Tensions have been brewing in the couple's relationship for some time. The young woman, he said, had drug problems - above all, she couldn't cope with the death of her mother and was therefore in therapeutic treatment.
Defendant's version: It was an accident
In the course of a separation talk, the 36-year-old suddenly wanted to leave the shared apartment. A fight then broke out at the bedroom door when he tried to prevent his girlfriend from leaving the apartment. He suddenly pulled her away from the handle, whereupon she fell and suddenly turned blue from shortness of breath. He then claims to have made rescue attempts.
Again and again the accused faltered in tears and finally asked for a break. He was "terrified" that their son would wake up in infancy and discover his dead mother in the living room. So he finally wanted to bury the body.
Why Black Forest? "We had a good time there"
"I remembered that we were once in the Black Forest together. We had a good time there." With the plan to bury the body of the woman from Solingen, he and his son set out in the direction of Baden-Württemberg. "We're going on a trip now" was the explanation he presented to his son.
However, according to the accused, this plan also failed. "The ground was just too hard." During a second attempt at disposal, he then doused the corpse with petrol to burn it.
Woman's body has significant injuries in the head area
The latter part is documented by photos that were shown to the chamber at the hearing. It shows a completely charred woman's corpse - the victim's teeth are severely misaligned in the mouth, as can be seen from the model cast of her jaw. The photos also suggest that the woman's body had significant injuries in the head area.
The explanations of the coroner suggest a strangulation. At the time of the fire, the woman from Solingen was no longer alive.
Set up a building of lies in the circle of friends
The accused seems to have built a far-reaching edifice of lies in his circle of friends and acquaintances about the mysterious disappearance of his partner at the time.
He told friends and acquaintances of the victim that his partner "was already gone when he got home". She packed her things without a word and just disappeared.
Witness: "She was a very good mother"
"That didn't suit her at all for me. Especially not that she just left her son behind. She was a very good mother," reports a friend of the deceased, who became more and more skeptical the longer the Solingen native swallowed up off the face of the earth seemed.
The accused tried to prevent her from reporting missing persons, the witness recalled. "He simply claimed that it was useless." He also tried to calm her down – with the lie that he had met the long-dead woman from Solingen several more times after her disappearance.
Was the mother struggling with drug problems and debt?
The relationship between the two, the witnesses report in unison, was characterized by tension.
After the death of her mother, the Solingen native had to struggle with drug problems and debts, he cheated on her while she was pregnant and hardly took any responsibility for the child and the household. Another witness who is said to have had an affair with the accused stated that several things had struck her as strange in the period after the Solingen woman had disappeared. "He asked me if I had ever killed someone."
He began a new relationship with a friend of the deceased, she said, immediately after the death of his partner. The defendant apparently also told her the story of the mysterious disappearance of his former partner.
