At the district court of Augsburg, the trial has begun in the case of a suspected "manure murder". The defendants defended the charge that the farmer had killed his wife.
The 55-year-old from Swabia is accused of knocking his partner unconscious and then doused with manure until it suffocated. The man denies the act.
His defenders said that the death of the woman was probably a "simple accident". The 51-year-old was in September 2018 on the farm in Wallerstein probably even climbed into the slurry pit and fell there. Then she could still climb out of the pit and then died. Even before the trial, the lawyers had called the murder charges as "adventurous".
The prosecution assumes that the man killed his partner because she wanted a divorce. The man had wanted to keep the common assets to himself and therefore already hidden around 130,000 euros in cash.
Additional expert admitted
To date, the man did not comment on these allegations. His lawyers confirmed the couple's marital problems. "It is true that marriage has been nothing more than a community of convenience for many years." At the time of the death of the woman everything had been as usual with the spouses, one of the defenders said "as always bad".
According to the lawyers, the couple managed the farm as a sideline. The man had long been of the opinion that his wife cares too little about the agriculture and have lately given her no budget money.
The court admitted on the first day of the proceedings an additional expert in the proceedings. The lawyers of the accused had named the head of the Hamburg Institute of Legal Medicine, Klaus Püschel, to refute the indictment based on the opinion of the Munich Legal Medicine. In a first statement before the trial, Püschel had already expressed considerable doubts about the assumed facts.
The criminal court has scheduled another 14 days of trial, with the verdict expected in January 2020.
