An 80-year-old series robber has been sentenced by the district court of Hechingen to seven years in prison. The robberies would have had serious consequences for the bank employees, said the presiding judge Hannes Breucker. They had fears of death, some of them struggling with anxiety and nightmares.
The defendant from Kirchzarten near Freiburg had admitted to the trial, to have attacked several banks between 2009 and 2019, including in Villingen-Schwenningen and Rastatt. At the beginning of May he was caught red-handed during a raid in Balingen.
The man always proceeded according to a similar pattern in his raids: he entered the banks and handed over a letter to the staff asking for money. He had threatened to explode a bomb in all his actions, but in fact he had only a bomb dummy. In three attacks the condemned man could capture money.
The court followed the sentence for severe predatory extortion of the claim of the prosecutor. The defender had spoken in his plea for a shorter period.
In the sentencing the age of the accused was mitigated by the court - if he had been younger, he might have been detained longer.
Both the prosecutor and the convicted person stated after the judgment that they did not want to appeal. The verdict is thus final.
