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The accused in court: "What would I have got out of it? I only have damage."
Photo: Bernd Thissen / dpa
It is shortly after six o'clock on an early Saturday morning in April 2019 when engine driver Thomas C. notices a few unusual shadows in the distance from his cab.
C. is on his regional train 93 between Erndtebrück and Bad Berleburg in the Sauerland, the speedometer shows 52 kilometers per hour.
He doesn't have any passengers yet, it's an empty journey.
The shadows are getting closer.
This is how he describes it later in an interrogation.
Finally he initiates an emergency stop, crouches to the side, then there is a crash.
Two massive manhole covers, each weighing 32 kilograms, break through the windshield of his driver's cab.
The fine splinters of the safety glass fly into first class.
The manhole covers had previously been attached to the railing of a railway bridge with ropes.
The police initially assumed an attack.
The investigators believed that C. escaped death only through his quick reaction.
Did the train driver orchestrate the attack himself?
The 49-year-old train driver has been sitting in the dock in the Bad Berleburg district court since Friday.
The public prosecutor accuses him of dangerous interference with rail traffic and of pretending to be a criminal offense.
C., so the allegation, is said to have orchestrated the attack on April 13, 2019.
The prosecution does not provide any indication of a possible motive.
C. denied the act during the interrogations.
He is silent in court.
It is purely a circumstantial process.
C., bald head and double chin, sits almost motionless on his chair, arms crossed over his chest.
The checked shirt stretches across his stomach.
C. is a colossal specimen of a human being.
He has grown since the incident, says a court investigator.
He did not remember the train driver that much.
C. in any case looks battered.
He was employed as a contract worker for the railway.
Since what happened, he has been living on sick pay of 80 euros a day and his wife's income.
In an interrogation he said: "What would I have got out of it? I only have damage."
A third manhole cover in the track bed
The court must now clarify whether it was really C. who knotted the manhole covers on ropes and lowered them the night before the crime so far from the bridge that they dangled exactly at the height of the driver's cab.
The police found a third manhole cover in the track bed; its installation had apparently failed.
According to the police, the perpetrator had recently lifted the heavy steel lid from a nearby country road.
The relevant loopholes were quickly found.
The investigators had set up a homicide squad immediately after the crime.
But useful evidence from witnesses did not want to open up.
In front of the court several police officers said that C.'s behavior immediately after the crime seemed strange and strange to them.
After arriving at the scene, they found C. unusually calm in the driver's cab.
However, they admitted, this was perhaps also due to the shock situation.
How does the DNA trace get on the rope?
A few days later, the case took its surprising turn: C. was himself targeted by the investigators.
They found traces of his DNA on the ropes and manhole covers.
They searched his small assembly apartment, which he shares with a roommate, but could not find anything suspicious.
They went to his main residence, 200 kilometers away.
Here the officers found a device on his bicycle that was fastened with a similar knot as the manhole cover.
The trial day reveals some peculiarities.
One of the police officers visited C. a few hours after the crime to question him as a witness.
It seemed strange to him that the train driver was apparently already chatting with colleagues on WhatsApp, but did not want to contact his wife.
At the scene of the crime, C. also testified that he had left his driver's cab after the collision and touched both the torn ropes and the manhole cover.
According to the investigators' findings, this would only explain part of the DNA traces found.
Because the officers also found the genetic material on one of the torn ropes that was hanging just under three meters above the track.
And another strange thing struck him while studying files, a young criminal investigator testified in court.
While evaluating C.'s data carriers, he came across deleted image files which he had reconstructed.
The photos were taken at the beginning of February 2019 and showed a CD and DVD collection.
It was precisely these collections that C. had been stolen in a burglary just three days after the photo was taken.
Even if he does not say it: Apparently the officer is also thinking of a fictitious crime in this case.
Defense attorney Dennis Tungel left it open whether his client will comment in the course of the three-day proceedings.
"First we want to hear what the witnesses have to say."
The process will continue on October 2nd.
Then the experts from the State Office of Criminal Investigation should comment in detail on the locations of the DNA traces.
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