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Arrested H. 2020: "Totally crazy"
Photo: M. Schäfer / HANNOVERREPORTER.DE / dpa
As on every day of the trial, the accused appears in a grotesque procession.
Mouth and nose protection, latex gloves and laboratory goggles that are reminiscent of oversized ski goggles.
As if Christoph H., 53, wanted to pass the Kiel Regional Court as the doctor he would love to be.
The presiding judge wants to know from him whether he has completed his studies.
No, replies H. and describes his test anxiety verbatim.
But H's wife thinks he's working as a research dentist in Kiel, the judge continues.
Well, he didn't want to lose her, replies the defendant.
"I'm not drunk and risk my wife kicking the sack and saying: I'm leaving you." He's not that kind of person, he can't just give up his wife and get involved with the next.
It dawns on his wife, who is also sitting in the hall, that her husband has lied to her for years.
He pretended to be a dentist without ever having learned the trade.
Christoph H. is on trial because he is said to have faked his death in order to cheat insurance companies.
According to the indictment, he drove from the port of Kiel-Schilksee to the Baltic Sea in October 2019, returned with the rubber dinghy and disappeared.
The police found him seven months later in the attic of his parents' house in Schwarmstedt, Lower Saxony.
14 term life insurance policies had been taken out on his person, totaling 4.1 million euros, to be paid out to his wife Olena, 53, and his mother Thea, 87.
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