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Defendant Christiane K. in the Wuppertal district court: an act of revenge?
The result of being completely overwhelmed?
Photo: Oliver Berg / dpa
The accused is led into the hall, you can tell by the flashing of the cameras, Christiane K. herself can hardly be seen at first, she is so small. In a blue plaid western shirt, she takes a seat behind her three defenders, she wears her long blond hair parted to the side, her eyes are rimmed with dark kohl, a well-groomed, youthful-looking face with a slightly snub nose - her past life, as disastrous as it may have been, has leave no visible traces on Christiane K.
When the officers came to their apartment in Solingen on September 3, 2020, they found five of their six children dead in their beds: Melina, 19 months old, Leonie, two, Sophie, three, Timo, six, and Luca, eight years old .
Only her eldest son, eleven years old, survived.
He was in school at the time of the crime.
Christiane K. told him that the siblings had died in a traffic accident.
Then she went on a train journey with him, via Düsseldorf to Mönchengladbach, where his grandmother lives.
They parted ways at Düsseldorf Central Station, the boy drove on to Grandma's, Christiane K. threw herself in front of an approaching train, she was injured and rescued from the track bed.
Since today she has to answer for what she has done before the 5th criminal chamber of the Wuppertal regional court.
The children must have struggled
The chairman of the chamber, Judge Jochen Kötter, asks her for her personal details.
She is 28 years old now.
"Still married to the best of my knowledge?" The chairman ascertained.
"Yes," says the defendant and nods, then remains silent.
Public prosecutor Heribert Kaune-Gebhard reads out the indictment.
He accuses Christiane K. of having "insidiously" killed five people.
In the morning between 7.20 a.m. and 11.30 a.m. she mixed the children with an anesthetic cocktail of drugs in the drinking cups and bottles "as part of a normal breakfast situation".
When the children fell asleep, she prepared "a normal bathing situation" in the bathroom;
the police found the toys in the bath water.
"Then she woke Melina," continues Haune-Gebhard, and suffocated her in the tub.
"Then she put the dead child in bed wrapped in towels."
One after the other, she killed all the children in this way.
"Leonie, grabbing her tightly by the neck." Then Sophie, then Timo, "suffocated by a grip on the neck."
Finally, Luca.
The children were found to have bleeding on the scalp, elbows, and collarbones - they must have struggled.
The prosecutor ends after five minutes.
Christiane K. has outwardly composed and listened attentively, once she wipes her eyes with her finger.
"Ms. K.," the presiding judge turns to the defendant, "you have the right to provide information or to remain silent."
Christiane K's defense attorney Felix Menke explains that at this point in time, his client will be silent.
A chat on the day of the tattoo lasts for hours
Shortly after the crime, a sea of candles, flowers and cuddly toys spread out in front of the mother's apartment.
A mother who kills five of her children - how can that be?
Even the investigators are still unclear about the motive.
Shortly before the crime, Christiane K's husband, the father of four of her children, who had been living with a neighbor in the apartment block next door for a long time, explained to her that the separation was final for him.
In a statement before the start of the trial, the public prosecutor had mentioned a chat history from the day of the incident, it goes on for hours from seven in the morning, in which Christiane K. wrote to her husband that he would not see the children again, that they would go where they would soon be will be.
So was the act an act of revenge?
A failed takeout suicide?
Or the result of complete emotional overload, as the investigators initially suspected?
No evidence of incompetence
The court and public prosecutor's office have commissioned the Cologne-based legal psychologist Sabine Nowara and the Bochum psychiatrist Pedro Faustmann to provide expert opinions on Christiane K.
She spoke to them in detail - and protested her innocence: a masked man broke into the apartment, tied her, the mother, and killed her children.
But the investigators have not found the slightest clue.
Both experts, the public prosecutor explains, have so far found nothing that suggests a long-term mental illness, an identity disorder or the like.
At the end of the first day of the negotiation, Christiane K's defense lawyer Thomas Seifert made a series of motions against the expert Faustmann. Seifert wants to steer him out of the proceedings as biased. The defense attorney alleges that Faustmann "deceived" the defendant about his duty to notify the court and the public prosecutor's office. He had failed to derive an EEG from Christiane K. that could have provided information about possible brain damage. And he did not deal adequately with an ongoing case by the Mönchengladbach public prosecutor's office against Christiane K.'s father.
The expert is unable to attend that day, he cannot explain Seifert's allegations, the public prosecutor considers them to be insubstantial.
But at the end of the day of negotiations, in this detour, a possible biographical piece of the mosaic emerges.
It turns out that Christiane K's father - convicted years ago for possessing multiple child pornographic material - is now also being investigated on suspicion of sexual abuse of his daughter.
Until the investigation is complete, Seifert requests that the proceedings should be suspended.
The court must now decide on this.
For the time being, eleven days of negotiation are scheduled for the procedure, and the negotiation will continue next Wednesday.
