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Start of proceedings before the Regional Court of Munich II
Photo: Sven Hoppe / dpa
Did a young man shoot his friend and his parents?
And what role did his buddy, who was waiting in front of the family house, play?
A good one and a half years after the violent death of a family in Starnberg, Upper Bavaria, the triple murder trial against two suspects has now begun.
The 21-year-old main defendant and his friend, who was accused as an accomplice, did not want to comment on the allegations at the start of the trial, as they announced before the Munich II district court.
According to the indictment, the 21-year-old is said to have shot the family in their home to get his friend's illegal weapons.
His alleged accomplice, a 19-year-old, is said to have driven him to the crime scene and picked him up again.
A police patrol discovered the bodies of the 60-year-old woman and her 64-year-old husband and son on January 12, 2020.
The accused are said to have cleverly concealed their act - the investigators initially thought the son was the perpetrator.
However, further investigations led them to the now suspect 21-year-old, who was friends with the son and is said to have spent the evening with him.
Like the dead young man, he is said to have been a gun fanatic.
The defense of the 19-year-old co-defendant expressed massive doubts about the allegation and attacked the public prosecutor's office in three opening statements.
In their indictment, this follows "a simple logic," said lawyer Alexander Betz.
"There are four people in a house, one comes out alive, and so the fourth is the murderer."
However, this is only one of the numerous conceivable variants.
There are "several hypotheses of what could have happened on the night of January 10-11, 2021, which are just as plausible, if not more plausible."
"Gaps in knowledge filled with a lot of imagination instead of investigative work"
The prosecution had "filled their gaps in knowledge with a lot of imagination instead of investigative work," criticized lawyer Alexander Stevens.
For example, he still considers the originally adopted variant of the son as the murderer of his parents to be possible.
In any case, complicity on the part of his client cannot be proven.
The main defendant did not comment on the allegations, but detailed - and not free of contradictions - on his personal circumstances.
He described problems with alcohol, drugs and his mother.
He didn't want to say how he got the money for the drugs.
Nor did he answer many other questions - such as those about his friends or his sexual orientation.
wit / dpa
