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Reiner Möller, chief of police from Aalen, at the press conference after the arrest of a suspected serial killer
Photo: Marijan Murat / dpa
After the violent death of three senior citizens in the Schwäbisch Hall region, the investigators have succeeded in their search.
The alleged perpetrator, a 31-year-old, is in custody.
He is charged with murder and manslaughter.
According to the police, among other things, DNA traces led to his arrest.
The acts of violence had unsettled older people in the Schwäbisch Hall region in particular.
Last week, an 89-year-old woman was found dead in her apartment in Michelbach an der Bilz.
In this context, the police also checked the death of a 77-year-old in December last year.
The woman's body was found in her apartment in Schwäbisch Hall.
Police believe both women were killed.
Investigation file initially closed
The death of a 94-year-old senior whose body was found in Schwäbisch Hall in October 2020 and very close to the apartment of the dead 77-year-old was also unclear until the very end.
Here, too, the police are assuming a homicide.
In September 2021, the public prosecutor initially closed the investigation file because there was no further information.
The investigators had identified parallels in the three cases and raised suspicions, partly because the three victims were older women from the same region and had been killed on Wednesdays.
Until Tuesday, they had called the investigation and the review "routine" and "automatism."
Apartment block and dumpster searched
According to the "Stuttgarter Zeitung", a block of flats in the Schwäbisch Hall district of Tullauerhöhe was searched on Tuesday.
There are also two of the three crime scenes.
Around a dozen civil servants had therefore shielded the building from passers-by and, among other things, secured traces in a garbage container.
The "Stuttgarter Zeitung" also quotes witnesses who said they had seen a man in handcuffs.
According to the police headquarters in Aalen, the operation is related to the special commission "height", which was determined in the three murders of senior citizens and has now been increased to 75 officers.
lmd/dpa
