Authorities in Germany have filed charges against a 23-year-old woman - a German of Iraqi descent named Sharban - who they say murdered her doppelganger to make people believe she was dead.
According to the authorities in the state of Bavaria, the woman found the double on Instagram, and murdered her last summer.
Her blood-soaked body was found inside a Mercedes car in the city of Ingolstadt near Munich.
At first it seemed that the suspect's plot was successful: the authorities thought it was the body of Sharban, who works as a beautician.
Even the members of her family recognized her body and thus almost closed the scroll on deciphering the affair.
But in the autopsy, doubts arose and in the end it turned out that it was an Algerian blogger who is also involved in the field of cosmetics: a woman named Khadija who lives in the neighboring German state of Aden-Württemberg, who is also 23 years old.
The police just this week shared their assessment of the possible motive in which Sharban allegedly murdered her double.
The police said that the resemblance between the two was "on an incredible level", as they both had long black hair, and a similar build.
"The investigation shows that apparently the suspect wanted to disappear because of a family dispute and therefore staged her death," said the investigator from the city's prosecution, Veronica Grazer.
Investigators believe that Sharban operated under several different usernames on social media and contacted several women on Instagram who she believed could be considered possible doubles in the week before the murder.
"By making various promises, she tried to get women to meet her, but without success at first," Grazer said.
But Sharban did not despair and Khadija finally agreed to meet after she was promised some benefit in the field of cosmetics.
Sharban picked up her victim from her apartment on the day of the murder, with the help of another person, then when they got to a wooded area they convinced her to get out of the car - and then stabbed her to death.
They drove the body to the area where Sharban's parents lived in Ingolstadt, and there they discovered it, and believed it to be her.
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