The now convicted undertaker (l) and his defense lawyer are standing in a hall of the Rostock district court. © Bernd Wüstneck/dpa/Archivbild
Money, love, sex, grief and alleged fraud - a trial against an undertaker in Rostock is attracting attention. On Tuesday, another alleged victim of the man testified.
Rostock - In the fraud trial against an undertaker, one of his alleged victims has said that he had financially supported the 49-year-old because of his feelings for him. After a first private meeting, she was in love, said the 63-year-old at the hearing on Tuesday at the Rostock District Court. When asked by the judge why she later lent the man 48,000 euros privately and initially without a receipt, the bank clerk spoke of a "euphoria of feelings". In the end, the woman got back only 8000 euros, according to her own statement.
According to the public prosecutor's office, the man, who has a criminal record, is said to have cheated several women out of large sums of money. According to the indictment, he had relationships with them and is said to have taken advantage of their emotional situation. A total of around 200,000 euros is at stake.
Already on the first two days of the trial, some women were interrogated. Most recently, the public had been excluded because it was also about intimate details and the death of the child of one of the women, whose burial the man had taken care of. The cases were the subject of a documentary on ARD under the title "The Grief Swindler".
The 63-year-old witness rejected on Tuesday the representation that the borrowed money was related to sex. "Certainly, sex had a different significance for him. I accepted that." However, she did not force this and did not demand it under any circumstances. According to her own statements, the woman initially had business dealings with the defendant and his family. There, too, there were problems after some time. In the relationship, the defendant was only concerned with physical matters. She finally ended it.
On Tuesday, more witnesses were to be heard. It was still unclear whether a verdict would already be made. Dpa