As of: January 29, 2024, 4:05 p.m
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The defendant (M), who is led by judicial officers into the hearing room in the regional court before the verdict in the trial surrounding the death of a 19-year-old from Klötze (Saxony-Anhalt).
© Simon Kremer/dpa
A 19-year-old from Altmark was searched for weeks last year.
Until she was finally found dead in a gravel pit - burned and with dozens of knife wounds.
Now it's clear: it was murder.
Stendal - In the trial of a 19-year-old from Klötze in the Altmark (Saxony-Anhalt) who was stabbed 32 times, the defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder.
On Monday, the court saw it as proven that the 43-year-old defendant treacherously murdered his much younger lover and did not kill him out of emotion, as the defense argued.
The evidence suggests that there was never an affect, said presiding judge Ulrich Galler.
The trial surrounding the young woman made headlines across the country.
The 19-year-old was searched for weeks until her body was finally found in a gravel pit in Lower Saxony.
The defendant, who was a former coach in the 19-year-old's soccer club, had an intimate extramarital relationship with the victim.
In their closing argument, the defense pleaded for manslaughter and pointed out that the crime had been committed emotionally.
The 19-year-old was delusional about becoming pregnant and tried to force the defendant to have sex with a knife.
It was a toxic relationship.
The public prosecutor and co-prosecution accused the father of three of treacherous murder.
The defendant took advantage of the 19-year-old's childlike infatuation.
At the time of the crime she was completely innocent and defenseless.
“You are a murderer,” said the victim’s mother’s lawyer, Holger Stahlknecht.
The defendant acted completely without empathy, initially storing his lover's body in a wild garbage dump, before trying to burn it a few days later and then placing it in a 1.70 meter deep pit.
The family continues to suffer greatly from what happened.
In addition to the prison sentence, the defendant was also ordered to pay compensation, totaling more than 45,000 euros.
Numerous friends and acquaintances of the 19-year-old were present in the courtroom during the 18 days of trial.
When the verdict was announced, many of them wore black T-shirts with a picture of the victim.
Before the verdict was announced, the 43-year-old also made his own statement for the first time. During the trial, he had a statement read out by his lawyers in which he admitted that he had stabbed the victim with the knife.
He was incredibly sorry, the man said on Monday.
He didn't want it.
However, according to the court, the 43-year-old acted in a planned manner.
Before the crime, he turned off his cell phone and drove to a secluded place with the 19-year-old.
The explanations for the crime are unbelievable.
He played with half-truths, just as he built his network of relationships with half-truths.
dpa