His son's playground friend is staying for an overnight visit. The next morning she is dead, stabbed, the victim of a terrible crime. It should have been the host father. In the process he is silent.
It wasn't planned, but the kids were begging so much. The mother is persuaded. Your six-year-old daughter can stay at the playground friend. A last kiss, a loving farewell: "I hugged her and told her that we'll see each other again tomorrow," the mother remembers that Saturday before Christmas a year ago. She never sees her child alive again. The girl becomes the victim of a horrific crime. The guest father is under suspicion.
The 34-year-old has to answer before the Baden-Baden district court for murder, among other things. He is said to have killed the six-year-old with a knife on the night of December 19 last year in his apartment in Baden-Baden and attacked the corpse. The man is silent. The verdict will be pronounced this afternoon. The public prosecutor is certain that the evidence is sufficient for a conviction. She accuses the trained road builder, among other things, of murder, disturbing the peace of the dead and attempted murder in four cases; she demands a life sentence - and the determination of the particular gravity of the guilt. The lawyers for the joint plaintiffs, including the mother and father of the girl who was killed, largely agreed in a closed session. The public defender wanted to waive an application for the sentence.
The defendant was considered a loving father and reliable. He was popular with children. The six-year-old had already stayed twice before with other children at the playground friend. The girl's mother knew the man from the playground. Nothing indicated to her that her daughter could be in danger with him.
What the public prosecutor's office lists is all the more appalling. The accused is said to have killed the girl in the bedroom with a cut through her throat, sexually assaulted the child's corpse several times and then mutilated the dead girl's genitals. He is said to have set fire to cover up the crime - although four relatives were sleeping in the house, including his six-year-old son. Investigators are shocked by the injuries inflicted on the little girl. And all the blood at the crime scene.
All those involved in the trial assume that the German, who has no criminal record, committed the crime. But what was the trigger? The man with the short dark blond hair and the eye-catching tattoo on his neck says nothing. He carefully, but largely unmoved, follows the prosecutor's list of intolerable details and witness statements. Now and then he shakes his head. The court, the public prosecutor's office, six representatives of the joint plaintiffs and the audience in the hall, including the girl's neighbors and acquaintances, are waiting in vain for an explanation.
The defendant does not consent to being examined by a psychiatrist. An appraiser has to get a picture of this in the process. From his point of view, there is nothing to suggest that there is less culpability. Pedophilia cannot be identified. The defendant grew up in the home, but after a difficult start he led an unremarkable life. Before the act, he is said to have watched porn. After that he is said to have tried to take his own life. What triggered the crime could not be clarified even after ten days of negotiations. If something remains unexplained, which is inexplicable anyway, it is particularly difficult for relatives in their immeasurable suffering. The girl's father hopes to the last that the alleged murderer will break his silence. Vain. His lawyer knows about the limits of criminal proceedings, but regrets: "The exact sequence of events remains a mystery." Some things, says the defendant's public defender, are incomprehensible.
