A Stuttgart hotelier is said to have stolen 100,000 euros from a guest and then murdered him after the victim wanted to confront him about the theft. Now the man has to answer for murder and embezzlement in court.
Could it have been the panic because his theft had been exposed and the hotel, which was only a few months old, was threatened with closure? Or could a hotel operator from Stuttgart also have pulled through a plan and murdered his own guest? At the start of a murder trial against a Stuttgart entrepreneur, the public prosecutor was convinced: the 47-year-old not only stole from his victim, but also killed him and hid the body.
The prosecutor at the district court said the German stole and murdered out of "greed and to cover up another crime". The permanent guest is said to have rented a whole year in the hotel in the Untertürkheim district of Stuttgart, very close to the vineyards and not far from the Mercedes-Benz plant. Room 103, he paid the rent of 6,000 euros in cash, according to the indictment. The 59-year-old had only recently sold his house and did not have an account. He deposited the rest of the money, more than 400,000 euros, in the hotel's safe, to which only the operator had a key.
According to the public prosecutor, the temptation was too great for the accused German: the man stole a total of 110,000 euros, bought some gold bars from the loot, deposited almost half the sum in a locker and also redeemed his leased car. Shortly before the Easter holidays, however, the hotel guest, who had become suspicious, confronted the man - after all, only he had a key for the safe.
"The accused feared that the crime would be reported and the money would be demanded back," said the prosecutor. On Easter Sunday, under a pretext, he ordered the man into the storage room of an underground car park, hit him eight times with a five-kilogram dumbbell and then choked the seriously injured man. According to the indictment, the German hid the body with the help of an acquaintance in a forest in Esslingen near Stuttgart. There she was discovered by walkers the next day, and the hotel operator was arrested almost three weeks later.
At the beginning of the trial, the man in the dock in room 1 of the district court initially kept silent. His client will comment on the allegations later, his defense attorney said. A total of 13 days of negotiations are scheduled, the victim's brother appears as a joint plaintiff. A verdict is not expected before the end of January.
