In the trial of 14-year-old Ayleen, who was killed in Hesse, the defendant was sentenced to the maximum penalty. On Thursday, the Gießen regional court imposed a life sentence on 30-year-old Jan Heiko P. for murder. The judges also determined the particular gravity of the guilt and ordered subsequent preventive detention.
The court also found the defendant guilty of attempted rape, kidnapping of minors, driving without a license, coercion and obtaining child pornography.
The 30-year-old defendant is said to have abducted the girl from her hometown of Gottenheim near Freiburg in July last year, taken her to a forest near Langgöns in the Gießen district and tried to rape her there. Finally, he is said to have strangled the girl and sunk her in a lake. The man was charged with, among other things, murder, attempted rape resulting in death and coercion.
The public prosecutor’s office had requested a life sentence for murder and saw the guilt as particularly serious. In addition, senior public prosecutor Thomas Hauburger asked the court to order preventive detention for the German, who was convicted of a sexual offense as a teenager and was housed in a psychiatric facility for years. This enforcement measure had no effect, said Hauburger and added: “If we cannot reach an offender, he must be taken into custody because our society must be protected from such offenders.” The man should not be given the opportunity to kill another girl.
The 30-year-old himself said in a statement read out by his defense attorney that the student had provoked and insulted him, so he got angry and killed her. Like Hauburger, his defense attorneys also assume murder, but in their plea they rejected the particular gravity of the guilt because the defendant could not be proven to have attempted rape and a sexual motive for the crime. After the arguments, the 30-year-old spoke for the first time on day 14 of the trial and briefly expressed his regret: He was joining the defense, “and I’m sorry,” he said.
