The act was sensational – and so was the trial: the trial of a triple murder in Starnberg is coming to an end before the Munich II Regional Court. The pleadings of the main defendant’s defense are scheduled for this Monday. In the afternoon – after about a year and a half – the verdict could fall in the process that has developed into a mammoth process.
Flashback: On January 12, 2020, a police patrol discovered the bodies of a 60-year-old woman, her 64-year-old husband and their son in a villa in Starnberg – after a relative had become concerned. The parents are in their pajamas in their bedroom on the first floor of the family home, the son’s body is in his room, on the bed.
It was also about a lot of money
Because a gun was found in his hand, the investigators found the matter clear: The son, who is training to be a gunsmith and is considered a gun nut, took his parents’ life and then himself. This assumed scenario lasts for about two weeks – then the turning point: A friend of the son confesses to the murder of the family.
This young German has been on trial since August 2021, charged with three counts of murder, among other things. The public prosecutor’s office assumes that the now 22-year-old and the now 21-year-old Slovak, who was accused of simple murder as an accomplice and who drove him to the scene of the crime, wanted to get hold of the young man’s illegal weapons in order to kill them sell. For a lot of money.
In the course of the trial, the 22-year-old – in contrast to his co-defendant – confessed to the crime and also largely confirmed the motive. However, he also stated that his friend, the gun enthusiast, had planned a killing spree in a Munich shopping center, which he actually wanted to prevent.
Long prison sentences possible
The public prosecutor’s office has demanded high youth sentences for the two accused, who were considered adolescents at the time of the crime. Prosecutor Julia Wiesenbauer spoke out in her plea for 13 years and six months in prison and the reservation of preventive detention.
The demand of the public prosecutor’s office is unusual in two respects: actually, in criminal law for young people, a maximum sentence of ten years also applies to murder. However, if adolescents – i.e. people between 18 and 21 years of age – are convicted under juvenile criminal law, up to 15 years are possible in rare cases of murder with a particularly serious degree of guilt.
And secondly, the prosecution is demanding the same sentence for the 22-year-old man who admitted to having shot three people and the 21-year-old who is said to have helped plan the crime but was not present at the scene. According to the indictment, he drove his friend and roommate to the crime scene and picked him up again after the alleged murders.
The public prosecutor’s office justifies the fact that the required sentence for the 21-year-old accused of being an accomplice for a murder is just as high as for the main defendant for triple murder with the older man’s confession. His alleged accomplice was silent in the process, his lawyers denied the deeds for him. Only involvement in a robbery shortly after the murders has been admitted. In their pleading, his defense attorneys asked for an acquittal of the charge of murder.
Video shows cruel act
The three victims “had to die in a cruel and humiliating way” and were “formally executed,” according to the public prosecutor’s plea.
Videos were shown at the trial of the main defendant, who confessed, filming the three people he had just shot. “He’s still breathing, hmm,” he says about his friend. “Well, then I’ll let you sleep on,” he said cynically about the corpses of his parents. “An even greater mockery of the victims is hardly possible,” said prosecutor Wiesenbauer in her plea.
She spoke of a “mental and moral brutalization of the accused that is rarely encountered” and says: “A human life was obviously worth nothing here.”
