It was a horrific picture that was presented to the investigators in January 2020: parents and son shot dead in their house in Starnberg. The court must now answer the question: What happened then?
Starnberg / Munich – They are terrifying, disturbing images. Sequences like from a horror film: “He’s still breathing”, says someone on the shaky film recorded with a cell phone, only a few seconds long – and adds an unmoved “Hm”.
The camera is pointing to a lifeless young man. The second video is just as appalling. It shows the dead father of the young man – collapsed in the door to the bedroom in which his wife, who was also shot, lies. “Then I’ll let you sleep some more,” says the voice cynically – and the light is turned off.
According to their own statements, investigators found these short film sequences on the cell phone of a 21-year-old German who is on trial because he is said to have shot his good friend and his parents in their house in Starnberg. They will be shown at the start of the trial against him and a Slovak co-defendant, who is two years his junior, at the Munich II district court.
Police patrol discovered the bodies
The public prosecutor accuses the man of three murders, and the co-accused of complicity in one murder. She assumes that the two wanted to get the guns of the family’s son, which he illegally owned.
“Investigation Group January 11” is the name of the criminal police unit that dealt with the case. A police patrol discovered the bodies of the 60-year-old woman, her 64-year-old husband and their son in their house. Only the family dog, which was also shot, survived seriously injured. “What about the dog” comments the voice on one of the gruesome videos of blood on the floor.
Investigations with a spectacular turnaround
Flashback: At first, the case seemed clear to investigators. They assumed that the son, a gun nut, shot his parents first and then himself. A few weeks later the spectacular turnaround: Further investigation results suggested a different scenario. The Munich public prosecutor’s office now assumes that the son was not a perpetrator, but a victim himself – a victim of his close friend, who is said to have him and his parents on his conscience.
The co-defendant is said to have driven his friend to the family home and waited there during the crime. Investigators later found illegal weapons on the main defendant that he allegedly stole from the family home.
The older of the two defendants is said to have confessed to the police – but he does not want to say anything more about the horrific allegations in court. The co-defendant is also silent, at least initially. His defense is still considering whether it will stay that way.
Conflicting statements by the main defendant
However, the unemployed main defendant made detailed statements – albeit not free of drastic contradictions – about his personal circumstances. He speaks of heavy alcohol and drug use, problems with his mother and bullying at school.
He does not seem to have any doubts that he will be convicted. Later, “as soon as I get into prison,” he wants to do a craft training, he says about his plans for the future. And then he wants to build a house – “when I get out”. He doesn’t want to say how he got the money for the drugs. And he also doesn’t answer many other questions – such as those about his friends or his sexual orientation.
The defense of the co-defendant expresses massive doubts about the version on which the prosecution is based on their indictment and attacks the prosecution in three opening statements based on the US model.
The prosecution follows “a simple logic” in their indictment, says lawyer Alexander Betz. “There are four people in a house, one comes out alive, and so the fourth is the murderer.”
But this is only one of the many conceivable variants. There are several hypotheses that are just as plausible, if not more plausible. The prosecution had “filled their gaps in knowledge with a lot of imagination instead of investigative work,” criticized lawyer Alexander Stevens.
Complicated evidence
There are seven hypotheses that the defense puts forward: For example, they still consider the originally assumed variant of the son as the murderer of his parents to be possible. Traces of smoke had been found on his hands and the forensic medical report did not rule out the possibility that the young man could actually have shot himself.
In any case, the three defense lawyers emphasize that their client’s complicity cannot be proven. Because even if everything went as stated in the indictment, the mere chauffeur does not prove complicity.
“An insane misfortune separated us in our earthly life,” reads an obituary notice for the couple who have given up friends. The relatives write about the “indescribable” and the “incomprehensible” in another advertisement. You all probably still ask yourself the question: What happened in Starnberg in January 2020?
The presiding judge Regina Holstein speaks of a “fog” that the main hearing will have to clear. The youth chamber has set 54 trial days for this. The verdict could then fall exactly two years after the fact: on January 11, 2022. dpa
