Cologne Regional Court - Ex-girlfriend murdered and burned to death: Life imprisonment
For the home invasion murder of his ex-girlfriend, the Cologne Regional Court sentenced a 37-year-old man to life imprisonment on Thursday. The judges saw it as proven in the appeal proceedings that the defendant killed the woman in Cologne at the end of 2020 with two head shots and burned her body afterwards. In the first trial in this case, the Regional Court had sentenced the defendant to eleven years in prison for manslaughter. However, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) had overturned the judgment and referred the case back to the Cologne Regional Court for a new hearing.
"There is no doubt about the defendant's involvement in the crime", said the presiding judge and referred to numerous indications, including DNA traces of the defendant on the weapon and smoke residues on his hand and trousers. The judgment for the home invasion murder was based on the fact that the defendant had "exploited the defenselessness of the victim in a hostile frame of mind" when he shot the 31-year-old woman through the open passenger side door or the open passenger window from behind. The act was to be assessed as "targeted, organized behavior".
Subsequently, the defendant and a companion transported the body to the Rhineland-Palatinate Ochtendung. There, the men had "disposed of the body by the side of a business road, doused it with fuel, and set it on fire", according to the judgment. The charred body was found by passers-by the next day.
The motives for the crime were "jealousy and possessiveness" of the defendant. He did not want the 31-year-old to enter into a new relationship. In addition, the Turkish man wanted to save his own family - with his wife and two children. His wife had learned of his affair and had filed for divorce a few days before the crime.
The now issued judgment is not yet legally binding. The defendant's lawyer announced a revision.
The defendant's former girlfriend was from Cologne, where the crime took place. The Federal Court of Justice, located in Germany, overturned the initial eleven-year sentence for manslaughter handed down by the Cologne Regional Court. The 37-year-old man's girlfriend was murdered in Rhineland-Palatinate, not long after the incident in Cologne. The North Rhine-Westphalia authorities played a role in the investigation, likely due to the proximity of Cologne to Rhineland-Palatinate. The new trial in the Federal Court of Justice resulted in a life sentence for the man's crimes.
