"Horror house" perpetrator goes into preventive detention
After two murders of women, Wilfried W. has now served almost half of his prison sentence. However, experts still consider him to be dangerous, and the court also considers the risk of recidivism to be too high.
The perpetrator convicted of fatally abusing two women in the so-called house of horrors in Höxter is to be placed in preventive detention after serving his sentence. This was ordered by the Paderborn district court. The verdict is not yet final.
In a sensational trial in 2018, Wilfried W. was convicted of torturing several women in the house near Höxter in eastern North Rhine-Westphalia together with his ex-wife over a period of years. Two of the victims died completely emaciated after months of severe abuse. The ex-partner, who was also convicted, was sentenced to thirteen years in prison, Wilfried W. to eleven years.
Unlike his ex-wife, the court found him to be of diminished capacity. During the trial, an expert had denied that he was able to distinguish between good and evil. The court agreed with her at the time and sent Wilfried W. to a psychiatric clinic. However, doubts soon arose there about this assessment. A later court ruling stated that he was capable of control and therefore fully capable.
The "erroneous committal" was reversed. He has now been serving his sentence in a regular prison since 2020. Because it considers him to be dangerous even after his sentence has expired and wants to see him behind bars, the public prosecutor's office subsequently applied for preventive detention.
Manipulative skills, callousness and criminal energy
After a prison sentence has been served, preventive detention serves to protect the general public from dangerous offenders. The defense continued to believe that W. was in the right place in a psychiatric ward and wanted to prevent prevent preventive detention.
Decisive for the verdict was the assessment of psychiatric experts on the question of whether Wilfried W. still posed a danger. Two forensic experts in the trial had determined that there was a considerable risk that he could commit serious crimes against women again once he was free. They attested to his high level of manipulative skill, callousness and criminal energy. He was unable to show empathy for his victims or remorse for his actions, said psychiatrist Prof. Johannes Fuß.
Despite having a learning disability, he had "a high level of criminal intelligence when it came to exploiting women", according to the assessment of expert witness Prof. Hans-Ludwig Kröber. W. had also shown in the past that his dissocial personality was primarily concerned with "consuming new women and then torturing them".
Source: www.ntv.de
