Helmut Kohl is Chancellor, the Berlin Wall is still standing and “I Want to Break Free” is playing on the radio. It is 1985. A year that seems far away today - and yet is in the middle of a murder trial at the Ulm district court. There, a 70-year-old has to answer for a gruesome crime that happened decades ago.
More than 41 years ago, investigators near Deggingen in the Göppingen district came across a case that would keep them busy for decades. The body of a 31-year-old woman is found on a forest path. The legs are tied together with a brassiere and the body shows serious injuries. Who killed the woman and what exactly happened remains a mystery at first.
Her face is partially skeletonized and affected by animals. The injuries indicate massive violence. The woman may even have been partially run over by a vehicle. At the beginning of the trial, the prosecution spoke of massive violence and an absolute will to kill, to which the 31-year-old fell victim.
The investigators at the time secured traces, interviewed people close to the dead and tried to reconstruct their last hours. The first important clue is a key that they find on the corpse. It leads to a locker at the train station in Göppingen. The documents discovered there ultimately help to identify the woman.
She is 31 years old, worked as a kitchen helper before her death and has no permanent address. She often hangs out around the Göppingen train station. She met the future defendant in a bar. He was 29 years old at the time, a newspaper deliveryman, married and the father of a daughter. He and his wife are expecting their second child.
According to his account in court, the two meet a few times and have sex once. The woman was described to him as sexually open. He finally took her with him in his car. He could no longer say exactly whether the sex took place in the vehicle or outside. After that they parted ways.
The defendant had already been questioned by the police on March 22, 1985. At that time he is said to have stated that he had known the woman since the 1970s. Today, however, he says he only met her in 1984. He couldn't remember much, but he knew: "It was just sex, nothing else." He did not have a relationship with the woman.
After her death, the German was questioned by the police for the first time in March 1985 and released again. Further investigations come to nothing and the case gradually becomes a cold case.
In 2022 there will be movement again. A saliva sample was taken from the defendant's home by the police. Around three years later, police officers searched his house in Schwendi (Biberach district) and secured evidence. The man was finally arrested in April of this year.
The public prosecutor accuses the defendant of murder. According to her account, he is said to have taken the woman to the forest path in February 1985 and raped her. He then allegedly choked her and hit her skull with a stone. It also cannot be ruled out that he drove over her body with a car. The public prosecutor's office assumes that the murder served to cover up the previous sexual offense.
According to the public prosecutor's office, the evaluation of confiscated evidence, a reassessment of old traces, a forensic medical report and DNA comparisons confirmed the suspicion. An old DNA trace is said to have played a central role. However, there were no details on the first day of the trial.
Why such a case can gain momentum again after four decades can also be explained by the enormous advances in forensic science. “Our technical capabilities for DNA analysis are far better than they were 40 years ago,” says Professor Sebastian Kunz from Ulm University Hospital, who is also involved in the process as a forensic expert. Today it is possible to “create a potential perpetrator profile with even the smallest amounts”.
Under certain conditions, certain external characteristics can now even be derived from DNA. It is possible to "reconstruct certain phenotypic characteristics," says Kunz - for example eye, hair and skin color.
But a DNA trace alone doesn't lead investigators to the perpetrator. “You need an appropriate comparison with a comparison track,” explains Kunz. The processing itself is also complex. “You shouldn’t forget that dealing with old murder cases requires a lot of personnel,” says the forensic doctor. It takes time “until old cases are processed and DNA analyzes are commissioned”.
In addition, a cold case works differently than a current homicide. “Police investigations and forensic medical follow-up assessments of cold cases are always complex,” says Kunz. One of the reasons is “that we were not directly involved, but rather only indirectly assessed”.
Six days were set aside for the trial. A verdict could come on November 11th.
