Trial of murdered eight-year-old: Cell phone data does not provide any new information

In the trial surrounding the violent death of eight-year-old Fabian, a new analysis of cell phone data probably did not bring the hoped-for clarity. A spokesman for the public prosecutor's office admitted this after a state criminal police officer presented the results to the Rostock regional court.

A new evaluation may not provide any major information, also because the location data was switched off, said the spokesman. The data was actually intended to provide information about where the 30-year-old defendant was at the time of the crime.

Police checked the reliability of the cell phone data

Investigators had checked the cell phone's location data, which they had previously presented. This data corresponded to further investigations and suggested that the defendant had moved from a lake to the crime scene on the alleged day of the crime and from there to her apartment. In order to check the reliability of the data read out, the investigators drove the recorded route a few weeks ago. They took the cell phone with them so that they could evaluate it again later.

The defendant's lawyer, Andreas Ohm, pointed out several inaccuracies. “The witness cannot explain how the inaccuracies come about,” said Ohm. The court then ordered the data to be checked again on another trip.

"I don't know the apartment"

The public prosecutor's office accuses the defendant of luring the boy last October from the apartment in Güstrow near Rostock where Fabian lived with his mother. According to the public prosecutor's office, the defendant later stabbed the eight-year-old to death at a pond in the nearby town of Klein Upahl and burned his body.

"I don't know the apartment," the defendant said in court. She picked Fabian up from his mother several times, but always waited for him in the car. After starting school in 2023, the eight-year-old "hardly stayed at all" in the apartment where the defendant lived with Fabian's father.

The defendant sees himself as a victim of domestic violence

The woman also commented again on her relationship with the boy's father. He “raised his hand against the children several times,” said the defendant. After she intervened, he also hit her. She justified her early experiences with violence as the reason why she did not separate from her partner.

The indictment states that the woman killed Fabian in a vague hope of saving her relationship with his father. After there was a physical altercation between the father and the accused, Fabian only wanted to meet his father regularly again after they had separated. Fabian's father then ended the four-year relationship in August 2025.

Crowd in front of courthouse

The public prosecutor's office bases its accusation, among other things, on witnesses who state that they saw the woman's pickup truck in Klein Upahl on the presumed day of Fabian's death.

Public interest in the process is very high. People had already lined up in front of the Rostock regional court that night so that they could attend the day of the proceedings in the courtroom.