German couple convicted of murdering Ukrainian refugees to steal baby
A German court on Monday delivered a verdict in the trial of a couple who killed a Ukrainian refugee and her mother in March 2024 to steal a newborn baby.
The German couple admitted to killing the 27-year-old Ukrainian woman and her 51-year-old mother in order to abduct the younger woman’s five-week-old baby on the first day of the trial at Mannheim District Court
The accused told the court that after suffering a number of miscarriages and failed fertility treatment, they hatched a plan to kidnap a newborn girl and pass her off as their daughter.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the couple have a total of four children, including one son together.
The 45-year-old woman and her 43-year-old husband are from Sandhausen, near Heidelberg.
“I regret everything I have done,” the man said in a statement read out by lawyers on Jan. 7, his wife added, “I made a big mistake.”
The couple intentionally targeted refugees from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, joining a group on Telegram to offer help with translation, prosecutors said.
The younger Ukrainian woman was living with her mother and baby in a refugee accommodation in the south-western German town of Wiesloch when she came into contact with the couple.
Earlier, on March 6, 2024, they allegedly sedated the two Ukrainian refugees in a restaurant before the man killed them with a blunt object in two separate locations.
They sank the grandmother’s body in a lake and burnt the mother’s body before driving home with the baby.
(dpa/NAN)
