More than 30 years after the violent death of young Sabine in Franconia, the trial against her alleged murderer has begun at the Würzburg Regional Court. The defendant is said to have killed the schoolgirl when she was 17 years old in Karlstadt shortly before Christmas 1993.
“The defendant spontaneously decided to sexually assault the victim and probably lured her onto the so-called threshing floor of the stable under a pretext,” said senior public prosecutor Thorsten Seebach. The now 47-year-old was “looking to satisfy his sexual urges at any cost.” It is unclear exactly what caused the victim’s death. However, the man is said to have hit the 13-year-old girl’s neck in a way that cannot be determined with certainty.
Defendant claims innocence
When the charges were read out, the German kept shaking his head. According to his lawyer, the man protests his innocence. The 47-year-old initially did not want to comment on the allegations on the first day of the trial.
Presiding judge Thomas Schuster urgently appealed to the defendant to do something to help solve the crime. “There are clues that make it very, very, very unlikely that you had nothing to do with the matter,” he said. Sabine’s family would certainly be more interested in knowing what happened than in him ending up in prison.
Mammoth process until mid-2024
The trial is scheduled to last 60 days until the middle of next year. Because the accused was a juvenile at the time of the crime, the proceedings will take place behind closed doors – even though the man is now 47 years old. Only five press representatives are allowed to attend.
The charge is murder, other possible crimes such as manslaughter are already statute-barred. The young woman disappeared on December 15, 1993, and two days later her body was discovered in a slurry pit on a farm in the Wiesenfeld district. The pit was covered with a concrete lid.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:240909-930-226934/2
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