Police and prosecutors say their daughter is suspected of murdering her – possibly to fake her own death.
The event that a German-Iraqi woman living in the southern German city of Ingolstadt was named Shahraban K. by the German newspaper Bild shocked many people in Germany. After she stopped answering the phone, her parents traveled from Munich to Ingolstadt to look for her – and found her car and body on August 16.
Police launched an investigation and released an initial statement about the homicide, saying the woman appeared to be a “victim of a violent crime”. But police spokesman Andreas Aichele said the victim’s identity was quickly cast in doubt because the victim’s DNA and fingerprint evidence did not match those of the missing woman, and police had heard “rumors” that the missing woman was seen driving a car around the local area. interview.
A day later, police identified “completely new circumstances” during their investigation and arrested the missing 23-year-old man and a 23-year-old Kosovar man on suspicion of homicide, police said in a statement.
German media named the victim as Algerian Khadija O, also 23, who investigators said looked “strikingly similar” to the missing woman.
At the time, authorities did not give a motive for the killing.
They now believe the suspects came up with a plan to find someone who could impersonate the young woman “who wanted to go into hiding because of a family dispute” and decided to fake her death, according to a statement from prosecutors Monday.
Police said they believed the suspect was “chatting with several young women who looked like her” online and tried to lure them into meeting with false promises.
On August 16, the two suspects traveled to the Heilbronn region in neighboring Baden-Württemberg state to pick up the victim from his home, police said. They then took her to a wooded area and stabbed her multiple times before driving back to Ingolstadt, where they left the body in the back of the vehicle.
While the two suspects, now 24, have been in custody since August on suspicion of homicide, a district court late last week issued warrants for their arrest in connection with the more serious murder charge, which carries a life sentence imprisonment.
Investigation is ongoing.
