German court convicts couple who killed two Ukrainian women to kidnap baby

The land court of the German city of Mannheim has put on trial a couple who killed a Ukrainian woman and her mother in order to pass off the younger woman's child as their own.

Source: European Pravda with reference to Spiegel

Details: At the beginning of the trial, both defendants confessed to the crimes read out in a statement by their lawyers. They expressed remorse for what had happened.

According to the indictment, the woman and her husband killed a 27-year-old woman and her 51-year-old mother in March 2024 in order to pass off the younger woman's five-week-old baby as their own.

The prosecutor's office noted that the motive for the crime was that the 45-year-old woman and her 43-year-old husband from Sandhausen near Heidelberg had long been planning to have a daughter together. Their nationality has not been disclosed, but earlier reports mentioned that the woman was Russian and the man was German.

The wife was specifically looking for contact with Ukrainian refugees and joined a Telegram group to support them, prosecutors said.

That's how she met a 27-year-old woman who was looking for help with translation in connection with the upcoming birth of her daughter. The mother, grandmother and baby were staying in a refugee shelter in the Rhein-Neckar district at the time of the crime.

The baby, who is about eleven months old, now lives with her aunt in Ukraine. The woman is a co-plaintiff in the case. The trial has nine days of hearings. The verdict may be announced on 21 February.

Background:

• The body of the Ukrainian woman was found on the banks of the Rhine a few days after the family disappeared from the refugee shelter where they were living, and two weeks later the body of her mother was found as well. The newborn girl was found unharmed.
• In June, a nine-year-old Ukrainian girl Valeriia was murdered in Döbeln.

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