Germany shocked by sophisticated crime: fifty stabbings
An unusual and brutal crime was committed in Germany by a young woman of Iraqi origin. She is accused of killing a victim who looks like her in order to fake her own death. It turned out that the killer was looking through social networks for peers similar to her.
The Bavarian prosecutor's office believes that a 23-year-old German woman with Iraqi roots found a doppelgänger on a popular social network and killed her along with a friend of Kosovo origin to fake her own death.
When the bloody body of a young woman was found in a parked Mercedes in Ingolstadt, southern Germany, last August, reports initially identified the victim as Sharaban K., a 23-year-old beautician from Munich with Iraqi roots.
< p>Although some members of Sharaban K.'s family identified the body, the autopsy report the next day raised questions about her identity. The victim was eventually revealed to be Khadija O., an Algerian beauty blogger from Heilbronn in the neighboring state of Baden-Württemberg, who was also 23 years old.
Police said the two women had long, black, straight hair , with a similar complexion and heavy make-up — looked «strikingly similar», prompting the German press to call the case «the murder of a doppelgänger».
Together with a 23-year-old Kosovo man named Shekir K. Sharaban K. was detained by the Bavarian police on August 19, 2022, although the authorities did not publicly speculate about the motive until this week. Victims and defendants are named by their first names and the first letters of their last names, as is customary in the German legal system.
“The investigation led us to believe that the accused wanted to go into hiding due to family disagreements and fake her own death to that end.” , said Veronika Grieser from the Ingolstadt prosecutor's office on Monday morning.
Police say that a week before the murder, Sharaban K., who worked on social networks under numerous pseudonyms, contacted several young women who looked like her. “Giving various promises, she tried to achieve meetings, which at first was unsuccessful,” Veronica Grieser said.
But Khadija O., according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, agreed to meet, seduced by promises of cosmetics. It is reported that Shekir K. and Sharaban K. took her by car from the apartment on the day of the murder. In a wooded area between Heilbronn and Ingolstadt, the accused couple allegedly came up with an excuse for a young Algerian woman to get out of the car, and then the attackers stabbed her.
“The crime weapon has not been found, but the evidence is irrefutable,” said tabloid Bild police spokesman Andreas Aichele. “The victim was stabbed to death with more than 50 stabs, her face completely disfigured.”
Prosecutors allege the couple then tucked the victim into the back seat of their Mercedes and drove to Ingolstadt, parking the car in a quiet residential area on the banks of the Danube, where the car was discovered by the parents of Sharaban K. shortly before midnight on August 16, 2022.
Although the investigation was ongoing and additional witnesses still had to be questioned, arrest warrants for Shekir K. and Sharaban K. were issued on January 26 and 27, said a representative of the prosecutor's office of Ingolstadt. If found guilty, the couple faces life imprisonment.
“You don't come across a case like this every day, especially one with such an exciting twist,” Andreas Aichele told Bild. “On the day we discovered the body, there was nothing to prepare us for such a development.”