German woman who murdered five of her children sentenced to life in prison

A 28-year-old woman was sentenced this Thursday to life imprisonment by the court in Wuppertal (western Germany) for the murder of five of her six children in September 2020.

According to German media, in the sentence the court emphasized the special gravity of the crime, which excludes an eventual release after 15 years, as is contemplated in other cases of permanent prison.

The court found it proven that the woman, identified only as Christiane K., had suffocated or drowned her three daughters and two of her sons in their home in Solingen, in western Germany, after giving them sedatives.

Judge Jochen Kötter described in his sentence as “tragedy” the crime that at the time shocked the country.

After ending the lives of the children, aged between one and eight years, the woman tried to commit suicide by throwing herself on the train tracks and ordered her eldest son, 11 years old, to do so, who nevertheless refused and left unscathed from the tragedy.

According to the prosecution, Christiane K. decided to commit the crime after her husband abandoned her for a neighbor, which led her to chat to him that she would not see her children again.

“She lived in a world of facades that she had built herself. When the facade collapsed, the children lost their function, ”said the prosecutor quoted by the weekly The mirror.

Christiane K., however, maintained her innocence until the last moment and claimed that an unknown person had entered the house and killed her children, a version of which the investigators did not find any evidence.

The bodies of the five children were found by the police covered up and in their beds, after the children’s grandmother sounded the alarm.

Christiane K., who was 27 years old at the time of the events, was placed in pretrial detention almost immediately, while the three parents of her children were not considered suspects by investigators. (I)