Cold case in court: Death of a girl over 30 years ago – defendant remains silent

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 17-year-old schoolgirl in Karlstadt shortly before Christmas 1993.

“The defendant spontaneously decided to attack the sexually aggrieved person and probably lured her onto the so-called threshing floor of the stable under a pretext,” said senior public prosecutor Thorsten Seebach. The 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 defendant was a juvenile at the time of the crime, the proceedings will be held 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 people disappeared on December 15, 1993, and two days later their bodies were discovered in a slurry pit on a farm in the Wiesenfeld district. The pit was covered with a concrete lid.