Aachen, Germany (dpa) – A quarter of a century after a brutal murder in western Germany, a man has been sentenced to life in prison at the end of a seven-day trial.
Some 45 witnesses were called to testify to help recreate the events of the end of 1996, when a mobile home dealer near the city of Aachen disappeared.
His disfigured body was found in a gravel pit not long afterwards, but it was not linked with the disappearance for some 20 years because his family had not filed a missing persons report. They assumed he had fled abroad to avoid paying his many debts.
The now 51-year-old suspect had killed the victim out of greed, the jury decided on Tuesday.
His only accomplice died a year after the crime in an accident, but he confided in his own brother, who was the main witness for the prosecution.
The brother had provided details about the crime that “only the perpetrator and no one else could have,” said presiding judge Roland Kloesgen.
Asked why he had not come forward sooner, the brother said that he had his own run-ins with the law to worry about, and also that he had for a long time not fully believed his brother’s account.
The mobile home dealer was attacked with a hammer and then strangled to death, the court heard.
The now convicted murderer stayed silent throughout the seven-day trial.