In Germany, a 65-year-old woman told police that she killed her 71-year-old husband the previous evening and then dismembered the body that night. They both originated from Russia. The woman stated in the interrogation that there had been a dispute between her and her husband in the immediate run-up to the crime. The husband wanted to travel to Russia again and accused his wife that her brother-in-law would take advantage of this situation to visit her. She said he was insulting and condescending, he was very angry and had a knife in his hand.
In a brief physical abuse, he injured his wife’s hand with the knife. Afterward, the man calmed down again and sat quietly at the kitchen table. The wife was annoyed by her husband’s behavior, but also scared, so she went to the basement and got an ax from there. She killed the husband, who was sitting at the kitchen table, with the ax with several blows to the head. He then collapsed.
Fig.1 The body parts were found in several garbage bags in the basement.
Fig.2 The body parts were found in eight garbage bags in the basement.
She dragged the lifeless body into the bathroom of the apartment, stripped it there, cut its throat with a knife (a single-edged, smooth blade, tapered), divided it up, and packed it in several plastic bags. She did not describe the division of the corpse in detail. She cleaned the apartment intensively until the early hours of the morning.
When the police arrived, several plastic bags with pieces of fabric were found in the basement of the apartment building. The couple’s apartment was in a neat and freshly cleaned condition. During the inspection, however, there were still pale traces of blood on the kitchen wall, on the kitchen floor, and in the bathroom under the heater. Furthermore, near the apartment, in the garbage waste, a carpet with large areas of blood was found.
Autopsy findings
The following body and tissue parts were found in a total of 8 plastic bags:
- Head, hands, and feet (right and left).
- Thorax with coarsely attached soft tissue remnants and the cervical soft tissues, and bones.
- Right and left lower leg, 4 ribs in combination with parts of the diaphragm.
- The lumbar spine, the pelvis, and the thighs, still retained via tissue remnants.
- A total of 19 pieces of skin of different sizes with attached subcutaneous fatty tissue and muscles, 8 pieces of muscle, parts of the liver, lungs, and heart.
- Tissue parts of the large and small intestine, parts of the liver, the spleen, adrenal gland, a larger piece of skin including the left shoulder blade, and other smaller pieces of muscle and skin.
- Numerous pieces of muscle and skin, the penis with attached exposed testicles as well as parts of the colon and the urinary bladder.
- Parts of the liver, both kidneys, the stomach, parts of the lungs, the heart and the intestines, the right and left upper extremities as well as other pieces of skin.
Fig.3 The thorax.
Fig.4 The pelvis with right and left femur.
Fig.5 Both tibiae and rib fragments.
On the left temporal of the head, above the hat brim line, as well as above the left eyebrow, there were star-shaped and also several right-angled, heavily hypoperfused lacerations of the scalp as a result of blunt force with an angular object, which is compatible with the back of the ax. Corresponding to these defects, an extensive fracture system of the calotte, as well as 2 smaller contusion foci and a left-hand subarachnoid hemorrhage over both cerebral hemispheres, could be determined.
The skin, mostly with subcutaneous fatty tissue and parts of the musculature, had been removed from all parts of the body with the exception of the head, hands, and feet. Only a few isolated areas of skin remained on the thorax, on the iliac crests, and the upper extremities. A total of 54 individual pieces of skin could be counted, ranging in size from a few centimeters to a maximum of 62 × 30 cm (24″ x 12″), and numerous pieces of muscle, which, due to their sometimes very small size, were not recorded individually. The organs had been removed from the thoracic and abdominal cavities; They were normal for their age. The bronchial tubes showed bloody contents in sections with isolated aspiration foci in the lung tissue.
The incision in the neck with subsequent blood aspiration was found to be the cause of death, as the subarachnoid hemorrhage and the 2 smaller cerebral contusion foci were not sufficiently pronounced. The knife found came into consideration as the only instrument for the dismemberment; The bony cuts of the vertebrae were also possible during reconstruction with this knife. The physical examination of the wife revealed the presence of numerous superficial cuts on both hands.
Fig.6 Numerous pieces of soft tissue.
Fig.7 Lacerations of the scalp as a result of blunt force with an angular object, which is compatible with the back of the ax.
Psychological and social factors
The couple, who come from Russia, had been married for 30 years at the time of the crime; they had no children together. They had lived in Germany for 12 years, but were poorly integrated here. In particular, there were significant language barriers. This was the wife’s second marriage. Her first marriage had produced a son who had died years ago. The death of her son had put a lot of strain on her. The husband was in his third marriage. He was ambivalent about life in Germany and traveled regularly to Russia, mostly with his wife. The wife was a German citizen, while the husband was a Russian citizen.
In her interrogation, the woman states, which has also been confirmed by various witnesses, that her husband suffered from mood swings and tended to aggressive impulse breakthroughs. The wife had been receiving medical treatment for a long time because of insomnia and depressive moods; she had been prescribed antidepressants. She also took the sleeping drug zopiclone regularly. A forensic-psychiatric assessment of the woman was commissioned by the public prosecutor’s office. Although before her first assessment, she committed suicide in the correctional facility on the same date her son died years earlier.
From the information available, no indications of the presence of a psychiatric disorder in the narrower sense in the woman can be derived. In the course of the police investigation, it became known that she had bought an ax (the instrument of the murder) and a saw (“foxtail”) at a local hardware store just a week before the offense.
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