German Couple Accused of Killing Two Ukrainian Refugees to Steal a Baby

The "unfulfilled desire" to become parents drove a German couple to cross all boundaries a few months ago. Absolutely all boundaries, including respect for life. Together - she aged 44 and he 43 - they devised a chilling plan to obtain a baby by exploiting the suffering of others. Their victims were two Ukrainian refugees, mother and daughter, whom they killed to take the child - granddaughter and daughter of the deceased, respectively - who was only a few weeks old. Now, with the case in the hands of the Mannheim Prosecutor's Office, the perpetrators have been charged with the double murder.

The relationship began to develop on Telegram, where the alleged female murderer infiltrated a support group for the thousands of Ukrainian refugees who have arrived in Germany - it is the EU country that has received the most, around 1.2 million - since the outbreak of war two years ago. Among all of them, in January, she contacted a pregnant woman in her twenties who was looking for an interpreter for the birth of her child. She was about to give birth; she was the perfect person for carrying out their horrific plan.

The contact between them did not cease after the baby was born and, in early March, they met again. The couple invited the Ukrainian family (the three women) to a restaurant. It was the last time the two refugees were seen alive. According to case investigators, the accused administered sedatives to them there. They just had to wait. The grandmother, aged 51, began feeling unwell, and the man offered to accompany her to a hospital while the mother and daughter went home. In reality, he took her to a lake where he struck her at least four times on the head with an unknown object and threw her body into the water.

The couple told the 27-year-old daughter that her mother had suffered a heart attack and was still in the hospital. They picked her up along with her baby from home and, still dazed from the sedatives' effects, took her to an area near the Rhine River in Hockenheim. The man once again took charge of ending her life by striking her head repeatedly and then burning her body. The baby was now theirs, and all three - turned into the family that the murderers so desperately wanted - returned to their residence in southern Germany.

The couple intended to "pass off" the baby they had just kidnapped "as their own daughter." They did not anticipate that their plan would fall apart just days later. The discovery of one of their victims' remains led investigators to the murderers, and a DNA test confirmed the link between the baby and the deceased. Social services have taken custody of the little girl.