Berlin court sentences serial rapist to 12 years and preventive detention

The verdict

On Wednesday, 28 October, the Berlin Regional Court (Landgericht Berlin) sentenced a 69-year-old former electrician to twelve years in prison. The court also ordered preventive detention (Sicherungsverwahrung) to follow the prison term, because it found a continuing risk that he would commit further serious offences. Prosecutors had asked for 13 years plus preventive detention. The defendant had confessed through his lawyer when the trial opened in August. The conviction covers rape, dangerous bodily harm and violating a person's intimate sphere by filming.

Prosecutors' request13

Court verdict12

Prosecutors' request

13 years

Court verdict

12 years

Data from the article text

The offences and the victims

The trial concerned 22 offences against 14 women, committed between 2016 and 2022. All the women were between 50 and 60 years old at the time and lived in Berlin or Brandenburg. The man allegedly met them through online dating platforms, presenting himself at times as a police commissioner and at times as a Bundeswehr pilot. He allegedly mixed sedating substances with alcohol into drinks, rendered the women unconscious, raped them and filmed the assaults. According to Spiegel, he shared the videos with other alleged offenders in chat groups, where an investigator described the victims as being dehumanised. The women learned what had been done to them only from the videos during the investigation.

The case is not closed. Spiegel reports that prosecutors assume 59 victims in total and that ten suspected victims have not yet been identified. Tagesspiegel separately reports that further suspected offences against 44 women are still being investigated. The two reports cite different counts, and neither has been confirmed by a final tally.

How the case came to light

The investigation began with a tip from police in Verden an der Aller in Lower Saxony. The defendant had been chatting under the name "Zeppelin70" with a man who allegedly drugged and abused his own wife. During a first search in June 2025, investigators found a permanently running camera fixed in the bedroom. They also found medication, cannulas and syringes packed in boxes and cases, and recordings of sexual assaults documented on numerous data carriers. He has been held in pretrial detention since March. Most of the trial was closed to the public to protect the victims.

Advocates call for change

Gesa Birkmann, a federal managing director of the women's rights organisation Terre des Femmes, told RBB Inforadio that violence against women is still underestimated in society. She said authorities are too poorly trained to respond adequately and that the police lack staff, with the topic not treated as a priority. She called for evidence to be secured faster and for limitation periods for rape to be extended or abolished.

Birkmann said the system must change in a broader sense.

“We need a system in which structural violence is abolished, in which all remaining gaps are closed.”

She also said that one in fifteen women feels she may once have been drugged with knockout drops, and that such cases often come to light only by chance. She added that the verdict could send a signal to women and to offenders, but that it must only be a beginning.

Protests outside the court

Several dozen people demonstrated near the court in Berlin on Wednesday against sexual violence and chemical submission. Media have compared the case to the French case of Gisèle Pelicot, in which a woman was drugged, raped and filmed, and have called the Berlin case a German Pelicot case because of the similarities. The initiative Die Scham muss die Seite wechseln had scheduled a rally for 3 pm, followed by a march in front of the Moabit criminal court.