Bavarian court convicts 49-year-old again over 1993 murder of 13-year-old girl

The verdict

The regional court in Würzburg convicted a 49-year-old German man of murder on Monday, 26 October, in the retrial of a cold case from December 1993. Because he was 17 at the time of the offence, the court applied youth criminal law and imposed a sentence of six years and three months, a term announced by a court spokeswoman. The court followed the prosecution in classing the killing as murder, but prosecutors had asked for six and a half years. The verdict is not yet final.

The victim was a 13-year-old girl who helped care for horses at a riding stable in Wiesenfeld, a district of Karlstadt in the Main-Spessart district of Lower Franconia, Bavaria. The sentence differs little from the one handed down at the first trial in 2024, which was also six and a half years. The case had gone unsolved for decades, and the girl's parents followed the retrial as joint plaintiffs.

How the case was reopened

The girl was killed in December 1993, and newsORF gives 15 December as the date of her death. She had been a regular at the stable, including shortly before Christmas, and she never returned home. According to the indictment, the then 17-year-old lured her into a stable, where he intended to sexually assault her, and killed her when she resisted and called for help. He is said to have hidden the body in a slurry pit, where it was found two days later.

The case stayed open for decades and was treated as a cold case. Several suspects emerged over the years, and in the mid-1990s prosecutors believed they had identified the perpetrator, but an earlier trial of a juvenile suspect ended in acquittal. Investigators got a new lead in 2020, when DNA traces pointed to the man now on trial.

In 2024 another chamber of the same court convicted him and imposed six and a half years of youth sentence. The Federal Court of Justice then found legal errors in how the evidence had been weighed and ordered a new hearing, which made a second trial necessary.

The retrial

The new hearing began in May 2026 and heard more than 90 witnesses, more than 32 years after the killing. Because the defendant was a minor when the offence took place, the proceedings were closed to the public, as juvenile cases usually are in Germany.

The defence asked for an acquittal and argued that his involvement in the killing could not be proven. Its lawyers maintain that several perpetrators must have been involved. The prosecution and the joint plaintiffs regarded the case as murder from the outset of the retrial.

What happens next

The verdict can be challenged through a revision to the Federal Court of Justice, so the judgment is not yet final. The defendant may remain free until a final ruling, unless the court finds grounds for an arrest warrant, such as a risk of flight or of tampering with evidence. The defence continues to seek an acquittal, so the case is not legally closed.