They have not seen each other since that 31 August last year. Christiane and Werner H. do not look at each other when they meet for the first time in the Old Courtroom of the Regional Court of Darmstadt. They are married, both dentists, parents of two children together. But the boy, 13, and the girl, 10, do not live anymore.
Attorney General Klaus Tietze-Kattge rises and claims that Christiane and Werner H. are accused of murdering their children and particularly severe arson. In view of the imminent eviction of their property in Mörlenbach, an idyllic community in the Odenwald, they should have made a deadly plan together: to kill the children in their sleep, to destroy the common home, to wipe out the entire family.
In the night of August 31 - a few hours before the new owners wanted to appear for the handover of the house and land - Christiane and Werner H. are said to have stabbed the children in their beds with a hunting knife. Afterwards, the parents allegedly distributed and ignited gasoline in numerous places in the house in order to "disguise the brutal killing of their children," says Tietze-Kattge.
When the fire started, the couple should have tried to kill themselves in their garage with car exhaust fumes. When the fire was noticed, firefighters first hid the bodies of the children, then they discovered the parents in the garage: unconscious, but alive.
How big can despair be? How small is the hope? Was there a harbinger of such a catastrophe? Who made what contribution? Answers to these questions must now be sought by the 11th Criminal Division, chaired by Volker Wagner.
The first answers are given by Werner H. himself. The defendant, a tall, heavy man, 59 years old, twice his doctorate in medicine and dentistry, specializing in maxillofacial surgery, reported in detail about his childhood in Lower Saxony and his medical education. He does not save with self-praise. At the end of the 1990s he opened his own practice in Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, he speaks of "vertical takeoff" and "princely result".
"Everything was just perfect"
Werner H. fell in love with his 13-year-younger practice colleague Christiane, left his wife and daughter and bought the 1300 square meter property in Mörlenbach with the new one. They built a princely home, equipped with three children's rooms, loft and sauna. In the years 2004 and 2007, the children were born, which was mainly cared for the mother. "Everything was just perfect," says Werner H.
It was not until November 2013 that his first wife divorced, and in April 2014, Werner and Christiane H. got married. Everything was not perfect anymore. They were "littered with performance audits," says Werner H. There were also arrears in social security contributions and rental payments. Bankruptcy petition was filed in November 2015 and the practice closed.
Christiane H. says in court that she did not notice anything of this. "For me completely surprising and unpredictable came the bankruptcy," said the 46-year-old. She is the optical alternative to her husband: small, slim, with an almost childlike figure. He looks older years, years younger. With the bankruptcy, "from today's perspective, this completely contradictory struggle for property" has begun, she says in a low voice, her head lowered.
Perhaps it also deceived her husband's dealings with the financial and economic imbalance: He concluded in May 2015 for a third Ferrari from a leasing agreement and berdeckte - as always - per year about 150,000 euros installments for all three sports cars. A man who paid his first daughter since the separation from their mother no maintenance.
"Our end has come"
As to the tragedy, neither Werner H. nor Christiane H. want to comment on this first day of the trial. Thus Judge Wagner asks the psychiatric expert Henning Saß, who spoke with both after the fact.
Werner H. spoke to him about the "legendary Thursday", says Saß. So on August 30, 2018, when the couple reached the fax, the property, which had been foreclosed in April, had to be handed over the next day. His wife then sent several faxes, hoping to postpone the eviction.
For Werner H. "fate had been sealed". Eviction, excerpt, possibly move to a social housing that accompanies everything with a squad of police, bailiffs and insolvency administrator - that was not an option for him, he said it according to the psychiatric expert.
At the same time he had described to him the film, which had expired again and again in his mind's eye: his two children leave their homes with a suitcase in each hand; The insolvency administrator stands across the street, grinning, as if to say: I showed you.
When the children slept in the evening, Werner H. told his wife about the movie in his head that accompanied him. "Our end has come", his wife is said to have said they both did not want to see the eviction. So he described it to the appraiser. They had considered how they could put an end to their lives.
For him it was the first time in his life that he did not know what to do, said Werner H. in conversation with Saß. He and his wife fumbled for calming tablets and swallowed them with beer. When his wife has put a backpack with papers and important documents and a note for the turtles in front of the neighbors' house, Werner H. wants to kill the children single-handedly, spilling three cans of gasoline and lighting them.
Egomane without much social reflection
He had thought: If we part from life, what happens to the children? Werner H. described "clear and vivid" how he had killed his son and daughter, says Saß and certifies the defendant an egocentric personality. This is an egomaniac without much social reflection. With this assessment, Saß "hit it very well", says Werner H. in court.
With his wife, who had returned from the neighborhood, he had finally sat in the garage in the car and had fallen asleep, said Werner H. Both came to the hospital Mannheim again to themselves.
Also spoke with Christiane H. Saß. She could only remember that after returning from Frankfurt on the 30th of August she had not received a reply to her fax sent to several agencies. From that moment her memories were extinguished.