For the deadly attack on the musician Jim Reeves, the Berlin district court sentenced two men to prison terms of 14 and 13 years. The act took place at the beginning of 2016 in a hostel in Berlin-Charlottenburg. The 31- and 24-year-old perpetrators have now been convicted of manslaughter in a particularly serious case in coincidence with particularly severe sexual abuse. They were considerably alcoholized in the act.
The 47-year-old Reeves, successful in the 1990s with the Eurodance and pop band Sqeezer, was brutally beaten in a six-bed room. Reeves had the defendants who shared a room with him previously made a sexual contact offer, it said in the verdict. When the musician was already unconscious, the perpetrators had repeatedly mistreated him "in a degrading, homophobic feelings expressing nature".
The Cologne-born Reeves had released his first singles with his siblings Shary, Terry and Andrew. Under the name 4 Reeves "Party" or "Jumpin '" came out, with the German national football team they sang "Everybody's Going to the USA".
The prosecution had each demanded 14 years and six months in prison for the deadly attack on Reeves. The 24-year-old had confessed to the deadly attack. The 31-year-old had declared himself innocent. The court ordered him to stay in a detention center. The verdict is not yet legally binding.