The loser keeps his head down. The loser who played Lord over life and death. As such, Johanna's mother had described the man who dragged her daughter, then eight years old, off her bike on 2 September 1999 in Ranstadt, Hessen, stunned her, put her in his car, possibly abused and killed her.

A crime that the 5th Large Criminal Division of the district court Gießen considers a murder, as a particularly reprehensible crime, the imagination of many "far beyond", as the Former Judge Regine Enders-Kunze formulated.

The Chamber sentences Rick J. to life imprisonment for murder, attempted sexual assault, and possession of child pornography. In addition, she notes the particular severity of guilt. The 42-year-old will therefore be released prematurely only in exceptional cases.

Narcissism, hedonism, egocentrism

The verdict is broken at 11:03 clock the tense silence in Room 207, no seat has remained free, on the windows are listeners. Johanna's mother, Gabriele Bohnacker, puts her hands on the table in front of her. She looks relieved.

The judge wants to renounce in the opinion of the judgment on "lurid and Schlagzeilenträchtige elements" as it announces. She does not succeed. And this is not only due to the characteristics of the character, which consequently characterize the nature of the perpetrator: dissociality, narcissism, hedonism, egocentrism, lack of empathy and dominance strivings.

According to the verdict, it is also due to the factual circumstances: For the horrible thing did not happen in deep darkness, in a remote place. It happened in broad daylight, in the most beautiful sunshine, in a busy place when Rick J. attacked Johanna, who was aware of no danger. Johanna was the accidental victim of a man who was looking for a girl, some girl. A girl on which he wanted to express his pronounced sexual abnormality.

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Abducted and killed child: the case Johanna

A verdict without boundless horror succeed also not because Rick J. the head of Johanna with 15 meters of tape wrapped 29 times - her eyes, her nose, her mouth.

It took 18 years, three months, three weeks and two days to arrest Rick J. after the crime, says the judge. Since then, he has "told a great deal and made extensive statements" to the police, to the court and to the psychiatric expert. "He did not tell us the truth," says Regine Enders-Kunze.

Instead, Rick J. has changed his statements and adjusted as soon as they no longer agree with the findings. His goal: to portray Johanna's death as "unwanted and accidental".

The judge speaks of "mere protection allegations", which had been refuted in 20 trial days, of "lies" and "non-existent" accounts. According to the chamber, it was a fact that Johanna suffocated around her head with the 15 meters of duct tape because Rick J. gave in to his fetish for bondage.

An incentive for the investigators

For the court, there are only two ways why Johanna had to die: Rick J. undressed the eight-year-old in a secluded place, bonded her to his sexual satisfaction and accepted that she comes here to death. Or he passed away and decided to kill her with tape to cover up the crime.

Rick J. had therefore committed a murder: either for the satisfaction of his sex drive or in concealment. "When you wrap a child's head 29 times with 15 meters of adhesive tape," says Enders-Kunze, one accepts the death of the child. She looks at the convicted now for a long time.

Prosecutor Thomas Hauburger keeps looking at Rick J. He had demanded for the 42-year-old the punishment, which has now imposed the court. "The verdict marks the temporary end of extremely complex, exhausting investigations," says Hauburger later in the hall of the court. "The end of this process should be an incentive to keep bringing out the files of old crimes and never let old cases rest."

After the announcement of the verdict, Johanna's mother, Gabriele Bohnacker, does what she already did on the first day of the hearing: she introduces herself to a pulk journalist and speaks. She talks about the "huge burden" the process has now taken away from her. "The verdict is as I had hoped, there is no just punishment, but the highest possible."

"I owed her damn it"

Where did she get the strength to sit against the murderer of her child for 20 sitting days, listening to all the horrible details of the crime? "I do not know," says Gabriele Bohnacker. "I had to hear it, my daughter had to endure it, I owe her damn it."

She presents herself one last time to the public, which she was forced to search for in the nearly 18 years of uncertainty: Together with Johanna's father, she put up posters, appeared in television programs, wrote an open letter to the unknown perpetrator. Desperately, they sought the murderer of their child. Johanna's father died in 2016 before investigators arrested Rick J.

In her plea in court Gabriele Bohnacker had hinted at the hope that a ruling could help Johanna's sisters to finish one day. Her message was clear: for parents, this hope does not exist.