"Nobody believes that," says Simon R. "That a colleague does something like that." There is still a sense of bewilderment in his voice. And he too could not believe it for a long time. It all started in 2016, with its mineral water bottles. As always, they stood in the break room of the valve company, where he has been working for ten years. Suddenly something whimsical had been seen, several times. Particles like in a snow globe, it tasted sweetish. But what could that be? First he drank from the water, then he tipped it away. At the time it started with the weakness that came over him suddenly.

"At the time, I thought about having this checked," says Simon R. this morning as a witness at the Bielefeld district court. But it was only when he discovered strange crumbs on his sandwich in March 2018, sometimes white on the jam, sometimes brown on the ham, that he came to the idea that his inexplicable kidney disease, years of nausea, stomach pain, and weakness could be caused by poisoning.

At that time, Simon R. had already experienced the physical deterioration of his colleague for a year: "The B. ate his sandwich, then vomited, coughed." He suffered from headaches and circulatory problems, hospitalization, and finally the inability to work. "For me it was the same symptoms that my colleague had a year before," says Simon R.

"The Mr. B., the Klaus O. and I, we have always been in a shift together with three," says Simon R. And now? If Simon R., 27, just before dialysis, his colleague Udo B., 57, goes to the bloodwash four times a week, with no prospect of recovery, and a colleague from the department has been in the coma for more than a year. And on the dock of the Bielefeld district court sits with impenetrable eyes Klaus O., locksmith, 57 years old.

"I do not know what that concerns you"

The prosecution accuses him of having poisoned his colleagues for years, attempted murder in three cases, maximum sentence: lifelong. The question is: why could Klaus O. have done this? Prosecutor Veit Walter says that O. wanted to enjoy the suffering of his colleagues. O. himself is silent.

"What was your relationship with your colleagues?", The chairman of the judiciary Georg Zimmermann asked witness R. "I had a very good relationship with Mr B.", says Simon R. "At the beginning I asked Klaus O. What he's doing over the weekend, he said, "I do not know what you're up to." From now on radio silence prevailed.

"Was there conflict?" Asks the chairman. "No," Simon R. shakes his head. He did his job, too, but he did not talk to anyone, he was closed, we respected that and left him alone. " There never was a quarrel.

While Simon R. reports on his medical history, Klaus O. does not look at him once. Earlier, R. says he was jogging 18 kilometers in one day. Today he has difficulty climbing stairs. "My kidney is so damaged, only 22 percent functioning, so I'll probably be dialysis patient." Even a transplant would bring no help.

On the large screen in the courtroom are now photos to see: a wholemeal bread with ham, then a dark brown powder, then one with poultry fillet, on the whitish attachments are visible - probably cadmium and lead acetate.

He hardly slept during the night

Simon R. took the pictures without O. getting it. In the night, before he decided to go to the works council with a soiled bread, he hardly slept. "Something had to happen," he says. "And no one else had been in the room except for the cleaning lady and O. But it was such a serious suspicion and I did not want to spread any panic because it could have been something harmless, you also trust each other."

Today, it is thanks to Simon R. that a video exists documenting what happened, taken by a surveillance camera specially installed by the management. The chairman presses on the remote control, on the screen you can see the break room of the fitting company: filing cabinets, a table with chairs, on one of them stands a backpack.

Klaus O. turns up from the right, with a file folder in his arm. With calm movements he fishes out of the backpack a pink lunch box, opens it, takes a folded piece of paper from the file folder and sprinkles it onto the bread. Then he puts the lunchbox back in his backpack, places the file folder in the cupboard and leaves the room. "Is this your backpack?" Asks the chairman Simon R. "Yes." - "And your lunch box?" Simon R. nods. "And then I handed the bread to the police and filed a complaint."

Simon R. is composed. In the end, his lawyer Ralph Niemeier asks him to say something else about the psychological consequences of the poison attack. He tries to accept what has happened, says Simon R. And also that no therapy could help him anymore. "But Mr. B. and the other colleague who is now in a coma, they can not participate in the life as they otherwise did."

At that time, in 2016, when whitish particles were floating in his water bottle, he also showed this to his colleague B. He thought the phenomenon might be due to the sun. "Another colleague said I should go to the police with it, and that's not what I'm doing today."