In the trial surrounding the killing of an optician in 1994, the Frankfurt Regional Court sentenced the accused to eleven years in prison for robbery resulting in death.

Prosecutors had asked for a murder conviction and the defense had asked for an acquittal.

The presiding judge said the chamber had done its utmost to clear up what happened almost 30 years ago.

Because the accused remained silent and a separately prosecuted co-accused could not be found - he is said to have fled to Turkey in the mid-1990s - it was difficult to reconstruct the course of the crime.

Anna Sophia Lang

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

  • Follow I follow

According to the verdict, the men who were involved in a wrestling club in Ober-Ramstadt decided to attack the optician who specializes in contact lenses.

The accused was a customer there and suspected large amounts of cash in the cash register.

With bondage and gagging utensils, the two drove to Frankfurt to the store on Große Eschenheimer Straße and tied up the optician, gagged him and blindfolded him.

But because he freed himself, one of the men stabbed him with a knife.

Then they took his watch and wallet and stole 1,000 marks from the register.

Knife wounds in the neck and head

The judges concluded that it could not be ruled out that it was the co-accused who stabbed the optician in the neck and head.

Therefore, the accused, who was 20 at the time and is now 49 years old, should not be convicted of murder.

However, he is responsible for the fact that the victim was choked with a scarf between the stitches.

A coroner said in the process that the choking was partly responsible for the death.

Therefore, the accused was convicted of robbery resulting in death.

The case went to court because the police resumed investigations at the end of 2017 and found DNA and dactyloscopic traces on the evidence objects using newly available methods.

The presiding judge said the defendant's fingerprints were found on a ball of toilet paper near the body's head.

These were assigned to him because in 2017 he was treated for another criminal offense by the identification service.

In addition, two scarves used in the crime came "from the defendant's household".

The father's DNA and a trace of the brother were found on it.

One of the errors in the case is that the scarves for the program "Aktenzeichen XY" were washed.

In a conversation with his partner, the accused admitted his presence at the crime scene and receipt of the stolen money.

According to a witness, the co-accused said while drunk on vacation in Turkey in 1994 that he had "killed the ophthalmologist".