And her daughter has been suspected of murdering her — possibly to fake her own death, police and prosecutors say.
The case of the German Iraqi living in Ingolstadt, named Shahraban K. by the German newspaper “Bild”, has shocked many in Germany. Her parents had traveled from Munich to Ingolstadt to find her after she stopped answering her calls – and found her car and body on 8/16.
The police began the investigation and issued a first statement about a murder and said the woman appeared to have been a “victim of a violent crime”. But doubts quickly arose about her identity as DNA and fingerprint evidence from the victim did not match that of the missing woman, and when police heard “rumours” that the missing woman had been driving around the area, police spokesman Andreas Aichele told an interview.
A day later, in the course of their investigation, the police discovered “completely new circumstances” and arrested the missing 23-year-old along with a 23-year-old Kosovar on suspicion of murder. The police said in a statement.
The victim was mentioned in the German media as Algerian Khadija O, also 23, who looked “strikingly similar” to the missing woman, according to investigators.
At the time, the authorities gave no motive for the killing.
Now they believe the suspects have hatched a plan to find someone who could pass for the young woman “who went into hiding because of a family dispute” and therefore chose to fake her own death, according to one of statement released by the prosecutor Monday.
The police say so believe the suspect “chatted with several young women” who looked like her and tried to lure her into meeting with false promises.
On October 8th, the two suspects traveled to the Heilbronn area in the neighboring state of Baden-Württemberg to pick up the victim from her home, police said. They then took her to a wooded area and stabbed her multiple times before driving back to Ingolstadt, where they left the body in the back of the vehicle.
While the two suspects, now 24, have been in custody since August on suspicion of manslaughter, late last week a district court issued arrest warrants for them in connection with the more serious crime of murder, which carries a life sentence.
The investigations are ongoing.
