A German court on Monday sentenced a husband and wife to life in prison for killing two Ukrainian refugees, the mother and grandmother of a newborn girl they planned to abduct and pass off as their own.
The couple, partially named by German media as Marco O., 43, and his wife Ina, 45, were arrested in March, one week after the murders in which the women were bludgeoned to death.
Judges in the southwestern city of Mannheim noted the severity of the crime which made an early release after a minimum 15 years less likely, a court spokesman said.
The couple were motivated by their “long-unfulfilled wish to have a daughter,” Mannheim prosecutors said in a statement.
As early as March 2023, the couple began preparations to kidnap a child, which they could present as their own.
The wife is said to have joined a group on the Telegram messaging app organizing support for Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion.
Through the chat, the couple came into contact with a 27-year-old Ukrainian woman, named as Margarita R., who was expecting a child and seeking help with translations.
Shortly after the birth of the child, Mia, the German couple are said to have organized a dinner with the Ukrainian woman, her 51-year-old mother, Maryna S., and the newborn.
During the meal, the pair slipped sedatives to the victims, prosecutors said.
When the elder Ukrainian woman became unwell, the couple offered to drive her to hospital and to take the younger Ukrainian woman and the baby home.
The German man took the elder woman to a lake where he clubbed her to death and dumped her body in the water, prosecutors said.
Public prosecutor Katja König said in court that while the husband was responsible for “the rough stuff,” the plot was “a joint act committed out of malice,” Bild daily reported.
The couple told the younger woman her mother had suffered a heart attack and was in hospital.
Instead of driving the woman and her child to the hospital, the couple took them to an area along the Rhine river near Hockenheim.
There, the German man killed the 27-year-old, who was still dazed by the drugs, with “at least three” blows to the head, prosecutors said.
The couple then set fire to the body and drove home with the baby girl, aged five weeks at the time.
The infant was found unharmed by police.
Bild daily reported that Mia, now one year old, had since been taken in by her late mother’s younger sister and her husband living in Ukraine. The convicted couple will pay the surviving relatives of the Ukrainian women 10,000 euros in compensation and 5,000 euros in damages, the outlet reported.
According to the United Nations, about 6.8 million refugees from Ukraine have been recorded globally as of November 2024.