In a court in the German city of Mannheim, a married couple — a 45-year-old woman and a 43-year-old man — confessed to the murder of a Ukrainian woman, her mother, and the kidnapping of the murdered womanʼs child.
Spiegel writes about this.
According to the prosecutorʼs office, in the spring of 2024, the suspects killed 51-year-old Ukrainian refugee Maryna Stetsenko and her 27-year-old daughter Marharyta in order to kidnap the latterʼs five-week-old child. The couple, according to investigators, were eager to have a child.
The prosecutorʼs office claims that the suspect specifically sought contact with Ukrainian refugees and joined the corresponding group on the Telegram messenger in January 2024. Thatʼs how she met 27-year-old Marharyta Stetsenko, who was looking for help with translation due to the upcoming birth of her daughter. The child was born in February 2024.
At the time of the crime, the infant, Maryna and Marharyta Stetsenko, were living in a refugee shelter in the Rhine-Neckar district.
Later, on March 6, 2024, the suspects sedated both women while they were having dinner together at a restaurant. When the 51-year-old Ukrainian woman began to feel unwell, the couple took her daughter and baby home. They told the daughter that they would take Maryna Stetsenko to the hospital themselves. Instead, they took the woman to a lake near Karlsruhe.
Then, German prosecutors allege, the male suspect hit the Ukrainian woman hard on the head with an unknown object and drowned her in the lake. He later admitted to using a rubber mallet from a hardware store.
Then the suspects took Marharyta Stetsenko and her daughter — they said that the grandmother had allegedly had a heart attack, so she was in the hospital. They drove to Hockenheim. The suspect hit Margarita three times on the head — she died from severe head trauma. Her body was set on fire, and the baby was taken away and driven home with him.
On March 7, 2024, the police found the body of Marharyta Stetsenko, and on March 13, the suspects were arrested and the unharmed child was taken from them. The body of Maryna Stetsenko was found only on March 20.
The child now lives with his aunt in Ukraine. The verdict in the case could be announced as early as February 21. The defense attorney says he will demand life imprisonment for the suspects due to the complexity of the crime committed.
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