Manfred Genditzki

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Manfred Genditzki (* 1960 ) was due to murder at the 87-year-old retiree Lieselotte Kortum from Rottach-Egern in a circumstantial evidence to a life sentence convicted. The case made headlines as the "bathtub murder" by Rottach-Egern . The conviction is final , but doubts about Genditzki's perpetration have been and continue to be expressed in public.

Death of Lieselotte Kortüm

Manfred Genditzki was born in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, is married and has two children. He was the caretaker in the residential complex in which Ms. Kortüm lived and did everyday things for her, such as shopping, preparing meals and washing clothes. After Genditzki drove her home from a hospital stay on October 28, 2008, he said goodbye to her there at around 3 p.m. because he wanted to visit his sick mother. Before that, he called the nursing service to report the return of Ms. Kortüm from the hospital. As every day, a nurse entered the apartment at 6:30 p.m. she found Frau Kortüm fully clothed, dead in the bathtub.

During the autopsy of the corpse, bruises were found on the back of the head with bleeding under the uninjured scalp, which is not unusual because the deceased was taking anticoagulant medication. Drowning after an unfortunate fall in the bathtub was believed to be the cause of death. The body was cremated the following day .

Murder trial

The prosecution started an investigation based on the results of the autopsy and assumed that Genditzki had killed the old lady to cover up the fact that he had embezzled money in her apartment during her stay in the clinic. The point of reference was that Genditzki had repaid a friend 8,000 euros on the day Lieselotte Kortüm came to the hospital. In February 2009 Genditzki was in custody taken.

The indictment assumed that Ms. Kortüm had established embezzlement on October 28, 2008 and had accused Genditzki of it. In the course of the main hearing , however, it turned out that there was no lack of money from Ms. Kortüm's assets; the money for the repayment came from comprehensible, completely legal sources. The Regional Court of Munich II based the charge of guilt from then on on the fact that the defendant had not committed embezzlement, but that there had been a dispute in the course of which he had beaten the woman. The killing was done to cover up the previous bodily harm. The court sentenced Genditzki to life imprisonment on May 12, 2010 for murder .

The Federal Court of Justice overturned the judgment decision of 12 January 2011 and referred the case because of a procedural error to another chamber of the regional court back. The exchange of the reference act in the case of undercover murder was a change in the legal point of view , which the court should have pointed out in the main hearing according to § 265 StPO.

The new main hearing ended again on January 17, 2012 with a life sentence for murder. The board considered it proven that Genditzki and Lieselotte Kortüm had got into an argument in which Genditzki either hit the woman on the head or pushed her so that she fell against a hard object and the two bruises pulled my head. In a panic and with the thought “I'll get help”, Genditzki dialed the doctor's number twice in quick succession, but immediately hung up again. For fear of being reported, he let water run into the bathtub and drowned Lieselotte Kortüm by pressing her under water for several minutes. The appeal against this was rejected as unfounded, as the review of the judgment did not reveal any legal error to the detriment of the accused ( Section 349 (2) StPO).

Doubts about the verdict

For trial observers and media representatives, doubts remained about the guilt of the convict. Observers at the main hearing had firmly expected an acquittal .

The defense assumed the old lady's death was a household accident. Lieselotte Kortüm wanted to soak dirty laundry in the bathtub after returning from the hospital . She suffered a faint attack and fell into the tub. A psychological report shows Genditzki to be peaceful. Genditzki explained the call to the family doctor by saying that he had wanted to inform that Ms. Kortüm had been released from the clinic and was back home. He hung up when only the practice's answering machine was on the line.

Genditzki's defense attorney has been preparing an application for a retrial since 2015 .

The trial has been portrayed as a miscarriage of justice in several media outlets .

A murder weapon was neither identified nor found. The plastic bags with laundry that Ms. Kortüm had brought from the clinic were disposed of without being seen. Investigators had not measured the temperature of the body or the water in the tub.

In 2015, the criminalist and profiler Axel Petermann was commissioned by Genditzki's relatives to re-investigate the case.

The Bavarian SPD member of the state parliament, Franz Schindler , invited to a press conference in the Bavarian state parliament on July 26, 2018, after intensively dealing with this case, at which he explained his doubts about the final judgment. A computer simulation prepared for the course of events was presented. The result of the simulation carried out by Prof. Syn Schmitt at the University of Stuttgart contradicts the assumptions on which Manfred Genditzki's conviction is based.

The daily newspaper Die Welt asks in an article from July 30, 2018, referring to the cases of Gustl Mollath , Ulvi Kulac and the death of Rudolf Rupp in relation to the imprisoned Manfred Genditzki: Is the Bavarian justice system facing the next scandal? With a look at the new computer simulation, which was created in 2018 for the fall of Lieselotte Kortüm at the time, it goes on to say: Shaped by iron righteousness and often blind lack of insight, judges and prosecutors have had to bow to progress in forensic technology several times in the past. Now the Genditzki case. He worries many people because the fairy tale of the murderous caretaker doesn't convince them.

Desired resumption of proceedings

On June 11, 2019, Genditzki's defense attorney, Regina Rick, filed a petition for a retrial at the Munich District Court II. It relied mainly on a computer simulation and on a witness testimony that has only recently become known . At the request of the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation , the Munich II public prosecutor's office announced that the Genditzki case was closed for them and, despite the computer simulation now available, no new evidence could be seen that would justify a reopening of the proceedings.

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Daughter of the Bathtub Murderer: "He is innocent" ; in: tz Online from November 17, 2014
  2. ↑ a b The murder that wasn't ; in: Süddeutsche Zeitung Online from January 12, 2012
  3. ↑ a b c d e Gisela Friedrichsen : Criminal Justice - On the wrong track . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 2011, p. 36 f . ( online - December 12, 2011 ).
  4. ↑ Dagmar Schön, murder sentence without a deed? , myops 30 (May 2017), ISSN 1865-2301, pp. 21-32
  5. ↑ a b c d e https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJigwbEdfxE , Bayerischer Rundfunk from February 22, 2017
  6. ↑ a b c In case of doubt against the accused. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Online from March 10, 2017.
  7. ^ LG Munich II, May 12, 2010 - 1 Ks 31 Js 40341/08
  8. ↑ BGH, January 12, 2011 - 1 StR 582/10 , accessed on May 2, 2017
  9. Jump up in justice in the bathtub murder. In: tz Online from November 1, 2011.
  10. ^ LG Munich II, January 17, 2012 - 2 Ks 31 Js 40341/08
  11. ↑ a b Murder of a Senior Woman: The Second Lifelong for the Caretaker ; in: Spiegel Online from January 17, 2012
  12. ↑ a b After the verdict in the bathtub murder: A fall - but why? In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Online from January 20, 2012.
  13. ^ Decision of the Federal Court of Justice of September 5, 2012 in full text, Az. 1 StR 272/12
  14. ↑ Federal Court of Justice rejects appeal. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Online from October 2, 2012.
  15. ↑ Hans Holzhaider : "Bathtub Murder" by Rottach-Egern: The Death of an Old Lady Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 7, 2011
  16. ↑ Nicole Kleim: New evidence in the Rottach "Bathtub Murder"? Simulation to prove Genditzki's innocence Tegernsee Voice, July 26, 2018
  17. ↑ In the clutches of justice - innocent in custody , VOX report from November 14, 2015 (YouTube)
  18. ↑ Bayerischer Rundfunk - TV report from February 22, 2017: (YouTube)
  19. ↑ Thomas Darnstädt : The judge and his victim - When justice is wrong , Piper Verlag 2013, ISBN 978-3-492-05558-1 ; the Genditzki case is described on pages 50–53, 126–128, 213–216 and 301–302
  20. ↑ Miscarriage of Justice? - Profiler unravels the "bathtub murder" by Rottach ; in: Abendzeitung München from June 24, 2015
  21. ↑ Video recording of the press conference on July 26, 2018 in the Bavarian State Parliament
  22. ↑ Hans Holzhaider: Death in the bathtub: computer simulation should enlighten ; in: Süddeutsche Zeitung Online from July 26, 2018
  23. ↑ Schindler: the public prosecutor should roll up the bathtub case again ; in: SPD parliamentary group in the Bavarian state parliament
  24. ↑ A Bathtub Murder That Probably Wasn't ; in: Die Welt from July 30, 2018
  25. ↑ Hans Holzhaider: What if everything was different? Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 12, 2019
  26. ↑ Spiegel-TV from October 1, 2019, The "Bathtub Murder"
  27. ↑ Despite conviction: Well-founded doubts about the bathtub murder at Tegernsee ( Memento from August 1, 2018 in the Internet Archive ); in: BR24 of July 31, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Genditzki, Manfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German convicted murderer
DATE OF BIRTH 1960