Manfred Wittmann

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Manfred Wittmann (* 1943 in Kaltenbrunn ) is a German serial killer who killed three girls with a knife in the Coburg region between December 1968 and November 1969 . In the media he was referred to as the Staffelstein killer .

Example

Wittmann was the fifth of seven children of a dairy worker, the mother was a housewife. Because of test anxiety , he did not finish his apprenticeship as a carpenter , but instead worked as a bitumen mixer in an asphalt mixing plant. Until his arrest, he lived continuously at the place of his birth and was considered shy and inconspicuous.

Since then, he as a child in the slaughter had been watching a pig, he developed violence and killing fantasies. These consisted of torturing a woman to death with a knife for as long as possible and killing it with a stab in the neck.

Deeds

On December 25, 1959, he had attacked a 19-year-old colleague of his sister whom he had met by chance on the way home from a visit to the cinema and whose place of residence he knew. He ran home first to arm himself and then took a shortcut to ambush his victim, hit her repeatedly on the head with a rubber club, forced her to undress and stabbed her in the neck with a kitchen knife. The victim pretended to be dead and therefore survived despite serious injuries, but could not reliably describe her attacker. Scratches on Wittmann's face only led to rumors in the village, but were not reported to the police despite an express request for relevant information. Wittmann was shocked by the sight of the blood and it was clear to him that he had almost killed a person; in the following years he pursued his fantasies less often.

In December 1968 he cruelly killed a 14-year-old schoolgirl and in August and November 1969 a 16-year-old girl . According to the literature, the instrument of the crime was a " pocket knife ", whereas Der Spiegel reported on a bread knife (so-called cutting devil) .

Procedure

The main hearing began on November 7, 1971 before the jury court at the Coburg district court ; there was a lynching mood in the hall, as the type of killing was viewed by the audience as "bestial". The trial was accompanied by demonstrations and calls for the death penalty . The meeting room had to be evacuated because of a telephone bomb threat .

The indictment stated:

"The accused (now the accused ) is physically and mentally healthy, although signs of physical and psychological abnormalities have been identified, but they are not of any disease value."

Wittmann was defended by Rolf Bossi , who tried to get admission to psychiatry as a measure of improvement and security . The court did not follow the defense , held Wittmann guilty despite two psychiatric reports and sentenced him on December 15, 1971 to three times life imprisonment if the guilt was particularly serious . The expert opinion had attested Wittmann a "seriously abnormal sexual development of a genuinely sadistic character" as well as an " addiction-like , pathological instinct derailment with an ever increasing, urgent desire in periodic intensifications" and a resulting greatly reduced ability to control .

Whereabouts

Wittmann was imprisoned in the Straubing correctional facility and behaved well there. At the end of December 2011, the responsible penal enforcement chamber decided to suspend the remaining sentence if a suitable facility was found to accommodate the already frail Wittman. In contrast to the experts and the public prosecutor, the director of the institution was critical of Wittmann's possible release from prison despite castration and drug treatment. After a final decision by the Nuremberg Higher Regional Court , Wittmann was released into the care of a nursing home in Central Bavaria in 2013 after 43 years in prison.

literature

  • Peter Murakami, Julia Murakami: Lexicon of serial killers. 450 case studies of a pathological type of killing . Ullstein, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-548-35935-3 , pp. 100 f .
  • Sinn, Dieter: The great criminal dictionary. Pawlak, Herrsching 1984, ISBN 3-88199-146-8 , pp. 508 .
  • Mariak, Volker: The spiral of violent crime: cruelty and killing of animals as a preliminary stage of violence against people. Criminological contributions to the examination of the brutality thesis. 2nd Edition. tredition, Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-7482-5232-0 , p. 174 ff .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Mariak, Volker: The spiral of violent crime: cruelty and killing of animals as a preliminary stage of violence against people. Criminological contributions to the examination of the brutality thesis. 2nd Edition. tredition, Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-7482-5232-0 , p. 174 ff .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Peter Murakami, Julia Murakami: Lexicon of serial killers. 450 case studies of a pathological type of killing . Ullstein, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-548-35935-3 , pp. 100 f .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Sinn, Dieter: The great criminal dictionary. Pawlak, Herrsching 1984, ISBN 3-88199-146-8 , pp. 508 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Signs without disease value. Spiegel Online, November 21, 1971, accessed July 18, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b The Kaltenbrunn girl murderer is free. inFranken.de, June 21, 2013, accessed on July 18, 2019 .
  6. ↑ a b c Girl killer comes free. inFranken.de, January 5, 2012, accessed on July 18, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Wittmann, Manfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German serial killer, convicted of three murders of underage girls
DATE OF BIRTH 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Kaltenbrunn