German couple sentenced to life for murdering Ukrainian women to steal baby

A German couple who confessed to killing a Ukrainian refugee and her mother last year to abduct a newborn baby has been sentenced to life imprisonment on Monday, 10 February.

As reported by DPA, a German press agency, last month, on the first day of the trial, the couple admitted to murdering a Ukrainian woman, 27, and her mother, 51, with the intention of kidnapping the younger woman’s five-week-old baby.

The accused told the court that after suffering multiple miscarriages and failed infertility treatments, they had planned to abduct the newborn girl and raise her as their own child.

The prosecution revealed that the couple already had four children, including one son together. The 45-year-old woman and her 43-year-old husband were from the town of Sandhausen, near Heidelberg.

"I regret everything I did," the man said in a statement read by his lawyers. His wife added, "I made a terrible mistake."

The prosecution charged the couple with murder and child abduction.

Prosecutors stated that the couple specifically targeted Ukrainian refugees, joining a Telegram group to offer translation assistance as part of their plan.

The younger Ukrainian woman was living with her mother and child in a refugee shelter in Wiesloch, a city in southwestern Germany, when she met the couple.

On 6 March 2024, the couple allegedly gave the two Ukrainian refugees sedatives at a restaurant before the man killed them with a blunt object at two different locations. They drowned the grandmother in a lake and set the mother’s body on fire before leaving with the baby.

The 27-year-old woman’s body was discovered by a passer-by on the bank of the Rhine the following day. On 13 March, police arrested the couple and found the abducted child. The baby was returned to Ukraine and is now under the care of her aunt.