A 55-year-old man with a criminal record has been sentenced to seven years in prison by a jury for strangling his terminally ill wife on February 24, 2022. The jury dismissed the murder charge and found the widower guilty of manslaughter. The judgment is not final. The woman had end-stage pancreatic cancer. “I just wanted it to end. I wanted us to meet again over there,” said the accused.
“It was an emotional explosion”
Lying in the marriage bed next to the woman, he had a thought in the morning when she was about to wake up: “It was clear to me at that moment that this is the solution for both of us, that we will see each other again in the afterlife. Then I have squeezed shut.” The 55-year-old repeatedly cried during his interrogation, and when his defense attorney Astrid Wagner pleaded, he sobbed audibly several times. “It wasn’t a rational decision. It was an emotional explosion, triggered by months of being overwhelmed,” said the lawyer.
Prosecutor Julia Kalmar saw things differently. The 55-year-old woman was seriously ill, “but she had not yet finished with life. She had hopes of being able to beat cancer.” The wife was particularly looking forward to the visit of her daughter, who lives in Salzburg, and the granddaughter who was just born.
“Everything in us has collapsed”
“It was a very good marriage. She was the woman of my life,” said the accused. He had met and fallen in love with the woman of the same age at work. They got married in a civil registry office in 1991 and their daughter was born the following year. In the summer of 2021, the woman suddenly developed persistent abdominal and stomach pain. Initially, gastritis was suspected, a colonoscopy and a gastroscopy provided no evidence of a serious, life-threatening disease. The woman was then taken to a hospital because of jaundice, and a thorough blood test revealed that the cancer was already well advanced. “Everything collapsed in us. It was horrible,” reported the accused.
He was “a problem solver” in himself, but was overwhelmed and helpless with the new situation. His wife “didn’t get the palliative chemotherapy. It was terrible for her”. Her pain was “brutal”. He himself had to take sick leave as a result of an exhaustion syndrome: “I felt the pain.”
Daughter notified emergency services
After the couple had been married in church, the daughter agreed to a two-week visit with the granddaughter. “The pressure that was on the man increased as a result,” said the defender. The 55-year-old could not imagine what life would be like for the four of them in his two-room apartment. The defendant admitted that he no longer knew “what to do”. In retrospect, he would “do everything differently. I would get help, I would talk to psychologists, to friends.”
After killing his wife, the man attempted suicide. He then sent the daughter a farewell letter in the form of an email, which the 31-year-old immediately read. She had a five-minute phone call with her father, which then suddenly ended. Because he was then no longer available, the daughter informed rescue and the police. The emergency services then broke into the apartment, which saved the 55-year-old’s life. Any help came too late for his wife.
Seven years imprisonment
The jury ended up following defense attorney’s plea for manslaughter. Astrid Wagner argued in her closing speech that the man allowed himself to be carried away in a generally understandable, violent emotional state. With a range of sentences of five to ten years, the court found seven years appropriate to the crime and guilt, whereby general preventive reasons would have spoken against a milder sanction, as the presiding judge explained in the verdict. The 55-year-old accepted the verdict, but the prosecutor initially gave no explanation.
Service: Are you in a desperate situation and need help? Talk to other people about it. The Ministry of Health’s Suicide Prevention Portal offers support for people with suicidal thoughts and their families. Contact details for support organizations in Austria can be found at www.suizid-praevention.gv.at. Information for young people is available at www.bittelebe.at
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