The 41-year-old is said to have poisoned his father-in-law with insulin
Process attempted poisoning in Cologne
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Nothing speaks for a suicide attempt by the victim
Cologne In the trial of a woman from Cologne who is said to have poisoned her father-in-law with an overdose of insulin, a forensic psychiatrist presented her report. There is nothing to suggest that the 80-year-old could have injected the insulin with suicidal intent, said the expert.
The time in prison has left its mark on Clara S. The dyed blonde has long outgrown her hair. She looks tired, keeps closing her eyes. She has been in custody since the end of July 2020 and separated from her two small children, now three and six years old. Clara S. (name changed) faces a life sentence. The 41-year-old is said to have tried to poison her father-in-law with an overdose of insulin. The circumstantial process against the woman before the Cologne district court has been running since last summer. She denies attempted murder.
Her father-in-law, the doctor Robert S., was a fit man who was still in his practice every day from morning to night and had just celebrated his 80th birthday. He suffered severe brain damage from insulin poisoning and is now at the mental level of a three-year-old. He needs round-the-clock care. Clara S. had suspected in the process that her father-in-law might have injected himself with the insulin to take his own life. However, a large number of witnesses – friends, relatives, colleagues, employees and the former partner – had testified in the proceedings that the devout Catholic had always condemned suicide and had never claimed to end his life himself. His younger son, the accused’s brother-in-law, said: “My father knows how he could safely kill himself.” As a doctor, he suddenly had access to all medicines, and there was always morphine in his doctor’s case. Why should he have risked a failed attempt with insulin?
The forensic psychiatrist Konstanze Jankowski has now also addressed the question of whether Robert S. could have been suicidal when approving her report on the accused. She says clearly: “There was no initial situation that could speak for a spontaneous suicide.” Not a single hearing of witnesses would indicate this. On the contrary: the doctor was in top shape, robust, stable, future-oriented, he planned trips, was on the road a lot and was welcome everywhere. At best, he fell asleep at a concert in the Philharmonie after a ten-hour day, as his former partner reported, but that is not a concern for a man his age, as the psychiatrist notes. Robert S. wanted to continue working despite his age and he would have liked to have celebrated his 80th big – but then the pandemic intervened.
Jankowski determined the accused in her psychiatric report as a lively and sensitive person, a “multifaceted personality”, socially competent, assertive and stress-resistant with a healthy tendency to distance themselves. In the process, it was discussed that Clara S. had been treated for depression for many years. A psychotherapist had even attested to her having bipolar disorder. But the experts cannot confirm all of this. At best, one can speak of depressive adjustment disorders that the accused had, for example, after the failure of her first marriage, says the psychiatrist. “It’s not pathological depression,” she says. Clara S. is also not personality disordered, from a forensic-psychiatric point of view there is no evidence of a pathological mental disorder. If the allegations of the public prosecutor’s office are confirmed and Clara S. is convicted for the attempted murder of her father-in-law, the psychiatrist is convinced that there are no indications of a specific criminal responsibility or of a placement in a correctional facility.
The public prosecutor is convinced that Clara S. drove with her daughter to her father-in-law’s villa on the afternoon of July 5, 2020. SHE is said to have first mixed a sedative into his drink and then given him at least one insulin shot after he had lost consciousness. Her little daughter is said to have distracted her with children’s series in the next room. They ran for an hour and a half on the mother’s cell phone, which investigators later proved. A possible motive for the crime is puzzling. The relationship between Robert S. and his daughter-in-law wasn’t the best, but is that why she decided to kill him? After all, she had a privileged life with her husband, who also works as a doctor in her father’s practice, and their two children. Could it still have been about money for the defendant? Perhaps the senior citizen’s large villa in the city forest?
What is certain is that Clara S. meticulously researched the Internet for weeks before that July 5 on the topics of “inheritance” and “poisoning”. She mainly googled tasteless preparations in the form of drops. The investigators also discovered research on the subject of “insulin overdose” in the search history and Clara S. had also called up a post entitled “An (almost) perfect murder” about a murder caused by an insulin overdose. The defendant had deleted the search history, but it was able to be restored. In the process, Clara S. explains the Internet search with her diabetes. She came across some pages by accident.
The trial could end in May.