Public Ministry wants 25 years in prison for suspects of killing elderly Germans in Beja

The Public Ministry (MP) requested this Tuesday a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison for the two alleged homicides of an elderly German couple in a village in the municipality of Beja, revealed one of the lawyers in the case.

The two defendants, a man, aged 54, and a woman, aged 38, are in pre-trial detention and began to be tried in the Beja Court, pronounced by two crimes of qualified homicide and one of qualified robbery.

In the final arguments, which took place this afternoon, the MP prosecutor requested the conviction of the two accused, as well as the application of a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison for both, indicated the defendant’s lawyer, André Caetano.

The panel of judges who are judging the case announced that the ruling will be released on April 3rd, at 2:00 pmalso in the Alentejo city court, said the same lawyer.

Defendant denied committing the crimes

During the morning, at the start of the trial, the defendant denied authorship of the crimes, but did not rule out that the other accused may have committed them.

“I didn’t kill them [aos dois idosos alemães]. I don’t know if it was Fernando [o outro arguido]but I’m not putting my hands in the fire for anyone,” he said.

The defendant, his companion, sentenced for the same crimes, chose not to speak in court.

The defendant’s version

The defendant reported that, on April 16, 2023, identified by the MP as the day on which the homicides occurred, after dinner, the defendant was alone in the room with the elderly woman and then asked the woman to call the elderly man.

“I don’t know what happened inside. I didn’t hear anything,” he claimed.

Shortly afterwards, he continued, the defendant left the house with a bag which contained the three’s belongings, including a lamp, they walked and ended up calling a taxi that took them to Beja, where they spent the night in a guesthouse.

Pointing out that she never returned to the German couple’s farm, the woman again refused to ensure that the defendant had not done so. [praticados os crimes]therefore, the following day, he reported that the man was absent from the guesthouse where they were staying for an hour and a half.

Questioned by the judges, the defendant acknowledged that, already in Aljustrel, where they had moved in the meantime, traveled with the defendant in the victims’ car and saw him use the German couple’s bank card.

“Fernando told me that they had given him the car because they owed them money”, he explained, giving the same answer when asked about his bank card.

As for selling the car for 200 euros, the woman stressed that it was the defendant who made the deal.

One of the judges even confronted the defendant with alleged contradictions between his testimony and that of his mother, particularly in relation to his presence inside the house at the time the murders occurred, but the woman kept her version.

The homicide of the elderly occurred on April 16, 2023 on the German couple’s farm, in Baleizão, municipality of Beja, but the bodies were only found by authorities almost a month lateron May 11, after an alert given by his son, who lives in Germany.

According to the prosecution, the defendants took advantage of the fact that the 71-year-old woman was alone and “they gave him several blows using an iron bar”. Afterwards, the defendant went to call the elderly man, who was in an annex, and when he entered the house they hit him with “several blows, using an iron bar, on the head, torso and limbs”.