This Tuesday, the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) requested a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison for the two alleged killers 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 54-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman, are in pre-trial detention and began to be tried this morning at the Beja Court, pronounced for two crimes of qualified homicide and one of qualified theft.
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, He referred the defendant’s lawyer, André Caetano, to the Lusa agency.
The group of judges who are judging the case announced that the ruling will be released on April 3, at 2:00 pm, also in the Alentejo city court, said the same lawyer.
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 partner, who was sentenced for the same crimes, chose not to speak in court.
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 containing the three of their belongings, including a lamp, walked and ended up calling a taxi that took them to Beja, where they stayed 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 since moved, she 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 also confronted the defendant with alleged contradictions between her testimony and that of her mother, particularly in relation to her presence inside the house at the time the murders occurred, but the woman maintained 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 the authorities almost a month later, on May 11, after an alert given by the son, who resides in Germany.
According to the prosecution, the defendants took advantage of the fact that the 71-year-old woman was alone and “struck her several times 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”.
