“They showed coldness and contempt”: couple sentenced to prison for death of elderly Germans in Beja

The Beja Court sentenced this Wednesday to 22 years in prison a man, aged 54, and a woman, aged 38, for murder of an elderly German couple on a farm on the outskirts of Baleizão.

When reading the ruling, the president of the panel of judges who judged the case said that the court “has no doubt that it was the two of them who killed these people” and was proven the two crimes of murder and one of theft that were pronounced.

The court found that the defendants were welcomed at the home of the German couple because they had nowhere to go and who, days later, attacked the elderly woman, aged 71, and the elderly man, aged 78, with an iron bar, they abandoned us in their house and returned later to take the victims’ car and bank cards.

“This behavior is of considerable gravity. They showed coldness, lack of remorse and contempt for these people who helped them and this was the way in which they repaid the good they did to them”, stated the president of the collective, highlighting the “absence of any act of regret or repentance” on the part of the defendants.

According to the judge, the murderers, both currently in pre-trial detention, were convicted, in legal terms, to 22 years in prison for two crimes of simple homicide and one of qualified robbery.

In its decision, the court changed the legal classification of the two murder crimes of which they were both accused, going from qualified, as stated in the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) indictment, to simple.

At issue, explained the judge, was the fact that the two elderly people were independent and that it was not a crime for futile reasons, that is, “there was a conflict” related to money that the murderers wanted to receive for agricultural work.

Regarding the crime of theft, the president of the collective recalled that the two killers “went as far as selling the victims’ car” and “used the cards [bancários] without worrying”, because “they knew that they were no longer here to oppose” that behavior.

In addition to the 22-year prison sentence, the two defendants were also sentenced to payment of compensation worth 30 thousand euros to a daughter of the German couple for non-pecuniary damages.

Upon leaving the court, in statements to journalists, the lawyers for the two defendants limited themselves to admitting their intention to appeal the decision.

Nuno Pássaro, lawyer for a daughter of the German couple, said that, with this decision, his constituent “feels that justice has been done”.

“She is not very well psychologically, but this brings some comfort and that is the most important thing, is that we feel that justice was done in a crime as macabre as this”, he added.