Freiburg police hold suspect in rape, murder case
June 3, 2017
After a seven-month police investigation, prosecutors in Freiburg said on Saturday that a 40-year-old male suspect had been taken into custody on Friday afternoon.
"I hope now that our region can again become a little calmer," said Freiburg Police President Bernhard Rotzinger.
Believed to be a Romanian citizen, the man has been detained since Saturday afternoon on suspicion of the rape and murder of 27-year-old Carolin G. in Freiburg at the beginning of November 2016.
Understood to be a long-distance truck driver, the suspect is also accused of having raped and murdered a student in Kufstein, Austria, in January 2014.
Forensic evidence from the two crime scenes indicated that the same individual carried out the two attacks, but it took police months to track down the man concerned. The method of the crime and the weapon, a heavy iron rod used in trucks, had been the same in both cases.
Two murder investigations
In April, a witness had provided an outline image of a man seen in the vicinity of the Freiburg crime scene. The victim, Carolin G., had gone out jogging alone for an hour on a Sunday afternoon. When she failed to return home, police began an extensive search operation that continued until her body was found on the following Thursday.
Just weeks earlier, in October 2016, the body of a 19-year-old medical student was found in the Dreisam river in Freiburg. She was on her way home by bicycle from a party when she was attacked. She too was raped before she died. A 17-year-old Afghan refugee was arrested in December and charged in March after DNA evidence appeared to link him to the crime. He had been detained on charges of murdering a woman on the island of Corfu in 2013.
jm/sms (AFP, dpa)