Melina, one year old, Leoni two, Sophie three, Timo six and Luka eight. Zollingen’s five children were found in their beds wrapped in blankets and towels.
All five dead. Shortly afterwards, their mother, 25 km away, at Dusseldorf train station in Germany , fell from the dock into a passing train. But it survives. Last year in early September. The news caused disgust.
One after another
The hearing on this unprecedented act begins today in Wuppertal. Christiane K., now 28, is sitting on the bench before the mixed jury.
She faces charges of murdering five of her six children. Only her eldest son survived. M. was then eleven. According to the indictment, his mother asked him to leave school and go to his grandmother in Monchengladbach.
Until now, Christiane K. constantly insists that she is innocent. That a masked man entered her house and killed her children. Investigators see this as an excuse.
“Of course we did all the necessary investigations, but we did not find anything to support the fact that the events took place, as described by the accused,” says one of them.
But how did the events unfold? Everything points to the fact that before the heinous act, things happened that aggravate the position of the 28-year-old.
Her husband, with whom she was already living apart, seems to have finally informed her that it was all over and there was no going back. Then she allegedly told him that she was not going to see his children again.
She put a medicine mixture in her children’s morning drink to anesthetize them and then drowned them in the bathtub or caused them to suffocate.. One after another.
There are some traces that show that some resisted, were not left to their own devices. On the day of the operation, Christiane K. told her eldest son that his brothers had lost their lives in a car accident.
There is also the expertise of a psychiatrist, with whom the accused did not want to talk for a long time. The psychiatrist did not find any psychiatric or mental illness in her history, capable of leading to a lack of accountability.
Felix Menke’s client pointed out that his de facto client had taken care of the children and did so in a very organized way. “A house with six children, she took them for a walk alone, at a time when the children’s father did not help much.” Christiane K.’s biography is tragic.
Did he act deceitfully?
At the age of 16 she became a mother and had 6 children with three men. According to Stern magazine, when she was a child she was sexually abused by an acquaintance of her grandparents.
“It’s something to be said, but it needs to be investigated,” said Felix Menke. “Of course it does play a role, but it is not clear yet,” said Prosecutor Herbert Kaune-Gebhardt.
“The motive for the act is missing.” Was reality beyond its power? Did she not want to leave her children alone without a father? Or did she want to take revenge on her then-husband, with whom she had four children and who abandoned her to live with another woman next door?
The indictment also mentions one word, deceit, that is, that he acted with the intention of committing the homicides, taking advantage of the inability of the children to defend themselves.
However, the family was known to the competent service of the city. He even appeared to her at some point, but Christiane K. did not want to receive more help. There were never any signs that the children were in danger.
“The heinous act saddens us, angers us and leaves us amazed,” said then-Family Minister Francesca Gifai.
“Practice is beyond the power of our imagination about what people are capable of doing.” For his part, the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Armin Lasset said that “the heinous crime makes us stop in our daily lives and think about the basic things of life.”
After the act, the neighborhood mourned the children. Many brought flowers, toys, toys. Balloons with the names of the five children “traveled” in the sky. The court has appointed eleven defendants. And then the decision is expected.
