The Krailling double homicide occurred on March 24, 2011; two sisters, eleven-year-old Sharon. and eight-year-old Chiara, were found dead by their mother and her partner at their home in Krailling, Bavaria (Germany).

One week later, their uncle, Thomas S., was arrested on suspicion of their murder because of DNA profiling. On April 16, 2012, S. was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Background

Anette S. and her daughters Sharon and Chiara lived separately from husband and father in Krailing, Bavaria. Her new partner ran a pub in the town where she regularly used to work. Despite the separation, the two girls saw their father regularly.

Thomas S. (who has taken his wife's name after marriage) was the husband of Anette's sister. He, his wife and their four children moved into an unfinished house in Peißenberg in 2010. They were not able to pay back the loans, so Thomas S. tried to force his wife's sister Anette S. to sell a flat the two sisters owned together and give his family the money, which she denied.

Murders

Thomas S. wanted to kill his sister-in-law and his nieces so his wife would be the sole heir of the flat, another flat Annette S. owned, and the heritage of the 98-year-old grandmother. He hoped that this way the family would be able to pay back their loans and would be able to help one of their children who is disabled.

On March 23, 2011, Anette S. left her two daughters Sharon and Chiara alone in their home in Krailling, to work in a nearby pub, only a few minutes away from her home, that was owned by her new partner. The door of the house was not locked because the mother feared the girls were not able to save themselves from fire if the door was locked. Thomas S. knew this and used it for his horrible plan: he invaded the house and killed his nieces around 02:00 and 02:30 a.m.

The investigators reconstructed that eight-year-old Chiara was first strangled with a rope. Sharon woke up and went to her sister's room. The murderer left the unconscious Chiara alone and chased Sharon through the house. In the kitchen, she was attacked with a barbell. After hitting her two times onto the head, the murderer took a knife from the kitchen and stabbed the girl; the autopsy later counted five wounds, as far as 17 centimeters (6,7 inches) deep.

Chiara woke up from her unconsciousness and overheard the mortal agony of her sister. In mortal fear, she tried to block the door, but the murderer pushed her away, smashed her head with the barbell and cut her carotid artery. Both bodies were also scattered with hematomas. The autopsy was not able to found the fatal wounds of the girls and said that there was a mixture of fatal wounds.

S. also planned to drown their mother in the bathtub, so it would have looked like an extended suicide of the mother, however, he changed this plan because she did not come home early enough and he feared that it would not be possible to cover the crime, because dawn was on to come.

At 5:00 a.m., Annette and her partner came back home and found the horribly mangled bodies of the two girls.

Investigation

After the police arrived on the crime scene, the Bavarian police and the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany (Bundeskriminalamt) started their investigation. The murderer wounded himself federal times during his slaughter, so DNA-material was found. The crime shocked Bavaria and was topic of the German and Austrian medias for days, so the help of the local people was immense. After testing 91 saliva samples which had been given voluntarily from local people, Selmayr was arrested only nine days after the murders, meanwhile in Krailling the two girls were buried.

Criminal trial

On January 17, 2012, the murder trial started in Munich. The accused first tried to explain his blood on the crime scene with a nose bleed he had during an earlier visit, which he cleaned up with Sharon, when the court asked him how such a large amount of his blood was found all over the house as a result of a nosebleed, S. answered: "Da müssen sie Sharon schon selber fragen!" ("Ask Sharon if you want to know!").

At the last part of the trail, S. claimed that his blood was found on the crime scene was put there by criminal officiers in order to frame him, which was refuted by the fact that the blood was found and analysed before S. was under suspicion. At last, even his defense lawyers distanced themselves from their client. On April 16, 2012, S. was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Wikipedia.org

Who killed the innocents? The case against Thomas Selmayr

ChatMagazine.co.uk

Story so far

A bathtub full of water, a dispute over a flat, and two children stabbed to death in the night. But would the clues lead the police to the killer?

The case

In March 2011, police in Munich, Germany, had a mammoth task ahead of them. There were 130 people to be interviewed.

All of them were friends, family and neighbours of Anette Schulz, who had come home one night after work to find her daughters Sharon, 11, and Chiara, 8, murdered…

Brutally killed. Clubbed with an iron rod and stabbed.

First to come under scrutiny was Anette herself. Separated from the girls’ dad, she told police she worked nights in a restaurant to make ends meet.

She’d tuck her girls up in bed at their home in Krailling, then head off for her shift. Normally, she’d be home by 2am. But on that night, the restaurant had been busy, and Anette hadn’t got home until 4.

That’s when she said she’d found the bodies of Sharon and Chiara. First Sharon on the floor of her room, then Chiara sprawled across her bed.

‘I screamed out her name,’ she told police about discovering Sharon. ‘She was still warm, but I knew she was dead.’

Immediately, she’d called her boyfriend. And then she’d waited for him to come round before calling the police.

Why the delay? Was she in shock? Or did she have something to hide?

And why, when the police had come round to Anette’s flat, had they found the bathtub full of water? Had Anette wanted to wash away any evidence?

‘I didn’t fill up the bathtub,’ Anette insisted.

Later that morning, Anette also called her sister. When questioned, her sister claimed she’d gone to bed early that night. And that her husband Thomas Selmayr had been with her. But suddenly, she corrected herself.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘He was on night duty at the Post Office.’

Thomas had only recently started working at the Post Office. Before that, life had been quite different for him. He’d been running his own carpet business. He’d been in the process of buying an upmarket family home in the sophisticated town of Peissenberg.

And then the business failed. Thomas had lost everything – even the new house – and had ended up doing night shifts at the Post Office.

The police looked into it. Found Thomas’s shift that night hadn’t started until 5am. Little Sharon and Chiara had been murdered before 4am.

Then there were more revelations from Anette’s sister….

After the death of their mum, Anette and her sister had inherited her flat. It was worth €80,000 (about £60,000). Now, if only Anette would buy her sister’s half of the flat, Thomas would be able to get out of his financial trouble.

Thomas had called Anette, asking her to buy their share in the flat for €50,000 (£39,000). Anette had refused. But she’d said she’d consider buying her sister’s share for €35,000 (£27,000)

After that, Thomas had called her repeatedly, begging her to reconsider. He even told her that he and her sister were about to be evicted from their place. They were in debt up to their eyeballs.

‘That’s it!’ Thomas had screamed down the phone at her sister. ‘You’ll regret this!’

‘Thomas can’t always control his temper,’ his wife said during a police interview.

And although she never admitted it outright, the police wondered if she was living in fear of her husband.

Then there was the DNA. The police had found DNA samples on the iron rod that had been used to batter Sharon and Chiara. The police wanted to take DNA samples from all the suspects.

Thomas Selmayr refused. Was this refusal the mark of a guilty man? Or was he innocent and unwilling to undergo the test on principle?

The plot thickened…

When Thomas’ wife was shown the knife used to kill the girls, she admitted it looked like one that had gone missing from her kitchen. But couldn’t there have been hundreds of kitchens across Germany with the same knives?

Could it be enough to convict Thomas Selmayr of the double murder?

And how would the police explain the bathtub of water?

In April 2011, police arrested Thomas Selmayr and charged him with the double murder. In court, it was claimed he’d planned to murder Anette, Sharon and Chiara so that his wife would inherit Anette’s half of the flat.

As he came to trial, it was announced that Thomas’ wife had filed for divorce.

Now, he would face the jury alone.

But was he an innocent man? His financial problems certainly provided a motive. But surely no-one would kill two innocent children simply for a share in the ownership of a flat, would they?

And what of that bathtub full of water?

Would the court believe the claims? Or was someone using Thomas as a scapegoat?

The verdict: Guilty!

The court in Munich found Thomas Selmayr guilty of the double murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

He had intended to murder Anette, too. He’d run the bath so that he could drown her when she came in from work. It’d been his intention to make it look like she’d killed her own daughters and then herself.

She only escaped because she got home from her shift so late and Thomas had to be at work.

  

Uncle of Krailling sisters to be charged with their murder

TheLocal.de

April 2, 2011

Authorities are expecting to charge the uncle of the two sisters found dead in their family flat on Wednesday night with their murder, they confirmed on Saturday morning.

The 50-year-old uncle of the sisters Chiara and Sharon was arrested on Friday after DNA tests linked him to the flat in Krailling where the eight- and 11-year-old girls were killed.

Although there were inconsistencies between his first and second interrogation, the uncle had not admitted their murders, said Markus Kraus, head of the murder commission in Munich on Saturday.

The suspect had made a "distanced and disinterested impression," he added.

The two girls were killed in their unlocked home in the small Upper Bavaria town while their mother was out. The post-mortem reports showed they were both subjected to "many violent acts of different kinds," using a knife and part of a barbell. There was no indication of sexual abuse.

The girls were buried on Friday.

The 31 members of the murder squad had checked 141 potential clues which had come in from the public, as well as interviewing 100 people, and testing 91 saliva samples which had been given voluntarily from local people.

The DNA samples linked the 50-year-old uncle to the flat and led to his arrest. Kraus said on Saturday that the killer had seemingly injured himself during the attack and left a blood trace at the scene.

The public prosecutor said charges of double murder would most likely be made against the man on Saturday. Spokeswoman Andrea Titz would not comment on a possible motive, but media reports said the man, himself a father of four, had argued with the girls’ mother over financial matters.

  

Mother finds two daughters dead

TheLocal.de

March 21, 2011

Police are investigating the deaths of two girls, aged eight and 11, whose bodies were found at home by their mother early Thursday morning in the Bavarian town of Krailling.

Investigators believe the young sisters were the victims of a violent crime. Their mother came home just before 5 am and discovered their bodies in the family’s apartment in Krailling, on the southwest outskirts of Munich.

A police spokesman said officers were carrying out a “double homicide” investigation. He declined to comment on news reports that one of the girls had been alive when the mother returned home.

The girls’ bodies were found separately in their respective bedrooms.

Daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the woman was separated from the girls’ father and worked as a waitress in a pub. Neighbours said the woman’s partner - who was with her when she arrived home - was the landlord of the pub. They said that although the women was separated from the girls’ father, he still saw his daughters regularly.

Investigators had sealed off the area around the second-floor apartment and were gathering evidence and interviewing potential witnesses Thursday morning. About 35 officers were involved in the investigation. A helicopter was also being used to search the surrounding area.

However, the circumstances of the girls’ deaths remain unclear.

  

Thomas Selmayr