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By Reinhard Fellner
Innsbruck – “Franz was a kind, friendly and helpful person!” Said a neighbor in front of the jury on Tuesday. He said this on behalf of several other Kössen witnesses and co-workers of a 56-year-old man charged with murder. His wife, of course, had seen it differently. For years there had only been side-by-side discussions for both of them; the marital imbalance had already caused whispers in the village: “She was screaming, she stalked him, she wanted to take him completely, she was extremely dominant. The way she insulted him was no longer clean! He was always calm. “
What the neighbors didn’t see: In addition to the wife’s misfortune, there was a husband who had absorbed all the aggression over the years. This led to a suicide attempt during his first marriage. The couple also had huge financial concerns. That had gone so far in February that the house had to be sold. The woman had resisted vehemently, without contributing to the household income.
Then one night in February, the scandal. Reason: fight to walk the dog. A shove sent the woman tumbling down the basement stairs. There, the 56-year-old man put the dog’s leash around his neck, crossed it and pulled until his wife died. Even when the head was already motionless in the man’s lap, Franz couldn’t stop pulling. The murdered woman was discovered in the basement only five days later. The 56-year-old man had continued to run the household as normal. Before the jury, the defendant presented the story of a marriage full of pressure, control, fighting and injury: “It took everything I wanted in Kössen. He even broke up with my parents. ” You couldn’t hear any remorse for the crime. On the contrary: “I thought that now I should look at myself. I felt free again! “
Defense attorney Andreas Grabenweger explained it with the nature of the man: “The worries of the wife and the money triggered depressive episodes in him. Then he saw red, but did not see any alternative course of action. During the act he was in the one-way street of a tunnel, at the end of which there was no more light ”. The forensic psychiatrist testified that he was less responsible and outlined a neurotic character, insecure of himself, for whom strangling the woman at that time was an “act of liberation”: “For the limited and chronically weak in decision-making, the discussion about the dog was perhaps the opportunity to make a decision. ” As an act of affection was ruled out, the decision fell on murder. The jury sentenced him to twelve years in prison. For the moment, the sentence was not final.
