“The alleged crime is completely turned upside down”

The Augsburg regional court surprisingly accepted the latest application for retrial by the convicted Benedikt Toth – because there is new evidence that strongly questions the 2008 verdict.

Munich – The parking garage murder is one of the most spectacular trials of the last 20 years. Now the trial of the slain parking garage millionaire Charlotte Böhringer (†59) is closer to being reopened than ever before. Because the district court augsburg has decided: New information and evidence could call into question whether nephew Bence Toth (49) could be convicted of murdering his aunt 17 years ago.

“The jury made its verdict in 2008 on a clearly erroneous basis,” says Toth’s lawyer Peter Witting. The almost 500-page application for reopening reveals exactly what could turn the tide. Die tz had the opportunity to take a look at the document.

Parking garage murder in Munich: The witness was afraid of being targeted by the murderer

On the one hand, there is talk of a witness who could have lied in the main hearing in 2008. A friend of Charlotte Böhringer, who was with her a few hours before the murder, had one at the time Munich Journalist recounts an observation: As she was leaving, she saw an older man behaving strangely in front of Böhringer’s apartment door. The journalist reported in court at the time that he quickly disappeared and did not want to be seen – but without mentioning the name of her informant. Because they didn’t want to be associated with the murder in the newspaper article about the unknown Mister X.

Böringer’s friend also remained silent out of fear – the murderer might then target her too, according to the journalist’s statement at the time. The crux of the matter: At that time the writer protected her informant, but no longer. She recently named the witness in a written statement, repeated her statements and agreed to do the same in court. Witting: “The girlfriend was questioned in the main hearing, but claimed that she was not the informant for the Mister X story.” That was obviously a lie. If witnesses were to be questioned again in the event of a retrial, they would have to testify about what they observed. The question would then have to be investigated as to whether there is a connection between what they observed and the crime. Proverb: Whether it was not Bence Toth but an unknown third party who murdered Charlotte Böringer.

Was the perpetrator already in the apartment?

A second aspect that the Augsburg Regional Court considers worthy of reopening is the traces of blood at the crime scene. Two new reports run across numerous pages in the application for reopening, one from forensic physicists at Mittweida University, a second from the Institute for Forensic Medicine at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster. Using the latest laser and 3D methods, which were not yet available in 2008, both come to the same conclusion: the large number of blood spatters in the hallway where the parking garage millionaire died fly from the interior of the apartment to the entrance door. “And that means that the perpetrator was already in the apartment at the time of his attack on Charlotte Böhringer,” says Witting, “and he did not watch his victim leave the apartment, as was assumed in the judgment at the time.” The facts assumed by the jury were completely turned upside down.”

For a reopening, this means that the course of the crime would have to be discussed from scratch and with it the 14 pieces of evidence that led to the conviction instead of evidence. Several of these pieces of evidence have been heavily criticized by lawyers in the past, including the fact that Benedikt Toth is left-handed – although, according to the court report, the murder was committed by a right-handed person. Or the evidence that the defendant reacted in shock when he found the body.

There is talk of a resumption of the proceedings – “long road to possible acquittal”

Whether there will be a retrial now depends on two things: On the one hand, the Munich Higher Regional Court (OLG) must decide whether to uphold a complaint from the Augsburg public prosecutor’s office. This was submitted almost at the same time as the regional court accepted the application for reopening at the beginning of December, but so far without the necessary explanation. “This is currently still in progress,” the public prosecutors reported when asked by tz. If the Higher Regional Court passes the positive decision of the Augsburg Regional Court, it will decide in a probation procedure (a kind of non-public mini-trial as a dress rehearsal) whether there will be a new main hearing. The convicted man Bence Toth says: “There is still a very long way to go before a possible acquittal.”