The prosecution had accused the woman, who is deaf, of hitting her father's head with an axe out of anger in February 2020. The victim survived the attack with serious injuries and was in a coma for more than a year in a ward of the University Hospital in Bonn. This summer, the pensioner died as a result of the his injuries.

We will probably never know what happened in the old man's flat between 4 and 7 February. "The deceased was a fun-loving person who looked after his health," said presiding judge Klaus Reinhoff in his sentencing. One thing was certain: "He did not kill himself." Assumptions to that effect were absolute nonsense, Reinhoff was sure.

The judges were just as sure that the perpetrator must have known his or her way around the house. After splitting up with her partner, the daughter had moved into one of two granny flats in her father's house. Apparently, the relationship between father and daughter was not particularly good; the father repeatedly urged his daughter to find a place of her own: "Move out, find a place to live, I'm afraid of Covid, you don't take Coronavirus seriously!" Reinhoff said that the father had repeatedly said things like this to his daugher.

A quarrel, however, did not constitute a sufficient motive as far as the judges were concerned. The pensioner had been lying in his bed when the murder weapon, a long-handled axe, was raised against him. This was the result of the forensic evidence taken by the police. A wild quarrel does not seem to have preceded the crime. The prosecution then primarily relied on the principle of exclusion: none of the surveillance cameras mounted in front of the house had filmed any other person entering the house during the decisive period. But the cameras do not cover the entire sides and back of the house. Also, the senior citizen had locked himself in his flat and only his daughter had a key to a steel connecting door. This can only be opened if no key is inserted from the other side. But that was the case when the dead man was found after an alert from his son, who had been trying in vain for several days to reach his father by phone. Only in the very unlikely scenario that the key was exactly vertical from the inside would the daughter have been able to unlock the door from her side. "The key should have been exactly at twelve o'clock, not at 11.57, not at 12.03," says Reinhoff.

"It is perhaps unfortunate that no perpetrator can be found after such a serious crime, the presiding judge concluded. "But that should not mean we have to point our finger at someone who probably didn't do it."

(Original text: Leif Kubik; Translation: Jean Lennox)