Trial Bremgarten: 8 years for parents after killing disabled daughter

Eight years imprisonment each for a couple who killed their severely disabled daughter in Hägglingen AG in 2020. The Bremgarten District Court found the couple guilty of intentional homicide and attempted homicide. The verdicts are not yet final.

On 6 May 2020, the now 32-year-old woman and the 34-year-old man drugged their three-year-old daughter with ecstasy and then suffocated her. Because he had procured the ecstasy, the man was also sentenced to a conditional fine for violating the Narcotics Act.

He was also found guilty of attempted murder. In October 2019, the parents had already tried to kill the child once with an overdose of sleeping pills in the bottle. However, it woke up again. The court ordered the two Germans to be deported for ten years each.

The child had suffered from severe cerebral impairment since birth. It would have needed intensive round-the-clock care for the rest of its life.

The parents claimed that they had relieved their daughter of her increasingly severe pain, cramps, paralysis and other ailments out of love. Their defense lawyers had pleaded for manslaughter and partial prison sentences of three years each. The defendants had acted under great emotional stress.

The public prosecutor had demanded custodial sentences of 18 years each for murder. There would certainly have been opportunities for the child to make progress. However, it had been a nuisance to the accused and they had wanted to get rid of it. In doing so, they had acted in a blatantly selfish and unscrupulous manner.

Acquittal for grandmother

The grandmother of the child who was killed was acquitted of the charge of complicity. The prosecution had accused her of not having prevented her daughter and her boyfriend from killing her.

She herself had claimed that she had not known what to do. She had strongly advised against the act and supported the young family as much as possible.