A woman accused of killing her doppelganger in a bid to fake her own death allegedly tried to kill before, prosecutors have claimed.
Last August, police found a body covered in blood inside a Mercedes parked up in Ingolstadt, southern Germany.
The victim was initially named as Sharaban K, a 23-year-old German-Iraqi beautician from Munich, after her family identified the body.
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However, a post mortem examination raised questions about the person’s identity, with the victim later being confirmed as 23-year-old Khadidja O - an Algerian beauty blogger from Heilbronn, in the neighbouring German state of Baden-Württemberg.
Sharaban K – identified only by her first name and last initial, as it customary in the German legal system - was later accused of plotting the scheme with friend Sheqir K, with both facing life in prison if convicted with their first-degree murder charges.
Prosecutors now claim that Sharaban K had made a previous separate attempt to kill, saying she attempted to hire someone to murder a relative just one month earlier.
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Veronika Grieser of the Ingolstadt state prosecutor's office told Insider that cell phone evidence indicates Sharaban K made a payment to somebody else to kill one of her relatives in mid-July last year,
Grieser said the plan failed to matieralise, explaining: "According to the investigations carried out so far, the other suspect had assured [Sharaban K.] that he would carry out the plan but did not pursue it further despite repeated requests.”
While Grieser disclosed neither the identity of the relative nor the person who received the payment, she told the outlet that an additional charge of attempted incitement to murder was handed down to Sharaban K on Tuesday, 11 July.
Grieser said investigations by the public prosecutor's office are still ongoing, but are at an ‘advanced stage'.
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Police said Khadidja O and Sharaban K were ‘strikingly alike’ in appearance, which has led the case to be described as the 'doppelganger murder'.
Speaking earlier this year, Grieser said: "Investigations have led us to assume that the accused wanted to go into hiding because of a family dispute and fake her own death to that effect."
She explained how the beautician had reached out to Khadidja O on social media the week before the alleged murder.
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Sharaban K is said to have attempted to set up a number of meetings with the woman using various aliases, but at first failed.
She then successfully met up with her by making a ‘cosmetics offer’, according to authorities, who say Sharaban K and her friend Sheqir K picked her up and took her to a forested area between Heilbronn and Ingolstadt, where they stabbed her to death.
Police spokesperson Andreas Aichele told the German tabloid newspaper Bild: “On the day we found the body there was absolutely nothing to suggest things would develop like this. The crime weapon has not been found, but the evidence is overwhelming.
"The victim was killed with over 50 thrusts of the knife, the face completely disfigured."
Topics: News, World News, Crime
Jess Hardiman