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2. Criminological Starting Point
The solution to any criminal case begins with certain preliminary considerations as to the possible course of events and the culprit's motives. Then there is the question concerning the group of people, one of whom the culprit might be: Did the victim know him/her, or was it an unknown third party? The special task force was soon able to answer this question, as no signs of sexual abuse whatsoever were found on Melanie and Karola Weimar. The hypothesis that an unknown third person could have suffocated and strangled the children near their home and then taken them away in a car seemed absolutely improbable with regard to the initial assumption that they were killed by day. If the children were not killed close to their home but somewhere near where they were found later, they must have entered the murderer's car, and the assumption is unavoidable that there must have been some relation to the culprit.
If the culprit came from within the victims' personal environment, the answer to the question of motive led to a further elimination of people who could have done it: None of the relatives, and even less so the neighbors in the two adjoining houses, had a motive for killing the girls. The outline of a motive seemed to develop around the parents alone: Monika Weimar might have had one with regard to her relationship with Kevin Pratt; Reinhard Weimar could have had the motive of jealousy, watching this relationship.
The basic assumption that only one parent could have been the murderer suggested itself but proved to be fatal for the quality of the investigations. The alternative whether it was the father or the mother gave every sign of evidence a result-oriented ambivalence. In short: The findings that exonerated the father weighed upon the mother; when he was found guilty of something, she was excluded. And as many signs of evidence need to be assessed before they become the basis of conclusions, to clear up the Weimar murder case became a kind of religious war in which, at one time or another, all people involved - criminal investigators, public prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges, too - participated. Who was rather believed capable of the deed, who had the most probable motive? The seemingly coarse Reinhard Weimar or Monika Weimar with her sphinx-like gaze? The emotional answer to this question was the fundamental tone that accompanied most reflections, even the assessment of outwardly objective material evidence. This assessment was sometimes made very naively: It was said that the mother's responsibility for the crime was proved by the allegedly "gentle" way of killing; two members of the special task force interpreted the orderly clothes and the hair-slides as follows - in a file note dated August 19, 1986, that only appeared during the trial in Gießen "Only the mother found the children beautiful even as corpses." On the other hand, public prosecutor Raimund Sauter followed a totally different direction in his petition to issue an arrest warrant against Reinhard Weimar. This petition and the subsequent complaint create an impression of conclusiveness which is only surpassed by the seeming power of persuasion of the Fulda judgment against Monika Weimar.
Unavoidable as the hypothesis of either the mother or the father being the culprit was, it was as dangerous for the objective establishment and assessment of the findings: The guideline of the 'either/or' developed a suggestive power which won recognition for prejudices both imperceptibly and effectively. The new criminal proceedings against Monika Böttcher dramatically demonstrates the fact that even seemingly neutral material evidence can be detrimentally affected by such suggestive power.
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