The public prosecutor demanded the maximum sentence on Friday afternoon, Stefan R.’s lawyers pleaded for acquittal. Shortly before 5 p.m. the jury chamber is finished with its deliberations. Then Matthias Schertz, the presiding judge, speaks the verdict: The accused teacher of mathematics and chemistry has to serve a life sentence for murder and disturbance of the peace of the dead. In addition, the court recognizes the particular gravity of the guilt. This means that Stefan R. cannot be released on parole after 15 years in prison.
After months of negotiations, the judges were convinced that the defendant had insidiously killed the 43-year-old mechanic Stefan T. to satisfy his sexual instinct and to make another crime possible, “in order to implement his cannibalism fantasies,” says Schertz in the grounds of the judgment. The accused killed the man, cut him up and removed his penis and testicles “to eat both”. Then Stefan R. looked at roasting instructions on the Internet. “We could not determine with certainty whether the consumption actually took place.”
According to the judgment of the court, the victim met the accused on the night of September 6, 2020 on the Planet Romeo dating platform and had an appointment with him. The fitter took a taxi to the teacher’s apartment in Pankow, was sedated there with a drink, then probably killed with a throat cut. Stefan R. dismantled the body and brought the body parts to various locations in the north of Pankow, where they were found two months later one after the other.
“What you have done is an inhuman and particularly despicable act,” says Matthias Schertz. He has been a judge for 30 years and has been involved in murder for 13 years. So far, he has never had such a case on his table.
The defendant comes from a Catholic family in the Palatinate. In 2012 he came to Berlin, became a teacher of mathematics and chemistry and, according to Schertz, lived out his homosexuality in the capital. He met with strange men and made no secret of the fact that he was a teacher. “It was not important to him to hide his homosexuality,” explains the judge.
Increasingly, there were role-playing games in the sex life of the accused in which he was the dominant part who sedated his partner. Stefan R. went “to the limit of mutual agreement”. His preferences increased to the point of sexual sadism. But Stefan R. was not addicted to it, he was also able to switch. That is why he is fully guilty.
Schertz speaks of increasing battle and cannibalism ideas that would have developed with the defendant. In a chat with a sex partner, he prepared his slaughter. Stefan R. bought a freezer, he had butcher knives and saws for cutting up a corpse in his apartment. “He was determined to implement his cannibalism ideas,” says the judge. Stefan T., the fitter from Lichtenberg, anticipated this chat partner. What he meant by that, Schertz describes as follows: When he saw Stefan T., the defendant knew that his first victim was standing before him.
The teacher was silent about the allegations for ten months
The accused pedagogue had been silent on the allegations for a long time, and only after ten months of pre-trial detention and several days of trial did he have his defense counsel read out an admission. In it he admitted meeting the fitter, but denied having killed him. Rather, the man had ingested substances and lay dead on his couch the next morning.
For fear of being outed as gay, he did not call an ambulance or the police, but instead dismembered the body and brought the parts away. He had separated the penis and testicles – so that the police would not find any traces of his DNA. It was all extremely difficult for him, both mentally and physically.
Schertz calls the admission incomprehensible, “incredible from back to front” and, according to the statements of many witnesses, cobbled together. Because the evening after the crime, Stefan R. was on his way to a new sex partner, who simply slept through the date.
Victim did not expect an attack on his life
In addition, the traces in the apartment speak a different language: the blood, the butcher’s knife set, the bone saw, the instructions for emasculating and slaughtering a man and making knockout drops, buying the freezer shortly before the murder , the chat history in which Stefan R. planned the crime – only with another victim. The fitter “didn’t die to himself,” as Schertz says. The cause of death was massive blood loss.
According to the judge, the victim Stefan T. did not expect an attack on his life at the sex meeting. In addition, the chamber does not think it is ruled out that Stefan R. has already looked for a new victim on the Internet – a man from Cologne with whom he had chatted. Due to the defendant’s arrest in mid-November 2020, there was no longer a meeting. “Fortunately,” says Schertz.
The judgment against Stefan R. is not yet final. The defendant’s two lawyers want to appeal the verdict.