BERLIN (AP) - A court in Germany has convicted a 61-year-old man of murder of killing and robbing a woman he met online.
The regional court in the southern town of Traunstein on Friday sentenced the defendant, whose name wasn’t released for privacy reasons, to life in prison.
Germany’s dpa news agency reported that judges concluded the German killed the 59-year-old woman last year before stealing 60,000 euros ($71,000) she kept in a safe.
His lawyer, Harald Baumgaertl, had sought a lesser sentence of 12 years for manslaughter, saying the killing was “spontaneous.” The defendant had previously served lengthy prison sentences for burglary, dpa reported.
In a separate case, the Hannover regional court convicted a 60-year-old man of murder for killing his ex-partner last summer after driving her off the road with his car.
During the trial, the court heard a 10-minute recording of an emergency call the 42-year-old woman made as she pleaded with the defendant not to kill her, dpa reported.
Judges sentenced the man, whose name wasn’t released for privacy reasons, to 14 years in prison, citing the fact that he was drunk at the time of the killing as a mitigating factor.
Both the victim and the defendant were Polish citizens who had worked in the same meat-processing plant.
Rights groups say a woman in Germany is killed by her current or former partner about every three days.
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