A yellow thread in the apartment, a harbinger of bad luck in his home country of Bosnia, was the final reason why the accused in Asten, Upper Austria, choked his wife and attacked him with a knife. The court in Steyr assessed this as deliberately causing serious bodily harm. Since the 41-year-old is not of sound mind, he was put in an institution.
For 16 years, she and her husband, the accused, “had a nice marriage,” the victim (37) tells the jury in a trembling voice. In the last month and a half before the crime, she did not recognize her husband, who is now divorced. He was jealous and there were always arguments: about the condominium, about the two children. There was also talk of divorce. In the early morning hours of June 20, the situation in the apartment in Asten escalated. The 41-year-old woke his wife who was sleeping in the daughter’s room. Blamed her again for a mark on the marriage bed, which he took to be a sign of infidelity. And because of the yellow thread, which only he saw. First he is said to have choked his wife on the balcony and only let go when his 16-year-old son intervened. A little later, according to the application for accommodation, he stabbed her in the neck with a sharp kitchen knife. Again the teenager helped the seriously injured mother. The attacker hid for a week. The father fled wearing only boxer shorts and a T-shirt and hid in a trailer under a tarpaulin for a week. He only came out when he was hungry and was arrested.Further crimes fearedAccording to expert Heidi Kastner, the man suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and could commit other dangerous crimes. The ex-wife’s legal counsel, Andreas Mauhart, doubts the insanity: “If he didn’t know what he did, why did he flee?” The jury’s decision is not final. The accused sees himself primarily as a victim of the broken marriage. “She kept insulting me.” He explains his escape with shock. He is committed to an institution for mentally abnormal lawbreakers. Not legally binding.
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