Ukrainian refugee Margarita Razaz, 27, was savagely murdered with a hammer along with her mother Maryna Stetsenko, 51, by a couple who stole her baby in Germany, a court heard
A married couple who brutally murdered a Ukrainian baby’s mum and grandma so they could steal the child have been jailed for life.
A court in Germany found that the crimes committed by Ina O., 45, and Marco O., 43, were so egregious that they will not be eligible for parole after 15 years, as is usually the case with life sentences in the country.
The pair were found guilty of murdering mum Margarita Razaz, 27, and her baby’s grandmother Maryna Stetsenko, 51, to kidnap the five-week-old tot, named Mia. It was to satisfy a “long-unfulfilled wish to have a daughter”, said the prosecution with the couple already having three sons.
The mother, grandmother and child had been living in a refugee centre in the Rhine-Neckar district after they had fled war in Ukraine to Germany. The couple had invited the mother and grandmother to a restaurant and secretly mixed a narcotic into the Ukrainian women’s drinks on 6th March last year, the Mannheim Regional Court heard.
Ina O. and Marco O., from Sandhausen, in Baden Wuerttemberg, then pretended to take the 51-year-old woman, who had fallen ill, to the hospital, while the 27-year-old and her newborn daughter were taken home. The man then killed the unconscious 51-year-old mother at a lake in Bad Schonborn by hitting her several times on the head with a hammer.
A short while later, he killed the 27-year-old woman in Hockenheim in the same way and burned the body. The couple then drove home with their child. Maryna’s body was discovered on the shore of a lake near Hockenheim on March 19 after a two-week search. The police investigation had begun after the body of her daughter was first found on the banks of the Rhine in Hockenheim on March 7 with signs of a violent death.
And it led to the baby being found with the couple on March 13, 2024, and they were both arrested. Colleagues of Marco O. who worked with him at a butcher’s shop said that he had been boasting about having a new baby who was in intensive care days before the killings.
While one of the couple’s neighbours told Bild: “The couple has three sons, the husband told me in December that they were having a girl in January. He proudly showed me a pink baby hat for the child. I was surprised because his wife didn’t look pregnant at all. But I would never have expected such a crime.”
During the trial, Senior Public Prosecutor Katja Koenig said of the case: “It was a joint act committed out of malice and base motives.” She said that the couple had acted “coldly and with criminal energy”. Baby Mia, now believed to be aged one, is back living in Ukraine with her aunt, who was a co-plaintiff in the case.
