A young woman has been convicted in Germany for seeking out her doppelganger, luring her out to meet in person. and then murdering her with the help of an accomplice, officials say.
The 25-year-old Iraqi-German woman, identified only as Shahraban K, was sentenced to life in prison. Her 26-year-old male accomplice was also sentenced to life in prison, according to court documents obtained by Euro News.
In August of 2022, Shahraban, then 23, used social media platforms such as Instagram to locate women who looked like her, attempting to set up a meeting with candidates each time.
Another 23-year-old woman, Khadidja O, of Algerian descent, agreed to meet up with Shahraban after being promised free beauty salon services. The two suspects met with Khadidja in the town of Eppingen in southern Germany and then the three traveled towards Ingolstadt in Bavaria, reported the BBC.
The two suspects allegedly proceeded to hit Khadidja on the head and stab her 56 times before discarding her body, and Shahraban's black Mercedes, in a forest. Police said the two women looked "strikingly alike," leading German press to dub the case the "doppelganger murder."
"The crime weapon has not been found, but the evidence is overwhelming," a police spokesperson, Andreas Aichele, told the German tabloid newspaper Bild. "The victim was killed with over 50 thrusts of the knife, the face completely disfigured."
Her body was initially misidentified as Shahraban when it was first located. However, the mix-up was quickly resolved when Shahraban and her accomplice, Sheqir K, were spotted at a pizzeria and then arrested the following day.
"Investigations have led us to assume that the accused wanted to go into hiding because of a family dispute and fake her own death to that effect," Veronika Grieser of the Ingolstadt state prosecutor's office said.
"You don't get a case like this every day, especially with such a spectacular twist," Aichele told Bild. "On the day we found the body there was nothing to prepare us for this development."
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