New details revealed

Rat poison and car seized at Lake Wolfgang

A deceptive idyll: Pavel S. (39), a father of three, was arrested on Saturday in St. Gilgen (Salzburg). He is suspected of lacing baby food with rat poison.(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Wolfgang Spitzbart, zVg, Tobias Steinmaurer/APA/picturedesk.com)

More and more details are emerging in the “HiPP poison case”: Police are analyzing GPS data from the suspect’s Range Rover. He is handing over his smartwatch to prove his innocence—since he denies everything. 

“I’m an academic. This termination didn’t bother me at all.” And anyway, this whole thing—all the fuss surrounding the rat poison in the HiPP baby food and his arrest—is just driving him up the wall. Through his defense attorney—the renowned Viennese lawyer Manfred Arbacher-Stöger, who visited his new client at the detention center early Monday morning—Pavel S. (name changed) has this to say: “This investigation is a total flop!”

Suspect denies everything
He, the sharp 39-year-old native of Slovakia, wants nothing to do with poison or blackmailing the family business in Germany. The fact that he was among the 26 employees laid off in February at the Austrian HiPP branch in Gmunden (Upper Austria) is irrelevant, says the former manager.

Whoever risked the poisoning or even the death of babies, children, or the elderly by adding rat poison to six jars of “Carrots with Potatoes” baby food is a mystery to the father of three.

As reported, the poisoned jars were seized in supermarkets in the Czech Republic, Burgenland, and in the home region of the divorced unemployed man (one of them is still in circulation in Austria).

However, the evidence gathered by the “Soko Glas” investigators is likely to be overwhelming. After days of surveillance, a raid took place last Saturday at the luxurious apartment—with a Spar branch just a stone’s throw away. According to reports, the baby food in question was purchased there, an insider told the “Krone.”

Bean soup instead of marinated char
By Sunday, S. had to trade his magnificent lake view in the Salzkammergut for gray walls and prison bars in a solitary cell in the middle of Burgenland. Instead of marinated Wolfgangsee char, he was served Mexican bean soup for lunch on Monday...

On Sunday, the suspect was transferred to the prison in Eisenstadt.(Bild: P. Huber)

 The 39-year-old, in any case, has a defense strategy: He wants to use his smartwatch to prove that he was never in Brno or near any of the crime scenes. The police, for their part, seized the man’s Range Rover. That means: GPS data everywhere! The navigation system is expected to reveal the (for now) most recent trips taken in the luxury SUV.

Equally explosive is what was found and seized during the “failed investigation” at Pavel S.’s apartment: namely, a large amount of rat poison. “But my client has a very clear explanation for that,” says Arbacher-Stöger. He runs a farm in his hometown in Slovakia. And there, he often needs poison to deal with a rat infestation.

My client denies everything.

Verteidiger Manfred Arbacher-Stöger

Bild: Zwefo

Why it had to be “temporarily stored” in the Salzburg region has not yet been disclosed. In any case, it was seized by the forensic team.

Decision on pretrial detention to be made Tuesday morning
During the “Krone” newspaper’s on-site visit to the multi-unit apartment building, only a colorful children’s playhouse in the tall, overgrown grass serves as a reminder of the former family idyll of the once-successful HiPP employee and the mother of his children. A decision on whether to remand him in custody will be made Tuesday morning. About the college graduate who doesn’t even care about being fired...