Atrocity Against a Married Couple

“He said, ‘Mom, I just committed murder’”

The scene of the butcher’s apprentice’s crime: a house in Sankt Peter am Ottersbach. “I would never have thought my child capable of a crime,” the boy’s mother sobs in an interview with the “Krone.”(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Erwin Scheriau/APA/picturedesk.com, stock.adobe.com)

Last April, a young man from Styria committed a horrific crime against a retired couple; he stabbed the man to death and seriously injured the woman. His sole motive was “to finally kill people,” as the 17-year-old later stated during questioning. Now the boy’s mother speaks out in the “Krone.”

The woman, now sitting in a quiet outdoor café in southern Styria, appears tense. “This is the first interview I’ve ever given in my life,” she says, explaining her nervousness right away: “And we’re going to be talking about terrible things.” The 41-year-old asks that she remain “strictly anonymous” to the public, “to protect my younger son.” So no photo may be taken of her, and her real name must not be revealed in the *Krone*: “Call me Melanie,” she says. Before she begins to talk about “what is inconceivable to me.”

The inconceivable thing she’s referring to—which she “probably will never truly understand” herself—is the heinous crime committed by her older son. And his motive for it.