Court clears way for trial in Innsbruck student murder

Austria’s Higher Regional Court in Innsbruck has rejected the defence’s objection to the murder indictment against a 42-year-old former fellow student of Daniela Kammerer, clearing the way for a trial, ORF reported. Kammerer, a 19-year-old student from Lower Austria, was stabbed to death in Innsbruck in 2005.

The murder remains unsolved more than 20 years later. Prosecutors are making a renewed attempt to resolve the case after the court found that the principle of “ne bis in idem”, which prohibits repeated prosecution for the same offence, did not apply because the case involved new evidence.

Court spokeswoman Claudia Hagen said the court also found a “probability of conviction”. No trial date had been set. According to the Tiroler Tageszeitung, the jury trial could take place in early autumn.

The accused, an Austrian who has lived in Australia for many years, is alleged to have killed Kammerer with two forceful knife wounds to the chest and back in the early hours of June 23, 2005. A pensioner found her blood-covered body near a telephone box in Innsbruck’s Rapoldipark. Kammerer and the accused had both attended a student party beforehand.

The man was briefly arrested in December 2013 after arriving from Australia. Investigators then cited several pieces of circumstantial evidence, including his DNA on the victim’s body, clothing and bicycle handles. He was released after seven weeks when DNA found on the clothing proved less conclusive than initially believed, and the investigation was closed in February 2014.

The new indictment filed in May is based on the accused’s DNA on the filter of a cigarette that had been only lightly smoked and was found in the telephone box. Prosecutors said this indicated that he had been at the crime scene. They argued that advances in forensic medicine had made the evidence usable, which they said would not have been possible in 2013.

Prosecutors said that possible suspects had been examined repeatedly over the past 21 years, but that the 42-year-old was now the only person against whom there was a “concrete suspicion”.

The accused has repeatedly insisted that he is innocent. His lawyer, Mathias Kapferer, said his client would attend a possible trial in Innsbruck and that there was “numerous evidence” showing that events had not happened as prosecutors assumed. The defence has also cited a private expert report on the cigarette butt that it says supports the accused.

Kapferer argued that the cigarette had always been available and that forensic methods were already sufficiently advanced in 2013 to analyse its DNA. The defence also criticised the police investigation and said there were no genuinely new traces or improved analysis methods.