A 23-year-old German-Iraqi woman is accused of k#lling a beauty blogger she met online who looked just like her.
Authorities say the alleged murder was part of the suspect’s elaborate plan to stage her own death, various outlets report.
The Munich-based suspect, identified in German news outlets as Sharaban K., allegedly scoured Instagram for a lookalike to target before settling on an Algerian beauty blogger, Khadidja O., the Times UK reports.
According to authorities, Sharaban K. sent the victim, who lived about 100 miles away in Eppingen, messages about makeup before allegedly luring her to meet by promising her a cosmetics kit, reports say.
On the day of the alleged crime, Sharaban K. and her boyfriend, Shequir K., allegedly picked the victim up in their vehicle, then drove her to a forest in Ingolstadt and stabbed her to death, authorities say, German newspaper Bild reports.
Khadidja O. was allegedly st@bbed more than 50 times and her body was left in the back of the Mercedes, which was driven by Sharaban.
When Sharaban failed to return home that day — she’d told her family she was meeting her ex-husband in Ingolstadt, according to prosecutors, The Times UK reported — her parents went out to look for her in that area. They soon uncovered an abandoned car with the deceased woman’s body inside it.
Sharaban’s family believed she was the victim in the backseat because of the strong resemblance between the two women; also, the severity of the victim’s st@b wounds made details of her facial appearance hard to recognize. However, an autopsy proved the body actually belonged to Khadidja O.
The weapon used in the killing has still not been found.
“It has been confirmed that the accused had contacted several women via Instagram before the act who seemed to look similar to her,” Attorney General Veronika Grieser told Bild.
“It can be assumed that the suspect wanted to go into hiding, due to internal disputes with her family, and fake her own death.”
Sharaban K. and alleged accomplice Shequir K. were detained by police in August 2022 and are now both charged with murder, according to multiple reports.
“After the investigation, it can be assumed that [Sharaban] wanted to go into hiding due to internal family disputes and faked her own death,” said Veronika Grieser of the Ingolstadt state prosecutor’s office, per Bild.
“It was an extraordinary case that demanded all the investigators’ skills,” a spokesman for the local police force, Andreas Aichele, told Bild. “We don’t have a case like this every day — especially with such a spectacular twist. On the day we found the body, we didn’t expect it to turn out like this.”
If they are convicted, the suspects could face life sentences. It’s unclear whether they have legal representation or have submitted pleas to the charges against them.