Doppelganger murder: German woman kills look-alike Instagram blogger to fake own death
2 min read . Updated: 05 Feb 2023, 10:21 PM IST
Premium- The police referred to the German woman as Shahraban K, 24, residing in Munich, who had set up a fake Instagram account and tried contacting women who resembled her.
In a bizarre and astonishing incident, a 23-year old German woman has been accused of allegedly killing her look-alike, whom she targeted on Instagram, in order to fake her own death.
Confused?
Dubbed as ‘doppelganger murder’ this incident has left the German Police in shock. The police referred to the German woman as Shahraban K, 24, residing in Munich, who had set up a fake Instagram account and tried contacting women who resembled her. After scouting many profiles, she found a cosmetics blogger, Algerian citizen Khadidja O, 23, who lived about 100 miles away, police said.
According to police, several knives were reportedly found nearby and the car was reportedly discovered not far from Sheqir K's flat.
After doing autopsy and DNA tests, it was found that the body was actually Khadidja O. The police have arrested Shahraban K and Sheqir K. The charges have been upgraded to murder chages and they will now face trail for murder and will be sent to prison for life if convicted.
The police were baffled by the resemblance between the owner of the car and the dead.
Eerie similar physique of Shahraban and Khadidja
The Munich resident, of German-Iraqi origin, is alleged to have set up fake Instagram accounts in order to seek out women who resembled her so that she could ensnare them as part of her elaborate and macabre plan to escape her own troubles, according to investigators.
After reportedly evaluating at least five women and dismissing them for not being close enough physical matches to herself, she eventually settled on Khadidja O, reportedly an Albanian national born in Algeria and living about 100 miles away in Heilbronn.
The Doppleganger murder plot
According to police, Shahraban K and her boyfriend named Sheqir K, 24, reached out to Khadidja and offered beauty products and went to pick her up.
While going back, they stopped in a forest and stabbed the victim over 50 times, police said.
According to prosecutors, Shahraban K had told her parents she would be visiting the city to see her ex-husband but they became alarmed when she did not return or answer their phone calls, travelling to Ingolstadt themselves and eventually finding the Mercedes on 16 August in a residential area near the Danube river and close to Sheqir K’s flat, Independent reported.
On the back seat of the car, the body of a dark-haired young woman brutally murdered was found and they believed it was their daughter, the Telegraph reported.
Murder motive
Veronika Grieser, an Ingolstadt prosecutor, told the Bild newspaper: "It has been confirmed that the accused had contacted several women via Instagram before the act who seemed to look similar to her.
"It can be assumed that the suspect wanted to go into hiding, due to internal disputes with her family, and fake her own death."
A police spokesman said the killing was done for "base motives."
(With agency inputs)
