A woman in Germany has been accused of killing a lookalike she found on Instagram to fake her own death.
The suspect, identified as Shahraban K, is alleged to have stabbed beauty blogger Khadidja O more than 50 times, completely disfiguring her face, after luring her into a meeting in the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt last August.
Shahraban K, a 24-year-old German-Iraqi woman who is herself a beauty blogger, then allegedly tried to make it look as if she was the one who had been murdered by leaving Khadidja’s body in her Mercedes car and parking it near the flat of friend Sheqir K, who is alleged to have been an accomplice.
Local reports said even Shahraban K’s parents were fooled and identified the body as hers before an autopsy a day later threw the assumption into doubt.
The extraordinary case, dubbed the “doppelganger murder” by the German press, is set to go to trial with Shahraban K and Sheqir K charged with murder.
Prosecutors believe Shahraban K wanted to run away from trouble at home. “After the investigation, it can be assumed that she wanted to go into hiding due to internal family disputes and fake her own death,” Veronika Grieser of the Ingolstadt public prosecutor’s office told German newspaper Bild.
Shahraban K, who was living in Munich, allegedly set up fake Instagram accounts and tried to arrange meetings with women who looked similar to her. She eventually found Khadidja O, a 23-year-old Albanian citizen, who lived about 100 miles away, police said.
Shahraban K and Sheqir K, her 24-year-old Kosovan boyfriend, allegedly made an offer to the victim about beauty products and went to meet her in Ingolstadt. They picked her up and drove to a forest outside the city where they stabbed her more than 50 times, prosecutors said.
Shahraban K reportedly told her family she was going to Ingolstadt to meet her ex-husband. After she did not return her parents travelled to the city to search for her and on 16 August found her Mercedes near the Danube river close to Sheqir K’s flat.
On the back seat they saw the body of a dark-haired young woman who had been brutally murdered and believed it was their daughter.
Several knives were reportedly found nearby but police told Bild they had not found the one used to kill Khadidja O.
Police spokesman Andreas Aichele said: “The murder weapon has still not been found, but the burden of proof is overwhelming. The victim was killed with more than 50 stab wounds and her face was badly injured. That was brutal in the extreme.”
After a post-mortem and DNA tests, it was discovered that the body was really Khadidja O, police said. Shahraban K and Sheqir K were then arrested.
Mr Aichele said the case tested investigators. “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 develop like this.”
