2018 Jungfernstieg double murder

On 12 April 2018, 34-year-old Sandra P. and her one-year-old daughter Mariam were murdered at the Jungfernstieg S-Bahn station in the Neustadt quarter of Hamburg, Germany. The perpetrator, 33-year-old Mourtala Madou (also Mado Bido Mourtala), the Nigerien ex-boyfriend of Sandra P. and father of Miriam, was arrested at the scene and convicted of two counts of murder in 2019.

The case was of significant public interest as the murder and preceding argument occurred in view of several bystanders. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) heavily focused on Madou's asylum seeker status, arguing that he should have been deported; Madou had no prior criminal record and a valid residency permit, but was considered a potential risk to his child by Jugendamt due to known anger issues.

Background

Victims

Sandra P. was born in Neustrelitz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. She had been in a relationship with Mourtala Madou between 2013 and 2017. Their daughter, Mariam, was born in July 2016 and 21 months old at the time of her death. Miriam was the youngest of Sandra P.'s five children, who had different fathers.

Perpetrator

Mourtala Madou was born in Tahoua, Niger. Following the death of his father, Madou moved to Libya for work, sending back money to his mother and sister. He fled the country in 2011 at the beginning of the Libyan civil war and was smuggled over the Mediterranean Sea via ship. The vessel crashlanded on Italy's Lampedusa island, with six people dying in the wreck.

In April 2013, after Madou arrived in Hamburg on a Schengen visa, as part of the "Lampedusa group", used to refer to 300 sub-Saharan Africans from the Lampedusa immigration center. He received a residence permit and temporary housing, but within the same month of the group's arrival, the housing was terminated. 80 of the former residents, including Madou, were taken in by the pastor of St. Pauli Church. Part of this group formed Lampedusa in Hamburg, which protested for work permits, with Madou participating before leaving the group after receiving toleration status the same year. Sometime in 2013, Madou met Sandra P. and the two started a relationship. Madou trained as a house painting assistant, worked as a cleaner and later resided in the public refugee housing in Wandsbek.

After separating from Sandra P., she received custody of Mariam. In January 2018, Madou sought custody of their daughter, but by April, the court told Madou that he was expected to lose the appeal. Sandra P. had initially offered Madou the right to co-parent Mariam while she pursued a new relationship, but Madou refused to accept the separation. He had issued several death threats at Sandra P., which she did not take serious. A family court issued a brief no-contact order, which was reduced to supervised visits. Madou demanded full parental rights, arguing "She is my blood" in regards to Mariam. He had initially plotted to kill Sandra P.'s new boyfriend and began carrying around a 19-cm ceramic knife for this purpose. He had toleration status at the time, in part due to his existent partial parental rights to a German national child; Madou had already received permission to stay in Germany until mid-2019, before he filed for full custody of Mariam.

Murders

On the morning of 12 April 2018, the victims and the perpetrator met at the Stadthausbrücke station, in company of a family assistant. Mariam reportedly appeared afraid of her father, with Madou arguing that Sandra P.'s new boyfriend had "used Voodoo" on Mariam to sway the child's opinion. The parties then left the station.

At 10:45, Madou encountered Sandra P., two of her children, including Mariam, and Sandra P.'s new boyfriend in the S-Bahn. Madou began an argument with Sandra P., which was continued as both parties exited at Jungfernstieg station. Three minutes after the argument began, Sandra P. said that Madou would not see their daughter again if he continued his behaviour and immediately after, Madou took the knife from his backpack and attacked Mariam, who was sitting in a buggy, stabbing the child in the abdomen before slitting her throat. As Sandra P. crouched down to grab Mariam, Madou stabbed Sandra P. in the back. Madou then threatened Sandra P.'s boyfriend before running out of the station. Madou then called police to be arrested, saying he "made a mistake" with his daughter, and repeated "I love my daughter" in German. Several eyewitnesses were treated for shock.

The first responding police officer rendered first aid on Mariam, but she died at the scene. Sandra P. later died at a hospital an hour later.

Boulevard papers claimed during early reporting that Mariam had been decapitated in the attack. In May 2018, authorities released information indicating that the child had not been beheaded. Although the stab wound to the neck was lethal, the initial wound to the stomach was the cause of death.

The father of two of Sandra P.'s sons, aged 6 and 8, took custody of his biological children and their 15-year-old half-brother. The fourth boy, aged 3, who witnessed the murders, was put into the custody of a children's house and later given into the custody of his father. Sandra P.'s boyfriend at the time, a Ghanaian national, reported to the authorities two weeks after the killings and filed for asylum to testify in court.

Trial

The trial started in the Hamburger Landgericht in October 2018, where Madou was charged with double murder. He confessed to the crime at the start of the trial, and entered a guilty plea for manslaughter. His attorney argued that the killings had been a crime of passion without prior planning. Psychologists described Madou as having an "impulsive-narcissistic personality accentuation", but did not diagnose a mental disorder. It was stated that despite Madou's belief in Voodoo and some paranoid delusions regarding persecution by inmates, prison staff, television and the radio, he was to be ruled legally sane. According to prosecutors, Madou acted out of anger and vengeance from being denied custody of his daughter, and that he had killed Mariam first to "punish" Sandra P.'s refusal. Madou acted erratically throughout his trial, occasionally refusing to enter the court room or asking to leave when footage or calls of the murders were played, at one point wishing to speak with the Nigerien ambassador to Germany to request for repatriation.

In February 2019, Madou was found guilty of two counts of murder, carrying an automatic life sentence, after rejecting Madou's argumentation, citing the presence of malice aforethought. An appeal was denied in April 2020.

Reactions

A spokesman for Hamburg police, Timo Zill, called the crime "substantial" and "unusual for Hamburg". Katharina Fegebank, Deputy Mayor of Hamburg stated that she was shocked about the crime: "If a child is stabbed by the hand which should protect it, this exceeds any imaginable cruelty."

Many citizens of Hamburg brought flowers and candles and mourned at the place of the crime.

Right-wing populist groups blamed the murders on lax immigration policies. The pastor of St. Pauli Church and Lampedusa in Hamburg were harassed and accused of bearing partial responsibility for their past association with Madou. The St. Pauli Church pastor and Lampedusa in Hamburg spokespeople emphasised that they had no contact with Madou since 2013 and called the right-wingers claims politically motivated.