Woman finds lookalike on Instagram and kills her to fake own death

A woman is accused of killing an Instagram impersonator in a scheme to stage her own death.

According to German police and prosecutors, a 23-year-old woman killed a stranger with the assistance of a friend in order to fake her own death and "start a new life owing to family troubles."

On August 17, 2022, in Bavaria, Ingolstadt, Germany, a woman's body was found inside a passenger vehicle. Police are now searching a nearby wooded area for objects and clues.

Germany's MAINZ — Disputes among the family, a woman missing, and parents discovering the woman's stabbed dead in her car: Authorities in Germany now claim that these things are not what they first appear to be.

Prosecutors and police in Bavaria now claim that the woman who had been missing had not actually been the victim but rather had found a lookalike on Instagram and killed her with a companion in order to stage her own death and "start a new life." Local media have nicknamed the crime the "doppelganger murder."

The woman and her friend have now been given arrest warrants on suspicion of murder, according to police in the southern city of Ingolstadt, which is located about 50 miles north of the regional capital of Munich. Since a few days after the body was found, the two have been in police custody.

According to police spokesman Andreas Aichele, "I can confirm that the accused 23-year-old girl evidently meant to start a new life owing to family troubles." Aichele claimed that she had created numerous social media accounts "to discover any folks looking as similar to her as possible."

"Investigations showed contacts with a number of young women over a few weeks. Investigators believe she set up a meeting with the subsequent victim under false pretenses. She went to the Heilbronn area with the 23-year-old man to pick her up and carry out the murder plan "Added Aichele.

The full identities of victims or suspects are not made public under German privacy rules.

According to a statement from police in upper Bavaria north, the mystery began last August 16 when the body of a woman who had been stabbed to death was discovered by the parents of the 23-year-old German-Iraqi woman in her parked car in Ingolstadt.

However, they claimed in a statement two days later that a subsequent autopsy "raised major doubts about the identity of the woman."

The father of the 23-year-old was relieved, but not in the way he had anticipated. "The cops arrived and informed us that your daughter is still alive. We were overjoyed. The woman's father was quoted by the German daily Bild as saying, "We believed she was dead.

In contrast, police said that they had detained the woman and another 23-year-old man of Kosovan ancestry under suspicion of manslaughter two days later. Since then, the two suspects have been detained, and late last week, arrest warrants on suspicion of murder were issued.

It turns out that the deceased was another 23-year-old woman who "looked extremely similar" to the suspect, according to the police.

According to a statement from the police on Monday, the suspects "came up with the plan to search online for a lady who looked similar to the German-Iraqi, kill her, and put her in such a way that the corpse would be mistaken for the suspect."

She provided them with a variety of advantages in order to arrange a meeting. It did not, however, result in a meeting with those women, according to prosecutor Dr. Veronika Grieser.

The primary suspect, according to the Bavarian police, made contact with the victim via social media in early August and scheduled a meeting for August 16. In order to pick up the victim at his home, she drove with a companion to the larger Heilbronn area, around 150 miles west of Ingolstadt, according to the police.

The victim was "insidiously and for base purposes" enticed out of the car and killed with a knife in a forested location, the statement continued.

Because females account for 10% or less of homicide cases, Fiona Brookman, a professor of criminology at the University of South Wales, called the case "extremely rare." She emphasized that female-on-female incidents are even more uncommon.

She concluded by saying, "I have never come across a crime of this kind before. Committing a murder in order to fake one's own death."