A successful businessman from Africa promises of a future together, a $40,000 inheritance, and only 5 days to live.
When a lonely woman meets the man of her dreams online, she has no way of knowing that behind his romantic promises lies a calculating killer who has turned online dating into a deadly business.
Anna Schmidt worked as a nurse at St.
George’s Clinic in Leipzig for over 30 years.
Her colleagues described her as a calm and conscientious woman who rarely spoke about her personal life.
After her husband died of pancreatic cancer, she was left alone in a three-room apartment on Karl Liebknecht Street in the Hallescher District.
They never had children.
Her late husband’s estate amounted to just over 45,000 euros, money from the sale of a small family business and insurance payments.
Anna continued to work even though she could have afforded to retire early.
Neighbors said that after her husband’s funeral, she became even more withdrawn.
In the spring of 2022, Anna registered on a dating site for middle-aged people.
She didn’t tell anyone about it, not even her close friend Monique, with whom she worked in the same department.
Her profile was modest, a few photos and a short description without any particular details.
She wasn’t looking for anything serious, as she later told investigators.
She just wanted someone to talk to.
Two weeks after registering, Jean-Pierre Akasso wrote to her.
The photos showed a young black man in a business suit against a backdrop of office buildings.
In his profile, he stated that he was 32 years old and an entrepreneur.
He wrote in English, but in simple sentences.
He said he lived in Cotonou, the largest city in Benin, and was involved in exporting agricultural products to Europe.
Anna had a basic knowledge of English, but it was enough for correspondence.
The first messages were ordinary.
Jean-Pierre asked about her work, was interested in Germany, and talked about his country.
He wrote every day, sometimes several times a day.
Anna replied less often, but gradually got involved in the conversation.
She had never been to Africa and knew little about Benin.
Jean-Pierre sent photos of markets, ports, and warehouses with sacks of cocoa beans.
Everything looked plausible.
A month later, he mentioned his feelings for the first time.
He wrote that he thought about her every day and would like to meet her in person.
Anna replied evasively, saying that it was too soon and that they lived too far apart.
But she continued to correspond with him.
Her colleagues noticed that she was smiling more often and checking her phone between shifts.
In the summer of that year, Jean-Pierre suggested they video chat.
Anna hesitated for a long time, but eventually agreed.
The first video call lasted about 20 minutes.
The man on the screen matched the photos, spoke with an accent, but was perfectly understandable.
He was sitting in a room that looked like an office with a wall behind him displaying a calendar and a map of West Africa.
They talked about the weather, her work, his business, nothing special.
After that, the video calls became regular, once a week, sometimes more often.
In August, Jean-Pierre first mentioned marriage.
He said he wanted to move to Europe and start a new life with her.
Anna was surprised and confused.
She understood that the age difference between them was almost 25 years, and it seemed strange.
But Jean-Pierre insisted, saying that age didn’t matter, that he valued her kindness and maturity.
He talked in detail about his plans to start a business in Germany, export African goods, and start a family.
Anna did not give a definite answer, but she did not refuse either.
In September, the situation changed.
Jean-Pierre reported that his business was facing serious problems.
His partner had cheated him, failed to pay for a large shipment of goods, and now he needed money to pay off his debts to suppliers.
He did not ask Anna for money directly, but complained about the situation almost every day.
He said that if he did not solve this problem, he would lose his business and the opportunity to move to Germany.
Anna discussed the situation with Monique.
Her friend was skeptical and asked Anna to be careful.
She said that such stories often turn out to be scams, especially when it comes to foreigners asking for money.
Anna assured her that Jean-Pierre had never directly asked her for financial help and that their relationship wasn’t based on money.
But a week later, she offered to help him anyway.
She transferred 2,000 euros to the account he specified.
Jean-Pierre was grateful and promised to repay the debt as soon as things got better.
He said that these were temporary difficulties and that everything would be resolved soon.
Anna did not expect the money to be returned.
She just wanted to help someone who had become close to her.
In October, Jean-Pierre asked for help again.
This time, the amount was larger, 5,000 euros.
He explained that this was the last payment, after which he would be able to pay off all his debts and start preparing documents to move to Germany.
Anna hesitated for several days, but eventually agreed.
Monique found out about this by accident and was furious.
She told Anna straight out that she was being deceived, that this was a classic scam.
But Anna didn’t want to listen.
She believed that Jean-Pierre was being honest with her.
By the end of autumn, Anna had transferred a total of about 12,000 euros to him.
Each time, Jean-Pierre thanked her, promised to meet soon, and return the money.
He sent photos of documents, supposedly contracts, invoices, papers from the Chamber of Commerce.
Everything looked official with stamps and signatures.
Anna had no business experience and could not verify the authenticity of these documents.
In the winter of 2022, Jean-Pierre announced that he was ready to apply for a bride visa.
To do this, he needed an official invitation from Anna and confirmation that they were in a serious relationship.
Anna agreed.
She sent him a notarized invitation, attaching a copy of her passport and apartment documents.
She also wrote a letter to the German Consulate in Cotonou, confirming her intention to marry Jean-Pierre Akasso.
The visa process took several months.
Jean-Pierre regularly reported on the progress of the case, sent photos from the consulate, and talked about the interviews.
In the spring of 2023, he wrote that the visa had been approved, but he needed a financial guarantee to enter Germany.
He needed a sum of money to confirm his solvency for the period of his stay in the country.
Anna helped again, transferring another 7,000 euros.
By this point, Monique had practically stopped communicating with Anna.
She couldn’t stand watching her friend lose money and common sense.
She tried several times to convince her to go to the police or at least to a lawyer, but Anna refused.
She was convinced that people were judging her relationship only because of the difference in age and background between Jean-Pierre and her.
In early May, Jean-Pierre finally announced his arrival date.
He was scheduled to fly to Leipzig on May 23rd, 2023.
Anna was excited and happy.
She cleaned the apartment, bought new bedding, and prepared food.
She told several colleagues that her fiance from Africa would soon be coming to visit her.
Most reacted with restraint, but no one dared to openly express their doubts.
On May 23rd, Jean-Pierre flew into Leipzig/Halle Airport.
Anna met him at the arrivals gate.
According to witnesses, they hugged and the man was carrying a large travel bag and a backpack.
They took a taxi and went to her home.
It was Wednesday.
Anna took a week off work to spend time with Jean-Pierre and show him the city.
The first few days went smoothly.
Neighbors saw them together several times, going for walks, coming back with groceries.
Jean-Pierre was polite, smiled, but hardly spoke.
Anna looked happy.
On May 25th, she sent Monique a short message saying that Jean-Pierre had arrived and they were discussing plans for the future.
On May 26th, Anna went to the bank.
She withdrew 28,000 dollars in cash from her account, almost all that remained of her husband’s inheritance.
The bank employee asked her why she needed such a large amount of cash.
Anna replied that she was planning a major purchase and investment in a business.
The money was given to her without any problems.
She put it in her bag and returned home.
On May 27th, Anna did not contact her colleagues, although she usually responded to messages quickly.
On May 28th, her phone was turned off.
On May 29th, her colleagues became concerned and asked Monique to go to Anna’s home.
Monique rang the doorbell, but no one answered.
She called the building manager and asked him to open the apartment.
The manager refused without giving a valid reason.
On May 30th, Monique returned to Anna’s home with another colleague.
They rang the doorbell again, knocked, and shouted.
There was no response.
Neighbors said they hadn’t seen Anna for several days.
Monique called the police.
The police arrived 20 minutes later.
The officers knocked on the door, introduced themselves, and asked to be let in.
Silence.
One of the patrol officers walked around the building and looked into the first-floor windows.
The curtains were drawn, but through a crack, he saw a mess inside.
An overturned chair, scattered belongings.
They called the investigator on duty and a technical team.
Half an hour later, the door was opened.
Anna Schmidt was lying on the floor in the bedroom.
Her body was cold.
According to the initial examination, death had occurred at least 2 days earlier.
There were signs of strangulation on her neck, deep bruises from finger pressure and blood stains.
Her clothes were not torn, and there were no signs of sexual assault.
The apartment looked as if someone had been searching for something valuable in a hurry.
The drawers of the dresser were pulled out, the pillows were turned upside down, and the closets were open.
Anna’s bag was lying on the kitchen table.
Her wallet was empty.
Her cell phone was never found.
Investigator Thomas Weber from the Leipzig police homicide division arrived at the scene at approximately 5:30 p.
m.
The first thing he did was interview the neighbors.
An elderly woman from the third floor recalled seeing Anna with a young black man on May 24th.
They entered the building together, carrying bags of groceries.
The man was tall and thin, wearing a sports jacket and jeans.
Another neighbor, who lived one floor above, heard voices coming from Anna’s apartment on the evening of May 27th.
They were speaking a foreign language, possibly English.
Then there was silence.
He heard no more sounds.
Monique told investigators about Anna’s correspondence with a man from Africa.
She said that her friend had transferred large sums of money to him, and that this man had recently arrived in Germany.
She did not know his full name, only that his first name was Jean-Pierre.
The investigators requested access to Anna’s bank accounts.
The records showed that on May 26th, she had withdrawn 28,000 euros in cash.
It was a large transaction, and the bank employees had recorded it in their log.
Over the past year and a half, Anna had also made several international transfers totaling about 12,000 euros.
The recipient was a certain Jean-Pierre Akisson, with a bank account in Benin.
The technical team seized several items from the apartment, a pillow from the bed, which could have traces of a struggle, a glass with fingerprints, and cigarette butts from an ashtray.
Anna did not smoke, so the cigarette butts belonged to someone else.
They also found a man’s toothbrush in the bathroom and a razor, clear signs that a man had recently been living in the apartment.
On the shelf in the hallway were a pair of men’s sneakers, size 42.
The investigators photographed everything and sent the evidence for examination.
The pathologist determined the exact cause of death to be asphyxiation due to strangulation by hands.
The victim’s neck bore characteristic marks from the attacker’s thumbs and index fingers.
The pressure was strong and prolonged.
Resistance was minimal.
No skin or hair from the attacker was found under the victim’s fingernails.
Perhaps she was taken by surprise or did not have time to react.
The time of death was determined to be the evening of the 27th or early morning of the 28th of May.
Remains of food were found in her stomach, indicating that death occurred several hours after her last meal.
Anna’s colleagues were shocked.
Monique blamed herself for not being able to convince her friend to end the relationship with this man.
She told investigators everything she knew about the dating site, the gradual development of the relationship, the money transfers, how Anna had changed over the past year.
Other nurses confirmed that Anna had become more withdrawn after her husband’s death, and did indeed spend a lot of time on her phone.
No one knew the details of her personal life because she never shared them.
Investigators looked up the data from Leipzig/Halle Airport for May 23rd.
On that day, a flight from Paris had indeed arrived, which was a transit flight for passengers from West Africa.
Among the arrivals was Jean-Pierre Akisson, a 29-year-old citizen of Benin with a fiance visa, invited by Anna Schmidt.
He entered the country legally, and border control did not detect any violations.
The photo from the database showed a young black man with a short haircut, thin build, and no distinguishing features.
His registered address was Anna’s apartment on Karl Liebknecht Street.
Now the investigators had a specific person.
Jean-Pierre Akisson became the prime suspect.
His cell phone had been turned off since May 28th.
The last recorded signal from his number came from a cell tower near the Leipzig train station at around 9:00 a.
m.
on May 28th.
After that, the phone was no longer connected.
Weber requested the CCTV footage from the station.
It took several hours to review the recordings.
In the footage from May 28th at 8:42 a.
m.
, a man matching Akisson’s description appeared.
He was wearing a dark jacket and jeans, and carrying a backpack and a large travel bag, the same one he had flown in with 5 days earlier.
He moved quickly, looking around.
He bought a ticket from a machine and went to the platform.
The cameras recorded him boarding a long-distance train bound for Cologne.
The investigators then checked possible routes.
From Cologne, it was easy to reach Belgium, the Netherlands, or France.
An international search was launched immediately.
The Benin police confirmed the existence of a citizen named Jean-Pierre Akisson, but reported that virtually nothing was known about him.
His birth certificate and passport were issued in Cotonou.
He had no criminal record in his home country.
The address listed on the documents turned out to be nonexistent.
According to local authorities, many fraudsters use false information or take the real names of deceased people to obtain passports.
Verifying the authenticity of Akisson’s documents would take weeks.
Meanwhile, in Germany, they began checking all of Akisson’s possible contacts in the country.
The fingerprints from items found in Anna’s apartment matched each other, but were not found in any database.
This meant that the suspect had no criminal record in Europe and had never been fingerprinted when crossing borders before.
DNA analysis from a toothbrush and cigarette butts showed that all samples belonged to the same man of African descent.
This genetic profile also did not match anything in the databases.
Investigators began studying Anna’s correspondence.
Her laptop was found in the apartment.
It had not been stolen or damaged.
Weber and his team gained access to her email and dating site accounts.
Her correspondence with Akisson began in March 2022 and continued until May 27th, 2023.
Thousands of messages.
The first few months were filled with ordinary conversations, compliments, and discussions of plans.
Then came requests for financial assistance.
Akisson always wrote very convincingly, using emotional arguments and promising a quick reunion.
He sent documents that looked like official papers, contracts, invoices, receipts.
Cybercrime experts examined these files.
Most turned out to be forgeries.
The seals were drawn in graphics editors.
The signatures did not match real officials, and the names of the organizations were fictitious or belonged to long-closed companies.
Particularly telling was Anna’s letter to the German consulate in Cotonou, written in January 2023.
She described her relationship with Akisson in detail, claimed that they were planning to get married, and asked to expedite the visa process.
The consulate approved the application after checking the documents and interviewing Akisson.
Everything looked legal.
The consulate staff could not have known that this relationship was a scam because Anna herself believed in the sincerity of Akisson’s feelings.
Monique provided investigators with screenshots of the last messages Anna sent her on May 25th.
In one of them, Anna wrote that Jean-Pierre had arrived, and they were discussing starting a business together.
He allegedly planned to import goods from Africa and sell them in Germany.
This required startup capital.
Anna said she was ready to invest her savings in the venture.
Monique replied that it was a bad idea, and that Anna should first have all the documents checked by a lawyer.
But Anna did not listen.
On May 26th, she withdrew money from the bank.
This was the last financial transaction recorded on her account.
No cash or Anna’s bank cards were found in the apartment, except for one empty card with a zero balance.
28,000 euros had disappeared.
Investigators assumed that Akerson had killed Anna immediately after receiving the money and fled with it.
The motive for the crime seemed obvious.
Financial gain.
But the details still needed to be clarified.
Was the murder spontaneous or premeditated? Did Akerson come to Germany with the intention of killing Anna? Or did the situation get out of control? The psychological profile of the suspect was compiled by criminal psychologist Marta Kohler, who specializes in cases of fraud and crimes motivated by romantic relationships.
She studied all the correspondence, analyzed Akerson’s communication style, his arguments, and his methods of manipulation.
In her opinion, Akerson acted according to the classic pattern of romantic fraud.
First, he established emotional contact and gained trust.
Then gradually began to ask for money under various pretexts.
Each request was accompanied by promises and assurances.
He exploited the age difference and Anna’s vulnerability as she had lost her husband and was feeling lonely.
Kohler noted that such scammers often work in groups using the same schemes on several victims at the same time.
But whether the murder was part of the plan was a more difficult question to answer.
Weber decided to check other cases of similar fraud involving Beninese citizens in Europe.
Interpol provided data on several dozen cases over the past 5 years.
Most of the victims were middle-aged or elderly women, single or recently widowed.
The amounts ranged from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of euros.
But in none of these cases was there a murder.
Usually, the scammers disappeared after receiving the money and the victims remained alive, albeit financially ruined.
The case of Anna Schmidt was an exception.
Here, the criminal went to extreme lengths.
On June 1st, German police distributed a photo of Akerson to law enforcement agencies across the European Union.
The alert was sent to train stations, airports, and border checkpoints.
The description was detailed.
29 years old, about 185 cm tall, thin build, short black hair, dark skin, possibly clean-shaven, wearing a dark sports jacket and jeans, carrying a backpack and a large travel bag.
Dangerous.
Suspected of murder.
Anna Schmidt’s funeral took place on June 5th.
About 30 people attended.
Colleagues from the clinic, several neighbors, distant relatives from another city.
Monique couldn’t hold back her tears.
She gave a short speech in which she said that Anna was a kind and responsive woman, but had fallen victim to a cruel deception.
Her words sounded like a warning to anyone who might find themselves in a similar situation.
Meanwhile, Weber continued his work.
His team checked all the cameras on the route from Leipzig to Cologne.
At one of the stations, they recorded Akerson getting off the train in Cologne at around 2:00 p.
m.
on May 28th.
After that, the trail went cold.
Cologne is a major transport hub from which it is easy to travel in any direction.
Checking the passenger lists of trains and buses yielded no results.
Either Akerson used forged documents or found another way to travel.
Investigators contacted their colleagues in Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.
They asked them to check migrant hostels, African diasporas, and social assistance centers.
Akerson could have been hiding among his compatriots, relying on their support.
But the first weeks of the search yielded no results.
He seemed to have vanished into thin air.
On June 18th, there was a breakthrough in the case.
Brussels police detective Claude Dupont contacted Weber by email.
He reported that there was a similar case in their database.
In March 2023, 60-year-old Belgian citizen Martine Verbeek was found dead in Brussels.
The cause of death was suffocation.
The apartment had been ransacked and cash and valuables had been stolen.
Before her death, the woman had been in a romantic relationship with a man from West Africa who disappeared immediately after the murder.
Witnesses described him as a young black man of slim build.
The police were unable to establish his identity.
Weber immediately requested all the case files.
When he received the surveillance camera footage from Brussels, his heart skipped a beat.
The blurry images showed a man who looked very similar to Jean-Pierre Akerson.
Same height, same build, same gait.
True, he was wearing a baseball cap that hid his face, but the resemblance was obvious.
Weber sent a photo of Akerson to his Belgian colleagues.
Dupont confirmed that it could be the same person.
The details of the Verbeek case were eerily similar to the murder of Anna Schmidt.
Martina had been widowed a year before meeting the killer.
She registered on a dating site where she was contacted by a certain Thomas Okafor, who introduced himself as a businessman from Nigeria.
They corresponded for several months and he asked her for money under various pretexts.
Martina transferred him about 8,000 euros.
Then he came to Belgium on a tourist visa.
A week later, neighbors found Martina’s body in her apartment.
About 15,000 euros in cash, which she kept in a safe, was missing from the house.
The safe had been broken open by brute force.
The Belgian police were unable to find Thomas Okafor at the time.
The passport details he provided when obtaining his visa turned out to be fake.
The Nigerian authorities confirmed that no such citizen exists.
The trail ended at the Brussels bus station where cameras recorded the suspect boarding a bus to Paris.
After that, nothing.
Now there is a new theory.
Perhaps Jean-Pierre Akerson and Thomas Okafor are the same person using different names and fake documents.
Weber and Dupont decided to join forces.
They began to investigate other similar cases in Europe over the past 3 years.
The Interpol database contained information on several dozen cases of romantic fraud involving West African citizens.
But in most of them, the victims were still alive.
Murders were rare.
However, a detailed search revealed two more cases.
In December 2021, 58-year-old Helena van Dyke was murdered in Amsterdam.
The circumstances of her death were strangulation and robbery.
Prior to this, she had been meeting with a man who introduced himself as an investor from Ghana named Kwasi Mensah.
They met online and she transferred money to him.
He came to visit her for 2 weeks, after which she was found dead.
The Dutch police searched for Kwasi Mensah, but to no avail.
The second case was in Lyon, France.
In July 2022, 52-year-old Sophie Durand was killed.
The same pattern.
Meeting on the internet, money transfers, a visit from a man from Africa, then murder and robbery.
He called himself Samuel Adebayo, an entrepreneur from Togo.
He disappeared after the crime.
Four murders in 2 and 1/2 years.
All the victims were single, middle-aged women from different European countries.
All were killed in the same way, by strangulation.
All were robbed after their deaths.
In all cases, the perpetrator used different names and documents.
Weber, Dupont, and their colleagues from Amsterdam and Lyon convened a video conference.
They compared all the available evidence.
The photos of suspects from different cases were of varying quality, but facial recognition experts conducted a comparative analysis.
The shape of the skull, the distance between the eyes, the cheekbones, the shape of the nose, everything matched within the margin of error.
It was the same person.
In all cases, his height was described as between 180 and 187 cm.
He had a thin build and was between 27 and 30 years old.
He had an accent when speaking English or French.
He always introduced himself as an entrepreneur or investor.
Criminologists also found similarities in the modus operandi.
In all cases, the killer acted quickly and decisively.
There were no signs of sexual assault.
There were minimal signs of a struggle, indicating that the attack was sudden and that the perpetrator was physically superior.
After the murder, he methodically searched the victim’s home for money and valuables.
He then went into hiding using public transport and avoiding airports and border cameras.
Psychologist Kohler added to the portrait of the criminal.
In her opinion, he is a cold-blooded and calculating person.
He knows how to manipulate emotions, inspire trust, and create the illusion of sincere feelings.
The murders were not impulsive.
They were committed after the criminal had obtained the maximum possible amount of money from the victim.
This suggests that murder was part of the plan from the outset.
He did not come to start a new life with these women, but to take all their savings and eliminate witnesses.
The total amount stolen in the four cases was about 86,000 euros.
That’s a lot of money for most people.
Weber suggested that the criminal might not have been working alone.
Perhaps he was backed by an organized group that supplied him with fake documents, helped him cross borders, and found new victims.
Romantic scams are often linked to transnational criminal networks, especially in West Africa, where there are entire groups specializing in online fraud.
Interpol set up a special task force to catch the serial killer.
Information about the case was sent to all European Union countries, as well as the UK, Switzerland, and other European states.
A photo of the suspect was sent to all law enforcement agencies.
He was declared a particularly dangerous criminal.
On June 24th, a woman named Laura Janssens went to the police station in Antwerp, Belgium.
She told a strange story.
A few days earlier, a young black man had approached her on the street and asked for help finding an address.
They got talking.
He introduced himself as Mark and said that he had recently arrived in Belgium from France and was looking for work.
Laura was a volunteer at a refugee aid organization, so she gave him the contact details of a local support center.
The man thanked her and left.
But a day later, Laura saw his photo in the news.
The police were looking for a suspect in several murders.
She recognized him immediately.
Laura described the meeting place, the Borgerhout district in Antwerp, a multicultural neighborhood with a large number of immigrants.
The Belgian police immediately organized an operation.
Dozens of officers began combing the area.
They checked hostels and apartments where people from Africa were staying and questioned local residents.
They showed them Akesson’s photo.
Several people confirmed that they had seen a man who looked like him in the area in recent weeks.
On June 27th, at around 6:40 p.
m.
, the task force received a tip.
The owner of a small shop in Borgerhout reported that a man matching the description in the photo had visited his shop that morning.
He bought bread, water, and cigarettes.
He paid in cash.
The salesman remembered him because he was acting nervously and constantly looking around.
He left in the direction of the old industrial district.
The police concentrated their forces in the specified area.
About 20 special forces officers surrounded the abandoned building of a former textile factory.
According to local homeless people, illegal immigrants sometimes spent the night there.
The building was divided into several sections.
Many of the windows were broken and the entrances were boarded up.
The police broke into the building at around 8:10 p.
m.
In one of the rooms on the second floor, they found a man sleeping on an old mattress.
Next to him lay a backpack and a travel bag, the very one seen in the recordings from Leipzig train station.
The man woke up from the noise and tried to jump out of the window, but was caught.
He did not offer any serious resistance during his arrest.
It was Jean-Pierre Akesson, more precisely, the man who used that name.
During a search, three passports with different names were found.
Jean-Pierre Akesson from Benin, Thomas Okafor from Nigeria, and Samuel Adebayo from Togo.
All passports turned out to be high-quality forgeries.
They also found about 23,000 dollars in cash in various currencies wrapped in a plastic bag at the bottom of a backpack.
Several mobile phones, one of which belonged to Anna Schmidt.
Two more phones were identified as belonging to Martine Verbeek and Sophie Durand after inspection.
The detainee was taken to the Antwerp police station.
He was charged with four murders, those of Anna Schmidt, Martine Verbeek, Helena Van Dyke, and Sophie Durand.
He was also charged with fraud, use of forged documents, and illegal border crossing.
During questioning, the man refused to give his real name.
He said his name was Jean-Pierre.
He refused the services of a court-appointed lawyer, but later agreed to have a defense attorney.
For the first 24 hours, he remained completely silent, answering questions only with “I don’t know” or “No comment.
” But when he was shown material evidence, the victims’ phones, photos from surveillance cameras, fingerprints from Anna’s apartment, he realized that denial was pointless.
On the third day of questioning, he began to talk.
He confessed to all four murders.
He described how he searched for victims on dating sites, how he corresponded with them for months, building trust.
He said he did it for money.
He denied any emotions or regrets.
When investigator Weber asked him why he killed these women, he replied briefly, “They could have identified me.
It was easier this way.
” The suspect’s real name was established through fingerprint analysis, which was conducted jointly with the authorities of several African countries.
His name was Eric Adams, 31, a citizen of Ghana.
In his homeland, he was convicted of fraud and theft in 2016 and served 2 years in prison.
After his release, he disappeared and was never seen again in Ghana.
Relatives reported that he had left to work in Europe and had not been in contact since.
His mother had died several years ago.
He did not know his father, and he had no brothers or sisters.
Further investigation revealed that Adams had been assisted by a whole network of accomplices.
There were people in West Africa who made fake passports for him.
Others helped him find victims.
They corresponded on his behalf when he was busy or on the road.
Still others provided temporary accommodation in Europe and helped him hide.
Police in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France launched a large-scale operation to identify all members of this network.
At the end of July, three more suspects were arrested in Côte d’Ivoire and two in Germany.
They were charged with aiding and abetting murder and fraud.
One of those arrested in Germany turned out to be a forger of false documents working in Berlin.
He confessed to making passports for Adams and several dozen other fraudsters from Africa.
European authorities began investigating whether Adams had other victims who were not yet known.
They sent requests to all European Union countries, asking them to report any unsolved murders of single middle-aged women over the past 5 years.
Several cases came under suspicion, but there was not yet enough evidence to link them to Adams.
Weber returned to Leipzig feeling both relieved and exhausted.
The case, which began with the tragic death of nurse Anna Schmidt, turned into an investigation into a series of murders committed by a cold and calculating criminal.
Four women died at the hands of a man who saw them only as a source of income.
They were all looking for love, companionship, and hope for a new life.
They all fell victim to a monstrous deception.
The trial of Eric Adams began in February 2024 in Brussels.
The Belgian authorities took over the case because that was where the suspect was arrested.
Germany, the Netherlands, and France handed over all the investigation materials and sent their representatives.
The trial lasted 3 weeks.
Adams was charged with four counts of first-degree murder, large-scale fraud, use of forged documents, and illegal border crossing.
The prosecution presented an extensive body of evidence, including correspondence, bank documents, witness testimony, and physical evidence.
The defendant’s lawyer tried to prove that his client had not acted alone and that he was part of a larger criminal network, but this did not mitigate his guilt.
During the hearings, Adams remained aloof.
He showed no remorse.
When asked by the judge why he killed these women, he replied as he had during the interrogation, “They could have identified him.
” The victims’ relatives were present in the courtroom.
Monique came on behalf of Anna Schmidt.
When the verdict was announced, she silently left the courtroom.
On March 21st, 2024, the court found Eric Adams guilty on all counts and sentenced him to life imprisonment without the possibility of early release.
The appeal was rejected 6 months later.
He is currently serving his sentence in a maximum-security prison in Belgium.
Three of his accomplices, arrested in Germany and Africa, were sentenced to between 8 and 15 years for aiding and abetting.
The investigation into the criminal network is still ongoing.
The police do not rule out the possibility that Adams may have had other victims who are not yet known.
The case did not receive widespread publicity.
There were a few short articles in the local press and one article in the crime section of a German publication.
The names of the victims were not disclosed.
For most people, it remained just another crime in the news.
Monique quit her job at the clinic a year after Anna’s death.
She moved to another city.
She said she could no longer work in a place where everything reminded her of her friend.
Anna’s apartment was sold by distant relatives.
The money went to pay for the funeral and legal costs.
The remainder was donated to a fund to help victims of fraud.
After this case, European law enforcement agencies tightened controls on invitation visas and launched a campaign to inform the public about the risks of romance scams.
But such crimes continue to occur.
Lonely people continue to look for love on the internet.
Scammers continue to look for victims.
The system works for both sides.
