2005 incident archive
1 documented case.
- Homicide in innsbruck, AT
· Charged · 1 source
A student of just under 20 was stabbed to death in Innsbruck in June 2005. The search for her killer was unsuccessful for years: a suspect was arrested in 2013 but released after a few weeks, and the proceedings were discontinued in 2014 because the circumstantial evidence against him, which included DNA traces on his clothing, was not considered strong enough by prosecutors. In May 2026 the case was reopened against the same man. DNA traces attributed to him were identified on a cigarette that had been recovered from the crime scene, a telephone box; prosecutors say this places him at the scene, and attribute the late discovery to improved analytical methods. On that basis the suspicion was held to have hardened, the prosecution filed a murder charge, and the appeal court rejected the defence's challenge to it. The trial is listed for 19 and 23 October 2026 at the Innsbruck criminal court, more than twenty years after the killing. The accused, now 43, lives in Australia; his lawyer has said he will travel to Austria voluntarily.