Article 365-1 of the code of criminal procedure

The assize court has been convinced that Dieter Krombach committed intentional acts of aggravated violence in LINDAU (Germany) on the person of Kalinka BAMBERSKI, violence leading to death without it being intentional. the court based its argument on the following elements of suspicion, which were discussed during the debates and which constituded the main elements of suspicion put forward in the course of the deliberations held by the court and the jury, previous to the votes on the questions :

The death of a very young girl, 14 years old, in her bed, appears in itself as eminently suspect, once it has been possible to rule out other explanations : sequels of a very remote accident, heat stroke with no symptoms, anaphylactic shock, bacterial infection.

It emerges from the experts' statements that young Kalinka died of a syndrom named syndrom of Mendelson, which consists in an intra-bronchial regurgitation of the alimentary bolus either caused by a situation close to coma linked with the absorption of an important dose of benzodiazepin, or caused by an assault in a context of a lighter dose, since it was observed that clobazam, a similar molecule, was traced in the organs of Kalinka.

The court remarks that it was only nearly eight months after the death, in a situation of close investigation, that Krombach, for the fist time, stated that on the night of the events, he had given Kalinka a tablet of Frisium; it being remarked that since then he has been able to specify that it was the first time he was acting this way towards her.

The dose that he himself admitted giving her has decreased, since in court he has talked about half a tablet of ten milligrams.

This observation, brought near the conclusions of the experts, leads to favour the second situation they described, namely a context of assault.

This conviction is largely reinforced when it appears that the experts have mentioned a wound on one of the vaginal labia, from which some blood flowed out, the wound therefore being inflicted when Kalinka was alive, in coherence with a reddish substance found on her underwear, and contrary to the statements of the report of autopsy; it being remarked that this wound cannot have occurred during the day, for the pain it caused would have necessarily led the girl to tell her mother about it, since moreover, the very evening, she had shown her tan to her.

Being given these elements, the totally changeable and incoherent statements of Dieter Krombach during the investigation and the preliminary inquiry deserve being highlighted : No mention at first of the taking of Frisium, in spite of its determining consequences, a fact of which he could not have been unaware; contradictory explanations about the circumstances in which he had seen Kalinka again during the night, stomach pains he himself suffered at night, totally unheard of by his wife; the fact of waking up Kalinka on the morning of July 10th, when he said that she had found it so difficult to go to sleep at night that he had given her a tablet; no heart massage in his first declaration, until he finallymentioned it at the hearing in court; administration, in the morning, of resuscitating drugs on a body that the mother described as showing cyanosis on one side of the face and presenting rigor mortis; manoeuvres that the forensic German experts described from the start as absurd and even strange; no declaration to the police even though the emergency doctor who was called for says that Krombach had declared he would report it himself.

All these elements put together bring the court to conclude that Kalinka's death took place in the context of an assault from Dieter Krombach, leading to an intra-bronchial regurgitation resulting in her death, in spite of the immediate manoeuvres the accused attempted with resuscitating drugs;

This conclusion leads to rule out the existence of an intentional act of homicide for which there is no supporting element, and therefore, close to it, an act of poisoning, as well as the existence of unintentional homicide, which does not take into account the assault that the court considers as proved;

One must notice that Kalinka Bamberski was under 15 years of age when these facts took place and that Dieter Krombach had authority on her, being her mother's husband;

Even if this remark is superfluous in comparison to the conviction that the court has reached, it is not uninteresting to note that besides the complaints that may have been lodged against him and for which there were no sanctions imposed by justice, Dieter Krombach was sentenced in Germany for committing a sexual assault on one of his patients who had just undergone anaesthesia in his surgery.

December 20th 2012