Overview

• Psychologist Max Steller told the Traunstein court he found no indicators of truth in the jailhouse witness’s account and cited massive contradictions in key details.
• Steller said the witness’s psychiatric profile increases the risk of false statements and noted prior untruths in official contexts.
• The inmate nevertheless repeated his claim that the defendant confessed to a sexually motivated attack and to throwing Hanna into the water.
• Prosecutors continue to pursue a theory of a sexual assault leading to drowning, while the defense maintains the death was an accident during a downstream drift.
• The defendant remains free during the retrial, which has been relocated to the Amtsgericht Laufen, and new allegations reported in BILD suggest investigators may have withheld information about the witness.