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Wife kills husband while at the wheel

A dentist was shot dead by his wife in his BMW while they were driving in their hometown of Tübingen on Tuesday evening.

Published: 7 March 2012 12:56 CET

Wife kills husband while at the wheel

Photo: DPA

The 63-year-old man, who has been identified as Fritz N., was driving his BMW SUV with his second wife Stanila N. in the passenger seat.

The 43-year-old shot her husband dead at around 7pm while he was driving, daily newspaper Bild reported on Wednesday.

The car swerved into a wall, Fritz N. staggered out and collapsed onto a road in Tübingen’s wealthy Denzenberg suburb, where the pair lived. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.

His wife was believed to have fled on foot, but was soon tracked down by the police, who are keeping her in custody. They do not yet know why Stanila N. shot her husband, or why she chose to do it when they were driving.

According to neighbours that spoke to Bild, Fritz N. had not been living in their home for some time, and when he did enter it was only when “accompanied by tough-looking friends.”

The area is still being searched for a murder weapon, which is believed to have been discarded somewhere in the streets of Denzenberg.

The Local/jcw

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German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

The Black Axe gang was involved internationally in “multiple areas of criminal activity”, with a focus in Germany on romance scams and money-laundering, Bavarian police said in a statement.

The dating trick was a “modern form of marriage fraud”, police said.

“Using false identities, the fraudsters for example signalled their intention to marry and in the course of further contact repeatedly demand money under various pretexts,” police said.

The money was subsequently transferred to Black Axe in Nigeria “via financial agents”, authorities said.

In the process, the gang used a “commodity-based money laundering” scheme where products, often with a seeming “charitable purpose” were bought and delivered to Nigeria.

Some 450 cases of romance scamming had been reported in the region of Bavaria in 2023 alone, with the damages rising to 5.3 million euros ($5.7 million), police said.

The suspects, who all held Nigerian citizenship and were aged between 29 and 53, were arrested in nationwide raids on Tuesday.

Law enforcement swooped on 19 properties, including both homes and asylum shelters, police said.

The Black Axe gang had “strict hierarchical structures under leadership in Nigeria” operating different territorial units, police said.

The group had a “significant influence” on politics and public administrations, in particular in Nigeria.

Globally, the gang’s main areas of operation were “human-trafficking, fraud, money-laundering, prostitution and drug-trafficking”.

Black Axe operated under the cover of the Neo Black Movement of Africa, an ostensibly charitable organisation used as “camouflage” for the gang’s structures.

The action against Black Axe was the first of its kind in Germany, police said.

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