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Swiss children’s home killer gets life

A man who killed the director of a children’s home and his partner in 2013 has been given a life sentence by a Swiss court.

Published: 14 December 2016 11:12 CET

Swiss children’s home killer gets life

File photo: Patrik Tschudin

The 48-year-old Swiss man was convicted on Tuesday by the court in Thun, in the canton of Bern, for carrying out the double killing in the town of Spiez in the presence of his son, reported news agencies.

The man and his son were arrested in 2014 following a vast investigation into the death of the 53-year-old director of a children’s home in Spiez and his partner.

The victims were stabbed to death, suffering around 100 knife wounds.

The son, now aged 19, had stayed at the children’s home with his brother for several weeks in the summer of 2003 and had suffered humiliating treatment at the hands of the home’s director, reported news agencies.

The director was killed in revenge for this, and his partner because she was a witness, found the court.

According to news agencies the convicted man never spoke of the crime and the weapon he used has never been found.

His son previously admitted to carrying out the stabbings alone, however traces of DNA at the crime scene proved that both him and his father were present.

Since he was a minor at the time of the crime the son will be tried in a juvenile court. The maximum sentence he could receive is four years in prison.

How to avoid the 'police' phone scam in Switzerland

Switzerland’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has been monitoring the phenomenon of fake calls from alleged police authorities for nine months now.

But in the last three weeks, reports of this scam have almost tripled, the NCSC said, indicating just how widespread it is.

What is this about?

The scam begins with a call coming, allegedly, from police or another Swiss authority.

A voice, which the NCSC describes as ‘robotic’, informs the person who answers the call that their personal banking data is involved in criminal activities, or makes a similar alarming (but false) claim.

According to the NCSC, “it is not a person who calls, but a software The machine randomly tries Swiss phone numbers throughout the day. If the number is invalid, it simply moves on to the next one.”

“By using this software, the number of calls that can be made is virtually unlimited. It could go through practically all the phone numbers in Switzerland in a day,” the Centre adds.

After raising alarm about your bank account, the fake ‘policeman’ will urge you to “press 1” to be put in touch with a human being and obtain more information.

If you do this and, worse yet, divulge your personal data to the caller, you risk having your computer and credit card hacked.

What should you do (and not do) if you get this call?

The most obvious answer is to immediately hang up because, as the NCSC explains, “real police never play recorded phone messages. They also never ask for money or sensitive personal data over the phone.”

To that end, the Centre recommends that anyone receiving this call:

Should hang up as soon as you hear the recorded message
Not press 1, or any other numbers, during the telephone conversation
Not get drawn into a conversation.
Never grant access to your computer, not even via remote maintenance software.
Never reveal prepaid card activation codes.

A fake tax refund

While the ‘police scam’ is the latest attempt at extortion reported to the NCSC, it is far from a unique case.

Scores of them are reported to the authorities each year, including the one reported earlier in 2024.

It involved phishing emails about alleged tax refund entitlements.

However, the link in the email leads to a phishing page.

Here too, authorities advise to ignore these emails, not click on the link, and not enter any personal data on the phishing page.

READ ALSO : The common scams foreigners in Switzerland need to be aware of

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