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Mother-of-ten dead in church: husband held

German police arrested the husband of a Catholic verger after she was found dead in the cellar of the church she worked in on Saturday morning. Some reports suggest the couple, who were separated, had ten children.

Published: 19 November 2012 08:19 CET

Mother-of-ten dead in church: husband held

Photo: DPA

The 48-year-old woman was found in the cellar of the church in the “Of the Holy Family” community church in Braunlage near Goslar, Lower Saxony. Police said on Sunday night that she was clearly the victim of a violent attack, but would not release further details, Der Spiegel reported.

Her 51-year-old husband was arrested in southern Germany after visiting a police station with a 12-year-old daughter and 20-year-old son. All three were held by police. A Lower Saxony radio station said the dead woman was mother to ten children.

Braunlage state prosecutor Julia Meyer said on Sunday that two flats in the town were searched after evidence had been collected from the cellar.

Further details are expected to be released once a post-mortem examination has been conducted on the woman.

Vergers act as caretakers to their churches and prepare religious ceremonies, taking care that candles, flower arrangements and liturgical equipment are prepared and in order.

The Local/hc

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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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