Israeli man kills two Hungarian women in their sleep, faces most severe punishment
Six years ago, an Israeli man committed a horrific crime in Kaposvár, Hungary. At first, he almost got away with it, but eventually, the evidence solidly points to him as the killer of the two Hungarian women.
The suspected man met the Hungarian girl in Germany in February 2018. They soon got together and rented an apartment in Kaposvár with the girl’s mother.
In October of the same year, the Kaposvár emergency services were alerted to a house fire. Firefighters broke down a locked door and found two dead women and a man still alive in the burning apartment. The Hungarian women – mother and daughter – were lying on the bed in their rooms, while the man had fled to the balcony.
After the incident, the man said there was a fire in the apartment, which the authorities initially believed. However, they later concluded that the women did not die from the fire but because they were strangled in their sleep. When this was discovered, the Israeli man fled the country and traveled back to Israel.
While he was away, the case was investigated, and it was concluded that he had indeed strangled the mother and daughter. This is supported by the fact that:
- there were three separate fires inside the apartment, suggesting that someone had deliberately set the fire;
- the women were in bed when they were found, and it is unlikely that they would not have woken up to find the flat on fire;
- their deaths were caused by strangulation;
- the apartment was locked from the inside with a key, so it is unlikely that anyone else could have entered;
- these were independently confirmed by three medical examiners and three fire examiners.
The man was once sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia. He was extradited to Hungary by Israel in 2021, and his trial was later reopened, with a verdict handed down in March this year. He was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to life imprisonment, with a maximum of 40 years before he could be released.
The man has denied the charges all along and still claims that the apartment spontaneously combusted, and that he was the only one of the three who managed to escape to the balcony. He and his lawyer have, therefore, appealed for his acquittal.
The prosecutor appealed for an aggravated sentence, requesting that the man also be convicted of causing a public danger and that the possibility of his release be excluded. The Appeal Prosecutor’s Office upheld the appeal, and if the court upheld them, the man could receive an effective life sentence, the most severe sentence in Hungary.
As we wrote last week, hundreds serve life sentences in Hungarian prisons for brutal crimes, details HERE.
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