Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Left-hand-path / Satanist / occult Left-hand-path and Satanist movements Bochum, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany · 2002

Germany: couple convicted of a killing staged as a sacrifice to Satan

Record class

Context only

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

self-described 'satanic vampires'; no authority over the victim

Organization

No organization assigned

Spiritual nexus

NOT AN AUTHORITY-ABUSE CASE. The victim was a friend, not an adherent. Recorded as victim-directed ritual: the staging was the crime's declared purpose, established in the trial record.

  • Violent occult ideology or sacrifice
  • Ritual, oath, or initiation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2002-01-31 · conviction and sentence with psychiatric confinement

    Landgericht Bochum, Germany. Daniel and Manuela Ruda were convicted by the Bochum regional court in 2002 of the July 2000 murder of Frank Hackert, a friend killed with a hammer and sixty-six stab wounds in what they described as a sacrifice to Satan; a pentagram was carved into his chest and blood drunk from a bowl. Daniel received fifteen years and Manuela thirteen, both with indefinite psychiatric confinement.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • the killing staged as a sacrifice to Satan
  • a pentagram carved into the victim's chest and blood drunk from a bowl

Primary record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting verdict and sentencing report The Irish Times: 'Satanist couple jailed for killing'.

International report of the verdict and sentences.

Related record

Related cases · Left-hand-path / Satanist / occult

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