Thomas Handrickthe German citizen accused of stoned to death his wife and one of his children in Adeje, Tenerifehas denied responsibility for the double crime and has assured that his conditions were impaired because he was under the influence of morphine, which he was taking for back pain, and other anti-depression medications.
At the start of the trial with popular jury on the Court of Santa Cruz de TenerifeHandrick, for whom the prosecutor is requesting permanent reviewable prison, has indicated that it was his wife who began to attack him unexpectedly and throw stones at him and that he, fearing for his life, “returned” the stones towards the place where they came from, but without intention to hit anyone.
Realizing that his youngest son, Jonas, had left, he went for him, and when he returned his wife and the eldest of the children were no longer there, whom he later found inside a cave where pretended to hide some Easter gifts for the childrenwhich, as he has stated, he did not know beforehand, but rather they found it by chance during the walk.
At that moment, his wife was emitting “roars” and her face, which was “half missing”, “full of light” and her eyes with “a greenish glow” despite the darkness that reigned in the cave, “as in a ghost Train”. He threw one last stone before collapsing, according to the defendant.
With respect to older childJacob, has said that he was found dead, and at that moment he has collapsed and has continued part of the story of what he lived that day between sobs.
He has related that when leaving the cave saw that Jonas had left and walked “here and there” to see if he could find himbut he was “disoriented”, as if he were the spectator of “a movie”, in spite of which he was able to return to his house, undress, wash himself and throw the clothes full of blood into a nearby container.
If he did not go to report the facts to the Police, he has alleged, it was because he was confused, as if everything were “a nightmare”.
TO prosecutor’s questions why he decided to take his family on an excursion along a path that he later described as “dangerous” and with steep slopes, despite being handicapped by his back pain, he has said that he did not know the path, and that later, despite that he had to stop and take more medication, they continued on the excursion because the children were “excited”.
He has also said that years before he and his wife they had signed a marriage settlement agreementin which a division of assets was established, and they had tacitly agreed that he was in charge of the management of the rents of several buildings and she of the care of the children.
When starting the divorce processkept the agreement in the same terms, with the condition that the father could see his children when he traveled to Germany, since had settled in Tenerife to spend the winter months, by medical prescription.
The one known as Adeje crime It dates back to April 2019, when the accused allegedly took his wife and children on an excursion to a cave and there he began to violently beat his wife, from whom he was in the process of separating, and his eldest son.
The youngest sonseeing that his life was in danger, he fled down the mountain and reached a populated area where he was able to ask for help, and with the mediation of a Dutch neighbor who acted as a translator, he told the police about the terrible scene he had just witnessed.
The defense attorney asks that his client be given the full defense of transitory insanity, and, therefore, free acquittal because he did not know what he was doing at the time, or alternatively, the extenuation of outburst for the crimes of homicide and not murder .
In his opening statement before the jury, he has recounted in a colloquial tone that Handrick he was “hooked” on medication for the back pain he has suffered since undergoing an operation for a herniated disc that led to recognized permanent disability.
The day of eventsthe lawyer has abounded, the defendant “put himself up to the top of a powerful opiate” to endure the walk with his relatives, and added that at a certain moment “his clamp went away”.
That moment was when, according to the defense version, his wife went into a rage when she suffered a bleeding wound, she does not know how, she tried to call for help but could not because there was no coverage, and she approached him to see the affected area.
Contrary to this story, both the prosecutor and the popular accusations, brought by the Office for the Protection of Minors, in Germany, and the Canarian Institute of Equalityagree that the accused devised a plan to end his family because “he wanted to lead an independent life,” according to the representative of the public ministry.
