Prosecutors Say Woman Found Lookalike Online, Then Killed Her to Fake Her Own Death

A German woman has been accused of searching for a lookalike on social media, luring her to a remote area and then killing her. This was part of an elaborate plan for the first woman to fake her own death, according to police.

The case has been dubbed “the Ingolstadt doppelganger murder,” according to German news outlet Bild, which was translated with Google translate.

The female suspect, identified only as Shahraban K., was charged with murder this week, along with her boyfriend and alleged accomplice, Sheqir K., according to the report.

In a translated news release from police headquarters in Upper Bavaria North, investigators said that the suspect “wanted to go into hiding due to family problems and fake her death.”

“The suspects came up with the plan to search online for a woman who looked similar to the German-Iraqi [Shahraban K.], kill her and place her in such a way that the corpse would be mistaken for the suspect.”

In early August, according to investigators, Shahraban used several social media accounts to contact several women who resembled her. She attempted “to persuade them to meet her with false promises.”

“In this context, she chatted with several young women,” police said.

“It has been confirmed that the accused had contacted several women via Instagram before the act who seemed to be of a similar type to her,” Attorney General Veronika Grieser told Bild.

One of those women was identified as Khadidja O., Bild reported.

The suspects arranged to meet the victim at her home in Heilbronn. But instead of taking her to the agreed meeting spot, they took a detour.

“As planned, the victim was lured out of the vehicle under a pretext and killed in a wooded area with a large number of stabs in the body,” the police report said.

The victim’s face was badly disfigured, police spokesman Andreas Aichele told Bild.

Shahraban K set up a fake Instagram account in an attempt to find someone who looked like her and lured Khadidja O into meeting her before brutally murdering her to fake her own death. #Germany #Murder #truecrime #doppelgangermurderhttps://t.co/eW2TGIW7fV

— MChheda (@MC_IBTimesSG) February 1, 2023

The suspects then continued to Ingolstadt and left Shahraban’s car with the body in the back seat.

At first, the plan seemed to work. As allegedly planned, Shahraban’s parents went looking for their daughter and found her Mercedes with the body in the back seat.

“The parents believed it was their daughter — because the victim looked confusingly similar to her,” Bild reported.

But then, things began to unravel.

An autopsy and forensic comparisons by the Ingolstadt Criminal Police Inspectorate “raised serious doubts about the identity of the woman,” according to a translated police statement.

The two suspects were arrested on manslaughter charges the next day, according to Bild, but those charges were upgraded to murder this week.

Aichele told Bild, “It was an extraordinary case that required all the investigators’ skills. We don’t have a case like this every day — especially with such a spectacular twist. On the day we found the body, we didn’t expect it to develop like this.”