Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
Ketchup, the tangy sauce made from tomato purée, sugar, vinegar, table salt and spices, is a staple of everyday cooking and can be found in almost every household. The fact that this condiment is also perfectly suited to staging a murder is demonstrated by the following criminal case, which took place in Germany in 2014 and made headlines across the country. Sabri S., a 44-year-old Turkish grocer from Leipzig, had fallen out with his Berlin-based business partner, 41-year-old Hüseyin D., a supplier of catering equipment. To get rid of him once and for all, Sabri hatched a diabolical plan. He hired 38-year-old Syrian Yusif S., a contract killer who ran a kebab shop in Teplice, the Czech Republic. For the murder, he paid Yusif a deposit of 12,000 euros; Yusif was to receive the remaining 28,000 euros after Hüseyin’s murder. As proof, he was to send him a photo of Hüseyin’s body. Yusif agreed to carry out the contract killing. However, instead of killing Hüseyin, he brought him on board by offering him half of the total 40,000 euros. In return, Hüseyin simply had to agree to play the part of the murder victim. Hüseyin agreed, and so they staged a perfect photographic evidence of the murder. Hüseyin lay down on the floor in a basement corridor. Yusif then painted Hüseyin’s face a deathly pale colour and splattered ketchup over his head, making it appear as though Yusif had eliminated Sabri’s hated business partner, Hüseyin, with a shot to the head. After taking the photo, Yusif edited it in Photoshop and sent it to Sabri as evidence of the murder. But Sabri simply refused to pay, which is why Hüseyin got cold feet, as he feared for his life. He eventually went to the police, to whom he revealed the details of the contract killing. Sabri was subsequently arrested on charges of incitement to murder, though he desperately protested his innocence. But this was to no avail, as the Assize Court at Leipzig Regional Court sentenced Sabri S. to three years and nine months’ imprisonment in 2017 for incitement to murder. Yet this was not the only time that ketchup had been used to stage a murder. A wife from Bückeburg also used ketchup to stage her own murder. The bizarre case, which made headlines across Germany as the ‘Bückeburg Ketchup Murder’, took place in June 2013. At the time, a married couple had hatched a grotesque plan to get rid of the wife’s former lover. The wife had met a photographer from Bonn on an internet forum, with whom she had been having a passionate affair. But when she ended the affair, her ex-lover began harassing her with suggestive photos sent by email. To stop him from stalking her, the couple staged the wife’s murder by having her lie in a huge pool of ketchup. The husband sent these photos to her ex-lover, who then alerted the police. However, when the police arrived at the wife’s home in Bückeburg, she was found to be very much alive. The photographer was deeply shaken, as he now presented a completely different version of events to that of his ex-lover. According to him, he had first confessed to his wife about the extramarital affair, which he had ended. But his ex-lover refused to accept this. When the photographer from Bonn spoke to her husband about his relationship with his wife – with whom he had, in the meantime, become friends during the affair – the husband lost his temper. In retaliation, they had staged the ‘ketchup murder’ to make him look like a stalker. Whichever version of events is true is probably known only to those directly involved. The staged murder did not result in any criminal charges, as the public prosecutor’s office dropped the case due to a lack of sufficient grounds for suspicion. In conclusion, it can be said that ketchup has proved its worth not only as a condiment but also as a blood substitute.
