A man who killed his wife, reported her as missing and then helped the police in the search stood trial for murder on Wednesday.

Patrick H. denied murdering his wife of 31 years, Simone G, but had looked for a place to dump the body before the crime took place, a court heard. “You don’t look for a place to dispose of someone if you don’t plan to [kill them],” said the judge in the case that left investigators puzzled.

On the afternoon of 30 September 2023, H. reported his wife missing. He told the police that she had travelled to work in Echternach in the morning but had not returned.

After the missing persons report was filed, the police immediately launched a search, enquiring at all the hospitals and issuing a media appeal for witnesses.

H. himself helped in the search for his seemingly missing wife – even though he allegedly knew for a long time that she was no longer alive. Her body was found wrapped in a bin bag and a pair of painter’s trousers in a wooded area near Scheidgen in the municipality of Consdorf.

Husband confesses to the crime after a few days

The officers became suspicious for the first time two days after the crime. H. returned to the police station to make adjustments to the missing persons report – a highly unusual behaviour.

“I’d never experienced anything like this before”, the police officer in charge said in court on Wednesday.

H. had initially explained that his wife had travelled to work in Echternach by car, but now wanted to change his statement: he had driven the car to Echternach himself to get back at his wife following a row.

The couple had had an argument the previous evening after she had come home drunk from a party, H. said, stating that he had then decided to drive the car to Echternach on the morning of 29 September and parked it in a car park so that his wife could not use it.

This story seemed strange to the officers. A search of the couple’s home in Dommeldange followed, during which the police discovered traces of blood on the door frame in the entrance area.

“At this point, H. was still unconcerned. He was calm in a way that seemed out of place,” recalled the lead investigator, adding, “But he kept talking about his wife in the past tense, as if he were certain she wouldn’t be coming back.”

But it wasn’t until a few days later, when he was supposed to pick up the confiscated car with officers, that H. broke down, and confessed to killing his wife.

He described the evening in question to the investigators. When his wife came home from the party shortly after midnight on 29 September, he hit her in the face with his fist, breaking her nose. He then choked her with both of his hands until she stopped making a sound, until no pulse could be detected. “I squeezed until she stopped moving,” he told the police.

Head covered with bin bag

He later wrapped the woman’s head in a bin bag and her lower body in a pair of painter’s trousers that he had bought in a DIY store the day before. He fixed everything to her body with tape, dragged his wife into the car and drove off.

More than 25 kilometres away, he dumped the body in a wooded area near Scheidgen – a few metres off a dirt track, hidden by branches and undergrowth. Anyone passing by would most likely not have discovered the lifeless body, and it is H. himself who later led the police to the body.

He threw his dead wife’s mobile phone into a pond and later disposed of her bloodstained clothes in a rubbish bin outside his workplace, the theatre in Luxembourg City.

Back at home, he wiped away the traces of blood with paper and detergent before going to bed. The next day, he drove the car to Echternach, then headed to the gym and sauna and later watched TV before his two children came to dinner in the evening.

The days after followed in much the same fashion, with H. going to the gym and sauna again and again. “After everything that happened, he just carried on living as if nothing had happened,” said the investigator.

“I wasn’t happy about having done it. It was still a relief, though,” H. told investigators. “I wasn’t jealous. It was simply frustration,” he said.

The trigger for the attack, the court heard, was probably an impending separation. A few days earlier, while on holiday together, his wife told him that their relationship was at an end.

After 40 years together, 31 of them married, she wanted to end it and already had a new lover. “She wasn’t the woman I knew anymore,” H. told the police. “After the vacation, my world collapsed.”

Searching for a suitable place to lay the body

The defendant showed hardly any emotions during the interrogations. “He was cold,” the investigator recalled. “He spoke of his wife as if she were an object.”

In court, the accused insisted that he had not planned to kill his wife. However, he told the investigators that he had already looked around for possible places to dump the body before the offence. “You don’t look for a place to dispose of someone if you don’t plan to [kill them],” said the judge.

The trial is due to be concluded on Friday. Despite the confession, the presumption of innocence applies until the final conviction.

(This article was originally published by the Luxemburger Wort. Machine translated using AI, with editing and adaptation by John Monaghan.)