A 23-year-old woman is accused of killing a beauty blogger who looks like her in order to fake her own death.
This follows the discovery of a blood-soaked body in the back of a parked Mercedes in Ingolstadt, Germany last August.
Police initially thought the victim was Munich beautician Sharaban K. after family members identified her from her body.
But autopsy reports the next day raised questions about her true identity.
In the end, the victim was Khadija Oh, an Algerian beauty blogger from nearby Heilbronn, who was also 23 years old.
The two women look strikingly similar, which has led to the case being dubbed “the doppelgänger murder”.
“It’s not every day that we get a case like this, especially with such a spectacular twist,” police spokesman Andreas Aichele told Bild newspaper.
“On the day when we found the body, absolutely nothing foreshadowed such a development of events. The murder weapon has not been found, but the evidence is overwhelming.
“Victim was killed with over 50 stab wounds, face completely disfigured.”
Detectives only discovered the alleged motive after Sharaban K. and a man named Shekir K. were taken into custody by the Bavarian police.
“The investigation has led us to believe that the defendant wanted to abscond because of a family dispute and, to that end, faked her own death,” prosecutor Veronica Grieser said.
Sharaban K. allegedly contacted several women who looked like her on social media in the week before the murder.
She reportedly arranged various meetings under various aliases with other women, all of which proved to be fruitless.
But Khadija Oh agreed to meet, seduced by the offer of cosmetics.
It is alleged that Shekir K. and Sharaban K. took her from the apartment on the day of the murder.
They then used an excuse to have Khadija get out of the car before allegedly stabbing her to death.
The suspects then allegedly lifted the victim in the back seat of their Mercedes and drove to Ingolstadt, parking the car in a quiet residential area.
The couple faces life imprisonment if proven guilty.
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