Ostrava, North Moravia, Jan 7 (CTK) – Czech Petr Kramny, 37, was convicted of murdering his wife, 36, and eight-year-old daughter by electricity during their holiday in Egypt in July 2013 and he received a 28-year prison term yesterday.
According to the ruling, Kramny must also pay eight million crowns to his wife’s relatives.
In the cause celebre, Kramny has pleaded not-guilty from the beginning. He blamed the deaths for stomach problems.
Kramny appealed the verdict on the spot yesterday, while the state attorney took some time for consideration.
Kramny´s defence counsel Jana Rejzkova demanded that he be fully acquitted, while the state attorney proposed an exceptional 30-year prison sentence.
Kramny has been remanded in custody for almost two years.
Judge Renata Gilova said the case was quite rare.
“The scene of the act was outside the Czech Republic. Czech detectives could not inspect it and court doctors did not have a chance to make immediately an autopsy,” Gilova said.
“Despite this, the court panel is convinced that enough evidence was gathered to make a decision,” she added.
The evidence creates an obvious chain whose links follow and support one another, Gilova said, although she conceded that there was no direct evidence.
“This is neither the first nor last case when someone was convicted on the basis of indirect evidence,” she added.
The court panel supported the version that Kramny had originally planned to kill himself, too, after murdering his wife and daughter, but that he had not found courage to comit a suicide.
According to the verdict, Kramny was preparing the act beforehand, including a murdering tool that was not found, though.
The court panel has no doubt about it, Gilova said.
The act was motivated by a deepening crisis of his marriage that the defendant did not cope with, the court said.
Kramny may have killed the daughter since he feared she would not manage to live without the parents, it added.
Experts were not able to pinpoint the exact time of the victims´ death, they estimated it from the evening on July 28 until the next evening.
After the double murder, Kramny started fabricating the story about their possible poisoning and he behaved accordingly, for instance, he manipulated the bodies to support his version, the verdict said.
Gilova justified the high prison sentence by the fact that Kramny had killed more people, including his own child whom he should have protected. Moreover, he did not express regret at the act and tried to put the blame on the late wife, she added.
On the contrary, his so far blameless life without criminal records spoke in his favour.
“It cannot be accepted at all that a marital crisis be solved in the way the defendant has chosen,” Gilova said.
The mother and daughter were found dead in a hotel room. Egyptian authorities said they had died of dehydration or poisoning. However, local experts found no poison.
As the Egypt police did not file any lawsuit, Kramny could return to the Czech Republic after three months.
However, after the bodies were transferred to the Czech Republic, experts made their autopsies. From them, they concluded that the victims died since they were hit by electricity. They also refuted the possibility of a fatal accident.
In February 2014, the police accused Kramny and a court remanded him in custody.
However, according to an expert opinion ordered by the defence counsels, poisoning was the most probably cause of the victims´ death. This is why the court had another expert opinion worked out that clearly set electricity as the cause of death.
($1=25.145 crowns)
