Husband and wife are jailed for life for murdering Ukrainian refugee mother so they could steal her baby five-week-old daughter to raise as their own

A married couple in Germany who murdered a Ukrainian baby’s mother and the child’s grandmother so they could steal the infant have been jailed for life.

The Mannheim Regional Court found that the crimes committed by Ina O., 45, and Marco O., 43, were so egregious that they will not be eligible for parole after 15 years, as is usually the case with life sentences in Germany.

The pair were found guilty of murdering young mother Margarita Razaz, 27, and her baby’s grandmother Maryna Stetsenko, 51, to kidnap the then-five-week-old baby, named Mia, to satisfy a ‘long-unfulfilled wish to have a daughter’, according to Mannheim prosecutors. Ina and Marco O. already have three sons.

The mother, grandmother and child had been living in a refugee centre in the Rhine-Neckar district after they had fled war in Ukraine to Germany.

The couple had invited the mother and grandmother to a restaurant and secretly mixed a narcotic into the Ukrainian women’s drinks on 6th March last year (2024).

Ina O. and Marco O., from Sandhausen, in Baden Wuerttemberg, then pretended to take the 51-year-old woman, who had fallen ill, to the hospital, while the 27-year-old and her newborn daughter were taken home.

The man then killed the unconscious 51-year-old mother at a lake in Bad Schonborn by hitting her several times on the head with a hammer.

A short while later, he killed the 27-year-old woman in Hockenheim in the same way and burned the body.

Young mother Margarita Razaz was just 27 when she was murdered by the married couple

Ukrainian refugee Rita (pictured) had her daughter Mia in January last year

Marco O. (pictured) reportedly went around bragging about his new baby girl after the murders

Ina O. (pictured) already had three sons with her husband

The couple then drove home with their child.

Colleagues who worked with Marco O. in a butcher’s shop said that he had been boasting about having a new baby that was ‘still in intensive care’ days before the killings. 

One of the couple’s neighbours also told tabloid Bild: ‘The couple has three sons, the husband told me in December that they were having a girl in January. He proudly showed me a pink baby hat for the child. 

‘I was surprised because his wife didn’t look pregnant at all. But I would never have expected such a crime.’

Maryna’s body was discovered on the shore of a lake near Hockenheim on 19th March after a two-week search.

The search operation began after police found the body of her daughter on the banks of the Rhine in Hockenheim on 7th March with signs of a violent death.

The baby was freed from the clutches of his kidnappers by the police on 13th March 2024.

During the trial, Senior Public Prosecutor Katja Koenig said: ‘It was a joint act committed out of malice and base motives.’

The couple’s motive for the double murder back in March had been a ‘long-unfulfilled wish to have a daughter’, Mannheim prosecutors said in a statement (pictured above is Margarita Razaz’ newborn daughter Mia)

Margarita reportedly moved to the German town of Hockenheim in December 2023 after previously fleeing from her home in Kharkiv, Ukraine, due to the brutal Russian invasion

The murderous couple drugged Maryna Stetsenko (pictured) before beating her to death and setting her body on fire 

Margarita was killed in the same way as her mother

She said that the couple had acted ‘coldly and with criminal energy’.

It is not known who Mia’s father is, according to lawyer Thomas Franz. 

Margarita reportedly moved to the German town of Hockenheim in December 2023 after previously fleeing from her home in Kharkiv, Ukraine, due to the brutal Russian invasion. 

Baby Mia, now about one, now lives in Ukraine with her aunt, who was a co-plaintiff in the case.

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