The court in Debrecen sentenced the four men who raped and killed an 85-year-old woman in Szalonná in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County to prison in November 2019, the spokesperson of the court told MTI on Thursday.
According to a statement by Ildikó Fórizs, the sentences of two of the perpetrators – the first and third defendants – were reduced from 18 years to 15 years each, because they “participated in the crime as accomplices, supporting the other two defendants”.
In the case of the other two defendants, the sentencing panel upheld the verdict of the Miskolc Court of First Instance: the fourth defendant was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the crime of manslaughter committed as an accomplice, out of a desire for profit, with special cruelty, and harming a person with limited ability to prevent the crime due to his old age. The court also found the second-rate defendant guilty of the crime of sexual violence and therefore sentenced him to 19 years in prison. The four offenders can be released on parole at the earliest after serving two-thirds of their sentences.
According to the facts, the four men decided to get money from an elderly woman living in the settlement. One evening in November 2019, they approached the property from the rear, from the field, and entered the yard, then entered the apartment building, where they found the injured woman at home and began abusing her.
They hit the woman on the head with an iron rod several times and did not stop the crime even when the victim was already lying on the ground. One of the defendants also sexually assaulted the unconscious woman. The victim died on the spot, her death was caused by severe skull injuries as a result of blows to the head. The four men left with an undetermined amount of cash found in the house.
The sentencing panel corrected the facts established by the first-instance court by saying that it could not be established that all four defendants had abused the victim at the same time, with the same tool, at the same time, only that two perpetrators had abused the elderly woman. The act of the defendants was aimed at taking the life of the victim, and they committed it in a brutal, unscrupulous manner – explained Ildikó Fórizs.
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