The Ketchup Murders

Ketchup, the spicy sauce made from tomato paste, sugar, vinegar, table salt, and spices, is a staple in everyday cooking and can be found in almost every household. The fact that this condiment is also perfect for faking a murder is proven by the following criminal case, which took place in Germany in 2014 and made headlines nationwide. The 44-year-old Turkish grocer Sabri S. from Leipzig had fallen out with his Berlin business partner, 41-year-old Hüseyin D., a dealer in catering supplies. To get rid of him for good, Sabri hatched a diabolical plan. He hired 38-year-old Syrian Yusif S., who ran a kebab shop in Teplice, Czech Republic, as a contract killer. He paid Yusif a deposit of €12,000 for the murder, with the remaining €28,000 to be paid to Yusif after Hüseyin’s murder. As proof, he was to send him a photo of Hüseyin’s dead body. Yusif agreed to the contract killing. But instead of killing Hüseyin, he brought him on board by offering him half of the total €40,000. All Hüseyin had to do was agree to play the murder victim. Hüseyin agreed, and so they staged a perfect photo as proof of the murder. Hüseyin lay down on the floor in a basement corridor. Yusif then painted Hüseyin’s face corpse-pale and splattered ketchup on his skull to make it look like Yusif had eliminated Sabri’s hated business partner Hüseyin with a shot to the head. After taking the photo, Yusif edited it in Photoshop and sent it to Sabri as proof of the murder. But Sabri simply did not pay, which is why Hüseyin got cold feet because he feared for his life. He finally went to the police and told them about the contract killing. Sabri was then arrested for incitement to murder and desperately protested his innocence. But this did not help, as the jury court at the Leipzig Regional Court sentenced Sabri S. to 3 years and 9 months in prison for incitement to murder in 2017. But this was not the only time ketchup was used to fake a murder. A wife from Bückeburg also used ketchup to fake her own murder. The bizarre case, which made headlines throughout Germany as the Bückeburg ketchup murder, occurred in June 2013. At that time, a married couple had hatched a grotesque plan to get rid of the wife’s former lover. The wife had met a photographer from Bonn in an internet forum, with whom she had a passionate affair. But when she ended it, her ex-lover terrorized her with suggestive photos sent by email. To stop him from stalking her, the couple staged the murder of the wife, in which she lay in a huge pool of ketchup. The husband sent these photos to her ex-lover, who then alerted the police. However, when the police arrived at the wife’s home in Bückeburg, she was alive and well. The photographer was deeply shaken and now presented a completely different version of events to his ex-lover. According to him, he had first confessed to his wife about the extramarital affair, which he had ended. But his ex-lover refused to accept this. When the photographer from Bonn spoke to her husband about his relationship with his wife, with whom he had become friends in the course of the affair, the husband lost his temper. In retaliation, they staged the ketchup murder to make him look like a stalker. Only the people involved themselves know which version is true. The staged murder had no criminal consequences, as the public prosecutor’s office dropped the case due to insufficient evidence. In conclusion, it can be said that ketchup has proven itself not only as a condiment, but also as a blood substitute.