German Woman Kills "Instagram Lookalike" To Fake Own Death

A 23-year-old German woman has been accused of seeking out a lookalike of herself on social media and killing her in an attempt to fake her own death, reported Telegraph. The brutal and bizarre case has been dubbed "the doppelganger murder."

The police referred to the German woman as Shahraban K, 24, residing in Munich, who had set up a fake Instagram account and tried contacting women who resembled her. After scouting many profiles, she found a cosmetics blogger, Algerian citizen Khadidja O, 23, who lived about 100 miles away, police said.

Both the women had long dark hair and similar complexion.

According to police, Shahraban K and her boyfriend named Sheqir K, 24, reached out to Khadidja and offered beauty products and went to pick her up.

While going back, they stopped in a forest and stabbed the victim over 50 times, police said.

Shahraban K had told her husband that she was going to meet her ex-husband.

When Shahraban didn't return, her parents went looking for her in Ingolstadt and found her Mercedes near the Danube.

On the back seat of the car, the body of a dark-haired young woman brutally murdered was found and they believed it was their daughter, the Telegraph reported.

According to police, several knives were reportedly found nearby and the car was reportedly discovered not far from Sheqir K's flat.

After doing autopsy and DNA tests, it was found that the body was actually Khadidja O.

Shahraban K and Sheqir K were then arrested.

The police were baffled by the resemblance between the owner of the car and the dead.

Veronika Grieser, an Ingolstadt prosecutor, told the Bild newspaper: "It has been confirmed that the accused had contacted several women via Instagram before the act who seemed to look similar to her.

"It can be assumed that the suspect wanted to go into hiding, due to internal disputes with her family, and fake her own death."

A police spokesman said the killing was done for "base motives."

The spokesman said: "During the return journey, the victim was lured out of the vehicle as planned under a pretext and killed in a wooded area with a large number of stabs in the body.

"The accused then continued their journey to Ingolstadt, where the body was found on the evening of Aug 16th. It was found lying in the vehicle."

Another police spokesman told Bild: "The murder weapon has still not been found but the burden of proof is overwhelming.

"The victim was killed with more than 50 stab wounds and her face was badly injured. That was brutal in the extreme.

"It was an extraordinary case that required all the investigators' skills. We don't have a case like this every day, especially with such a spectacular twist. On the day we found the body, we did not expect it to develop like this."