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‘What on earth have youdone?’


“THE head shots came automatic. That was an automatic thing, that is where training kicked in.”

So said Ernst Lichtenstrasser when he described to police officers at Walvis Bay on 15 May 2019 how he had

killed the two top executives of the Namibian Institute of Mining and Technology (Nimt) at Arandis a month earlier.

‘What on earth have youdone?’

Lichtenstrasser (61) said he had used “a Mozambique drill” method to shoot Nimt executive director Eckhart

Mueller (72) and his deputy, Heimo Hellwig (60): “Shots to the body and then to the head, double tap to the body.”

He added: “I might have exaggerated with Mueller.”

A police officer, inspector Reinhardt Maletzky, read out a transcript of Lichtenstrasser’s recorded confession

before judge Christie Liebenberg in the Windhoek High Court yesterday – a day after the judge ruled that the

confession was admissible as evidence in Lichtenstrasser’s trial.

Lichtenstrasser is accused of murdering Mueller and Hellwig at Nimt’s head office at Arandis early in the morning

of 15 April 2019. The state is alleging that he had been involved in a dispute with the two Nimt executives because

of a decision to transfer him from Nimt’s campus at Tsumeb, where he was based, to Keetmanshoop.

Lichtenstrasser denied guilt on seven charges, including two counts of murder and charges of possession of a

firearm and ammunition without a licence – when his trial started in February last year.

When making his confession during a meeting with police investigators at Walvis Bay, Lichtenstrasser said if it

had not been for his wife, who he thought the police wrongly suspected of having been involved in the killing of

Mueller and Hellwig, “I would have taken this to my grave”.

He recounted that after a quarrel with his wife, he left their home at Otavi and drove to Arandis, taking a 9mm

Beretta pistol with him.

After spending the night near Arandis, he awoke and felt like there were two people inside himself, he said: “The

one says you are on a mission, they are enemies […] I really believed that they are enemies.”

Lichtenstrasser continued that he questioned himself, asking “is it worth it, not worth it”, when he saw the car in

which Mueller and Hellwig were travelling approaching Arandis.

“I just could not believe that this thing is all going through so smoothly,” he said, recounting that after the two men

had parked their car, he parked his vehicle behind theirs and approached them.

He said he was still in two minds, thinking he should talk to Mueller and Hellwig on one hand, while on the other

he was surprised “this operation is turning out well”.

When he approached the two men, Hellwig asked him in German what he was doing there. Then Mueller said to

him, also in German and “in that voice of his”, that he had no business there and should disappear, Lichtenstrasser

said.

“That was the biggest mistake,” he remarked.

“Then I lost it,” he continued.

Indicating that he acted automatically, he said he shot Hellwig first, and then fired at Mueller.

“If I think of it now I did not actually see Mueller, I just saw a figure,” he said. “It must have been tunnel vision.”

He described the sound of the gunfire: “Pap pap pap, he came towards me, right stepped, bam bam, you know.”

He added: “The head shots, it came automatic.”

When one of the police investigators, warrant officer Lodewyk van Graan, asked him if he was sure the two men

were both dead after the shooting, Lichtenstrasser answered: “Honest with you, I did not think of it and I did not

care. I did not care.”

As he drove away from Arandis after the shooting, reality struck him, he said: “F*#k it what have you done, what

on earth have you done? What have you done, f*#k it, man, what have you become? So [I] drive off, drive off into

the desert.”

Lichtenstrasser continued that he contemplated killing himself, but reasoning with himself, he decided to try to get

bail and delay his case while spending time with his wife.

“I never knew or never believed for one moment that I will get away with this,” he said.

He also told the police officers: “It was a bad thing. […] I was thinking when I was lying in the cells, I know it was

wrong, totally wrong.”

The trial is continuing.





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