Woman ‘killed lookalike’ to fake own death

A WOMAN in Germany has been accused of searching for a lookalike on Instagram and then killing the woman in order to fake her own death.

The extraordinary incident – dubbed the “doppelganger murder” by German media – allegedly took place in Ingolstadt, Bavaria.

A German-iraqi woman who police referred to as Shahraban K, 24, living in Munich, allegedly set up fake Instagram accounts and tried to engineer meetings with women resembling her.

She eventually found a cosmetics blogger, Algerian citizen Khadidja O, 23, who lived about 100 miles away, police said. Both women had long dark hair and a similar complexion.

Shahraban K and her Kosovan boyfriend, named as 24-year-old Sheqir K, then allegedly made an offer about beauty products and went to pick her up. On the way back they stopped in a forest and stabbed the victim over 50 times, German police alleged.

Shahraban K had told her family she was going to Ingolstadt to meet her exhusband. When she didn’t come back her parents searched for her in Ingolstadt and found her Mercedes near the Danube. On the back seat was the body of a dark-haired young woman who had been brutally murdered, and they believed it was their daughter.

Several knives were reportedly found nearby. The car was reportedly discovered not far from Sheqir K’s flat.

However, following a post-mortem and DNA tests, it emerged that the body was actually Khadidja O, police said. Shahraban K and Sheqir K were then arrested.

Police were initially baffled by the resemblance between the owner of the car and the dead woman found in it but the true identity of the victim was finally established in August after police looked at Shahraban K’s social media.

Ingolstadt prosecutor Veronika Grieser told the Bild newspaper: “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.”