The state court in the German town of Koblenz has sentenced the two kidnappers of a newborn girl from the town of Trmice in the Ústí Region of the Czech Republic to four and a half years in prison. The verdict has yet to take effect.
Uwe Reinecker (51) and Melanie-Christin Maria Bernhart (48) kidnapped the infant last July from her pram and took her to Germany in a stolen automobile. They spotted eight-week-old Michala at the Globus supermarket in Ústí nad Labem and then kidnapped her from a park in Trmice.
Five days later, police found the child and the kidnappers in the town of Neuwied not far from Koblenz. Both defendants confessed.
The defendants faced up to five years in prison on the kidnapping charge. The complicated trial also addressed the theft of the automobile, the commission of fraud, and the falsification of documents, all of which are indirectly related to the kidnapping and for which the defendants theoretically face up to 10 years in prison.
