German man admits killing Brit heiress girlfriend during sex but denies murder

Anna Florence Reed, from North Yorkshire, was found dead at Hotel La Palma au Lac, a four-star lakeside hotel in the southern Swiss municipality of Muralto on April 9 2019

A German man on trial for the death of his British millionaire heiress girlfriend has admitted to strangling her with a towel during sex but denies killing her for her fortune.

Appearing on Monday in front of a courtroom in the Swiss town of Lugano, in the Ticino region, Dirk W. told the court of how he was having sex with 22-year-old Anna Florence Reed on their bathroom floor when he put a hand towel around her neck.

“Then I pressed on it with my hands, as we had done a hundred times before. Suddenly she stopped moving, her tongue was sticking out. I tried to resuscitate her,” he said.

Ms Reed, from North Yorkshire, was found dead at Hotel La Palma au Lac, a four-star lakeside hotel in the southern Swiss municipality of Muralto on April 9 2019.

The defendant, who has also been named as Marc Schatzle, or Marc S during some coverage of the case, maintains her death was the result of a sex game gone wrong.

The prosecution believes he murdered the young woman to appropriate her fortune.

Her credit card, which was missing at the time of her death, was found in the ceiling of the hotel lift four months after the alleged crime.

The defendant told the court he placed it there as a prank after his girlfriend complained about always paying for everything.

The court heard how the pair had consumed alcohol and cocaine and had argued on the night before her death.

During the court case, he was asked detailed questions by the judge, about their sex life on the date Ms Reed died and how did it come to pass that they played the strangulation game.

However, the defendant was unable to answer many of the questions because of the time distance involved, and also because he was very drunk on that date.

His lack of recall over the events of the night, paired with his lifestyle sleeping with hundreds of women over the years and living a VIP lifestyle without worrying about his obligations to his two children, were key points considered in the case.

However, the court also criticised the prosecutor’s case in particular over failures of the investigators to ascertain the precise time of death of the young woman when called to the crime scene.

The court case continues.