Life sentence for Amy Lopez's killer – cold case solved after 30 years
Koblenz regional court sentenced 81-year-old Hans S. to life imprisonment for the murder of student Amy Lopez – more than three decades after the crime.
Verdict in Koblenz: 81-year-old convicted of murder of Amy Lopez and sentenced to life imprisonment
More than 30 years after the murder of 24-year-old student Amy Lopez, Koblenz regional court issued its verdict on Friday: the 14th criminal division convicted 81-year-old Hans S. of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The three professional judges and two lay judges also established the particularly grave severity of his guilt. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the convicted man accepted the verdict without objection: "I accept the verdict; it is the only thing I can still do right."
The chamber found it proven that Hans S. killed Amy Lopez on 26 September 1994 with premeditation and to satisfy his sexual drive. "On that day he literally went hunting for a woman," the judges explained. "Amy Lopez was unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
The crime and the long path to resolution
The body of the student from Houston, Texas was discovered on the morning of 26 September 1994 by playing children on the grounds of Koblenz's Ehrenbreitstein fortress – in a dilapidated building, only about two hours after Lopez had set out to visit the youth hostel there. The autopsy revealed that she had been raped and stabbed. The perpetrator remained unknown at the time.
For decades, the case lay dormant in files and evidence storage – a so-called cold case. In February 2026, Koblenz prosecutors announced the arrest of Hans S., a sex offender convicted multiple times since the 1970s. The trial before Koblenz regional court began on 18 August amid considerable public interest.
Already during detention and at the start of proceedings, S. confessed to having raped and killed Amy Lopez. Thanks to this confession and newly isolated, conclusive DNA evidence obtained through an extensive procedure, the trial lasted only four days. The prosecution, legal representatives for the victim's family, and the defence were all in agreement: conviction for murder. The verdict is final.
The father's letter
Amy Lopez's father and brother attended the proceedings from the gallery – although, according to their own account, it was barely possible for them to bear the details. They wanted closure.
Two days before the verdict was announced, Koblenz solicitor Kathrin Kienle, the representative for the victim's family, read out a letter in courtroom 128 of the regional court. For approximately six minutes, she conveyed the words of Robert Rimbau, the 85-year-old father of Amy Lopez, and in the second part also those of his son Walter Rimbau, 59, Amy's brother.
"After the crime and throughout all these years, we repeatedly received calls and letters from various sources with information about Amy's case and possible leads on the perpetrator, but they always proved to be baseless. With each call and each message, we went through a rollercoaster of emotions and hope," Kienle read out.
As devout Catholics, as noted in the letter, the father and brother had prayed for all those years that Amy's murderer would commit no further crimes and would one day be found and convicted. The letter also made clear what a burden the uncertainty had been over the decades: "After the senseless murder of our beloved Amy, we never found our inner peace." Father and son wanted the judges – and the murderer – to know "what immeasurable damage and pain he has caused our family."
The sentence that captured the pain most precisely came from Robert Rimbau: "The murderer killed Amy, her future, her family life, and also a part of myself."
The relatives themselves had been unable to deliver these words in person. "We could not have borne the emotional burden of the cruel details of this brutal and senseless crime that came to light during the trial," Kienle read out. And at the same time: "We had to be present at his conviction to find closure for ourselves."
Two old men in the courtroom
Father and son put this intention into practice on Friday. At the verdict announcement, Walter and Robert Rimbau sat across from the defendant – on one side of the courtroom the family of the victim, on the other Hans S. For a brief moment, thus met the father and the murderer of Amy Lopez: two old men whose lives have been tragically intertwined for more than three decades and who will probably both not have enough time left to fully process this late turn of events.
After his arrest in a senior care facility, photos of Hans S. had appeared in tabloid press, in which he appeared white-haired but vital. In court, he supported himself on a walker and appeared frail.
The Amy Lopez case exemplifies what distinguishes a cold case from a closed case: not the passage of time, but the persistence of pain among those left behind.
Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung