An Austrian case drawing comparisons to France's headline-making Pelicot case has left a 39-year-old woman dead after an alleged sexual assault and her husband under investigation. The woman was discovered by her teenage daughter in their Marchtrenk home on June 26, near Wels, per CNN. Prosecutors say the bleeding, severely injured woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Her 51-year-old husband initially told police she'd died during "rough sex," and authorities saw no crime, per the Telegraph. A later autopsy, however, indicated her death had come after a sexual assault.
Investigators now allege the husband repeatedly drugged his wife and charged other men close to $600 each to assault her while she was unconscious. Police say his phone showed searches on how to incapacitate someone and chats in which he called his wife "dead meat." A 51-year-old neighbor is also in custody, along with the husband, admitting to assaulting the woman twice, including on the day she died, though prosecutors believe only the husband is tied to her death.
The husband is now being investigated on charges of abuse of a defenseless or impaired person resulting in death, which could bring him a sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison, or even life behind bars. Murder charges also aren't off the table. Additional suspects are being investigated in the case that's been dubbed by one prosecutor as "Pelicot 2.0." (Another case with similarities to Gisele Pelicot's also recently emerged in the UK.)
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