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April 1999: German Duo Convicted of Making Snuff Film
Two men in Germany were recently sentenced to life imprisonment for committing murder while producing a snuff film. It's the first such conviction ever. The men filmed themselves sexually assaulting and torturing a 21-year-old woman for a snuff film they had hoped to sell in America for $16,000. Frankfurt-based prosecutor Job Tillman says there's a ready market for films depicting violence against women and children -- especially in America. Although one of the men is appealing the ruling, the other says he views jail as an opportunity to work on himself and his problems.

Michael Leidig writes 4/13/99 from Vienna for the Daily Telegraph, a London newspaper:

Ernst Dieter Korzen, 37, and Stefan Michael Mahn, 30, [videotaped] themselves sexually assaulting and torturing a 21-year-old woman in 1997. The victim died before the production was complete and the pair kidnapped a second woman to finish the video. But she escaped and alerted authorities, who arrested the men.

Wolfgang Rahmer, the chief prosecutor, told the court: "From my experience this represents a new depth in perversion. You see the victim begging for her life, pain being inflicted and massive sexual torture."

The court was told that the murdered woman, Jueleyha Akpinar, was working as a prostitute in Cologne when she met the two men in November. They offered her drugs and money to go with them to the remote bungalow in Kierspe-Roensal, near Hagen. A lack of direct evidence had previously led to widespread scepticism over the existence of a snuff movie industry, with many writing it off as an "urban myth". But Wolfgang Rahmer said he had no doubt that such an industry existed.

Both men were jailed for life in a secure psychiatric institution. Judge Hoerst Werner Herkenberg said Korzen should not expect his case to be re-examined for at least 18 years, and that Mahn would have to wait at least

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