The family of a woman who was tortured and murdered is suing the authorities for EUR 150,000, claiming that police missed the corpse of an earlier victim when they searched the killer’s home, which would have seen him arrested.

They also allege that police failed to notice the victim’s number on the killer’s phone.

Timo M., 41, full surname not revealed due to strict local privacy laws, has since been jailed for life for killing at least two women for fun.

He was living in the town of Rendsburg in the central part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein when he murdered at least two women in the city of Kiel.

He first killed 26-year-old Sebat Alimanovska from the German city of Geesthacht, in Schleswig-Holstein in August 2018.

He had invited her to his apartment in Rendsburg, and once inside, he put a plastic bag over her head after first tying her up. When he had finished torturing her, he dumped her body in his attic.

The motive for the killing was reportedly that he found it a turn-on to torture women, and he also robbed them as an afterthought.

In September 2020, two years after the murder of the first woman and two months before his arrest, Timo M. tied up and killed another woman called Leyhan Feim Veith, 40, in her apartment in Rendsburg.

The killer also took the 40-year-old’s distinctive, red mobile phone, a Samsung Galaxy A20s, as well as her apartment keys, her clothes and some cash that he had found in her home.

He was arrested on 4th November 2020 for the murder of Veith, who worked as a prostitute, after he was identified as her last known client. The body of the first victim, Alimanovska, was then found in his attic.

The first victim’s skeletal remains were left hidden in the attic until investigators finally found them, despite there having been a prior search of his flat a year and a half before the murder, according to German daily Bild.

During the search, the investigators allegedly failed to search the attic, where it is claimed that they would have found first victim’s body.

Veith’s mother Gultyen Yasif and her brother Deniz Memdu are each asking for EUR 75,000 (GBP 62,500), claiming that their relative would still be alive if the police had found the body of the first victim in the attic during their initial search.

Lawyer Atilla Aykac, 51, said: “Despite the decision [to search the apartment the first time], the officers did not search the attic. That was amateurish. A corpse was overlooked.”

He added: “The officers did not confiscate his cell phone either. They could have found the number of the first victim on it.”

He said that the “state police office has asked for an extension of the deadline for further investigations”, and he added that he does not intend to back down and that “if necessary, we will sue the Ministry of the Interior in the civil court.”

A spokesman for the State Police Office said: “We are currently investigating the matter.”