A German nightclub owner who hosted Heidi Klum and George Clooney among others, and who was arrested for pushing his girlfriend off a balcony to her death, may have been strangling her as well.
New revelations say that forensic evidence reportedly points to strangulation marks present on the neck of the victim Anja Koerner, 39, who was allegedly murdered by her boyfriend Daniel Hoeferlin, 49.
Hoeferlin is a well-known figure on the Berlin party scene in Germany, having hosted the likes of Dustin Hoffmann, George Clooney, Heidi Klum and Denzel Washington.
He was arrested on suspicion of murder in February after his girlfriend Koerner was found dead by residents in the back garden of her home on Dornacherstrasse street in the Swiss city of Basel.
Hoeferlin has been in custody since then, with the Basel City Public Prosecutor’s Office announcing that Koerner, a German citizen, had been the victim of a violent crime.
In the case’s latest development, marks suggesting strangulation were found on the victim’s neck, according to the results of a forensic examination, the Swiss weekly magazine Weltwoche has revealed.
The victim, who worked as a masseuse, had bruises on one side of her neck and her hyoid bone – a U-shaped bone in the neck that supports the tongue – and larynx were broken, according to Swiss newspaper Blick, quoting the magazine article.
The suspect reportedly ran two popular nightclubs, 90 Grad and Felix, along with the luxury hotel Adlon, where he hosted celebrity parties.
Both he and his girlfriend were not only active in the party scene, they also shared pictures of their VIP lifestyle online.
They presented themselves as a happy couple in public and could usually be spotted together. They were residing in Basel where the suspect moved to in order to be closer to his partner.
However, residents in the suspect’s apartment block reported a corpse in the back garden on 8th February that was identified as Anja Koerner, whom Hoeferlin was suspected of pushing from the apartment balcony.
A longtime friend of Hoeferlin said: “The times when I saw them together, they seemed respectful, harmonious and loving towards one another. They also hugged all the time.”
Friends of the couple were shocked and expressed their condolences through social media.
The investigation is ongoing.
