A psychiatric evaluation found that 74-year-old Ivan T. was not criminally responsible due to dementia at the time of the crime, and prosecutors are seeking preventive detention instead of a prison sentence.
On Wednesday, the trial against 74-year-old Croatian citizen Ivan T. began at the District Court in Bülach, in the Swiss canton of Zurich. He is accused of killing his wife Vesna T. (68) and daughter Sanja M. (49) in February 2025 at the family home. According to the indictment, he attacked the women with a kitchen knife with a total length of 33.5 centimeters and a blade of 20.5 centimeters, inflicting more than 200 stab wounds.
The crime occurred on February 17, 2025. That morning, police received a call from residents who saw a bloody person on a balcony calling for help. Upon arrival, officers found two dead women in the house, as reported by Swiss outlet Blick. The prosecution alleges that Ivan T. stabbed his wife 84 times and attacked his daughter 129 times. Both women had numerous injuries to the head, neck, torso, and limbs, and death resulted from acute heart failure and massive blood loss.
According to the prosecution, the wife tried to flee to a ground-floor bathroom, but Ivan T. caught up with her and continued stabbing. They describe his behavior as extremely cruel, noting that he inflicted far more injuries than necessary to cause death. This is so-called overkill, i.e., continuing to inflict fatal injuries after the victim was already severely wounded. The indictment states that the suspect acted with "particular recklessness" in his bloody rampage, causing "excessive pain and suffering" to the victims with more than 200 stab wounds, according to the prosecution. The severe injuries are described over nearly ten pages of the indictment: Vesna had "two stab wounds on the left side of the back of the head, an injury to the left neurovascular bundle, and two stabs to the esophagus," and she also suffered injuries to the left side of the neck, two cervical vertebrae, spleen, kidney, and pancreas. Daughter Sanja sustained injuries to the head, neck, torso, arms, hands, and legs.
During the trial, it was also revealed that Ivan T. had serious health issues before the crime. Experts, as stated by the prosecutor, recommended that the family place him in a care facility and warned that it was necessary. Despite this, the family brought him home on February 12, 2025. Just five days later, the tragedy occurred. According to the defense, Ivan had been "extremely confused and paranoid" a year before the crime and had reportedly been hospitalized multiple times due to his illness. In February 2025, he was in the hospital, and doctors reportedly did not discharge him home but sent him to a nursing home. The family took him out of there five days before the crime.
A psychiatric evaluation, which according to Swiss media is 125 pages long, found that Ivan T. suffered from dementia with psychotic and delusional ideas. He reportedly believed he was being poisoned with wrong medications and that his wife had another partner. The evaluation showed that at the time of the crime, he was unable to understand the wrongfulness of his actions, and he was declared not criminally responsible.
His lawyer, Ueli Vogel-Etienne, stated that due to advanced dementia, his client is likely unable to participate in the proceedings or to comment on what happened. During the trial, the lawyer said that his client should not be portrayed as a "merciless double murderer," claiming he has a long history of illness and had previously shown warning signs such as delusions and confusion, and therefore should not be held criminally responsible. Consequently, the prosecution is seeking that Ivan T. not go to prison but be placed in preventive detention, i.e., that a security measure be imposed due to the risk of reoffending. The prosecutor stated in court that a therapeutic measure is not appropriate because the disease is incurable.
Sanja M. had lived in the United States for years. She came to Switzerland in February last year to help her parents, said the family's lawyer. According to her, Sanja was a support to the family and at the time of the attack tried to protect her mother but ultimately lost her life as well. She grew up in Switzerland as the eldest of five children and left for the U.S. in 1997, where she met her husband and had three daughters with him.
In addition to the criminal part of the proceedings, the court is also discussing the family's compensation claims, which total a six-figure amount. The lawyer also requested reimbursement for travel expenses for relatives who came from the U.S. for the trial. Ivan T. is currently held in the secure ward of a forensic psychiatric institution. Sources disagree on the exact number of stab wounds: Večernji list reports more than 210, while 24sata writes of 213 stab wounds.
