A 33-year-old German society hostess who once boasted she was a "woman of luxury" yesterday admitted setting up an insurance fraud that led to her plastic surgeon husband being beaten to death by a gang of eastern European car thieves.
Tatjana Gsell told a court in Nurembergat the opening of her trial that she had attempted the fraud because she and her car dealer boyfriend were in dire financial straits after having run up over €100,000 ($190,000) in bills at a Marbella hotel.
She is accused of attempted fraud and concealing her crime from police, but has been cleared of complicity over the killing of her 76-year-old husband, Franz. Two members of a car-stealing gang are likely to face trial over his death.
Police launched an investigation in January last year after masked intruders broke into the Gsell's luxury Nuremberg villa and attacked Gsell, allegedly with pickaxe handles. The surgeon later died in hospital from his injuries.
At the time Tatjana Gsell was holidaying in Marbella with her boyfriend Helmut Becker, a 61-year-old financially strapped car dealer.
The case has captured the headlines in Germany because of the nature of the Gsells' marriage.
Until she met her husband, Tatjana Gsell was an unattractive, dumpy provincial girl named Tatjana Gick.
After marrying she subjected herself to no less than 12 of her husbands' operations which transformed her into a raven-haired, silicone-packed Barbie Doll.
Her toupee-wearing husband boasted: "I delight in having transformed my wife into a work of art."
Desperate for cash, Tatjana Gsell is alleged to have contacted a shadowy Romanian car thief named Welimir V. with the aim of carrying out a car insurance fiddle with the family Mercedes 500 SL.
The car was to have been stolen and smuggled to eastern Europe, enabling Tatjana Gsell to collect from the insurance company.
However, the planned "theft" never took place and the transaction ended with an angry altercation between Gsell and the car thieves.
