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| - Prosecutors on Monday demanded a life sentence for a Danish man accused of bludgeoning a German backpacker to death 34 years ago on a ferry from Sweden to Finland. Herman Himle, an 18-year-old scout at the time of the crime, appeared before judges in Southwest Finland district court and pleaded not guilty to the murder of Klaus Schelke, 20, and attempted murder of his girlfriend Bettina Taxis, then 22. The two students from West Germany, on a tour of the Nordic countries, were discovered with serious head injuries in the open-air sleeping area on the upper deck of the Viking Sally cruise ship on July 28, 1987. The pair were airlifted to hospital but Schelkle was pronounced dead on arrival. Taxis survived but sustained serious and lifelong injuries. A court document seen by AFP described the attack as "particularly brutal and cruel given the (victims were) asleep in a sleeping bag and entirely defenceless." Prosecutors said they will show the court text messages sent by the accused "in which he claims to have killed and got away with murder", and referred to the killings on the ship. They will also question how the accused "came to know that (the murder weapon was a) welding hammer," given that police had not released that information, the document said. However on the first day of proceedings, which are due to last a week, judges struck out some evidence from 2016 police interviews of the defendant, which were conducted without a lawyer present. Himle's defence lawyer also claimed the text message confessions were not real and only made in order to scare his ex-wife, Finnish media reported. Although police questioned everyone on board at the time, the murder remained unsolved in part because of incomplete passenger records and a lack of DNA and CCTV evidence. In September last year, Finnish police announced they had identified a suspect after receiving new information in 2016. The Viking Sally was later renamed the MS Estonia, which in 1994 sank during a crossing from Estonia to Sweden, claiming 852 lives. sgk/po/jz
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