A death, a plagiarism scandal and a quest for revenge: the bizarre tale of Otto Z: After his mother died, Otto became convinced he’d been wronged by the forensic investigators – and that one of them was a fraud. The truth was even stranger (Alessio Perrone, 8 Oct 2026, The Guardian)
On a balmy, quiet evening in June 2020, Otto’s elderly mother, Doria, was fading in her Munich apartment. As she lay with her eyes closed, her pale face, framed by her white hair, was calm.
Otto, masked, gloved and draped in a sterile apron, dozed in a chair beside her. Otto, who sometimes goes by the name Rainer, and whose last name is only known as “Z” because of Germany’s strict privacy laws, was a doctor who had cared for his mother for years, ever since she had suffered a stroke and moved in with him. He described the course of that night to me. He woke to the sound of her short breath and tried to sit her upright. Her eyes were shut, and her lips pursed. She stopped breathing. Otto reached for his phone to call for help, but then Doria opened her eyes and stared into his. She smiled, drew one last deep breath, shut her eyes again, and lay still.
Otto sank into his chair. As a doctor, he had seen death many times, but his own mother’s passing sent him into shock. He felt frozen, watching the windows glisten in the fading light. He was 66, and his brother and father had died years before. He had no friends. He had given all of his time, energy and attention to his mother’s care, and now that his task was suddenly over, he had no one to turn to. He mourned in solitude, with an impromptu ritual. He lit candles and set metal plates at the four corners of her bed. He sat beside her and thought about her soul.
Once the rite was complete, Otto picked up the phone and called a funeral home. He knew the procedure: as a doctor, he could issue his own mother’s death certificate. After he hung up, Otto waited. It was the last calm moment he would experience for many months.
