A Crime Story of Milieus, Nightlife and Luxurious Lifestyles in Frankfurt’s Upper Class.
On May 9th 2018 the corpse of Irina Aizina (29) was found in Frankfurt’s largest park “Nidda Park”, with 27 knife stabs into the face and neck. Only a few days later Jan Mai (53) was arrested and put into custody.
Mai was suspected of the murder because according to witnesses, he owed Aizina money from the sale of the “First in” bar they owned together in Frankfurt’s city center. The suspicion grew when Mai’s DNA was found at the crime scene.
Irina Aizina was the owner of Irina & Co Real Estate GmbH with only a mailbox listed as the address and books with red numbers (Northdata.com, 2016). She was driving a luxury Mercedes GLE and invested 175,000 Euros in a bar called “First in” where she worked as a waitress. Aizina was also the daughter of Oleg Aizina, someone who is said to be linked to organized crime in Moldova (Iskandar, 2018). Not only did Jan Mai testify in court that he was “well aware of the family Aizina’s ‘potential’ ”, after her murder, family Aizina members supposedly arrived in Frankfurt “highly emotionalized” and “of unsound mind” (Iskandar, 2018).
Aizina is described by many articles as outgoing and impulsive “partygirl” (Teutsch, 2019). The Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper reports in an article how “the court learns a lot about Frankfurt’s night life in the trial about the murder in Nidda Park”.
It becomes even more bizarre when reviewing the testimonies of prosecution’s main witness Stanislava T. When being asked about her relationship to the victim, she testified that they were “best friends” and that their relationship consisted of occasional “fist-fights and cocaine” (Teutsch, 2019).
News platforms such as the Daily Beast report on Jan Mai as being a character of “big muscle” with “connections to the Hells Angels motorcycle gang” (Huetlin, 2018).
The ‘Biss’ investment magazine released an article about Mai in 2018 stating that “among the public, Mai was regarded as a millionaire”. This assumption is further underpinned by articles labled: “Mai sells his penthouse for 1,75 million” published by BILD (Pfad, 2019) or a calculation by the court to determine his net worth at the time of the murder being 1.3 million Euros (Lang, 2019). When trying to prove that Mai was not broke, he testified in court that he also owned 50% of the house in Oberursel where his kids and wife lived and that his real estate investments resulted in 300 thousand Euro profit (Lang, 2019).
However, investigations revealed that his business’s accounts were all on the debit side and that he had no liquidity left (Lang, 2019). “Narcissism and Hybriss” is what got him involved in the murder says Judge Kaiser-Klan (Schlender, 2020). “You wanted to maintain the picture of the wealthy and successful gastronomist in public” is what the judge states in his verdict.
The latest headlines about Mai prior to his arrest however involved both him and his supposed murder victim. During New Year’s Eve in 2017 the bar “First in”, run by Aizina and Mai at the time, made headlines in the BILD about refugees entering and molesting women. This story went around the world as it was a heated topic in Germany at the time. Only one year prior to that was the scandal of 2000 refugees raping women right after Germany opened the borders to all Syrian refugees (Noack, 2016). Since German politicians were accused of hiding this incident and only leaked documents had proven the extent of this event, Mai and Aizina’s accusations indicated another failure of German law enforcement and foreign politics. This was used by the right wing party AFD who was emerging at the time for their propaganda campaign against foreigners. However, according to the Washington Post, these accusations were proven false, when investigators found out that Aizina, who testified, was in a different country at the time of the incident (Taylor, 2017). After being asked why Mai went public with this story, he reported: “I was mad that the people in charge said that nothing happened during New Year’s, when I told my friend Kerry Redington about what was going on in that night, he offered to connect me with the BILD. When we met with the BILD in the “Frist in” bar, Aizina was there and offered herself as a witness.” The Trump supporter Kerry Reddington is an American member of the ‘local foreigner’s representation’, chairman of ‘Republicans Overseas Germany eV’ and a sympathizer of the AFD (Majic, 2017).
Due to the major media exposure of this topic, the German government started an investigation and filed charges against Mai and Aizina for inventing a crime. Both of them were scheduled to appear in court only months after the murder. This caused heavy speculations in the media ultimately after the body was found of Aizina, that Mai killed her because of her lying in the news and ruining their business (Langengau, 2018). Only months after the scandal, the “First in” bar was sold for 350 thousand Euros.
Nevertheless, the murder case seems clear to the public, the verdict states: Jan Mai could not pay back the money he owed Azina, after selling their business. Therefore he enticed her into the park with the wrong information that she would receive her money there from an unanimous third party (Archyw, 2021). The only evidence is drops of blood at the crime scene that belong to Mai and a bizarre testimony by Stanislava T. who stated that Mai still owed Aizina “20,000 Euros” (Teutsch, 2019).
Jan Mai had no criminal record prior to his arrest in 2018. He is in prison since May 2018 and still asserts his innocence. His appeal for a revision of his trial was denied in June 2021 (Archyw, 2021).
Work Cited
“Aizina & CO. Real Estate Gmbh, Frankfurt a. Main.” Www.northdata.com, https://www.northdata.de/Aizina+%26+Co.+Real+Estate+GmbH,+Frankfurt+a.+Main/Amtsgericht+Frankfurt+am+Main+HRB+103860.
Archyw. “Judgment against Jan Mai Is Final.” Archyworldys, 9 June 2021, https://www.archyworldys.com/judgment-against-jan-mai-is-final/.
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Langenau, Lars. “Ein ‘Sex-Mob’-Skandal, EINE Tote, Ein Angeklagter.” Süddeutsche.de, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12 May 2018, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/mord-in-frankfurt-ein-sex-mob-skandal-eine-tote-ein-angeklagter-1.3976930.
Majic, Danijel. “Einsturz Eines Lügengebäudes.” Https://Www.fr.de, Frankfurter Rundschau, 14 Feb. 2017, https://www.fr.de/frankfurt/einsturz-eines-luegengebaeudes-11664340.html.
Noack, Rick. “Leaked Document Says 2,000 Men Allegedly ASSAULTED 1,200 German Women on New Year’s Eve.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 19 Apr. 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/10/leaked-document-says-2000-men-allegedly-assaulted-1200-german-women-on-new-years-eve/.
Pfad, Daniela. “Frankfurt: Jan M. Verkauft Seine WOHNUNG FÜR 1,75 Mio.” Bild.de, BILD, 14 Oct. 2019, https://www.bild.de/regional/frankfurt/frankfurt-aktuell/frankfurt-jan-m-verkauft-seine-wohnung-fuer-1-75-mio-65347546.bild.html.
Taylor, Adam. “German Police Say Major Newspaper’s Story about a Rampaging Arab ‘Sex Mob’ Was Wrong.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 18 Apr. 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/14/german-police-say-major-newspapers-story-about-a-rampaging-arab-sex-mob-was-wrong/.
Teutsch, Oliver. “Mord Im NIDDAPARK: „Partygirl’ Im Zeugenstand.” Https://Www.fr.de, Frankfurter Rundschau, 6 Sept. 2019, https://www.fr.de/frankfurt/frankfurt-hessen-mord-niddapark-zeugin-sagt-gericht-12976750.html.
Schlender https://www.main-spitze.de/lokales/rhein-main/hybris-und-narzissmus_21425948