James Schmidt

James Schmidt (born Lual Yai Fayin Lual in 1992), currently known under the name Cornelius Bach, is a South Sudanese-born Danish serial killer and rapist who killed three pensioners in Copenhagen's Østerbro district from February to March 2019, just two years after being released after serving out a 7-year prison sentence for raping a 14-year-old girl as a juvenile. After initially being convicted for two of the murders and acquitted of the third, he was tried again and successfully convicted in all three, resulting in a life sentence.

While he was regarded as a nice boy by his immediate family, Lual was notorious amongst female students and teachers at his primary school for either grooming or groping them. In 2002, at the age of 10, allegations arose that he had attempted to rape a 6-year-old girl, but he was presumably not charged due to his young age. Three years later, unable to take proper care of her son anymore, Lual's mother sent him to a foster home. Despite the staff's best efforts, he proved to be problematic as he often fought with other children and seemed obsessed with sex, often shouting that he was "God's gift to women." Because of this, he was often moved around various juvenile detention centers, where he continued to cause problems. Eventually, he was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, with the examiners concluding that Lual suffered from narcissistic personality disorder and showed a complete lack of empathy for others' suffering. At a later court hearing regarding this attack, Lual tried to place the blame on the woman, claiming she suddenly got up and took off his clothes in an attempt to sexually assault him, and he resorted to strangling her in self-defense. He was ordered to undergo another psychiatric evaluation, which reiterated previous findings that he was a narcissist who showed a complete lack of empathy. Notably, Schmidt made several boastful claims, amongst which was that members of Aarhus Fremad thought he was a talented footballer and that he was the modern-day Martin Luther King Jr. He also openly and proudly proclaimed to be a member of the Social Democrats and that his brother worked as a surgeon in Rigshospitalet, both of which have not been confirmed with certainty. Between early 2018 and March 2019, a series of deaths took place in the complex, which was considered an unusually high amount. The first to raise suspicion was the mysterious 7 February 2019 death of 83-year-old Eva Hoffmeister, but due to the police's slow response time, her relatives, who believed she had died of natural causes, had her body cremated before an autopsy could take place.

Not long after, another suspicious death was recorded at the complex on 2 March, when 80-year-old Peter Jensen Olsen was found deceased at his apartment. While it was initially thought that he had also died of natural causes, an autopsy performed on his body concluded that he had been strangled. While authorities were still investigating, yet another death occurred only five days later: this time, 81-year-old Inez Hasselblad was found dead in her apartment. She was found by her daughter, Malene, who found the circumstances surrounding her death highly suspicious and resorted to making a list of the things she found odd. Eventually, she called her mother's bank and was notified that her Dankort card had been blocked, and while the employee provided no details, she advised Hasselblad to call the police. After this, she immediately informed the police, who eventually identified and arrested Schmidt on 9 March in front of the cinema "Imperial", where he had just watched a screening of Captain Marvel.

After Schmidt's arrest, investigators interrogated him as to why he had Hasselblad's card, to which he replied that he had simply found it on the floor of the complex. Unconvinced by his explanations, authorities investigated the deaths in depth, concluding that Schmidt had used the Dankort cards of Hoffmeister, Olsen and Hasselblad. Because of this, he was charged with three counts of murder and fraud, for which he vehemently denied responsibility. During the entirety of the first trial, the media did not reveal the suspect's name because of a gag order, but confirmed that he had been convicted of raping a minor girl under his birth name. This ruling was later overturned by the High Court, which rescinded the gag order and allowed the suspect's name to be published in the press. His defence attorney contested that while Schmidt did indeed know and had visited Hasselblad before, he was not attempting to hide it, which was supposedly what the actual killer would attempt to do. At one point, he also directly addressed Inez Hasselblad's daughter, Malene, saying that she was ruining his life by having his image displayed on national television, for which he was reprimanded by the judge and ordered to calm down. In the end, he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the judges, who found no mitigating circumstances to issue a lesser sentence. As the verdict was read out, Schmidt just sat expressionless in his chair, without uttering a single word.