- Sharaban wanted to disappear and start a new life, so she devised a plan to fake her own death
- After searching social media for women who looked like her, she targeted beauty blogger Khadidja and lured her to a fake beauty appointment
- The plot unravelled when DNA testing revealed the body wasn’t Sharaban
Beauty blogger Khadidja had everything to live for. The stunning 23-year-old had built a loyal following online with her glamorous make-up tutorials, beauty tips and fun-loving posts.
With long dark hair, olive skin and striking features, thousands of followers clicked on her TikTok and Instagram accounts.
She had no idea her photographs would make her the target of a killer.
In August 2022, 23-year-old beautician Sharaban came across Khadidja’s social media profile while searching for women who looked just like her. The resemblance was uncanny – the two young women could have been sisters.
Sharaban was desperate to escape her failed marriage and ongoing family conflict. And she believed the only way out was to disappear.
Her chilling solution? Find a woman who looked like her, kill the woman, and leave the body behind so everyone believed Sharaban was dead.
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So using fake social media accounts and false identities, Sharaban began contacting women who resembled her.
Her first approach to Khadidja was brazen. Pretending to be German singer Lune, she invited the lookalike to appear in a music video.
But Khadidja was suspicious and contacted the real singer who told her via voice message, ‘It’s fake, sister. Don’t answer!’
Sharaban didn’t give up on her deadly plan, creating another fake Instagram profile, this time posing as a cosmetics professional offering free treatments and a make-up kit in exchange for social media promotion.
The offer appealed to Khadidja. Beauty was her passion and collaborating with a cosmetic brand sounded like a great way to boost her online following.
She agreed to meet up. On August 16, 2022, Sharaban and her friend, 25-year-old Sheqir, arrived in a black Mercedes-Benz and picked up Khadidja outside her apartment in Eppingen, Germany, promising to drive her to a beauty appointment.
That same day, Sharaban told her parents she was travelling to Munich to visit her ex-husband – but neither story was true.
Instead, the trio drove until they stopped in a secluded wooded area, where Khadidja was lured from the car and viciously stabbed more than 50 times. The savage attack left her face so badly disfigured she was unrecognisable.
Her lifeless body was placed in the back seat of the car, before the killers abandoned it in a quiet residential street in the city of Ingolstadt before fleeing.
When Sharaban failed to return home or answer her phone, her worried parents began searching for her.
Just before midnight on August 16, they found her abandoned Mercedes and the body of a young dark-haired woman they believed was their daughter.
But who would want her dead? The devastated parents called police, who initially thought the body was Sharaban, but the next day, DNA testing confirmed the victim wasn’t her.
Desperate to find answers police discovered concerning clues. The Mercedes was parked outside Sheqir’s apartment building making him a key suspect. And Sharaban’s Instagram account history quickly revealed she’d used aliases to message people, including Khadidja, to try and lure them to meet her.
There was also GPS data showing the couple had driven to the beauty blogger’s home.
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Within 24 hours, police tracked down Sharaban and Sheqir to a local pizzeria and arrested them on suspicion of murder.
Prosecutor Veronika Grieser told media outlet Bild evidence showed Sharaban had contacted numerous women on Instagram who looked similar to her, before the murder. ‘It can be assumed that the suspect wanted to go into hiding due to internal disputes with her family and fake her own death,’ she said.
For Khadidja’s family, the truth was devastating. Her mother, Cherifa, who lives in Algeria, said she hadn’t seen her eldest daughter for years, after Khadidja moved to Germany with her father.
But on the day her girl died, she felt something was terribly wrong. ‘Her framed picture fell off the wall,’ she told Insider. ‘As a mother’s intuition, I sensed that she was in crisis.’
Khadidja’s younger sister, Ahlem, learned of the murder on social media. ‘I screamed and cried,’ she said. ‘I still don’t understand the reason.’
The trial began in January 2024 at Ingolstadt District Court. And on December 19, 2024, Sharaban K and Sheqir K – German courts use first name and initial to protect privacy – were both convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Judge Konrad Kliegl described the doppelgänger killing as a ‘disturbing act’.
The court ruled there was a ‘particular severity of guilt’, so the offender won’t qualify for the usual parole consideration after 15 years.
Khadidja’s best friend, Leyla, gave heartbreaking evidence during the trial.
‘She was by far the person with the biggest heart,’ she told the court.
‘She took care of me, and I can’t explain how anyone could do this to her.’
During the trial prosecutors revealed that in mid-July 2022, just a month before the murder, Sharaban K had hired a killer to have her brother-in-law killed as she blamed him for the family dispute. The would-be assassin had taken the deposit but never carried out the attack.
Sharaban K was also found guilty of attempted incitement to murder.
When that plot failed – she’d stolen the life of innocent Khadidja.
