A U.S. Army veteran extradited to Germany to stand trial in the nearly 50-year-old cold case slaying of a German teenager was convicted of murder in a German court on July 29, 2025. (Aspen Reid/U.S. Air Force)

GRAFENWOEHR, Germany — A former U.S. soldier extradited to stand trial for the killing of a pregnant German teen nearly 50 years ago has been found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

Tommy Molina, 71, was convicted of murder July 29 by a three-judge panel in Schweinfurt District Court for fatally stabbing 18-year-old Cornelia Hümpfer on April 20, 1978.

Her body was found a day later, discarded along a dirt road in Schweinfurt, a Bavarian city about halfway between Frankfurt and Nuremberg.

A Nebraska native, Molina was long suspected in Hümpfer’s death. The two were reportedly having an affair and he was questioned about the killing, extradition records state. He told German authorities at the time he had been with his wife, Linda, who told police she could not remember if that was true.

U.S. Army Europe and Africa on Tuesday did not immediately have the details of Molina’s service record.

German police reopened the case in 1995 after his subsequent wife, Cindy Newstead, told Army officials that Molina, while intoxicated, had admitted to killing a pregnant lover with a knife in Schweinfurt, the extradition order said. He again denied involvement.

A Schweinfurt court issued an arrest warrant for Molina in February 2021. A Nebraska judge in 2023 granted the request to extradite him.

Molina arrived in Germany in June 2024 and his trial started in February, court spokeswoman Kerstin Leitsch told Stars and Stripes on Tuesday.

Prosecutors said Molina met Hümpfer at around 8 p.m. near Dittelbrunn. They parked his white Fiat 124 on a dirt road off State Road 2271 and had consensual sex, Nebraska extradition records say.

Hümpfer told Molina she was pregnant and planned to tell his wife, the German indictment states. While leaving, she was stabbed in the back and neck 14 times with a 5-inch blade, the indictment said.

Police found tire tracks near Hümpfer’s body that matched the type on Molina’s car, the extradition order said.

Witnesses reported seeing two people in a car matching the Fiat’s description around the time of the killing, the extradition records state. The car had the green license plates given to U.S. soldiers at the time.

Investigators noted that the diamond-shaped pattern of Molina’s car mats was visible on the sole of Hümpfer’s shoe and on her skirt, the extradition records said. A DNA sample taken in 2021 matched five separate samples taken from Hümpfer’s knee-length stocking.

Johannes Makepeace, the German-American lawyer who defended Molina, said Wednesday that his client maintains his innocence.

Makepeace criticized the court’s reliance on what he described as hearsay and said the DNA results did not establish what happened. He also said that some of the physical evidence had been lost by police.

Molina plans to appeal the verdict, said the spokeswoman Leitsch, who is also a district court judge.

German law requires the verdict to be delivered in writing, which can take up to two months, before the appeal can proceed, Makepeace said.