Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.

On  july the 17th, 1975 firefighters sifting through the remains of a fire in a hamburg apartment block made a gruesome  discovery .

 they found all different kinds of body parts and had to examine them,the  investigators asked themself what was going  on 

at first  nothing made sense and as the police  began to search the small attic flat the true horror of the discovery became apparant.

they found a corpse, they found two corpses.they found three corpses.they  found four corpses.

it was a huge story ,because things like this don’t exactly  happen often in Hamburg.

a man named fritz honker had been murdering women and dismembering their bodies in his home  for the past five years.

 he claimed that jack the ripper had told him to do it 

it  was simply crimes of opportunity but with a horrible edge, he showed no compassion for the  victims. he didn’t respect their bodies or  feel  remorse,

clearly he just  cut them up

he carved his name in history  as one of the world’s most evil  killers 

the brutal murders of 39  year old  fritz honka left the whole of west germany reeling   when a fire  ripped through his appartment block on  the 17th of july 1975.

out of the ashes the butchered remains of four women  were revealed. hidden away in honka´s  attic.

nobody knew they´d been missing from the streets of hamburg.

it was a shocking crime scene even for the hardened murder squad. the lead investigators on the case were jurgen vierle and carl pries.

 mr pries: ” they told us where the body parts , so inside the building we went up to the attic and there were two flats  mr  honka’s flat and another one. and then there was a toilet and  a loft and  in this loft were the body parts”

mr vierle:” we were standing outside the door when a small man  walked up the stairsthe flathe lived in was completely filled with smoke. it was right next to the attic  that had caught fire, i just happened to be standing right by the  front door of his flat  and he goes:

” what’s going on here ?” as you can se it has been a fire.i said .” oh” he said. that ‘s really bad looks like i wont be able to live here anymore.i then asked him hwo has the key to this atticroom and who owns it. t o which he replied  this is my  attic- room and i am the only one  who’s  got the  access to it . and in that moment there were reasonable grounds to  suspect him of a crime.

consequently  ,investigators took him to the  offices of the police headquarters at  berlina tournament.

The story of  this elusive serial killer  begins over  80 years  ago

Fritz honka  was born into a working class family in  Liepzig east  germany 

on the 31st of july  1935.

He had eight siblings .the relationship with his father was very difficult ,  he mentions an incidentwhere his father supposedly wanted to kill him and connection to his mother was also rather cold.

when he was 11  years old, she  left the family , so he always had a rather crushing relationship with his parents. all the children were given away ,which  will have had quite an  effect on him.

after  his father died in 1946 , 11 year old  honka was left to grow up  in an  orphanage. his  childhood was far from  ideal .

He had quite  hard time growing up,these were  quite turbulant times in  Germany   but for’a young  lad who was considerably shorter then his peer’s

he didn’t  always fit  in very  well  at school and that  made him a target for  bullies  so he was always the brunt of  someone else’s joke.

so he  didnt  had a very easy time of it at all .

The evidence what was  shown in the court. ( photo : archiv)

After leaving school  Honka began work as a bricklayers apprentice but it didn’t last  long  in  1951, age 16 ,he fled from communist east germany and headed west.

after honka had strangled four women ,he sawn them with this foxtail. he stuffed the limbs into plastic bags and hid them in a shed of his attic flat .(photo:florian Quandt)

He then came over to west  germany and worked in the farming industry, before relocating to hamburg.

he worked for a security service company as a night wathchman

so he had always  a steady income which of course gave him socially an advantage with the crowds he hung out with.

age 22 he meets  his wife and they get  married and things are quite normal and quite regular,but both of them  have a bit ofan issue  with alcohol.

both of them tend to drink to excess and their relationship becomes quite volatile and quite chaotic.

they attract the attention of neighbors and  the authorities  when they’re arguing. and they overheard having domestic disputes, so it’s  not a particularly nicehousehold for very long.

After separating from his wife in 1967,32 year old honka was alone and working the graveyard shift as a night watchman.

so he rented a small one-bedroom apartment which was very close to the ted light district in  hamburg.

and in this apartment he created his own little  world basically , he wasn’t subject to any kind of informal  surveillance of  other people who would question what your doing.

so it was his own little zone . essentially and this is a place where he would live in  something of a little bubble.this  is a recipe for someone like  him

honka spent his free time drinking in 24-hour bars  around reeperbahn hamburg in the city’s notorious red light district.

there will be lots of reasons why people turn to alcohol, in this case here´s an individual who didn’t have  a lot of control over his life.as a child there was  a lot  going on around him that  he had  very little power over whatsoever.

stair to fritz loft

and what can happen with people who experience circumstances like these is that in adulthood,they develop an intense need to be in control of what’s going  on  around them .some people  thar will manifest itself in self- medication .

one of the bars was the famous golden handschuh, the golden glove,it was  named like that  because it belonged to a famous boxer .

and right across was the elbschlosskeller. a bar where mainly homeless  alcoholics or drifters hung out.these people had reached rock bottom,at least the women who went  there.

The  golden glove soon became  one o f honka’s favorites haunts. he would regularly visit  after  finishing his shift as a night watchman

when  honka came in  wearing his uniform you could see  he was very proud of himself. but he was never pushy

people who didn’t know him ,hwo just saw him  briefly thought he looked a bit odd.

he looked  a bit creepy.

A traffick accident in his twenties had left Honka with a crooked nose and a pronounced squint.

he’s an individual who has never really had a  very positive relationship when it comes to women,so  he was aboandoned by his mother ,the relationship he had with his wife was quite chaotic and quite unstable,so there isn’t a really positive association. with women in his mind  at this point in time.

honka is a mentally unstable intellectually chellanged runt of a man who has profound sexual problems.he  finds sex with a women almost  impossible and therefore demands oralsex.

he is a drunk, a lonerwho has has almost no paternal maternal caring as a child.he was  no one´s idea of mr universe ,but he was clearly or at least  able and could afford to hire prostitutes

Honks had taken a liking  to older prostitutes,how coulld  often be found in bars around the reeperbahn.

these was homeless women ,who had no  income, he had money, he could  offer alcohol, he could offer a place to stay and that made it quite easy for him .

wouldn’t say to make friends ,but certanly to make  the aquauntance of people ,whether that’ll be femalle or male and as a result, he was  well known in these circles he moved inthe lowest class of society that was his world and it was a world that was about implode .

on  the 17th of july ,1975

a fire in honka’s apartment block would lead to a startling revelation. the dismembered bodies of four  women

The fire service responded to the fire  incident and when they found the bodies in the attic, they called  the homicide squad . investigators made they way  to the crimescene

the police waited for honker,the police wauted for honker to arrive home from his shift  as a night watchman.he was immediately arrested and taken to the police stationd for questioning.

investigators  set out to do their work and walk through the crime scene and during the crime scene investigation a mummified corps was found,

and underneath this mummified corpse lay a  partly decomposed torso.

investigators  broke down walls, broke through the floor and searched

throughout the whole flat we noticed this very strong smell. a typical smell of decay mixed with that  of burning.

and so ,this led investigators to search more .and they found a hatch  facing the  side of the roof, that had been covered with wallpaper,

and then broke into the side  of the roof  and found a large  object wrapped in bed linen with a corpse inside.

they  took it out and announced that  they had discovered another body .

the press soon got wind of this shocking discovery  and headed  forthe crimescene.

the firebrigade was already there

the firefighters have a good nose and they can  of  course pick up the smell of dacaying bodies .

then  they  found honkar’s bags, news reporter  were downstairs getting information from the police”we  found four corpses ” 

 it was a huge  story  because this don’t happenvery often in hamburg 

up and down the street, the news that  this wasn’t just a fire, spread quicky, and a lot of people turned up

you can see in the photo that they  looked into the police car, this cluster of people

left and right 

it wasjust sensational, also for the people who lived there.

it was simply  unbelievable,they probably knew him.they knew honkar.

the following day it was on the front page of all  of hamburg’s newspaper

 as forensic experts worked tirelessly at the crime scene,detectives at the  police station were beginning to question Honka about  the gruesome discovery.

during the interrogation you have to try to get  a confession or at least try to get clues explain the evidence found at the crime scene.

only this evidence from the crime scene could help to confront him with allegations that  eventually lead to charging him .

 investigators explained that they found four bodies inhis living room at the adjoining rooms of his flat and they  confronted him with that.

he had nothing to say about it .

then he said i dont knwo,i’ve got nothing to say about this , and i don’t know what you want from me.

of course in that moment you accuse him and you say ” how it is possible that we found a wrapped up body behind the disgusied wall in your living room. 

and what about the two body parts we found in the covered hole behind your toilet.the mummified corps and the torso.

and what about the fac t they found  loads of  women’s dresses and initial examinations of the  wrapped up body ,show that it is a woman,so is the mummified body .

just as the chopped up bodyinvestigators found under the coals, also belongs to a women .

when investigators confronted him and asked him what have you got to say to that! he just  shrugged his  shoulders and said ” no idea”

and there you are ,the officer leading the interrogation and you  need to prove to him that he does have something  to do with it

with Honka not giving  them any information the police began the arduous task of trying to identify the remains of all four women.

and they got a big break early on missing parts of one of the bodies had been discovered four years previously.

In november, 1971,a worker at a factory yard in the gaubstrabe came across some junk and when he rummaged through it, he found body parts. 

he saw a hand sticking out of a pile of  rubbish, he immediately informed the police and the local offcers on duty  who were the first  arrive at the scene informed investigtors tht the findings were indeed body parts.

they went  to investigate further and spotted several chopped up body parts . only the  torso and the right leg were  missing, everything else was there but cut into pieces

beside the body parts ,they found breasts that have been cut off suggesting ,this was in all probably related to a sex offense .

allthough the head was badly decomposed in 1971 ,expert was able to reconstruct it well enough to enable the police to provide a photo to the press.

 the victim was identified as 42 year old prostitute Gertrud Bräuer before the fire  at honka’s apartment. the case had remained unsolved.

from the body parts found in gaubstrabe to the torso found on the premises of honkar’s living quarters and subsequently investigators  could charge him with this crime 

honkar had murdered Gertrud Bräuer in december 1970 after  picking  her  up in the golden glove. it was the first time he’d killed someone

investigators believe he strangled the 42 year old to death because she refused to have sex with him.

he dismembered herbody  using a saw ,to simply cut off a limb is a fairly straightforward procedure,you need a knife to get through the flesh and a saw to get  through the bone. it doesn’t have to be a complex thing to do , it’s not like you’re a surgeon doing an opertion

Gertrud Bräuer a hairdresser and part-time prostitute was a regular  in the bar. time after time prostitutes are killed because no one reports them missing.they  live on the edge of the law

they’re long past in connection with their families, they are living in a twilight world  and well , you missa prostitute,well she could have given up or she could have gone to another city or she could have gone back to her mother  or whtever it may have been .and so  the’y’re very seldom tracked.

even though honka refused to cooperate with  the police, they had now identified  one of his victims.each time they interrogated him detectives tried to find out more  about the other three women .

honka frequently go to san pauli,  and other  bars in san pauli and  drink vast amount  of alcohol and investigators  found a lot  of alkohol in honka’s flat.

and investigtors have seen the wall in his place, there full of pornographic posters they also found a plastic dolly used to satisfy himself when no women was around

the aim was to unsettle him , the  uncertainty produced insecurity,his replies to specific questions were different to those he had given the previous day 

after taking the life of another human for  the first time in december 1970 honka wouldn’t kill again  for almost four years

what happened to start him off again in agust 1974.

Honka’s alcoholism had probably got so intense by that time that he was  desperatately out of control and perhaps he just  had genuinely  some kind of psychotic break.

some kind of brainstorm that led him to kill

the police had a wealth of evidence   against  Honka, but they were desperate for him to make a full confession

if he continued with his silence they  may never identify the other three murdered women 

it smelled really odd in the house ,there were also  foreigners living andhonka always the foreigners cook in a funny  way.they  use strange spices in their food and that’s why it stinks.

none of  the neighbors suspected that it wasn’t  the foreigners

 that the smell came  from the body in honka’s flat and they had started to wreak .

once somebody dies decomposition will begin, there will be an  increase to start with in particularly the smell that comes from the body as the body functions render down , things start to decompose.

everywhere in the flat were scented stones ,all around  the skirting boards. the toilet was full of them, they were everywhere.

the longer the bodies had remained in honka’s attic the harder it was to get rid of them the dead body is difficult to move and once rigomorta  start to set in and the body becomes stiff,it’s not even flexible to move it , can be very hard to do.

this is really illustrative of the type of serial killer ,he was, he wasn’t massively organized in terms of covering up his crimes 

he would have the corpses of his victims right there  in his flat.

he didn’t actually dispose of them , so this was something he was doing just kind of short term reactionary,just kind of coping with  each day as it aross

when the police went to honka’s favorite bars and broke the news that bodies had been found in his flat, they were  met with complete disbelief.

no one expected that of him.no one.even if you´’ve met him you definitely have said “him? no ,he’s  too harmless”

Journalists also went round the bars to  get background color for their stoires.

part of the story was to look around and find out where did honka  meet his women. and that was in the golden  handschuh ( golden glove)

 it was unimaginable, this was pure poverty people  human wrecks , women as well as men whos fate  had taken a sad turn for the  worse

these people had reached the very bottom of society.,this doesn’t mean they had to be criminals but they were very poor creatures.

as a consequence it smelled pretty bad in  handschuh ( golden glove) as this people  weren’t able to wash they had no where to go  because they were homeless.

the police had identified  one of Honka’s victims as Gertrud Bräuer but the other three remained a mystery,establishing their identitites would not be simple

even in the  modern ERA of DNA identifying victims can be incredibly challenging by and large you haveto have something to compare your victim to. so dental records,evidence of missing people ,have they got defning characteristics that’s unique to them.

the poice found a pile of women’s ID cards in honka’s flat and set about the  complicated task trying to  find the rightful owners  among the prostitutes who frewuented the bars around the reeperbahn 

each time they found a women ,each time ,they found a woman alive they were able to cross her off  from the list of  potential victims.

they were able to work they way through all the names on this list  and we realized that the omen all seemed to be alive.

 the hamburg police also put out a call to colleagues across Germany for details of missing women in  their mid- 40s to mid-50s.

how many missing persons reports do you think they get in Germany. investigators had stacks  of them on their desks and  they had to look through all of them and somehow still wasn’t making progress.

so they catalogued the clothes they  had found in his flat ,hung them up ,numbered them and photographed each item.this clothes were really the only  thing we had at that moment.

detectives would have to go  to the bars honka went to around the reeperbahn to see if anyone could help them.

you try  going to st. pauli when you don have a name, you don’t have  an  address,

 all you have  is clothes and nothing else .

you have the name of mr honka, with that you go to a bar and ask people”what kind of girlfriends did he have?

do you think the people in these bars tell you  “yes he had many women ,you know one wascalled annie .the other Geirda   and the next  erika ,but that’s  all we know.

so you go around all the bars and showing the outfits and if you lucky you might  get a name. “yesd , such and such  always wore these kind of clothes.

as soon you get a first  name you can make progress. at thet point investigtors were established that they  were probably dealing with aging prostitutes.

using the list of missing persons,the clothes found in honka’s apartment and the names  gathered  from  the local bars  ,detectives were able to draw  up a short  list of  possible victims armed with  photographs ,they headed out onto the reeperbahn once more.

and with these  pictures they  went back to show them around and were finally able  to establish,”yeas  he had a thing with her”

it was a major breakthrough for the police  they had linked number of women to honka

as soon the investigators knew who these women were, they could confront honka ,again and again during the the interrogations and they kept insisting until he’d say

“yeas , i knew her,and she’d been over at my place”

so at least now he had admitted that they’d been with him.some stayed longer with him. for days.even weeks. 

it was nice for the women,suddenly they had somewhere to live ,the question was what happened next.

investigtors obviously had to confront him with  the fact that he  had killed the woman and all he said ” i can’t remember”

investigator had no choice but  to accept that ,however , there was evidence that the women who had been identified and who had also had lived with him were found dead in his flat exactly was the point.

but the police still needed a confession,now they just had to hear from him that  he killed them and how he killed them and what he did  with the bodies. 

and that’s difficult that’s  very difficult.

as one of the detectives remember  honka always made it sound like it was a possibility but he never  admitted it 100%

it is interesting  that he didnt deny the killings and he wasn’t a particularly” oh no  it’s got nothing to do with me “

mind you it would been very difficult for him to deny the killings he was living with the body  parts of four women.how they got  there, he was the only person who truly knew.

investigtors kept pushing him,” but you shopped up the bodies”you cut the women up with a saw” honka  just said ” i can’t remember”

it was further frustration  for the police, for example he would say : yeah, i slept with that woman and in the morning she was lying dead next to me.well how she died the way she died  i simply can´t say.”

allthough honka continued to deny  killing the three  women the detectives were at least able to finally identify them .

they were 54 year old  anna boishell

53 year old  ruth schultz

and 57 year old frida  roblick

a regular  in the golden glove  who went by the name  Rita.and her new boyfriend was fritz honka who strangled her to death. in december 1974-

 fritz honka was an accidential serial killer ,he didn’t fit what the BAU the FBI’s behavioral unit call organized ,he was completely disorganized, these  were crimes of opportuity.he wasn’t stalking these women.

he wasn’t planning their killings , they happened ,they  were part of his  tragic character and part of his drinking and part of the fact that he found any kind of  sexual relationship with women almost imossible  

and this was the only  way he  could find  to satisfy those desires that he had.

the west german press were fascinated with honka

 Lutz managed to capture a photograph of

 the mysterious killer .

the  police were trying to determine  a motive for the murders ,interviews  with local prostitutes who´d been with honka and lived to tell the tale ,revealed shocking facts about his perverse sexual tastes.

the women who escaped from his home were very lucky, the interrogation of these women  hinted at his sexual practices, and these were sometimes catastrophic

investigators dont wont to go  into every detail ,but it was pretty terrible

it possible these  sexual practices got out of hand and became excessive which investigators  have to say: might have led to the death of the women.

one of th e surviving victims showed the police a scar she´d received in a brutal sexual encounter.

because she was so upset about fritz honka that dirty old swine as she called him  she pulled up her skirt, took off her underwear and pointed to a scar beside her her vagina

she then told  during a sexual encounter with fritz honmka he had penetrated her with a broom handle. that´s where the injury j had  come from and she ended up in hospitaland she wasn’t  the only one who needed medical  treatment after spending the night  with  Honka

for example one of the women he took back to his  place, he sat her with  her bare bum on top of a hot plate, as a result the women  ran  semi- naked out of the flat

this is an example, the sort of thing where he became violent

This may have resulted in these deaths but of course it’s also possible that the women weren’t complying with his demands and he became violent towards them.

the investigation was drawing to an end but some questions remained  unanswered.

 he had unbelievable though it may seem escaped under the radar for five years . killing four women  and basically  keeping them around the flat as trophies.

Now there’s no suggestion that Honka  had sex with them post – mortem.

there’s no suggestion that  he was some  kind of necrophiliac.

 he was just a dreadfully lazy drunk ,who didn’t know what else  to do and just convinced himself it’d be perfectly all right

 november  1976

the trial of fritz honka began in hamburg, he had  retracted his initial confession and was now denying  all the charges against him .

his defense strategy when he was arrested and charged with the crimes was an incredibly bizarre one.

he decided to blame  ack the ripper, who was  sending him messages  to kill these women .

Now this  appears to be something that is completely bizarre and  very odd but it could be evidence of somebody who is experiencing some kind of mental ill  health .

we know  that people who experience episodes of psychosis feel very strongly compelled  to act in a particular way and they´re not really fully in control  of their actions.

but equally at the same time  if you are reading  the newspapers,if you are listening to the radio and you know that this is something that  is available to you

 that you´re able to  come out with this and it perhaps be taken seriously then you´re going to give it a go.

the psychiatrists who examined honka during  the court case  ,concluded that he’d acted with diminished criminal responsibility.

on the  20th of december 1976 ,the jury found him guilty of three counts of manslaughter

and one of murder, that of 54 year old   anna boishell ,hwo he had strangled in his apartment in august 1974.

Honka was sentenced to 15 years in a psychiatric hospital

he might have been described at the time as a bit  slow, that  affects the amount of culpability thatwe   assigned to his crimes, so was he  in control of what he was doing,did he know what  hewas doing was wrong and if that can’t be established,then perhaps he is treated in a mental health facility rather then a prison. 

and indeed he served 15 years in  a hospital in a hospital setting.

the crimes of fritz honka left the entire country in shock, especially the city of hamburg.

 

Lutz says: i believe after the second world war  such a murder  case has never happened again in the history of crimes in hamburg. it was a unique case. that someone killed four women,dismembered them and left them in his flat.

 

former bar owner  golden handschuh( golden glove)

Jörn :After that we became very very well known beyond hamburg,famous for the murder as unpleasent as it  was..and as sorry as i felt for the women especially  Rita ( frida  roblick) rita really didn’t  deserve it.

Honka was released from the psychiatric hospital in 1993. 

he spent  the final years of his life in a nursing home under the name peter jensen.

he died in hamburg on 19th  of october 1998. he was 63 years old

today  fritz Hona has become something of a cult figure in hamburg .

the golden glove continues to capitalize on its  most infamous former customer with the words :

Honka saloon .Emblazoned above the entrance.

this bars were a  no-go zone.not in a million years would a normal hamburg citizen go there.

only after the series  of murders  was made public  did it become an interesting place for people  in fur coats to visit after the opera,so they could see for themselves, how well off they were and how miserable  the others .

but it  will  never be forgotten that Honka was a violent killer who took away the lives of four innocent women

fritz honka callously killed four women between 1970 and 1975. he strangled them before dismembering their bodies.by attacking prostitutes ,he hoped his crimes would never be revealed