RedHanded - Episode 206 - Fritz Haarmann: The Butcher of Hannover

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

In the early 1900s Germany was a nation ravaged by the horrors of war, debt and death. For years, as they struggled with stagflation and starvation, all manner of depravity began to emerge; there had even been rumours of human meat being sold on Germany’s black markets.And it was during this time, that a dangerous man roamed the streets committing a series of gruesome murders so diabolical that he terrified people who had survived the nightmares of WW1. This man, a deviant sexual sadist, went on to be known as The Butcher of Hanover...Follow us on social media:InstagramTwitterFacebookVisit our website:WebsiteContact us:ContactSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed, an award-winning podcast. I'll never get tired of saying it. An award-winning show. Gold award-winning, listeners' choice, people's princesses of a show. That's all we're going to say, because now we've got to move on. Oh, yes. We've got to move on up and over to Germany.

To a big old pasto case, which doesn't happen often here on Red Handed. But when it does, we pick a horrible cannibal one. Is he a cannibal? Not really a cannibal. A horrible fucking maybe. We'll figure it out. Withhold your judgment until the end. So today we're heading to Hanover, the capital and largest city of the state of Lower Saxony.

It was here in the early 1900s, in a state already devastated by the horrors of war, crime and poverty, that a series of murders were committed by a man so diabolical that he would go on to be known as many things, including the Vampire of Hanover, the Werewolf of Hanover and the Butcher of Hanover, and the Butcher of Hanover. Two supernaturals and a normal job. Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, at first I was like, how many monikers does one man need? But when you are done researching the case, you feel like, yes, all of those are appropriate.

All of them fit. So they just couldn't pick one. So he's a dog man with a butcher's knife. So it was 1918. The German armies had collapsed in the World War and a generation of young soldiers who'd spent the last five years in battle returned home to find 14 million people dead. The German mark was plummeting in value with each passing day. And you've all likely seen the photos of young children making things like kites out of almost worthless German paper mark banknotes or people pushing along wheelbarrows full of money on their

way to buy half a dozen eggs. Just to put this into context at the time a loaf of bread cost around 200 billion marks. So most people unless you are a scholar of this time in the world, don't know what the fuck World War I was about. I know it's something to do with Archduke Austria-Hungary got shot, Ottoman Empire something, then don't know. Some stuff happened. That's it. But what we all know is that this period of history was called the Weimar Republic and it had a hyper inflation crisis. The money was beyond useless. So a barter economy took over. So yeah, Weimar Republic and it had a hyperinflation crisis. The money was beyond useless so a barter economy took over. So yeah Weimar Republic if you don't know now you do. Welcome to your smarty pants. Weimar Republic was Germany's government from 1919 to 1933 the period following World War I

until of course old Adolphus showed up and there we go. And obviously how fucking awful everything was in Germany was direct contributor to the rise of fascism. And Hanover, conveniently located four hours by rail from Berlin and eight hours from Cologne, quickly developed into a bustling centre for the black market. At the time, there was a very strict policy on rationing food and after queuing for hours, you'd only receive minimal amounts of bread, milk and meat.

Do you remember when we were in Cuba and we saw people queuing for the cheese shop? Yeah. I imagine like that times a bajillion. Also, what the fuck's happening in Cuba? We should talk about that on Under the Duvet. Oh, I know. It's so sad. Yeah, we'll talk about it on Under the Duvet.

But yeah, it's very much that. And I think also everyone is also familiar with those pictures of people literally just burning money to keep warm. Because that's how fucking useless it was. And yeah, we just can't like over exaggerate the level of poverty and decimation and depression that would have been engulfing Germany at this period of time. Which, as Hannah said, directly led to the rise of the Nazi party and Hitler. That's what happens when people are upset. The right wing flourishes. Yes.

Upset sounded trivial. That's what happens when people are completely oppressed and desolate. Of course, you say that. But then also, you know, we lost a fucking football game and people were upset. And then we saw a bunch of racist abuse and our cities getting trashed yeah and children being punched in the face by fully grown men yeah a friend of mine who's black almost bought a ticket to the final and he was like i'm pretty glad i didn't go now yeah no thanks pay 800 quid to get my fucking face kicked in yeah i'll pass yeah pass so this very strict

government enforced rationing and money being completely useless gave rise to a flourishing trade of secretly stolen and butchered animals like rabbits, goats, and even cats and dogs. Another fun Cuba fact, you get more time in prison for killing a cow than you do a human. We learned that in Trinidad from our very cool tour guide. By night, the streets were lined with the traumatized youth that survived the war, who'd now become petty criminals, sex workers, pimps and conmen in order to survive. It wouldn't have been uncommon to see missing limbs, disfigured faces and young men lying in the streets shaking from shell shock, all very visceral reminders of the horrors of the trench warfare they endured in World War I.

These were desperate times and committing crime for profit was the norm. But what about murder for profit? Let's put a pin in that for now. Because on the 17th of May 1924, a group of children were playing by the water. And in a very German retelling of the spooky bitch story, let's have a look. Because beside what was then the Herrenhausen Palace in Hanover, these children stumbled upon a human skull in what would be the very first in a series of macabre and haunting discoveries that left the residents of Hanover terrified. I really hope one of them was called Martin. So do I. What's the German for Martin? I think it's just Martin. I think it's a German name. Oh, that's hard.

Boo. Boo. So just over a week later, on the 29th of May, after this skull was found, another skull of a child washed up in a mill race on the other side of Hanover. I didn't actually know what a mill race was, so we're all going to learn a little fact together, unless you already knew it, in which case, keep it to yourself. I'm a city bitch. I don't know what a mill race is.

No, let's find out, because a mill race is apparently the channel of water that drives a mill wheel. Isn't that fun? Fun fact, kind of. Anyway. I know. Yeah, I know. And then after this discovery, the following

month, two more skulls were found. One washed up on a riverbank and the other was found in yet another mill race. An autopsy found that the first two skulls were from two men aged between 18 to 20 and the others were from boys aged just between 11 and 13 years old. They also found that the skulls had been cut from their torsos using a sharp blade and that they had been in the water for quite some time. I think in an attempt to calm the freaking out residents of Hanover, the leading theory of where these skulls were suddenly appearing from

became that it must have just been the work of grave robbers. So don't worry, these people were already dead. Somebody was just robbing their graves and then threw their skulls into various bodies of water. Much better. Yeah, much more fine. They're not killing people, they're just stealing from graves. There's a cemetery called Bunhill Fields near our office, and there appears to be some sort of exhuming going on so I walk through it on the way from the office to the gym and it's like a really old old cemetery like like weather-beaten gravestone so maybe they're doing some sort of renovations but there are open graves right now with people with like paintbrushes like just dusting off like something is going on on

Bunhill Fields oh there's also oh my god you this, Abney Cemetery, which is right next to my house. Guess how many people are buried there? 666. 200,000. Whoa. Oh, my favorite game is to like walk around Abney Cemetery and count how many Hannah's fucking loads, by the way. I'll take you. It's really nice. You bring Blue.

We'll go for a walk. Yeah, I do love a graveyard. Let's do it. I'm in. So yeah, they're basically like, don't worry. It's just the work of grave robbers. But this theory was not proven. And there was also absolutely no evidence that this is actually what was going on. And just a few weeks later, some more young boys playing in some marshland in a place called Doran, which is about two hours from Hanover, stumbled upon a bag of human bones.

I mean, just Germany during this time, as if they've not got enough fucking problems. Yeah, probably quite a lot of bags of bones, to be honest. Most people were bags of bones. This is very true. This is very true. And a little later, yet another skull was discovered in Hanover on the 24th of bones. This is very true. This is very true. And a little later, yet another skull was discovered in Hanover on the 24th of July. This one, and this is like my worst thing, this is the thing that I hate above all else when it comes to like, you know, disfiguration,

attacks by killers. This skull had been scalped and showed clear signs of decapitation. Honestly, scalping is just the, I don't know. I just can't. I can't with that. I watched Maniac and I was like, I just. What's Maniac? Oh, it's like a, just again, not watched any good films, but I'll tell you about Maniac. Maniac was like, I think I want to say 70s, 70s like exploitation, horror, slasher film.

And then it was remade just a couple of years ago with Elijah Wood as a serial killer. Oh! Yeah, and it's about this guy who's a very innocent seeming guy. He runs a mannequin shop. I mean, someone's got to. You're right, we laugh, but someone does have to run the mannequin shops. And he scalps women, because he's a serial killer, kills them,

and then puts their scalp complete with hair onto mannequins and then fills his living room with them. Ah, okay. Yes. All right. There you go. Oakley dookley. Moving on.

Word of these horrific discoveries spread throughout the region and the local residents found themselves gripped with terror that someone or something was hunting their children because between 1918 and 1924 a huge number of people had been reported missing in germany and the town with the highest figure was hanover those missing were mostly boys aged between 14 and 18 and when we say that people feared that their children were being hunted, we literally mean hunted. For years, there had been rumours of human meat being sold on Germany's black markets during the Weimar Republic's period of hyperinflation. People were starving. And generally, if you managed to get your hands on

some cheap meat, you didn't question where it had come from. Was it Stalingrad where parents would be like, don't go anywhere near someone who looks healthy because if they look healthy, they're eating humans? Yeah, I think it's quite a common issue during periods of time like that. I think it was definitely during Stalingrad. I definitely think it was also during like the Homolador. I think that's how you pronounce it, Homolador. During which time like Andrei Chikatilo was growing up,

another famous Russian cannibal who we will get to one day. We get a lot of requests. We will get to him one day, guys. Yeah, I think being a healthy size during a time when everyone else is starving is probably quite sinister. And you're probably doing something quite nefarious. Yeah. People were deeply traumatised by this,

as you can imagine, as well as everything else the fuck going on, and a supernatural fear seemed to grip the broken German psyche. Some of the people of Hanover were terrified that a werewolf was prowling their streets. England is like a pretty... It's not often that people are starving like in this particular way obviously we've had since the economic crash food banks have been used more than ever so it does happen but like even in a relatively safe country we fucking love big dog prowling more werewolf

stories like we have so many like oh big cat on the moors like so it's not it's not unusual i don't think no that's very very true but maybe you're thinking you know a werewolf that sounds pretty crazy even for weimar republic starving germany but given what they discovered on wit sunday in 1924 and again i didn't actually know this wit sunday is the seventh sunday after easter so just put that into context what they discovered on that day would have solidified the monster theory in many people's minds on that day hundreds of townsfolk from hanover gathered to search the surrounding lands for more human remains and their efforts were not made in vain. Because, and this is unbelievable, that day they uncovered more than 500, like, parts of human remains from at least 22 people, all no older than 20 years old.

Around half of the bodies had been underwater for a long time, and the quote-unquote fresh bones had clearly been cut at the joints with some level of expertise the way that a butcher might and I think this is the thing that starts to send the real panic not only is it that various body parts are turning up it's the fact that they've been disarticulated precisely so that is a human hand at work it's not that animals have torn these bodies apart and maybe got into a fresh grave or something like that. This is when you have to stop being able to look at it as maybe it was just grave robbers and it starts to seem much more killer-y. And it was, of course, a shocking discovery. But much to the relief of the residents of Hanover and its surrounding regions,

on the 23rd of June, so very soon after they had discovered all of these remains, the police arrested their prime suspect. They found him, in part due to good police work, and in part due to a rather odd series of chance occurrences. The suspect's name was Friedrich Fritz Harmon, and this wasn't the first time the police had met him. Fritz had a long rap sheet of 15 previous convictions and had actually been a police informant since 1918. Before we get to that, as ever, let's start at the very beginning and go back to the childhood of the man who would go on to gain the grisly moniker of the Werewolf of Hanover. Friedrich Heinrich Karl Harman was born on the 25th of October 1879, I told you I was secretly German, during the German Empire to Olli Harman

and Joanna Claudius. Olli and Joanna's marriage was one of convenience. It was common knowledge that Olli had only married Joanna because of the substantial dowry, which included several houses and a small fortune. Do you find it weird, because I definitely do, when you talk about pastos, not you specifically, when one talks about pastos, and they have names like Ollie? Yes, yes. I spoke about this under the duvet, the Tiffany problem,

that Tiffany's actually a 12th century name, but you could never write a novel that's like actually a 12th century name but like you could never write a novel that's like Tiffany the 12th century peasant because no one would believe it so there's a whole thing in literature of like you have to make it even if it is historically correct you have to make it align with what people think is historically correct it's so interesting that's so interesting because you're right like the idea of like somebody just roaming around the fucking 19th century with the name Ollie. I mean, that's weird to me. I'm like, can we just call him Oliver? Because it's freaking me out.

It's kind of like when I first watched Game of Thrones and I was like, why is his name Rob? Why is his name Jamie? Like, I hate this. No. so Ollie in the olden times not the now times was bad-tempered and a notorious womanizer who spent most nights in seedy bars chasing any woman who looked in his direction Ollie's fuckboyery did catch up to him however when he eventually contracted syphilis which I think if there's any disease of the olden time fuckboy it is syphphilis. Yes. Which put an end to his late night escapades. But this only worsened his general dissatisfaction with life. It would, wouldn't it? I mean, it would.

If I got syphilis, I would be dissatisfied. Yeah, if your whole life revolves around getting your end away and then you have a very visible disease, which people know is sexually transmitted, nope. Yeah, and then you go mad. Yes. Yeah, all around bad around bad times, really. And your nose falls off.

Syphilis, of course, extremely curable with antibiotics. Today. Yes, yeah, yeah. I actually read, I don't know, I feel like this is one of those things that I'm going to get told isn't actually true. But I believe that most antibiotics you can actually drink on, but the myth of not drinking on antibiotics started because antibiotics were being used to treat syphilis.

And people with syphilis, obviously, you're more likely to have sex if you get drunk. So they told them not to drink, which I think is... Yeah. I'll double check it. I have also read that. Which is interesting. So if you're on antibiotics, go on the piss. It's fine.

Hannah says so. Yeah, obviously. But if you've got syphilis and that's why you're taking antibiotics don't then you can't except you good also please consult a doctor before taking any of this advice thank you i'm not a doctor but i am a doctor poor old joanna with her syphilitic womanizing husband has been described as a small-minded fairly unintelligent woman who grew old before her time after having given birth to her sixth and final child, Fritz, at the age of 41, as she fell sick and barely left her bed. Not too many details of Fritz's upbringing are known,

but what we do know is all from accounts later given by his five siblings. But the sibling stories of their childhood, and Fritz's himself, do vary, which is just the nature of the beast with pasto times but one thing that they do all corroborate is that Fritz was pampered and spoiled rotten by his mother like literally every youngest child ever in my personal experience especially when it's a boy yes oh my god yes and interestingly Fritz absolutely hated his father from a very young age. It's almost, when you do the reading into this, like he saw his father as something of like a rival. Like he always seemed to be competing with his father, which granted isn't like that unusual a thing.

There is a lot of psychological theory around the fact that you do somewhat compete with your same gendered parent if you have one. And I think that's interesting. I do think that's interesting. And it does seem that Fritz took that to a whole nother level. And this hatred for his father only grew worse throughout Fritz's life, with the two of them engaging in regular physical fights, with Ollie threatening to have Fritz sent to an asylum. And this is something we'll come back to, so remember that. And Fritz, in turn, threatening to have his dad arrested for the death of a train driver that he had caused years before when he had once worked on the railways.

So not healthy. They're not the best relationship, these two. But by all accounts, it was only his mother, Joanna, for whom Fritz seemed to truly have any love or care or time for. Growing up, Fritz was encouraged by his mum to engage in more traditionally feminine activities, like playing with dolls, sewing, wearing girls' dresses, instead of playing football with the other boys. Now, of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of that if the child wants to do those things. But it is hard to ignore the number of serial killers who we've come across during the research for this show and

also the research for the book who were forced to wear dresses by their overbearing mothers as children. Quite a common theme. And interestingly Fritz's darker side seems to have been apparent even from that young age. He apparently enjoyed tying up his sisters against their will and also terrifying the locals by running around tapping on their windows in the dead of night. As for his school life, although his behaviour was described by his teachers to be exemplary, Fritz was an awful student having to repeat a school year twice in 1888 and in 1890, which is going to knock anyone's confidence. A traumatising event took place during Fritz's school years that would have left a permanent

scar on the young man. According to Fritz, when he was just seven years old, he was abducted from school and violently sexually assaulted by a much older man. He would only go on to reveal this much later on in life, in very little detail. Also very common for serial killers. Yeah, as we'll go on to discuss, there is a huge sexual element to Fritz's crimes. And this is really the only insight or the link that we have into his childhood or his development of sexual abuse. And he really doesn't give away much, so we don't have that much to play with, but it does seem that it happened. By the age of 16, Fritz had grown into a physically strong and trim young man.

And in 1895, having left school the year before, he enrolled in a military academy in the town of Brysak. And as it turned out, Fritz made a rather remarkable soldier. He was applauded by his commanding officers for his obedience and marksmanship. So it seems like good at taking instruction, good at following orders. Not so good at mental maths. However, in September 1895, he began experiencing lapses of consciousness, apparently due to either a concussion or sunstroke.

He was eventually discharged in November that year after being diagnosed with an epileptic-like condition. Again, we've talked at length before on this show about how many serial killers are drawn towards time in the military. That is, of course, not saying everyone in the military is, you know, a budding serial killer. It just seems that a lot of serial killers are drawn to that kind of role. We know that this is to do

often with the authority that that position gives, the uniform they like, that kind of power that they can try and exert over people. But again, very similar to people like Jeffrey Dahmer and also Gary Heidnik, if you remember, both of them being discharged from the army, especially Heidnik due to kind of undiagnosable, quote-unquote, strange occurrences or strange behaviour. And I thought that's quite interesting. Yes, yeah, absolutely. So after he's discharged, Fritz then returned to his family home in Hanover and began working in his father's cigar factory.

But he had no intention or will to actually work for a living, which just led to much more animosity between father and son. And all the while, something dark was bubbling away beneath the surface for young Fritz that nobody could have foreseen. And I think by this point, you might be thinking, oh, young Fritz, like, but he's been in the army, he's come back home. How young could he be? He's only 17. Christ. Only 17 by this point that he's already gone to the military and been discharged and sent home. I had a real, I re-watched Blood Diamond last night,

which I regret doing because I think it came out when I was in secondary school, I think. And no, I'm not going to talk about Leonardo DiCaprio's accent. I'm going to talk about the fact that his character in Blood Diamond is 31. And I was like, okay, I'm going to talk about the fact that his character in Blood Diamond is 31. And I was like, okay, I'm an adult. I'm an adult. I could be a diamond smuggler.

That's how old I am. Oh, no. That's a depressing thought. But then, but then, that is set in previous times. And I think that we have all become more and more infantilized as time has passed and I think 31 now is really like 21 a couple of decades ago yeah well yeah we'll go with that yep no problem I think so I think like millennials not that we're infantilized like I just think we know more about the world than previous generations I think we're more socially conscious etc all of that kind of stuff but I do think like due to certain

economic crises that were thrust upon us we have not been able to I don't know maybe get as far as people did previously yeah and I've said it before and I'll say it again in the first season of Will and Grace, Grace is only 30 and she's a mess for like 10 seasons, so it's okay. Exactly. Exactly. Absolutely. Let's go with that. So, yeah, Fritz, you could say if you are speaking in serial killer terms,

he is massively overachieving because at the age of just 17, he started to lure unsuspecting young boys into cellars and alleyways so that he could sexually assault them, which is unusual in the world of serial killers. Generally speaking, serial killers, especially of this ilk, don't generally start carrying out assaults or especially kills until they're usually in their mid to late 20s, even early 30s. Generally speaking, at this point, when you're talking like pubescent stage, adolescent stage, they're still kind of doing peeping tommery.

Yeah, skinning cats. Exactly, skinning cats, starting fires, stealing underwear, that kind of thing. So he is quite precocious in the sense of being a serial killer. But, of course, being a juvenile and committing such offences meant that he wasn't exactly very criminally sophisticated, and so it didn't take long for Fritz to get caught. And in 1896, Fritz was arrested and charged for the first time for abusing a minor. During his trial, however, he was found to be, quote-unquote,

mentally deficient, and he was sent to a mental asylum, where he was dubbed by a doctor there to be, quote, incurably deranged, which is a diagnosis you don't see often these days anymore. No, no, doesn't show up that much. No. So he was obviously committed to this psychiatric facility. But after just six months on Christmas Day, maybe, you know, everyone's been a bit grumbly about having to work Christmas Day. And that's why he makes his escape that day. Seems smart. That's the day to do it. Fritz actually

managed to escape the psychiatric hospital and apparently he did this with the help of his mother and he ended up fleeing to Switzerland where he stayed with one of his mother's relatives. And whilst in hiding, Fritz somehow managed to seduce a young woman named Erna Lowert who agreed to marry him. But the happy couple didn't last long because in 1900 he left his now pregnant bride to re-enroll in the military for compulsory service. Oddly, I thought, his escape from a mental institution after being convicted for sexually assaulting a child seemed to have been totally forgotten about and he was just let back into the military and after he left Erna was like fuck this and she had an abortion and forgot all about her horrible husband-to-be. Good for you Erna. Yeah. Fritz later described this second stint in the

military as the happiest time in his life but again his health betrayed him and he collapsed during a gruelling marching exercise. This incident took place shortly after his mother had passed away, which was likely a contributing factor to his deteriorating health. Following this, Fritz was deemed permanently unsuitable for community service and honorably discharged in July 1902. After this, Fritz was granted a military pension, but he felt it wasn't enough money for him to survive on. So at the age of 23, he decided to sue his father, claiming that it was his responsibility to provide his son with maintenance costs. This lawsuit was unsuccessful.

The following year, the father and son fighting continued, as Ollie attempted to have Fritz sent back to the mental asylum after he threatened to beat him to death. Over the following years, Fritz began his career as a burglar and conman by getting jobs at various businesses before robbing them blind. One of his favourite cons was to search through the obituaries in the local papers and turn up at the homes of the bereaved with a disinfectant system he'd bought. And then he'd claim to be a, quote, official of the town's disinfection department and advise the families that he was required to disinfect their rooms and belongings. But of course, he just used this as an opportunity to steal from them.

Over the next few years, Fritz was in and out of jail constantly for everything from larceny to assaulting his father. And for a short while, he worked as a grave robber. I would imagine in the Weimar Republic, there's a lot of work for a grave robber. Yeah. I mean, does one work as a grave robber? I mean, maybe. Maybe there was like a grave robbing recruitment agency that just picked people up in bars. You know how they used to go around bars and recruit drunk people into the Navy and make them sign when they were drunk and then it was too late like that's what a press guy is oh wow i didn't know that interesting yeah yeah yeah they used to go around like all of the like dens of ill repute and um recruit drunk men who couldn't say no i see i see and now they just hijack hollywood films to force

marketing down everybody's throats to get them to sign up to the military. Anyway, so in the seven years between 1905 and 1912, Fritz spent just a few months out of prison. And even during that time, he couldn't stay out of trouble. Because in 1911, the fathers of four little boys banded together and reported Fritz for having sexually assaulted their children. But, and I founditz for having sexually assaulted their children. But, and I found this very weird, because their statements didn't all perfectly align, they didn't all perfectly match up, the charges against Fritz were dropped. This close call didn't deter him, however,

and in November 1912, Fritz lured a 13-year-old boy back to his house, enticing him with money. Once he arrived, Fritz sodomized him and made the boy promise not to tell his parents, which thankfully he did. But for this crime, Fritz only received two months in jail. It's like he got two months in jail as if they were punishing him for, at the time, gay sex was illegal, it's like they're punishing him for that rather than for it being rape. Yeah. And they're like, no, I don't care about that. So the following year after this, Fritz was then again caught for burglarizing a warehouse. And this time, unlike for raping a 13-year-old boy,

the police decided to throw the book at him. And Fritz, for stealing from a warehouse, was sentenced to five years in prison, compared to two months for the previous assault. But luckily for him, this sentence coincided with the start of World War I. And he was able to actually escape getting like fucking conscripted and spent the entirety of the war in the safety of a prison cell. Lucky him. He loves being a soldier, though. He probably hated that. I know, that's also true. That's also true.

Not that I'm like, oh, poor Fritz. I imagine it was another layer of torment. This is true. Eventually, Fritz was paroled in 1918 at the end of the war, and he almost immediately resumed his criminal activities by teaming up with a group of smugglers buying and selling stolen goods. Due to the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had no military at this point, and their police force struggled to keep up with the crime rate. This created perfect conditions for a bustling black market of stolen goods to thrive in Hanover, and Fritz made sure he was a part of it.

Due to his previous convictions, Fritz was very well known to the police and despite the nature of some of his crimes, they actually ended up using him as a police informant due to his network of close criminal contacts. However, for Fritz, this was simply an opportunity to divert the authority's attention away from himself onto others whilst he just carried on doing whatever the fuck he wanted. Fritz even began

to introduce himself as Detective Harmon on occasion. Not only would Fritz provide the police with invaluable information leading to arrests, he also set up his criminal colleagues directly so the police could catch them red-handed. He would do this by acting as a fence, which if you haven't watched Hustle is someone who knowingly receives stolen goods and moves them on. So he had stolen goods delivered to his house, and when they arrived, the police would storm in and arrest everybody, including Fritz, so as to not give the game away. And he'd be secretly released shortly afterwards. It was around this time that he committed his first provable murder, although he wouldn't be caught for another six years. By now, in the aftermath of the war,

Hanover train station was absolutely flooded with homeless refugees, runaways, male sex workers and commuters. As a result, Fritz had his pick of young boys, and this is where he would go to get his hands on almost all of his victims. Hanover train station very much became Fritz's hunting ground. He would go there, regularly invite young boys he found to stay at his place for the night, which was a room that he'd been renting at number 27 Sellerstrasse. He'd promised these boys food and a place to sleep but of course when they arrived they realized that he had much darker motivations.

He would sometimes rape these boys before he either strangled them to death or, and prepare for this next bit because it's pretty horrible, he would bite into their Adam's apples as hard as he could during climax. Nope. And Fritz referred to this rather playfully as the quote love bite. But yeah, as you can imagine, biting into someone's Adam's apple caused his victims to die of suffocation or simply by drowning in their own blood. It's speculated, though impossible to prove, that Fritz also drank some of his victims' blood afterwards too. Hence the nickname, the Vampire of Hanover. Blech.

And as will become glaringly obvious later on, Fritz Harman was a sexual sadist. And as with most sexual sadists, Fritz is not motivated by the kill itself, it's the terror he witnessed on the faces of his victims as he either bit or strangled them. That's what got him to the point of climax. His victims' reactions of fear, humiliation and terror were where he got his sexual gratification and the feeling of superiority he would have felt afterwards. Sexual sadists are

a fascinating breed of offender because the very thing they want from you as their victim is to see the horror in your eyes and hear your screams of pain. That's what gets them off. And we do a whole chapter on this shebang in the book that we wrote. And we really explain how paraphilias, which are like disordered sexual drives, how they are developed and what the psychological differences are between people who have paraphilias and people who don't and people who become sexual sadists. Yeah, and it is really fascinating. It's actually probably one of my favourite chapters because I think that there is a lot of misunderstanding about sexual sadists because, you know, people

often lump it in with like the BDSM community, which obviously it is not related to when we're talking about sexually sadistic killers and offenders. It's terrifying. They are, in my opinion, the most terrifying type of killer or offender because it's your reaction to their torture. That's what gets them off. I'm not saying it's obviously any better to just be murdered, but I would rather just be murdered than be horribly tortured for months on end so that some guy can get off on it so yeah go get your hands on the book if you want to be utterly horrified by that but coming back to fritz it was around september 1918 when a 17 year old boy named friedel roth went missing his friends had informed the boy's parents that he'd gone off with a man who introduced himself as Detective Harmon. Again, no fucking marks at all for, like, coming up with a fake name. He's just like, no, it's fine, this'll do.

But when the family said this to the police, they found them oddly reluctant to take any action. It seems very obvious that at this point the police knew who the family were talking about. The guy's using his same fucking surname. But I think they don't want to get involved necessarily because, after all, Fritz had not only gained the police's trust, he'd also proven to be very useful to them in his work as an informant

because it had led to numerous arrests in Hanover's criminal underworld. It's like they know what he is, but they're like, but he's so fucking good at just, like, snitching on people. Like, do we really want to go after him because he's raping and murdering all these kids? But eventually, even the police couldn't ignore it anymore and they had to give in to the pressure from Roth's family.

And at this point, the police raided Fritz's flat. And when they did this, they literally found Fritz in the middle of raping a 13-year-old boy. They literally walk in on him doing this. So obviously, they're forced to arrest him immediately. But they did not search his property. And if they had done, according to a statement from Fritz himself, that he would make years later,

the police would have found Friedel Roth's decapitated head wrapped up in a newspaper, tucked away behind the stove. Fritz was sentenced to nine months in jail for the sexual assault of a minor but was cleared of the murder of Friedel Roth. Again like we said if the police had just fucking searched the flat they would have found this boy's head. And somehow he even managed to put off serving his sentence for the rape for an entire year. To be fair, between 1914 and 1918, there's a lot of other stuff going on. Yeah, they're like, fine, okay, we've got some other stuff to do. Promise you won't go anywhere, we'll come back and get you in a year.

During this time, so October 1919, Fritz was lurking around Hanover Station when he met a young man called Hans Granz. Oh, just perfect. Perfect. Cindy Hindi. Hans was an 18-year-old runaway from Berlin who's living rough and surviving by selling old clothes. He'd learnt that Fritz was homosexual

from mutual acquaintances, something which was illegal in Germany at the time and punishable by imprisonment. Hans approached Fritz to offer him sex in exchange for money. But it got a bit more serious than that. The two fell in love and moved in together. But the dynamic between the couple was pretty odd. For one, Fritz was 40 years old and he would later say that he saw Hans Granz as a sort of son that he needed to pull from the ditch to make sure he didn't go to the dogs. But he also mentioned that he was aware that the young man had manipulated him constantly, and that over their years together, when Hans Granz would openly mock him,

Fritz would kick him out of the apartment before begging him to come back. Speaking on this, Fritz said, quote, I had to have someone. I meant everything to. Ugh, damage. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot of the classic traits of a sexual sadist, though, that we see. You know, he is very much drawn to authority. Time in the military is very typical of a sexual sadist.

He's also drawn to working with the police. Again, very typical. He has a partner. Again, like literal bingo for fucking sexual sadists and we actually have a bingo card of sexual sadists in the book which you should go get your hands on but yeah let's leave it on that slightly troubling note of just how fucking domineering fritz is and i love that he's like this young man manipulated me hans granz is like fucking 17 years old and he's a 40 year old man like shut the fuck up, Fritz.

So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh, yeah.

Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you.

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to rent him a ground floor apartment in number eight Neustrasse. He said that he was going to use it as storage for his business whilst he lived in the adjoining room. And it seems that maybe for a while things were a little bit quiet, but of course, Fritz couldn't stop himself. And a couple of years later, he committed his second known murder, five years after the murder of Friedrich Roth. And this time the victim was 17-year-old Fritzl Frank. These names are so German. I know they're all in Germany. Why am I surprised? But I love it. Fritzl Frank was actually a pianist who Fritz had met at Hanover Station. Fritz had invited the boy back to No. 8 Neustraße, where he introduced him to Hans Granz, and also two female sex workers who

occasionally cleaned Fritz's apartment for money. One of the women was called Dorchen Mutzfrach, and she was actually Hans Granz's female lover, and the other was called Ellie Schlutz. Dorchen later told police that after she had met the 17-year-old pianist that Fritz had brought home, Hans Granz had whispered in her ear, quote, that boy's going to get trampled on today. Dorchen told police that she had no idea what this had meant at the time. But the following morning, Dorchen had gone back to Fritze's place, ready to clean the apartment. But when he opened the door for her, she saw the young pianist laying on the bed, half naked, pale as a ghost, and not moving.

Sensing that something was off, she asked Fritz what was wrong with the boy, but he immediately shushed her, saying, quote, he wants to sleep, come back this evening, before quickly covering the boy up with a blanket. When she returned about 7pm, the room had been scrubbed clean. The windows were all open and Fritz was in an excitable, borderline frantic state. And he was asking her whether she could smell anything. He's got no chill. No. Can you smell anything? Can you? How does this smell to you? Also, welcome to my apartment that you want to clean that is

perfectly clean. And also the idea that when she's like, is that boy okay? And he's like, no, he just wants to sleep and just throws a blanket over him. Like, okay. On the bed with the boy's clothes. But Fritz told her that he'd suddenly decided to go to Hamburg and that he'd be back in a few days. Apparently, Granz's female lover and her friend searched Fritz's room when he was away and they discovered the young pianist's wallet,

his cigarette holder, the bloodied apron, and huge pots full of pieces of meat under the stairs. Is that where you keep meat? No. I don't know. I don't know. And it's worse because two of these pieces of meat were covered in hair. Oh. Nope. Hairy meat is not in hair. Oh. Nope.

Hairy meat is not something I... Oh, yeah, don't eat, by the way. Stop eating. Yeah, we forgot to tell you. Stop eating. It's too late now. Everyone just vomits in unison. They took these two pieces of hairy meat to a policeman

who was actually using Fritz as an informant at the time, so he just brushed them off. Not with a hairbrush, with his words. He said that the meat was clearly pork skin. He's some hairy pigs kicking around in Hanover. Five weeks later, a 17-year-old boy named Wilhelm Schultz was on his way to work in Hanover station when he was approached by Fritz. His remains were never found. However, Fritz's landlady was found in possession of his clothing years later. One of the most troubling killings took place on the 17th of May, 1923. Although the MO remained the same, it was what Fritz did after the fact that was the most disturbing.

A 17-year-old boy named Kiems had gone missing, and despite his parents pleading to the police to put out a missing persons notice, they never did, nor did they adequately investigate his disappearance. So taking things into their own hands, the boy's parents paid for a notice in the local newspaper, offering up a sizable reward for any information. Several days later, a man turned up at their door claiming to be a criminologist who was interested in the case, and he asked them for a photo of Keams. He told the boy's family, if your son is still in Hanover, I shall solve the case in three days,

which is just like such a fucking pasto line from like a pasto play or something. And when Keams' parents left the room to fetch the photo, they left this man alone with the missing boy's younger sister. According to the young girl, the second her parents were out of earshot, the quote-unquote criminologist began laughing hysterically as though he'd just heard the funniest joke in the world.

I don't think you need me to tell you that the criminologist is obviously Detective Harmon, a.k.a. Fritz. Keams' body was later pulled out of a canal with a rope tied around his neck and a handkerchief monogrammed G stuffed into his mouth. Of course, like we said, no prizes for guessing that this was, of course, Fritz's work. And it's believed that he actually used one of Hans Granz's handkerchiefs to stuff into Keams's throat in order to try and frame his lover. But this wouldn't work out because Hans Granz was actually already in custody the day that the boy went missing. In the Peter Curtin

story, there's also a monogrammed handkerchief that throws people off the scent. Another German vampire. They love the handkerchiefs and their monograms. That's true. And if you're confused because we haven't actually covered Peter Curtin, don't go through our back catalogue looking for it. We're just going to cover it at some point in the future. Yeah, yeah. So it's a bit of foreshadowing. Yeah, he nearly went in the book. He didn't make the cut. But why was Fritz trying to frame Granz of all people? Well, they'd actually had an argument and Granz had ransacked Fritz's apartment and run off for a few weeks

and Fritz was clearly not over it. And Fritz went on to kill two more boys in that apartment at No. 8 Newstrasse. Two runaways, 16-year-old Roland Hutch and 19-year-old Hans Sonnenfeld. Numerous witnesses later testified that they'd seen Fritz wearing Sonnenfeld's distinctive yellow overcoat weeks after his disappearance. And this is it. He's just like not even fucking trying. He's like wandering around in this murdered kid's fucking distinctive clothes

after the killing. And the same month, feeling that number eight Newstrasse had maybe become too hot, Fritz and Granz had moved into a single room attic apartment at number two Rotteria. Their neighbor here was a shoemaker who had a 13-year-old son named Ernst Ernberg. And one morning, Ernst's father sent him on an errand to deliver some shoes to a customer. And on his way home, Ernst had bumped into Fritz and accepted his invitation into his apartment. The police would later find Ernst's green school cap and braces in Fritz's apartment. So trophy keeping. And also, I think it speaks to how small the population must have been that only one person in the entire city had a yellow coat. Yes. No, that's so true. And you're right about the trophy keeping.

That is like such a, obviously, we've talked about that multiple times. You guys know trophy keeping is such a serial killer trait. We're going to talk about how Fritz also brings Hans Granz into the whole trophy trophy keeping arena because I think that's quite interesting but we'll come to that a little bit later on Between the 23rd of August and the end of September, Fritz is known to have murdered at least three boys aged from 17 to 18 years old

Again, items of their clothing were found in Fritz's apartment and they would be identified by their families the following year. Over the month of October 1923, Fritz murdered three more young boys, Wilhelm Erdner, Hermann Wolf and Heinz Brinkmann. Hermann's clothes were actually later found in Fritz's apartment, but somehow he was acquitted of this particular murder after providing an alibi.

Later on, Fritz even yelled at the boys' parents in court after being shown a photo of Hermann. Fritz told them that he'd never stooped so low as to touch such an ugly child and that they ought to be ashamed of his appearance. We'll come back to the trial later on, so hold on to it because there's some pretty erratic behaviour going on, to say the least. On November 10th, 1923, a 17-year-old carpenter's apprentice from Düsseldorf, Adolf Hannappel, disappeared again from Hanover Station. Witnesses later told police that they'd seen Adolf sitting on his trunk and behind him they saw Fritz

and Granz watching the boy and that Granz pointed at him and the three had struck up a conversation. Adolf's clothes didn't turn up until July the following year when the boy's parents identified their son's hat on the head of a police inspector at the station. How distinctive are people dressing in these past times? Like I don't like maybe I'm just like completely brainwashed by like mass production that we have now but I just find it difficult to believe that every piece of clothing was completely unique. I know it is weird unless, unless people were just literally making their own clothes and the mum is like, I made that hat for him. Yeah, right, right, right.

It's like, that's his hat. But yeah, it's a very crime of its time and a very set of identifying markers of its time. Absolutely. And this policeman had been given this hat by Fritz, obviously. Fritz did this a lot. He would either keep the clothes given to Granz or sell them or gift them to police officers, apparently.

Granz was found to be wearing the boy's trousers, something Fritz later used to his advantage, telling the police that Granz had pointed at the boy and told Fritz, I like his trousers, he's next. Fritz went on to kill at least 13 more young boys, with his final kill being on the 14th of June, 1924. And you can see here, you know, when we said that we'd come back to the whole trophy keeping thing, let's come back to it now, because this is the thing with Fritz,

he doesn't just keep the trophies like for himself, you know, in a secret little box that he can just take a look at. Because he takes clothes from his victims, he does things like give them to his partner or give them to other people that he knows he's going to see and again that's very typical because it's like a power play it's like a dominance thing it's this idea of like seeing those items and you know they were taken from your victims not in Grant's case because he's not unsuspecting he knows but on the head of an unsuspecting police inspector because that gives Fritz such a sense of power and control, like knowing where that hat really came from. It tells so much about

his psychopathology, I think, and it's fascinating in the most horrible way. I'm sure he would become aroused every time he would have seen those items of clothing on someone else. Oh, definitely. So if you cast your minds back to the top of the show, you'll remember that we mentioned the remains of many of Fritz's victims had been discovered in May of 1924, with more turning up almost every single passing day. So by the time that Fritz had committed his final murder, the police were already conducting a serious investigation into the killings of Hanover's young boys.

But it's weird because despite the number of people that came and told them, it's this guy who's calling himself Detective Harmon. They're like, nah, we're doing an investigation, but it couldn't possibly be Fritz Harmon, the guy we work with as an informant. Couldn't possibly be Fritz Harmon that literally everyone is like, oh yeah, that boy that just went missing. He was definitely talking to this guy. His name is Fritz Harmon, F-R-I-T-Z. And he's got a massive rap sheet for molestation. Yeah. And a yellow coat. Yeah, so basically, it's just shocking that even with such an extensive criminal record for molestation, the police weren't immediately on to him. But eventually, the police couldn't ignore Fritz's

criminal record and the fact that he was, of course, under suspicion for having killed Friedrich Roth. So Fritz did eventually become the police's number one suspect. But they knew that they needed more solid evidence. And so, with the help of two young officers from Berlin, they began to surveil Fritz closely. They knew that they had to bring in officers from Berlin because if they just used their own men, Fritz would obviously immediately recognise them

because they were probably wearing hats that he'd fucking given them. So this surveillance began on the 18th of june 1924 and within days the two policemen spotted fritz shouting at a 15 year old boy named carl from at hanover station fritz then called the police officers over again in such a fucking power play and told them to arrest the boy saying that he'd been traveling on forged papers it's like at some point he actually thinks he is the police it's like he actually thinks he's detective harman so the police play along and they took from to the station and during questioning from told the police how he'd been staying with fritz and how fritz had raped him repeatedly at knife point for four days and so the very next day on the 23rd of June,

police arrested Fritz at his apartment. And this time they did conduct a very thorough search of his property. They found large bloodstains all over his floors, which Fritz attempted to shrug off by saying that they were caused by meat that he'd butchered for his black market trade on the floor. Yeah. The scariest thing is he might well have been telling the truth. Maybe he had been selling the flesh of his victims as minced beef. I wouldn't put it past him. No. And all they ever found was bones. They never found anything else. Oh, except the hairy meat under the stairs. Police interviewed a number of Fritz's neighbours from his current and previous addresses

and found many of them saying that young boys were constantly coming in and out of his apartment at strange hours. His neighbours also told police that they regularly saw Fritz leaving his place carrying large sacks and baskets that he struggled to carry. And one neighbour even mentioned

that she'd seen Fritz throw one of said baskets into the River Lane, which was the place where many of the bones were discovered. So pretty solid eyewitness testimony there. The police have literally so many eyewitnesses that give them incredibly detailed accounts of what's going on. They're like, he was wearing a yellow coat, he was speaking to this guy, and then that guy was wearing a yellow coat and that kid's gone. And they're like, nah.

And indeed, many of the items of clothing were identified as belonging to missing persons. Fritz tried to explain this away by saying that they were simply from his dealings in the illicit clothing trade. But by now, the mountain of evidence against him made it impossible for the police to hold any more doubt as to whether Friedrich Harman was indeed the serial killer they'd been looking for. They hadn't been looking that hard. What they mean is, was indeed the serial killer they'd been looking for. They hadn't been looking that hard. What they mean is, was indeed the serial killer they had been aware of. Yeah.

The serial killer they had been ignoring for some time. All this evidence, however, didn't stop Fritz denying the charges against him at every opportunity. And, shockingly, even with all of the mountains of evidence the police had, they still couldn't completely prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Fritz was indeed responsible for every murder that he was accused of. They needed a confession. Initially, when they questioned Fritz, he admitted that he had on occasion strangled, bitten and throttled a few young lovers in the grips of sexual passion. But it was only several days later, after undergoing incessant questioning, while being constantly deprived of sleep and force-fed laxatives, that Fritz finally broke and confessed

on the 29th of June 1929. Obviously, they've used quite torturous techniques to extract this confession. And it does come. Fritz told the police at this point that he had never initially intended on killing anybody. Again, I believe that. I think as a sexual sadist, that wasn't what he wanted. He just wanted to fucking torture them so he could get off. But he said that when he would start raping these boys, he would find himself overwhelmed by an intense sexual murderous rage,

which caused him to either strangle his victims or bite through their Adam's apples. When asked about how he dismembered the bodies, he told the police that he abhorred the process just like Dennis Nilsen and for the first time he did it. It left him ill for eight whole days. And then he went on to say the following, put down at the sandwich, you pervert. Here's what he said, I bit through the Adam's apple and must have throttled them at the same time. I would collapse on the dead body. I'd go make myself some strong black coffee. I'd put the body on the floor and cover the face with a cloth so it wouldn't be looking at me. I'd make two cuts in the abdomen and put the intestines in a bucket.

I'd dip a towel in the blood collecting in the abdominal cavity and keep doing that until it had been soaked up. Then I'd make three cuts down the ribs towards the shoulders, take hold of the ribs and push until the bones around the shoulders broke. I'd then cut through that area. Now I could get the heart, lungs and kidneys and chop them up and put them in my bucket. He was definitely selling it. He was definitely selling it.

Yeah, 100%. Then I'd take the legs off, then the arms. I'd take the flesh of the bones and put it in my wax cloth bag. The rest of the flesh went under the bed or in the cubbyhole. I wonder what German for cubbyhole is. It would take me five or six trips to take everything out and throw it down the toilet like Nilsson or in the river. I'd cut the penis off after I'd emptied and cleaned the chest and stomach cavities. I would cut it into lots of little pieces. I hated doing this, but I couldn't help it.

My passion was so much stronger than the horror of the cutting and the chopping. I was really hungry before we started recording this. And now I'm never going to eat again. Yeah, and... Yeah. After this, he went on to say, I'd take the heads off. I'd use the little kitchen knife to cut around the scalp

and cut it up into little strips and squares. I'd put the skull face down on a straw mat and cover it with rags so that you wouldn't hear the banging so much, because then I'd hit it with a blunt edge of an axe until the joints of the skull split apart. The brain went in the bucket and the chopped up bones went in the river opposite the castle. And then, he said, I gave the clothes away. Most of them went to out of love. I sold the other things. After his confession, Fritz's entire demeanour changed from very reserved yet chatty, to actually very helpful and borderline childish. It seemed as though a weight had been lifted from

his shoulders, and he even took the police on various excursions around Hanover, and revealed to them more places where he disposed of his victims' remains. It was only when he was faced with the parents of his victims or asked in detail about his sexual depravity and the true nature of the illicit meat that he sold that he would become shy and withdraw into himself. Fritz's trial started on the 4th of December 1924. He had confessed to around 50 to 70 murders at this point, but he was only charged with 24. The jury heard testimonies from over 200 witnesses and were presented with mountains of evidence, as well as the written confessions from Fritz. Like many other psychopathic killers we've come across, Fritz insisted on acting as his own lawyer. He is the creator of the bingo card.

He's Mr. Bingo. Fritz's appearance completely challenged the conventional image everybody had in their minds at the time of what a murderer looked like. Despite his moustache, he had a fairly androgynous look to him mixed in with some childlike features. His tongue would flick in and out of his mouth

when he became nervous. Oh no. And he would clam up uncomfortably when embarrassed, especially when asked about paedophilia or cannibalism. I would also be embarrassed. Yeah, I mean, it's just awkward, isn't it? When they are two favourite things. The pale-faced killer couldn't sit still for more than a few seconds,

almost constantly pulling at his long fingers while talking incessantly. Everything about him was full of contradictions. He had a strong muscular body, but the voice of a high-pitched older woman. Fritz was a strange sight in court. When he was embarrassed or praised, he'd involuntarily wiggle his backside without realising. What? Like a dog? He's such a strange character. And when he was tired in court, he'd begin to rub his temple like it hurt, and then he'd start his sentence over and over again. When he grew defensive, he'd start blinking uncontrollably while again licking his lips.

And after speaking to him for just five minutes, it was hard not to realize how utterly deluded he was. Especially because he's like fucking representing himself. So he's just talking nonstop in this courtroom. And everyone is just like, this guy is off his fucking rock himself. So he's just talking nonstop in this courtroom. And everyone is just like this guy is off his fucking rocker. Because you could tell that Fritz completely believed that every young boy he met was in love with him. And he also oddly thought that every woman he spoke to was flirting with him. And this is weird, because Fritz very much apart from his mother despised women. And again, like his father, almost viewed them as rivals.

Just to prove his disdain for women, at one point during his trial, Fritz actually insisted that he wouldn't go on unless all of the women in the courtroom were made to leave. It didn't happen, thankfully. But he demands it. And on the 19th of december 1924 finally after a drawn-out grizzly trial fritz harman was found guilty of 24 murders and acquitted of the three that he denied he was sentenced to death by beheading fritz made sure he wasn't going to go down alone however and shortly

after fritz's arrest grounds Granz was arrested too, under charges of having known about the killings and providing Fritz with victims and probably alibis. Subsequently, Granz was found guilty of incitement to murder in the case of Adolf Hannappel, the boy whose trousers he wanted, and he was also sentenced to death and an additional 12 years in prison. When Fritz was handed his death sentence, he announced, I accept the verdict fully and freely and shall go to the decapitating block joyfully and happily.

Granz, on the other hand, was horrified and collapsed the moment he was returned to his cell. Apparently, German tradition back then dictated that a prisoner sentenced to death shouldn't be notified of the date of execution until the night before. That evening, Fritz repented his sins to a priest and enjoyed an expensive cigar and Brazilian coffee as his last request. And on the morning of the 15th of April 1925, Fritz Harman was led to the guillotine, and with the fall of the large blade, the werewolf, vampire, butcher, whatever, of Hanover was dead. After his death, police discovered a letter written by Fritz in which

he revealed that he had lied about his lover Hans Granz's knowledge of or involvement in any of the murders he committed. This led to Granz being admitted a retrial and he was subsequently given two consecutive sentences of 12 years instead of the death penalty. Unusual. Yeah, yeah, he does that. But yeah, there you go. He does set Hans Granz free after death. And in the aftermath of the werewolf of Hanover, the police rightfully came under heavy public scrutiny. Some of the parents of Fritz's victims had actually turned up at the police station where he was being interrogated in the hopes of lynching him. These parents later recalled how they had looked through the keyhole

of the room where Fritz was being held. I love the idea that just a mob of parents got as far as being able to get to the fucking room and look through the peephole. Yeah, I know. And that the keyhole's so massive. They're like, yeah, definitely him. And they're like, let's get him.

But wait, let me just look through the keyhole first. And apparently when they looked through this keyhole's so massive. They're like, yeah, definitely him. And they're like, let's get him. But wait, let me just look through the keyhole first. And apparently when they looked through this keyhole, what they saw was the police beating Fritz to a pulp and crushing his testicles with their boots. We obviously already know that they did torture Fritz to get the confession out of him, but this is obviously far beyond what the police admitted to. And they also said that they

believed that fritz had only implicated his lover grants in order to stop the police from torturing him i can believe that oh me too so this information along with the fact that the police had actually employed fritz for years as an informant despite knowing of his previous and numerous crimes and also given their reluctance to investigate the first report in the case of Friedrich Roth through the police's conduct throughout the years into question. Not only this, but the entire case of Fritz Harman, the serial killer, set gay rights in Germany back decades

and incited a whole new wave of homophobia across the nation in which being homosexual was already a crime punishable by imprisonment. Again, just like Peter fucking Curtin, Fritz's brain was dissected and studied by doctors who found traces of meningitis, but this was later decided to be irrelevant to his psychopathy. Notably though, meningitis can cause inflammation of the brain and lead to a wide range of cognitive issues like seizures, epilepsy, behavioral disorders, and emotional instability, all of which we observe throughout Fritz's life story.

And the first of a couple of fun facts we've got for you, his head, just like Peter Curtin's head is in a fucking Ripley's Believe It or Not. I know. His head is preserved in a tank. It was preserved in a tank in 1925 at the Gurdaginff Medical School for Future Students, but it was recently destroyed only in 2014.

Peter Curtin's head's still knocking about. You can go and see it. I think it's in Wisconsin. The bodies of many of Fritz's victims were buried in a mass grave at Stockner Cemetery in Hanover and memorialised with a large plaque. But as we know, Fritz admitted to having killed up to 70 young boys and men, so it's likely that many of his victims were never found. Time for another bonus fun fact, anyone?

Because apparently there's a band from Chicago called Macabre. Macabre? Macabre? I don't know. I don't know how to say that word. I avoid it at all costs. I feel like I don't know how to say it anymore. I feel like I did. Macabre. We'll go with Macabre. That don't know. I don't know how to say that word. I avoid it at all costs. I feel like I don't know how to say it anymore. I feel like I did. Macabre. We'll go with macabre.

That is how we say it. Wait till everyone yells at me on the internet. And they actually labeled themselves as murder metal, which is an interesting genre of music. And their latest album, named Carnival of Killers, was released last year. And it has a song on that album dedicated solely to none other than Fritz Harman titled Warte Warte which I did look up and I did check the pronunciation and I believe it means wait in German so wait wait so you know lovely

they sing that entire song in german but they're obviously not german they're american so that's interesting they also have other songs on this album that are dedicated to various serial killers i mean it is called carnival of killers they have reworked the children's song wheels on the bus into a song about ted bundy how edgelord do you want to be very apparently so there you go who's who who is buying that music I don't know if you are buying it then let us know I would be fascinated to find out do you listen to murder metal people do you listen to macabre let us know so that is. So that is it, guys. That is the end of the episode on Detective Fritz Harman. Detective Harman. And his yellow coat.

Yeah, we don't often do older ones. They are much harder to research, but hopefully you found that interesting. So here we go. Here are our Patreon lovely people from November. Danielle, Kevin Cushman, M. Penny Fitzsimmons, Jane Leanne Robin, Molly Richardson, Christina Lenarduzzi, Ashley Gillespie, Anna Wesley, Holly, Katie Cat Stewart, Dina and Jessica J, Hannah Dutton, Nicole Wellham, Teresa Hale, Amy Vincent Bunn, Helena Bird, Chelsea Crane, Charlotte Reed, Eleanor James, Melissa Donegan, Julie Ann, Jake Bauer, Tash M. Jade, Keira Collins,

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it's just such a good name Lily Make Peace and like it's a great name so everyone will ask me about it and be like it's a secret anyway

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