Fritz Haarmann

Haarmann was a vicious and unscrupulous man who saw this as a business opportunity not to be missed.  He would pose as a policeman and pick up young vagrants who would hang around the main railway station in Hanover.  He would then lure them to his dirty lodgings on the Kellerstrasse.

Haarmann would sexually assault his victims before biting through their throats to kill them.  He would then strip them of their clothing; which he sold, take the meat from their bodies; which he sold, and dump their bodies in the River Leine.

In september 1919 Fritz Haarmann met a fellow homosexual degenerate named Hans Grans.  Together they formed a deadly partnership.  Grans was the dominant one in the relationship, who it is reported, treated Haarmann little better than a servant.  Grans would select their victims, and would keep a personal for himself.  He always made sure it was Haarmann who took all the risks.

During this time it is estimated that Grans and Haarmann were disposing of two victims a week to the black market meat trade.

One of their customers did however go to the police, suspicious of the meat they were about to consume.  They were told they should be grateful to find such a good piece of pork in such difficult times!

This activity went on until June 1924 when skulls started to be fished out of the River Leine.  And on 22 June  Fritz Haarmann was arrested for trying to molest a boy in the street.  The police then searched his apartment.  The police discovered piles of clothes awaiting sale.

Then on June 24 1924 a group of children found some human remains in a meadow and the River started to yield more than 500 bones.

Fritz Haarmann decided to confess all to the police and implicated Hans Grans.  The both stood trial in December 1924 at the Assizes in Hanover.  The trial lasted fourteen days.

Haarmann could not understand why he was only being charged with twenty seven murders when he could recollect well over forty.  During the trial he would constantly interrupt shouting abuse at any witnesses who had come forward.

Fritz Haarmann was sentenced to death and while in prison awaiting decapitation he made a lengthy confession.  He blamed his sexual perversion for his lust to kill.

Hans Grans on the other hand was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment.  I could not find any information as to what happened to him after his release.

The reason I find the crimes of  Fritz Haarmann so gruesome is not only the 27 brutal murders of which he was convicted.  It is the fact that he swore he could remember killing well over 40, and that he sold the “meat” on the black market.  Perhaps it is the hundreds of people who unwittingly ate the bodies who are the true victims.