„I am the best human of Hannover“.
Biography
Friedrich „Fritz“ Heinrich Karl Haarmann (Hannover 25/10/1879 – Hannover 15/04/1925) was a serial killer, who was sentenced to death after having killed 24 young men and boys in Hannover.
His father raised him in a very authoritarian way, while his mother spoilt him to bits. His older brother also sexually abused him over several years. Following his apprenticeship to a locksmith, he joined a military academy, but was ultimately kicked out due to the many hallucinations he had been having.
He remained unemployed for a while, before taking a job at his father’s cigarette factory. He was again booted out when he started abusing children, and was sent to a sanatorium where he was diagnosed with incurable dementia. In 1900, he had to join the military, but soon started hallucinating again. Shortly after, he was diagnosed with hebephrenic schizophrenia and so had to be discharged. So, he started his life as a criminal. Theft, burglary, dealing in stolen property… He worked as a spy for the police and lived out his homosexual desires (he’d been twice previously engaged.)
He spent the whole of WWI in prison, and moved to the red light district when he was released. There, he met and began a sexual relationship with Hans Grans, another petty criminal whom he had met in 1919.
His crimes
Between May and June of 1924, several skulls belonging to young men were found. They had been chopped off the body with a knife. The police concluded hold-up murder, and started the search for a prolific homosexual offender. Haarmann had been under suspicion since 1918, and police kept a close eye on him as he was supposed to have killed two young men. He was closely observed around-the-clock from the 17th of June, 1924 onwards, but without incident – until one day, he threatened a teenager at the main station. On 23rd June, officers broke into his flat and found bloodstained clothes.
He was taken in custody, and eventually confessed under torture. Little by little, he confessed to have killed young men and so called “puppet boys” with a bite to the neck. After that, he dismembered the bodies and got rid of them. He either sold their clothes or wore them(!) Over 300 bones were found, and were suspected to have belonged to at least 24 victims of his. All over the country, the victims’ families came forth to identify their clothes, but not all of them could be identified. Since Haarmann also sold preserved meat, many also claimed that he sold the victims as meat this way, but this was never proved.
After further forced confessions, wherein he disputed 6 cases while possibly confessing to the others (he thought he might have been responsible, although he was not able to remember fully) he was sentenced to death. Hans Grans was given 12 years of penal servitude. During the trial, the victims’ families accused the police of bias, as Haarmann had good connections in the police force from during his time as a spy.
In the end, Haarmann was executed via guillotine. He found his last meal so delicious that he ordered a second one. The undersecretary in the Prussian Justice Department Hartung sent his head to the Kraepelin Insitute of Brain Research in Munich, and scientists later discovered that he had been infected with meningitis, which would possibly have caused alterations in his brain and behaviour, thus being responsible for his reprehensible behaviour.
Copyright and source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haarmann and http://moerder.blogspot.de/2011/05/fritz-haarmann-27-opfer-vampir-werwolf.html
