All language subtitles for Episode 08 Wolfgang Schmidt

-In October 1989, the body
of a woman was found in a forest

on the outskirts of the village
of Deetz in East Germany.

She'd been hit by a hammer,

strangled,
and sexually assaulted.

Scattered around her body

was her underwear,
stolen from a washing line.

Police had no idea at the time,

but this was the work
of a perverted serial killer.

-He did know what he was doing.

He did know that it was wrong,
and he chose to do it anyway,

regardless of whatever drives
or desires he had.

-The murderer was a 23-year-old
man named Wolfgang Schmidt.

He'd been roaming the local
woods in search of prey

to satisfy his depraved
sexual fantasies.

He became known as
the Beast of Beelitz.

-I was on call day and night,
and when my phone would ring,

I would sit up
straight in my bed

because I thought
he had struck again.

-Over the next two years,

he would kill a further
four women and a baby,

all to fulfill his own
grotesque form of sexual urges.

-You have a man who is
completely possessed

by the desire

that he's now feeding
the frenzy of his own addiction.

-Wolfgang Schmidt,
the Beast of Beelitz,

had become one of
the world's most evil killers.

Wolfgang Schmidt had
brutally killed five women

and an infant during his near
two-year-long killing spree.

He committed his crimes
in and around the forest

near the town of Beelitz
in East Germany,

but when he was finally
captured in 1991,

it was after the fall
of the Berlin Wall,

and so he faced the courts
of the new unified Germany.

The trial began on
the 20th of October, 1992,

just two weeks after
Schmidt's 26th birthday.

-The public gallery
was jam-packed.

Not one more person
could fit in.

Everyone wanted to see
Wolfgang Schmidt.

This, of course, has to do
with the sensationalism.

It's also clear
the more difficult,

the more terrible the crime,

the more people are fascinated.

-Schmidt had murdered
five people

and attacked three other women
in an attempt

to get sexual gratification
from his unique perversion --

stealing and soiling
their underwear.

The only way he could do this
was if they were dead.

-There are some elements of

the most extraordinary
humiliation

in Schmidt's acts towards women,

and there can be
no forgiveness for that.

He was literally out of control.

He was quite literally
fulfilling his own fantasies

at the expense of whomever
might get in his way.

-It moved the whole country --
all of Germany,

not only the vicinity
of Berlin and Brandenburg.

It was on the national news.

Germany was moved.

-Despite the extreme violence
and sexual elements

to his crimes,

when he was found guilty and
sentenced to 15 years in prison,

Wolfgang Schmidt showed
little remorse for his actions.

-I think he was embarrassed,

but he was not ashamed
about anything,

least of all the murders.

-During the trial,
it became clear

Schmidt's motive for killing

was to indulge his fantasies
for wearing women's underwear

and defecating in them
to reach sexual satisfaction.

He was diagnosed with a fetish
called coprophilia.

-Coprophilia is a very rare
paraphilia,

and it's basically
a sexual arousal

around human waste,
around excrement --

people becoming sexually excited
around this substance.

So it's very, very rare
to see this,

even amongst serial killers.

-Any kind of major fetish

almost always
becomes uncontrollable.

The same is true of someone who
gets an intense satisfaction,

as in this case,
from wearing women's clothes.

That satisfaction
along with coprophilia

is a very dynamic mixture.

-In time, Schmidt's bizarre
and murderous acts

would earn him two monikers.

He was called
the Beast of Beelitz

and was also labeled by some
as the Pink Giant.

-He became known as
the Pink Giant

because he grew to be
a 6-foot-1-, 6-foot-2-tall man,

and he loved pink underwear --
ladies' pink underwear --

which was part of his fetish.

-This killer's story begins
just over 50 years ago.

Wolfgang Schmidt was born
on the 5th of October, 1966,

in the small town of Lehnin,
near Potsdam,

in the former
German Democratic Republic.

He, along with
his younger brother,

grew up in a rural area
just outside the town.

-Well, the family is
the first institution

in which we start to learn about
men and women's roles in society

and about their relationships
with one another,

so what we see in our family
in our early years

we take to be
our benchmark for normal.

-According to
a psychologist's report,

Schmidt's unusual desires
began early.

-Wolfgang Schmidt discovered
his fetish by coincidence

when he went through
his mother's closet

as a 6- or 7-year-old boy
and discovered lingerie.

And then he put
that lingerie on.

He had the need for a loving,
symbiotic relationship

with his mother...

-...which he was able
to establish

by wearing her lingerie.

-At first, Schmidt says
he felt a childlike pleasure

from wearing
his mother's underwear,

and it became a substitute for
a close maternal relationship.

-Well, many children
are going to experiment.

They're gonna play
when they're youngsters.

They're gonna try on the clothes

of their parents,
their siblings.

This isn't something that is
completely out of the ordinary,

but the real key for me here is,

it's the reaction
of other people

when a child engages
in this behavior.

Is this something
that the parent is gonna

make them feel bad about?

Is it something that
the parent's going to

make them feel ashamed of?

Or is it something that's
just going to be brushed off

and, "Okay, it's fine.

They're just playing.
They're just experimenting"?

-According to Schmidt,
his mother reacted with horror,

and she started to
lock her underwear away,

but Schmidt had already
developed a fondness

for wearing
his mother's undergarments.

When he discovered that
defecating and urinating in them

increased the overall
pleasurable sensation,

he could not stop.

-The thing about him starting
to soil the underwear --

it could have been maybe
he was wearing the underwear

when everybody
was outside the house,

and then he heard a noise.

He's a kid.
He gets scared.

You can't really control it,
and it just happened.

Right there,
he didn't intend to,

and as he did,
something else came over him

that he don't know what it is.

But it was something
that made him go,

"Wow. I like this."

Not a sexual thing.

He just simply felt
a different excitement,

and when a kid likes something,
they will go back to it.

-By the time
Schmidt reached puberty,

defecating in
his mother's underwear

added a whole different level
of enjoyment.

-To get pleasure out of
destroying something

that belongs to her,

something that is intimate
for her --

that's really meaningful for me

looking at this
from the outside.

And to see him getting pleasure
in doing this,

in soiling this underwear --

that's something
that signifies to me

he's enjoying getting
a little bit of power back.

-He ritualized that behavior
over the years

so that it didn't only become
the central element

of his sexuality,
but of his entire life.

That means that he really
only lives to experience

that kind of sexuality.

-With all the underwear
locked away,

Schmidt started to look
elsewhere to satisfy his urges.

This was the beginning
of his double life.

Ulrich Bauschulte was
Schmidt's defense lawyer.

-Often, with his father,

he cleared things from the house
to be put in trash heaps,

or as they were called then in
the German Democratic Republic,

mullhaufen.

Then he noticed that women's
underwear was also thrown away,

and so he began to collect
these undergarments.

-Schmidt regularly went
into the forest

near the village of Deetz
that was near to his home

in search of underwear
on makeshift landfills.

He would then defecate
with the underwear on,

satisfy his sexual urges,
and clean up after

as if nothing had happened.

As he grew to be an adult,
however,

this routine
would not be enough for him.

He needed an actual woman
to fulfill his fantasy.

-That means the woman has to be
draped with lingerie.

There has to be
mutual defecation,

and then there
will be intercourse.

And it became clear to him
at some point

that in order to
live out this fantasy,

he needed a woman
to be entirely at his disposal.

-And the only way Schmidt
was going to satisfy his needs

was to murder.

But living in such a remote
and sparsely populated area,

the opportunities for Schmidt

to fulfill his unusual fantasies
were limited.

-He lived in
a very rural community --

lots of forests,
lots of lakes, woods,

so there weren't
countless washing lines

with ladies' underwear
hanging on them out to dry.

It was quite
a complicated search,

but search he did,
and he searched rubbish dumps.

He searched as much as he could.

He got pleasure from
putting the underwear on,

taking it off, urinating in it,
defecating in it.

It was all mixed into this

bodily-function,
sexual-arousal dynamic.

-In 1985,
Schmidt's life changed.

He signed up to
10 years of service

with the riotant,
anti-insurgency police force.

Around that time,

he also met a young woman
from a nearby village.

-He develops a double life.

He has this young woman
who he's devoted to

and eventually
becomes his fiancée.

-At this time, Schmidt appeared
to be leading a regular life.

-And he has this
very ordered life in the police.

Perhaps he thinks
something about the uniform

or the discipline will --
well, how can I put it? --

"Help me control my urges.

Perhaps there's something about
that disciplined environment

which will calm me down."

It's a very male,
macho environment.

-But when, in April 1989,
he got drunk

and publicly celebrated
Adolf Hitler's 100th birthday,

he was dismissed from the force.

It led to
catastrophic consequences.

-Well, when we look at
the offending behavior

of serial killers,

often we identify
particular stressors,

particular things that would
have made the difference

between offending
and not offending

at that particular
point in time,

and I think for Schmidt,

losing his job
as a police officer

was very, very significant
for him

'cause this was quite central
to his sense of identity.

-Schmidt, now 23, got a new job
at a local steelworks,

but without the discipline
of the police force,

his strange urges grew stronger.

-I'm not in any doubt

that Schmidt was
increasingly unraveling

from the moment
he lost his job with the police

until the first killing,

which was not
all that much later.

It was that ticking time bomb
within him

that led inevitably,
unfortunately,

to the first killing.

By the autumn that year,
he is about to explode.

-Schmidt was on his way to work
when he was sidetracked

by his desire to indulge
in his deviant fantasies.

He ended up on the outskirts
of the small village of Deetz,

where he hid
at the edge of the forest

to watch a row of houses.

He was hoping to find
women's underwear.

-He goes to the house
on the end of the little road

and discovers
that there's a tool shed,

and he presumably started by
looking for the washing line,

but he goes into the tool shed,
and he discovers a hammer.

He then spies the owner
of the property,

and I think at that point,

the detonation went off
in his head.

-When Schmidt saw
Edeltraut Nixdorf

tending to her garden,

he was overcome
by an intense urge

to violently assault
the 51-year-old woman.

-And probably
in the first instance,

without very much premeditation,
he simply hit her on the head

with the hammer
he'd found in the tool shed.

-The woman screamed and tried to
defend herself with a rake,

but Schmidt dragged her
into the house,

hit her again with the hammer,
and strangled her.

He then proceeded
to have intercourse with her.

However, not getting
the satisfaction he craved,

Schmidt wrapped her body
in a blanket

and started to carry her
towards the forest.

Wolfgang Schmidt had killed
his first victim,

but it had not gone to plan.

-In terms of his first killing,

that reality didn't quite
live up to the fantasy

that he had in his head,

so of course he was
going to continue

to try and create that fantasy
and make it a reality.

-Schmidt had been spotted

when he carried his victim
into the forest,

and the police
were called to the scene.

The witness gave a description

of a very tall, strong,
and athletic man.

When detectives searched
the crime scene in Deetz,

they found underwear scattered
around the victim's body.

One of the investigating
officers was Volker Kelm.

-These clothes were lying
in the area

very close by to the victim.

From this, we concluded
that it was a break-in

and that the perpetrator had
been disturbed by the victim,

and so he killed her.

-Police also found a vital clue
in the house --

a large footprint.

The boot was military-issue
and similar to ones worn

by some police units,
but in 1989,

the German Democratic Republic
was on the brink of collapse.

Attempts to identify
the owner of the boot

from an official list of
police recruits proved futile.

For Schmidt, however,
this was just the beginning.

-This is a man who is now
literally searching for prey.

He wants nothing more
than victims,

and he doesn't really mind which
shape and form they come in.

They could be older.

They could be younger.

What's important
is they are submissive.

-On the 24th of May,

Schmidt was riding his bicycle
to meet friends in Ferch,

about eight miles from
the town of Beelitz,

when he saw a sign
pointing to a landfill.

-Although there weren't copious
washing lines for him to search,

there were increasing numbers
of illegal landfills

in which were deposited

underwear of all sorts of
shapes and sizes,

be it slips, bras, knickers,
all kinds,

and that became
Schmidt's happy hunting ground.

-While Schmidt searched the
landfill for women's underwear,

he was disturbed by a noise.

He spotted a 55-year-old woman,
Christa Naujoks,

who lived in a caravan
next to the landfill.

-He did not care about the age
of his victims at all.

In the fantasies of
a perpetrator like that,

the victims appear faceless
and ageless a lot of the time.

So it's not about
who I do it with,

but rather about what I do,

and with him, the central
element of experience

was his fetish.

-As Schmidt approached
his victim, she screamed.

He put his arm around her neck
and started to tighten his grip,

but Christa managed to get away.

Schmidt then picked up
an electric cable

and caught up with her.

He strangled Christa to death,

dragged her into the forest,
and sexually abused her.

-The first two murders
were really spontaneous.

Wolfgang Schmidt didn't intend
to kill anyone.

That's not why he was out there.

But he learned by committing
the first two murders

firstly that he was capable
of doing it...

...and, secondly, that when
he had sex with corpses,

it was especially arousing
to him.

-By the time police arrived
at the crime scene,

Schmidt had already left.

Having now found a way to get
his deadly needs met,

it wasn't long until Schmidt
tried to overcome another woman.

-By now, you have the classic
behavioral trait

of escalation.

First murder --
the autumn in October 1989.

Second murder in May 1990.

Not much longer,
again in the summer of 1990.

-In July,
Schmidt was at a landfill

just outside the city
of Brandenburg.

He had already found underwear
and pornography

when he realized
he was not alone.

He spotted his next victim,
a 58-year-old woman.

This time,
Schmidt was carrying a knife.

He approached and stabbed her
but did not kill her.

He then dragged the woman
to a more secluded place.

-He renders her unconscious,

and he's about to rape her,
but he gets interrupted,

so he's nearly got to the point

where he's fulfilled
his fantasy,

where he's made
his fantasy reality,

but he's been stopped
in doing so.

-Schmidt fled the scene.

The woman was found in time
to call an ambulance.

She survived but was unable
to give a description

of her attacker
to the local police.

With no formal identification
made,

the police could take the case
no further.

At this point, they did not
make a connection

with the previous killings.

Schmidt laid low
for eight months,

but he could not control
his urges,

and it would not be long
before he struck again.

-When he gets to
the fourth victim,

he goes prepared, essentially.

He's got a knife.

He's absolutely determined
'cause he's nearly reached

the point
that he wanted to reach.

He's nearly managed to have
sexual relations

with a woman who is submissive,
who is unconscious,

and he's absolutely determined

that he's gonna
make this happen,

so there's a real sense
of urgency in him now,

and he's a very,
very dangerous man.

-On the 13th of March, 1991,

Schmidt attacked Inge Fischer.

The 34-year-old woman

was walking home
through the forest near Beelitz.

-She was stabbed by the killer
with a knife from behind.

And here, too,
based on the way it was done

and in the circumstances,

we couldn't establish
connections

with any previous incidents.

The modus operandi, the way
it was done, was different.

One was struck with a hammer.

One was strangled.

One was stabbed.

Two were older women,
this time a younger woman,

on a forest path,
a cottage, a rubbish dump.

Because we didn't have
any matching clues until then,

it was hard for us
to see any connections.

-After four attacks,
three resulting in murders,

it was still impossible
for police

to make a conclusive connection
between the crimes.

That meant Schmidt's
killing spree

continued unabated.

In the spring of 1991,

Wolfgang Schmidt
was leading a double life.

He was engaged to be married and
worked at a local steelworks.

At the same time, he was
a dangerous sexual predator

who was still on the loose.

One thing had become clear --
it was dangerous for women

to venture into the forest
on their own.

Police handed out leaflets
and warned local communities,

but the message had not
reached a community

of former Russian military
families living in the area.

-They had very little contact
with the people in the area

and so probably didn't notice
what was happening.

One should add that, tragically,

that they were just about
to go back home.

-Just nine days after
killing his last victim,

Schmidt was prowling
the forest behind a hospital.

He spotted a Russian mother,
Tamara Petrowskaja,

and her infant son
walking home through the woods.

-He's been fantasizing
about this --

this sexual encounter --
for so many years.

It's something that
he really wants.

Now the possibility
is in front of him,

and there's this one barrier
in the way,

and that barrier is the baby.

So he's very instrumental
in removing this obstacle

to getting what he wants.

-Schmidt attacked his victim,
beat her,

and started to
pull her into the forest.

To silence the baby,
Schmidt picked up the infant

and threw him to the ground

and then callously kicked him
in the chest.

-The most horrific, the most
terrifying of Schmidt's crimes,

was the killing
of a Russian doctor's wife.

The woman was 44.

Imagine how much she must have
prized the child,

particularly at that age.

Unfortunately for her
and for her child,

Schmidt comes across them

and is absolutely determined
to attack the woman.

-At the crime scene where
the baby and the woman died,

there was women's lingerie lying
right there at the scene,

and it was clear that it had
something to do with the crime.

That's when it occurred to us,
"What about the others?

Could this case be linked
with the others?"

-Police found women's underwear
at the crime scene.

They had now established
it was crucial evidence

in all these murders,

and that was
a major breakthrough.

The investigators believe
the perpetrator

must be someone
with a dangerous fetish.

They were coming under
increasing pressure

to capture the killer who was
now hitting the headlines

as the Beast of Beelitz
and the Pink Giant.

Could this be the missing clue
that would finally lead them

to this extremely dangerous
sexual predator?

-After we were able
to establish the relationship

between the underwear
and the perpetrator,

naturally, we went to search
this angle in particular.

And at the surrounding area
of the crime scenes,

we found lairs

where he basically
collected the underwear

and where he satisfied himself
with it.

And there were bags of underwear
that we found.

-Marianne Bohm, then a young
prosecutor from West Berlin,

was sent to Potsdam
to head up the investigation.

-The case of Wolfgang Schmidt
was especially distinguished

by the variety of cases
to deal with.

It was because of this anxiety,

because we couldn't catch
the perpetrator,

I was on call day and night,

and when my phone would ring,

I would sit up straight
in my bed

because I thought
he had struck again.

-Schmidt would have known that
police were closing in on him,

but he was still free

and still indulging in
his now deadly fantasies.

-The main reason why it was
tricky for the police

to put all the clues together
to go after Schmidt is,

there are two types
of serial killers,

or two main types
of serial killers.

One is the victim-based
serial killer,

and the other one
is action-based serial killer

or the violence-based
serial killer.

The victim-based goes after
a specific kind of victim.

The other kind of serial killer
is one that the victim

makes zero difference to them.

What they are after
is something else.

Either the violence --

that is what excites them,
is killing the person --

or some kind of sexual pleasure.

In the case of Schmidt,
he didn't care about the victim.

He wanted the sex.

-But as yet,
the police had no idea

who they were dealing with.

-The whole problem was that
Wolfgang Schmidt

was not known to the police
as a sexual perpetrator.

The investigators back then
already had

a pretty clear picture
of what made this predator tick,

that his way of acting
was fetishistic

and that he went into
a situation

with an intent of killing.

-It was also clear early on

that they were dealing with
a serial killer.

And since there were no leads
to Wolfgang Schmidt

that came from
the general public either,

it was basically impossible
to catch him

unless he was caught
in the act at some point.

That means they were looking
for a needle in a haystack.

-Two weeks after
his last assault,

Schmidt was on the prowl again.

He came across
two 12-year-old girls

who were looking for
a dead deer in the forest.

-The escalation is
very, very common.

So now he escalated.

Maybe he thought,
"To have my kind of fetish sex

with two women instead of one."

Maybe he had already
been fantasized

about that for awhile.

I'm certain that the reason
why he went after that

is because he had done
everything prior to that,

and he was always escalating
and escalating and escalating

until the day he gets caught.

-Schmidt attacked the girls
dressed up in women's clothes,

wearing an apron.

What the girls must have thought
almost defies belief.

There's this presumably huge man

dressed up in women's clothes
with an apron on.

It is truly bizarre.

This time, they both survive.

This time, they can describe
the man who's attacked them.

-Schmidt's disappointment
at failing

to fulfill his sexual needs
with the two girls

was so intense
that the following day,

on the 5th of April, 1991,
he struck again.

He broke into the house
of a 66-year-old woman,

Talita Bremer, while she slept.

Schmidt found her underwear
and became highly aroused.

He strangled her to death and
then sexually defiled her body.

-What we've got to remember is,

here is a man that did have
some control over his behavior.

Everybody has fantasies.

Everybody has things
that they would like to do,

but they know that these things
are socially unacceptable

or they are deviant
or that they are illegal,

so most people choose
not to act on them,

but he did.

He knows what he's doing
is wrong,

but he's choosing
to do it anyway

because he wants that fantasy
that he's created in his head

to become a reality,

and he's always making
the decision

that he's gonna try again.

He's gonna try again

'cause, "I've not quite
achieved it this time.

I'm gonna do it again."

-The hunt to capture Schmidt
was gathering pace.

Thanks to the description given

by the two surviving
12-year-old victims,

police were able to issue
an Identi-Kit,

and the prosecution offered
a reward

of 20,000 Deutsche Marks
for information.

-We received hundreds of bits
of information

after we went public with it.

-There were several things

that pointed towards somebody
that lived in the area,

that was out and about,
that had some sort of occupation

that made him wander
the forests,

but that was all we knew.

All of that really became
more focused

when the girls
were able to tell us

who we were
actually looking for.

-By the summer of 1991,
East German Wolfgang Schmidt's

deviant fantasies had spiraled
completely out of control.

In his extraordinary search
for sexual fulfillment,

Schmidt had attacked nine people

and murdered five women
and a baby.

But his lust for a bizarre form
of gratification

showed no signs of stopping.

On the 1st of August, 1991,

nearly four months
after his previous murder,

Schmidt returned to the woods
surrounding his home

to try and satisfy his desires.

-With Schmidt, it's not simply
about ending his victims' lives

and then sexually abusing them
and raping them

after they've died.

It's also about
continuing in this behavior

of wearing women's underwear,
of soiling this underwear.

He has this routine,
he has this ritual,

and he has to have every stage
of this ritual

in order to gain
sexual satisfaction,

and it's becoming
all the more elaborate

and all the more complex
with several stages in it --

wearing women's underwear,
soiling the underwear,

identifying a victim,
and assaulting that victim.

And all of those elements
need to be there

for him to have
satisfaction from it.

-Alert to his perverse
and murderous activities,

the police were now determined
to catch the serial killer

known as the Beast of Beelitz.

-We carried out searches
in the woods

for these types of
clothing sites...

...because we firmly believed
that there must be more to find.

And we were able to find
several of them in the forests

around Beelitz-Heilstatten,
at Neuendorf and so on.

We staked out
two of these sites.

To do this, we used
special observation forces

who were trained for this,

who lay hidden in the woods,
who watched,

and then, if they saw him
either putting the clothes on

or engaging
in any type of sexual act,

they could catch him in the act
and arrest him.

-While the police lay in wait,

Schmidt,
wearing a bra under his jacket,

was spotted gratifying himself

at another site
by two passersby.

When the shocked witnesses
reported his abhorrent behavior,

Schmidt was promptly arrested
and taken into police custody.

There he was charged
with the murders he'd committed.

-He was a very shy, reluctant
young man back then who,

as is often the case with sexual
killers or killers in general,

he didn't have it written on his
forehead that he was a murderer.

He was often described
as the nice kid next door.

-His defense lawyer
was Ulrich Bauschulte.

-In contrast to
his physical size --

he was well over 1-meter-90 --

I found, when I spoke to him,

he seemed very small, very shy,

which is astounding
when you read and learn

how violently
the deaths occurred.

-When confronted
with the details

of the murders he'd committed,

Schmidt seemed to show
scant remorse for his actions.

-I think it was
embarrassing for him,

but he was not ashamed
about anything,

not even about the murders.

He was probably embarrassed that
he was seen in women's lingerie

and with an apron on.

-The trial was set to begin
on the 20th of October, 1992,

just two weeks
after Schmidt's 26th birthday.

The interest in the killer

the German tabloids
have dubbed as

the Beast of Beelitz
and the Pink Giant,

after his fascination
with pink underwear,

was immense.

-So there was an unbelievable
press hype back then.

We had far too little room
in the court for all the press.

Everyone was following it
on the news.

-Gisela Friedrichsen was
the court reporter

for a renowned
West German magazine.

-At the beginning,
everyone knew

that Wolfgang Schmidt
killed many women.

And then, gradually,
all the details

came out into the open
through reports in the tabloids.

-And it became very clear

that he must be
a very disturbed person.

-The East German press,
however,

were less understanding
of Schmidt's problems.

-They would have, ideally,
wanted to execute him.

They would have cut off
everything that could be cut off

from his body and so on.

-Schmidt's mental health
was assessed

by Professor Wilfried Rasch,
who was the leading

German forensic psychiatrist
of his time.

-Professor Rasch explained it
brilliantly to the court

how Wolfgang Schmidt developed
throughout the years.

It began during his childhood
in the search

to have a closer relationship
to his mother,

and that naturally evolved into
something else as time went by.

That was fetishism
and also transvestism.

A combination of these,

which together with inclinations
toward coprophilia,

changed and became established.

-Even when we look at cases
of serial killers,

we only come across
a handful of cases

where people have engaged in
this type of behavior,

and, unfortunately,
if something like this

isn't nipped in the bud,
isn't recognized early on,

it's something that's
only going to get worse.

-Schmidt had shared
his most intimate secrets

with the psychiatrist,

including revelations
about his habit

of defecating
in women's underwear

and then wearing it
back-to-front

while pleasuring himself.

Professor Rasch concluded
that Schmidt's sexual fantasies

began to grow,

and at some point,
the balance tipped over,

and he decided to try
to do this with a woman.

But when Schmidt failed
to achieve sexual gratification,

he snapped,

and that's when
his killing spree began.

-When the desire got stronger
and stronger,

it ended in those murders.

That's where he got
his first kick

and where he noticed that there
was a chance for him to move on

to a level that may
give him sexual satisfaction.

-Schmidt was cooperative
from the beginning,

but when he was confronted
with the Identi-Kit

that led to his capture,

his response
was rather startling.

-When he saw the picture,
he said to me,

"That looks a lot like me,

but it can't be me
because I didn't kill anybody."

I didn't really know how to
interpret that statement

back then until Professor Rasch
conducted the examination

in order to see what it was

that was really wrong
with Mr. Schmidt.

The results stated repeatedly

that when he lived out
his fantasies,

in his mind,
the women had lived.

-All throughout the trial,

Schmidt continued to claim that
in his head,

all his victims
were still alive.

-So Schmidt's fantasy was all
about dominating alive women.

He says, "In my head,
they were alive."

Well, in his head,
they had to be alive

'cause that was
the only way in which

he could get pleasure
out of the situation.

-The prosecution had
vast amounts of evidence,

such as clothes, undergarments,
and the murder weapons,

but they did not play
a significant role

during the trial

because Schmidt
had confessed to everything.

-Everybody agreed
that Mr. Schmidt

belonged in
a psychiatric facility.

-Schmidt was sentenced
to 15 years in prison

and was admitted
to a psychiatric clinic

in Brandenburg,
where he remains to this day.

Adding to the price he's paid,
Schmidt's fiancée has,

since his incarceration,
left him.

-Wolfgang Schmidt
is very sexually deviant,

and he most certainly has
a personality disorder, as well.

As long as he does not
confront what he has done

and gets the appropriate means
to help him,

he will always pose a threat
to others.

And since, to this day,
that has not changed,

there is no chance for him
to ever be set free again.

-Many people have issues
seeing him

as a typical serial killer
because of his modus operandi

varying from one victim
to the other,

but essentially,
his drive, his motivation

is the same
as many other serial killers.

He wants to have power
over other people

and to dominate other people.

He shared with
other serial killers

a callous disregard
for the rights of other people,

for the lives of other people,
and for their suffering.

-In a final twist
to this story,

in 2009,
courts allowed Wolfgang Schmidt

to change his name
to Beate Schmidt

when he revealed his desire
to transition into a woman.

Schmidt has been undergoing
hormone treatment since 2010

but has so far been refused
gender-reassignment surgery.

Regardless of his current
or future gender,

the bizarre and callous killings

committed by
the Beast of Beelitz,

Wolfgang Schmidt,

makes him one of
the world's most evil killers.