Original subtitles

The question that always comes up in these serial crimes is "why?"

Why? The question of "Why?"

Why do you go out to kill someone?

Why, having already committed a murder, did he look for another victim?

Why?

Why this individual feels the urge to kill

when millions of others don't,

has no real logic behind it.

What we can do, however, is to look at the sort of appeal this crime has.

The perpetrator will give us the answer.

A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES

I started out with a beer at the bar.

BASED ON ORIGINAL PERPETRATOR STATEMENT

There were two guys behind the bar, but only one was serving.

The other one was chatting on the side.

I was wearing sneakers and dark blue jeans

and a dark blue jacket made from synthetic fibers.

There was a lot going on in both the bar area and the back area.

There were maybe 15 to 20 people in the back area.

I then went into the back area...

and looked around.

POLICE

We now considered Nicky M.

to be victim number two at Grosse Freiheit,

Miroslaw, number three,

and Alexander, number one.

That means we could now actually consider him a serial killer

now that there were three murders.

We then continued.

We had another idea. Alexander M. died in his apartment.

So we tried to find out who was with him last.

Alexander must have let him into the apartment,

this...

murderer.

That's something else I thought about.

How did he get in?

Well, Alex must have known the perpetrator fairly well.

I saw in the chat that Alexander had set up a new profile.

So I wrote to him.

We exchanged texts

on April 24th or 25th, 2012.

- WANNA MEET UP? THURSDAY? - OKAY.

He didn't know there were knockout drops in there.

He shuddered, and I thought he might spit it back out.

But he didn't.

He then stood in the kitchen and drank two glasses of water in a row.

He said he wasn't feeling well.

He doesn't know what's happening right now.

He then went to bed, and I took his things.

"I put on the jacket from the wardrobe and looked in the bedroom again."

"He was lying there, his eyes closed."

"I was about to leave the apartment

when I saw, on the bookshelf to the right of the apartment door,

Alex's wallet, keys, and iPhone."

"So I threw the wallet and iPhone into a backpack

which was also by the door."

I remembered that I tilted the window in Alex's bedroom open

to let some fresh air in.

Then it's possible that I smoothed out the blanket.

He didn't know what was in his glass.

But I didn't give it to him to get rid of him.

I wouldn't have done that.

Alex was so sweet.

It's quite possible that he realized, "Hey, this worked perfectly."

"What's going to stop me? And why should I? It's working."

"What have I done? How will this play out?"

There's often also this inner fear about your own development.

After the third murder,

you have to wonder if it's becoming some sort of bad habit,

meaning each killing increases the chances of another one.

Where is this going?

The perpetrator knows this too.

And then there was another homicide.

The murder of Peter.

11 DAYS AFTER THE MURDER IN THE DARKROOM

I knew him from chatting online.

But in the chat, he called himself "Mario."

PETER'S APARTMENT

We were chatting, then we suddenly decided to meet up.

My bottle with the knockout drops was on the glass table in the living room.

We sat on the sofa and chatted.

Just your average small talk.

Then I took the debit card from his wallet.

I was on my way home when I tried to use it.

Of course I knew it wouldn't work. I didn't have the PIN.

Peter was also found in his apartment,

exactly like Alexander, lying on his stomach under the sheets.

Test results also showed that GHB had been detected in his blood,

and it was a very high dosage.

It had been many, many decades

since we had a series of murders like this

using poison.

The way the substance was handled seemed well-rehearsed.

With this modus operandi, you could probably get away

with crimes like this for a long time.

A once-in-a-century case.

The pressure rose immensely.

The fear that he might keep killing.

We need to solve these crimes as quickly as possible.

And I wondered how many more victims there'd be

and how many cases haven't even been identified as homicides yet.

COMA KILLER

FRIEDRICHSHAIN'S POISON KILLER

I wrote an email to the criminal investigator assigned to me.

"I just read this. Is this also connected?"

That was the moment he realized I might need psychological help,

and he said, "We have a police psychologist."

"Why don't you talk to her?"

The perpetrator was still at large, but I'm slowly starting to realize

this case is getting bigger and bigger.

Just the sheer amount of luck I had that night.

That gradually dawned on me because there were these casualties.

People were dying.

And nobody knows who's doing it. Where is he? What else is he planning?

As a killer, I have the advantage of knowledge

because I know he won't survive the day.

Because I know I'll pour the knockout drops into this beer shortly.

So this is an almost god-like position.

If I were to say he's narcissistic and appears to be a psychopath,

it's not like it would be obvious.

And even if he's been treated for it, no doctor will tell me about it.

So how do I find him?

I asked the relatives of the victims

if they knew anything about his plans for that night.

Was he going to meet someone?

That's important to us because the area where the victim was

is usually the same as the perpetrator.

The perpetrator is at large.

That does something to you.

It was all so difficult to grasp, to comprehend.

And Alexander's cell phone was never found.

The data on his phone was our only way to find anything out.

Who did he contact last?

Who did he meet?

Because it was clear to us that it wasn't a stranger.

By then, we had a list

of Alexander's phone calls and text messages.

Their recent contacts are usually people who have valuable information.

There were outgoing text messages to a mobile number.

- THURSDAY? - OKAY.

And our colleagues established

that this number belonged to a certain Dirk.

This could be a very important witness.

But you can't just pick up the phone and call him.

You run the usual background checks and find out who this guy is.

BERLIN - SAARBRÜCKEN 453 MILES

I'm Dirk's aunt.

I'm ten years older than him.

I was basically raised alongside him.

Grew up with him.

It was a bit like having a younger brother.

Because, as a child, he was always at my parents' house.

Dirk is friendly, nice, courteous.

That's basically the Dirk I knew.

Dirk was 13 when my father died.

And one day, I was visiting.

What I saw was Dirk in my parents' bedroom,

pulling the covers over on my father's side of the bed.

But I didn't ask any questions.

Like, why are you sharing a bed with my mother?

And I think she was forcing my nephew,

or perhaps encouraging him,

to wear my father's pajamas.

He basically did everything for my mother,

and she was able to use him as she liked.

Dirk had become a substitute for my dad.

She took what she wanted.

The first time I met Dirk was on a night shift.

I liked him pretty much right away.

It was known that Dirk was very much homosexual.

He was quite open about it.

He was able to win people over with his demeanor,

but you always felt that Dirk was sort of...

struggling to fit in,

or wanted to belong, to be liked.

And I think somebody with solid self-confidence

wouldn't think of having plastic surgery done.

Dirk lived at his grandma's, where he had his own apartment.

He always gave the impression of having had a very normal childhood,

a good family home.

He had a good relationship with his parents and his family.

They were really close,

but actually, he never really talked about it.

And Dirk was also active in his church.

He stood in front of the congregation and read from the Bible.

Many people stayed in the closet.

It was even worse back then.

Because it was condemned by the church.

My mother must have caught him

and discovered that he's gay.

I wouldn't want to have been near that woman that day.

She later also used the word "disgust."

She was disgusted by Dirk.

It made living with her impossible.

So he moved to Berlin.

I didn't want to be gay.

I was also scared of being an outsider.

So I stopped going to places where I could fall in love with a man.

My plan was to simply not admit to my sexuality.

Of course, that didn't work for long.

Homicide then called the person who was last in contact with Alexander M.

So...

they got him on the phone and arranged to question him as a witness the next day.

My colleague then told me he saw him in person for the first time

and realized that this could be the person from the surveillance video.

He actually mentioned this to him, and Dirk was aware of the footage.

He told him, "Yes, that's me."

So, of course, there was this huge expectation

that we finally had the right guy sitting in front of us.

"You are here as a suspect and as such have the right to make any statements,

not make any statements, and at any time, even before this questioning,

to consult a lawyer and make inquiries with them."

Do you understand these instructions?

Answer, "Yes."

He seemed completely normal, inconspicuous.

He was very calm, spoke very calmly, but also very deliberately.

He also seemed educated.

He kept staring at us

in a straightforward way, with these big brown eyes,

and answered everything in a very calm, collected manner.

So then I kept thinking to myself, "So you're the perpetrator?"

Some people have a highly-developed manipulative tendency,

meaning they're great at influencing others.

They pick up on exactly what the other person wants or needs.

They know what they can give the other person to gain their trust.

But behind all of this, they're playing their own game.

"What were you trying to achieve by placing knockout drops in the drinks?"

"Sexual stimulation."

- "For who?" - "For me."

"And possibly to bring about a situation

in which the other person becomes momentarily uncon..."

"How shall I put this? Momentarily disoriented."

"Why did you take the credit card, but not the cash?"

"I wanted to buy a single train ticket to Saarbrücken with the stolen card."

"But it didn't work."

"The ticket machine responded with 'unable to process transaction'

or 'process canceled'."

"I was dissatisfied."

"This feeling, this experience

of doing something with someone else's property didn't work."

We conducted seven interrogations, and he had a different story each time.

Different every time, and he only admitted to things

that we'd just managed to prove.

"Everything I said is correct, except that I had two bottles with me."

"I withdraw my respective statement from two days ago."

"I was misinterpreted, or rather, I didn't explain myself properly."

"I didn't know the exact dosage."

"For me, it was just about potentially getting hold of the credit card."

"I wouldn't kill over that."

At this point, I don't trust him one bit.

He was a trained nurse.

He knew all about the toxic effects of even the tiniest dosages.

This is quite different from someone

who hasn't received any training.

And I didn't believe him when he said he didn't want to kill them.

I don't believe him at all. He wanted to.

POLICE

We then searched Dirk's apartment.

What we found, which he talked about during his interrogation,

was a bottle of "Kleiner Feigling" schnapps he left there.

And I think he wanted it to be found

to bring an end to this whole thing.

The police appear to have caught a serial killer.

The perpetrator is now in custody

and has confessed to all cases.

What happened with Dirk...

It makes me sick.

I find it sick. It's sick.

This isn't the person I knew.

I have no idea what happened there,

or why he did this,

what triggered it.

After announcing the warrant and detaining the perpetrator,

a few details had been confirmed.

But it was far from a complete picture.

We had to look into the perpetrator's personality,

his background, his life,

to find out what else there might be.

"My grandmother died in September 2006 and left me money."

Responding to a question, "It was about 80,000 euros."

"Did your sister get this much money too?"

"No, just me."

The whole course of events when my mother died was also strange.

First of all, Dirk was there.

My mother laid down in bed saying she wasn't feeling well.

Then Dirk finds her dead in her bed.

Then a doctor is called, but not the family doctor.

Not her own.

The next one who was called was the undertaker.

And only then were my brothers called.

And I was only called the next day.

She was already in the coffin.

Regarding my mother, I personally think that was him too.

I think my nephew was involved in it,

that he also gave my mother...

Whether in her food or her drink...

No idea.

The grandmother was exhumed.

There were substances

detected in her body,

medication which our suspect had access to when working at the hospital.

One medication we used frequently is one

that is administered to prep for an operation.

It relieves anxiety, makes you tired. It's a sleep-inducing drug.

And this medication was also detected in his grandmother.

Had anyone told me at the time that I knew a serial killer,

I'd probably have said, "No way, I'd have noticed."

Did I actually know him? Was he a completely different person?

Had he always been like that?

The investigations were not continued by the local prosecutor there.

They said, "Well, he now has three homicides in Berlin."

"That'll do for a conviction. That's enough."

FIRST DAY OF TRIAL 02/22/2013

Throughout my career,

my cases surely number in the thousands rather than the hundreds,

but ones that left a lasting impression,

I can definitely count on one hand.

And they include this case,

which I must say, still very much frightens me to this day.

As we entered the courtroom, I sat with the co-plaintiffs.

That was the first time I saw people who were presumably parents,

or someone else acting as a co-plaintiff.

And then I sat there in the courtroom.

ANKA HILGERT NICKY'S SISTER

I looked down toward my parents.

Then the other relatives.

I thought, "Wow, how big is this thing?"

Then the door opened.

In that glass box.

Then he came in.

And I looked at him.

I thought,

"You're lucky

I can't lay my hands on you."

Once the press left, he uncovered his face,

and that was the moment when I saw him again for the first time.

I tried to remember every detail

just to present the craziness of this case to the court.

I want to play my part in getting him the longest possible sentence.

I can remember, at some point, our eyes met.

And all I was thinking was, "Don't look away. Do not look away."

Then he turned away, and I thought

I stood my ground.

These people I've encountered in my profession

are not

monsters.

They're just human beings, really.

And more often than not, you can understand their backstories.

But to this day, I've never understood this case.

Solved, yes. Understood, no.

LIFE SENTENCE FOR TRIPLE-MURDERER

Today, the District Court delivered its verdict,

life imprisonment for triple murder.

They never found a motive.

That makes it even more difficult to bear.

No reason.

He just did it for the hell of it.

Why did he do it?

Why would someone go out and give liquid ecstasy to people?

Why? To watch them die?

To rob them? Was it about the money?

It's unbelievable.

There isn't just a single motive.

But on the outermost surface,

the motive is right in front of your nose.

It's about the desire to kill.

It's about wanting to kill.

"I know I'm doing something forbidden, something wrong."

"I'd condemn these actions if it were anyone else."

"But it satisfied something within me."

"It gave me a certain feeling."

For a human being,

there is not a single piece of knowledge

superior to the knowledge

that another person is about to die, and that person doesn't know it yet.

It's the ultimate power trip.

The act of killing, being able to kill,

and also watching someone die

provides satisfaction.

I kept thinking about visiting him in prison

to ask him questions, ask him why.

Or just to tell him what he did to us,

what he did to the parents, what he...

How many people have suffered because of him.

Not just the victims, but all the people around them too.

9 MONTHS AFTER THE VERDICT DIRK TAKES HIS OWN LIFE

When I heard he killed himself, I thought,

"He finally did the right thing, and he can't hurt anyone anymore."

But my next thought was,

"There will never be any answers to our questions."

Never.

This person...

Yeah.

He wasn't human.

He didn't even apologize to any of us.

Nothing.

Of course it's incredibly painful.

But you learn to live with it.

To really live with the pain.

I've heard the deceased pass on their capabilities

to their closest loved ones.

Dad's become very warm-hearted.

He got Nicky's warmth.

Mom never had a clue about technology.

And the capability I got from him was being able to say what I think.

I probably wouldn't have been able to before.

It made me strong.

Subtitle translation by: Kristopher Brame