All language subtitles for Worlds.Most.Evil.Killers.S01E06.English

-On July 17, 1975,

firefighters sifting through
the remains of a fire

in a Hamburg apartment block
made a gruesome discovery.

-[ Speaking German ]

-We found all different kinds
of body parts

and had to examine them.

We were asking ourselves
what was going on.

At first, nothing made sense.

-And as the police began
to search the small attic flat,

the true horror of the discovery
became apparent.

-[ Speaking German ]

-We found a corpse.

We found two corpses.

We found three corpses.

We have found four corpses.

It was a huge story
because things like this

don't exactly
happen often in Hamburg.

-A man named Fritz Honka
had been murdering women

and dismembering
their bodies in his home

for the past five years.

He claimed that Jack the Ripper
had told him to do it.

-I think it was simply
crimes of opportunity,

but with a horrible edge.

He showed no compassion
for the victims.

He didn't respect their bodies
or feel remorse, clearly.

He just cut them up.

-Fritz Honka had carved
his name in history

as one of the world's
most evil killers.

♪

♪

-The brutal murders of
39-year-old Fritz Honka

left the whole of
West Germany reeling.

When a fire ripped through
his apartment block

on the 17th of July, 1975,
out of the ashes,

the butchered remains
of four women were revealed,

hidden away in Honka's attic.

Nobody knew they'd been missing
from the streets of Hamburg.

It was a shocking crime scene

even for
the hardened murder squad.

The lead investigators
on the case

were Jurgen Vierle
and Karl Pries.

-[ Speaking German ]

-They told us where
the body parts where,

so inside the building,
we went up to the attic,

and there were two flats,

Mr. Honka's flat
and another one,

and then there was
a toilet and a loft,

and in this loft
were the body parts.

-[ Speaking German ]

-We were standing
outside the door

when a small man
walked up the stairs.

The flat he lived in was
completely filled with smoke.

It was right next to the attic
that had caught fire.

I just happened to be standing
right by the front door

of his flat, and he goes,
"What's going on here?"

"As you can see,
there's been a fire," I said.

"Oh," he said.

"That's really bad.

Looks like I won't be able
to live here anymore."

I then asked him,
"Who has the key

to this attic room,
and who owns it?"

To which he replied,
"This is my attic room,

and I am the only one
who's got access to it."

And in that moment, there were
reasonable grounds

to suspect him of a crime.

Consequently, we took him
to the offices

of the police headquarters
at Berliner Tor.

-The story of this elusive
serial killer

begins over 80 years ago.

Fritz Honka was born
into a working-class family

in Leipzig, East Germany,
on the 31st of July, 1935.

-[ Speaking German ]

-He had eight siblings.

The relationship with his father
was very difficult.

He mentions an incident
where his father

supposedly wanted to kill him,

and the connection to his mother
was also rather cold.

When he was 11 years old,
she left the family,

so he always had a rather
crushing relationship

with his parents.

-[ Speaking German ]

-All the children
were given away,

which will have had
quite an effect on him.

-After his father died in 1946,
11-year-old Honka was left

to grow up in an orphanage.

His childhood
was far from ideal.

-I think he had quite
a hard time growing up.

These were quite turbulent
times in Germany,

but for a young lad who was
considerably shorter

than his peers, he didn't always
fit in very well at school,

and that made him
a target for bullies,

so he was always the brunt
of someone else's joke,

so I don't think he had
a very easy time of it at all.

-After leaving school,
Honka began work

as a bricklayer's apprentice,
but it didn't last long.

In 1951, aged 16, he fled
from Communist East Germany

and headed west.

-[ Speaking German ]

-He then came over here
to West Germany

and worked in
the farming industry

before relocating to Hamburg,
and here in Hamburg,

he worked for a security service
company as a night watchman.

So this means he always had
a steady income,

which, of course,
gave him, socially,

an advantage with the crowds
he hung out with.

-Age 22, he meets his wife,
and they get married,

and things are quite normal
and quite regular,

but both of them have a bit
of an issue with alcohol.

Both of them tend to drink
to excess,

and their relationship
becomes quite volatile

and quite chaotic.

They attract the attention
of neighbors

and the authorities
when they're arguing

and they're overheard
having domestic disputes,

so it's not a particularly
nice household for very long.

-After separating from his wife
in 1967, 32-year-old Honka

was alone and working
the graveyard shift

as a night watchman.

-So he rented a small,
one-bedroom apartment,

which was very close to the
red-light district in Hamburg,

and in this apartment,

he created his own
little world, basically.

He wasn't subject to any kind
of informal surveillance

of other people
who would question, you know,

"What are you doing?"

So it was his own little zone,
essentially,

and this is the place
where he would live

in something of a little bubble,
to be honest,

so I think this is a recipe for
disaster for someone like him.

-Honka spent his free time
drinking in 24-hour bars

around the Reeperbahn

in the city's notorious
red-light district.

-There will be lots of reasons
why people turn to alcohol,

but I think in this case,
here is an individual

who didn't have a lot of control
over his life as a child.

There was a lot
going on around him

that he had very little power
over whatsoever,

and what can happen with people
who experience circumstances

like these
is that in adulthood,

they develop an intense
need to be in control

of what's going on around them,
and for some people,

that will manifest itself
in self-medication.

-[ Speaking German ]

-One of the bars was the famous
Goldenen Handschuh,

the Golden Glove.

It was named like that because
it belonged to a famous boxer,

and right across was
the Elbschlosskeller,

a bar where mainly
homeless alcoholics

or drifters hung out.

Well, they drank
plenty of alcohol.

The preferred drink was
grain schnapps with lemonade.

There was dancing, and it
didn't get cleaned very often.

It was open all hours,
around the clock,

and looked accordingly.

You had to be careful
not to stick to the floor,

and those were
the surroundings and conditions.

These people had
reached rock-bottom,

at least the women
who went there,

and now and then, the men
would take the women home

with them to play sex games.

-The Golden Glove soon became
one of Honka's favorite haunts.

He would regularly visit
after finishing his shift

as a night watchmen.

The owner of the bar,
Jorn Nurnberg,

became friendly with the man
his regulars knew as Fite.

-[ Speaking German ]

-When he came in
wearing his uniform,

you could see that he was
very proud of himself,

but he was never pushy.

People who didn't know him,
who just saw him briefly,

thought he looked a bit odd

because Fite wasn't
exactly a pinup.

At times, he looked
a bit creepy.

-A traffic accident in his 20s
had left Honka

with a crooked nose
and a pronounced squint.

-Well, he's an individual
who has never really had

a very positive relationship
when it comes to women.

So he was abandoned
by his mother.

The relationship that
he had with his wife

was quite chaotic
and quite unstable,

so there isn't a really
positive association

with women in his mind
at this point in time.

-Honka is a mentally unstable,

intellectually challenged
runt of a man

who has profound
sexual problems.

He finds sex with a women
almost impossible

and therefore
demands oral sex.

He is a drunk, a loner,
who has had almost no paternal,

maternal caring as a child.

He was no one's idea
of Mr. Universe,

but he was, clearly
or at least able,

could afford
to hire prostitutes.

-Honka had taken a liking
to older prostitutes

who could often be found in
the bars around the Reeperbahn.

-[ Speaking German ]

-These were homeless women
who had no income.

He had money.

He could offer alcohol.

He could offer a place to stay,

and that made it
quite easy for him.

I wouldn't say
to make friends,

but certainly to make
the acquaintance of people,

whether that would be
female or male,

and as a result,
he was well-known

in these circles he moved in.

The lowest class of society,
that was his world.

-And it was a world
that was about to implode.

On the 17th of July, 1975,

a fire in Honka's apartment
block would lead

to a startling revelation --

the dismembered bodies
of four women.

-[ Speaking German ]

-The fire service responded
to the fire incident,

and when they found
the bodies in the attic,

they called us,
the homicide squad, so myself

and the rest of the on-duty team
made our way to the crime scene.

-The police waited for Honka
to arrive home from his shift

as a night watchman.

He was immediately arrested

and taken to the police station
for questioning.

-[ Speaking German ]

-We set out to do our work
and walk through the crime scene

and during the crime-scene
investigation,

a mummified corpse was found,

and underneath
this mummified corpse

lay a partly decomposed torso.

We broke down walls, broke
through the floor and searched.

Throughout the whole flat,

we noticed
this very strong smell.

I'd say the typical smell
of decay

mixed with that of burning.

Very unpleasant.

And so this led us
to search more,

and we found a hatch
facing the side of the roof

that had been covered
with wallpaper,

and then we broke
into the side of the roof

and found a large object

wrapped in bed linen
with a corpse inside.

We took it out and announced

that we had discovered
another body.

-The press soon got wind
of this shocking discovery

and headed for the crime scene.

Lutz Jaffé was a newspaper
photographer at the time.

-[ Speaking German ]

-We always listened
to the police radio.

Back then, it was possible
to do that,

and you could hear
where things were happening.

That's how we found out
about the fire in Zeissstrasse.

We heard a residential building
was burning,

and, of course,
I headed right out.

The fire brigade
was already there.

You obviously wait a little
because you never know

what's going on
inside the house.

Is anyone hurt?
Did someone die?

Well, firefighters
have a good nose,

and they can, of course, pick up
the smell of decaying bodies.

And then I think
they found Honka's bags.

We were downstairs getting
information from the police.

"We have found a corpse.
We have found two corpses.

We have found three corpses.
We have found four corpses."

Well, of course, for us,
it was a huge story

because things like this don't
happen very often in Hamburg.

Up and down the street,

the news that this wasn't
just a fire spread quickly,

and a lot of people turned up.

You can see in the photo that
they looked into the police car,

this cluster of people
left and right.

It was just sensational.

Also, for the people
who lived there,

it was simply unbelievable.

They probably knew him.

They knew Honka.

The following day,
it was on the front page

of all of Hamburg's newspapers.

-As forensic experts work
tirelessly at the crime scene,

detectives at the police station
were beginning to question

Honka about
the gruesome discovery.

-[ Speaking German ]

-During the interrogation,
you have to try to get

a confession
or at least try to get clues

that explain the evidence
found at the crime scene.

Only this evidence
from the crime scene

can help to confront him
with allegations

that eventually
lead to charging him.

So I explained the situation.

We had found four bodies
in his living room

and the adjoining rooms
of his flat,

and I confronted him with that.

He had nothing to say about it.

Then he said, "I don't know.

I've got nothing
to say about this,

and I don't know
what you want from me."

Of course, in that moment,
you accuse him, and you say,

"How is it possible
that we found a wrapped-up body

behind the disguised wall
in your living room?

And what about
the two body parts we found

in the covered hole
behind your toilet,

the mummified corpse
and the torso?

You see?

And what about the fact that we
found loads of women's dresses,

and that initial examinations
of the wrapped-up body show

that it is a woman?

So is the mummified body,
just as the chopped-up body

we found under the coals
also belongs to a woman?"

When we confronted him
and asked him,

"What have you got
to say to that,"

he just shrugged his shoulders
and said, "No idea."

And there you are, the officer
leading the interrogation,

and you need to prove to him

that he does have something
to do with it.

-With Honka not giving them
any information,

the police began
the arduous task of

trying to identify the remains
of all four women,

and they got
a big break early on.

Missing parts of one
of the bodies

had been discovered
four years previously.

-[ Speaking German ]

-In November 1971,
a worker at a factory yard

in the Gausssirasse
came across some junk,

and when he rummaged through it,
he found body parts.

He saw a hand sticking out
of a pile of rubbish.

He immediately informed
the police,

and the local officers on duty

who were the first to arrive
at the scene informed us

that the findings were,
indeed, body parts.

We went to investigate
further and spotted

several chopped-up body parts.

Only the torso and the right leg
were missing.

Everything else was there,
but cut into pieces.

Besides the body parts, we found
breasts that had been cut off,

suggesting that this was,
in all probability,

related to a sex offense.

-Although the head
was badly decomposed,

in 1971, experts were able to
reconstruct it well enough

to enable the police to provide
a photo to the press.

The victim was identified

as 42-year-old prostitute
Gertraud Brauer.

Before the fire
at Honka's apartment,

the case had remained unsolved.

-[ Speaking German ]

-We had come full circle,

from the body parts found in
the Gausssirasse

to the torso found
on the premises

of Honka's living quarters,

and subsequently, we could
charge him with this crime.

-Honka had murdered Gertraud
in December, 1970,

after picking her up
in the Golden Glove.

It was the first time
he'd killed someone.

Investigators believe
he strangled

the 42-year-old to death

because she refused
to have sex with him.

He dismembered her body
using a saw.

-To simply cut off a limb

is a fairly straightforward
procedure.

You need a knife
to get through the flesh

and a saw to get
through the bone.

It doesn't have to be
a complex thing to do.

It's not like you're a surgeon
doing an operation.

-Golden Glove barman
Jorn Nurnberg

had unknowingly assisted
Honka in meeting his victims.

-[ Speaking German ]

-He always said in a sneaky way,

"Hey, Jorn, give that
one a little drink,

but don't tell her
it's from me."

"Okay, Fite, no problem,"
gave the drink.

"Who's that from?"
"From someone."

"Oh, okay. Good."

They didn't ask much, as long
as they had something to drink.

-Gertraud Brauer, a hairdresser
and part-time prostitute,

was a regular in the bar.

-Time after time,
prostitutes are killed

because no one
reports them missing.

They live on the edge
of the law.

They're long past in connection
with their families.

They are living in
a twilight world,

and, well, you miss
a prostitute?

Well, she could've given up,

or she could've gone
to another city,

or she could've gone
back to her mother,

or whatever it may have been,

and so they're
very seldom tracked.

-Even though Honka refused
to cooperate with the police,

they had now identified
one of his victims.

Each time they interrogated him,
detectives tried to find out

more about the other
three women.

-[ Speaking German ]

-"You frequently go
to St. Pauli.

You're still going to
the Elbschlosskeller

and other bars in St. Pauli.

You drink vast
amounts of alcohol.

We found a lot of alcohol
in your flat.

And we've seen the walls
in your place.

They're full
of pornographic posters."

Well, we also found
a plastic doll

he probably used
to satisfy himself

when no woman was around.

The aim was to unsettle him.

The uncertainty produced
insecurity.

His replies to specific
questions were different

to those
he had given the previous day.

-After taking the life
of another human

for the first time
in December, 1970,

Honka wouldn't kill again
for almost four years.

-What happened to start him off
again in August, 1974?

I would argue that Honka's
alcoholism had probably got

so intense by that time that he
was desperately out of control,

and perhaps he just had
genuinely some kind of

psychotic break, some kind of
brainstorm that led him to kill.

-The police had a wealth
of evidence against Honka,

but they were desperate for him
to make a full confession.

If he continued
with his silence,

they may never identify
the other three murdered women.

-[ Speaking German ]

-It smelled really odd
in the house.

There were also foreigners
living there,

and Honka always said,

"The foreigners cook
in a funny way.

They use strange spices in their
food, and that's why it stinks."

None of the neighbors suspected
that it wasn't the foreigners,

that the smell came from
the body parts in Honka's flat,

and they had started to reek.

-Once somebody dies,
decomposition will begin.

There will be an increase,
to start with,

in particularly the smell
that comes from the body.

As the body functions render
down, things start to decompose.

-[ Speaking German ]

-Everywhere in the flat
were scented stones,

all around the skirting boards.

The toilet was full of them.

They were everywhere.

-The longer the bodies
had remained in Honka's attic,

the harder it was
to get rid of them.

-A dead body is difficult
to move,

and once rigor mortis
starts to set in

and the body becomes stiff,
it's not even flexible to move.

It can be very hard to do.

-This is really illustrative
of the type of

serial killer he was.

He wasn't massively organized in
terms of covering up his crimes.

You know, he would have
the corpses of his victims

right there in his flat.

He didn't actually
dispose of them,

so this was something
that he was doing

just kind of short-term,
reactionary,

just kind of coping
with each day as it arose.

-When the police went to
Honka's favorite bars

and broke the news that bodies
had been found in his flat,

they were met with
complete disbelief.

-[ Speaking German ]

-No one expected
that of him, no one.

Even if you've met him,
you'd definitely have said,

"Him?
Nah, he's too harmless."

Really shocking.

-Journalists also went
round the bars

to get background color
for their stories.

-[ Speaking German ]

-Part of the story was to
look around and find out,

"Where did Honka
meet his women?"

and that was in
the Goldenen Handschuh.

It was unimaginable.

This was pure poverty.

People, human wrecks,
women as well as men,

whose fate had taken
a sad turn for the worse.

These people had reached
the very bottom of society.

This doesn't mean
that had to be criminals,

but they were
very poor creatures.

As a consequence,
it smelled pretty bad

in the Goldenen Handschuh,

as these people
weren't able to wash.

They had nowhere to go,
as many of them were homeless.

-The police had identified
one of Honka's victims

as Gertraud Brauer,

but the other three
remained a mystery.

Establishing their identities
would not be simple.

-Even in the modern era of DNA,

identifying victims
can be incredibly challenging.

By and large, you have to have
something to compare

your victim to,
so dental records,

evidence of missing people,
have they got

defining characteristics
that's unique to them?

-The police found a pile of
women's ID cards in Honka's flat

and set about
the complicated task

of trying to find the rightful
owners among the prostitutes

who frequented the bars
around the Reeperbahn.

Each time they found
a woman alive,

they were able to cross her off
the list of potential victims.

One of the local officers
at the time was Peter Reichard.

-[ Speaking German ]

-We were able to work our way

through all the names
on this list,

and we realized that our women
all seemed to be alive.

-The Hamburg police
also put out a call

to colleagues across Germany

for details of missing women
in their mid-40s to mid-50s.

-[ Speaking German ]

-How many
missing persons reports

do you think they get
in Germany?

I had stacks of them on my desk,

and I had to look through
all of them,

and somehow still wasn't
making progress.

Well, so we catalogued
the clothes we had found

in his flat, hung them up,

numbered them,
and photographed each item.

These clothes were
really the only thing

we had at that moment.

-Detectives would have to go to
the bars Honka went to around

the Reeperbahn to see
if anyone could help them.

-[ Speaking German ]

-You try going to St. Pauli
when you don't have a name.

You don't have an address.

All you have is clothes
and nothing else.

You have the name of Mr. Honka,

and with that,
you go to a bar and ask people,

"What kind of girlfriends
did he have?"

What do you think the people
in these bars tell you?

"Yes, he had many women,
you know?

One was called Annie,
the other Gerda,

and the next, Erika,
but that's all we know."

Well, what are you
going to do with that?

So you go round all the bars
showing the outfits,

and if you're lucky,
you might get a name.

"Yeah, such-and-such always wore
these kind of clothes."

As soon as you get a first name,
you can make progress.

At that point,
we were established

that we were probably dealing
with aging prostitutes.

-Using the list
of missing persons,

the clothes found
in Honka's apartment

and the names gathered
from the local bars,

detectives were able to
draw up a short list

of possible victims.

Armed with photographs,

they headed out on to
the Reeperbahn once more.

-[ Speaking German ]

-And with these pictures,
we went back to show them around

and were finally able
to establish,

"Yes, he had a thing with her."

-It was a major breakthrough
for the police.

They had linked a number
of women to Honka.

-[ Speaking German ]

-As soon as we knew
who these women were,

we could confront him
again and again

during the interrogations,

and we kept insisting
until he'd say,

"Yes, I knew her, and she'd
been over at my place."

So at least now he had admitted
that they'd been with him.

Some stayed longer with him,
for days, even weeks.

It was nice for the women.

Suddenly, they had
somewhere to live.

The question was,
what happened next?

Well, we obviously had to
confront him with the fact

that he had killed the woman,

and all he said,
"I can't remember."

We had no choice
but to accept that.

However, there was evidence
that the women

who had been identified
and who had also lived with him,

were found dead in his flat,
and that exactly was the point.

-But the police still
needed a confession.

-[ Speaking German ]

-Now we just had to hear
from him that he killed them

and how he killed them

and what he did with the bodies,
and that's difficult.

That's very difficult.

As I remember, he always made it
sound like it was a possibility,

but he never admitted it 100%.

-It is interesting that
he didn't deny the killings.

He wasn't a particularly,

"Oh, no, it's got nothing
to do with me."

Mind you, it would've been
very difficult for him

to deny the killings.

He was living with
the body parts of four women.

I mean, how they got there,

he was the only person
who truly knew.

-[ Speaking German ]

-We kept pushing him.

"But you chopped up the bodies.

You cut the women up
with a saw," and so on.

He just said,
"I can't remember."

-It was further frustration
for the police.

For example, he would say,
"Yeah, I slept with that woman,

and in the morning,
she was lying dead next to me.

Well, how she died, the way
she died, I simply can't say."

-Although Honka continued
to deny killing the three women,

the detectives were at least
able to finally identify them.

They were 54-year-old
Anna Beuschel,

52-year-old Ruth Schult
and 57-year-old Frieda Roblick,

a regular in the Golden Glove
who went by the name of Rita.

-[ Speaking German ]

-I had a cleaning lady
who always helped out.

Her name was Sofie,
and Sofie was friends with Rita.

Now and then, Sofie would
take Rita home with her

so she could have a wash,
bathe, or even sleep,

but I don't know.

I think she had nowhere to live.

She was gone for a while.

One day, she came back
wearing nice clothes,

really quite fancy, and I said,
"Where have you been?

I already thought
you were dead."

"No, I have a new boyfriend,
and he's wonderful."

-But that new boyfriend
was Fritz Honka,

who strangled her to death
in December 1974.

-Honka always seems to me to be

kind of a accidental
serial killer.

He didn't fit what the BAU

or the FBI's behavioral unit
call organized.

He was completely disorganized.

These were crimes
of opportunity.

He wasn't stalking these women.

He wasn't planning
their killings.

They happened.

They were part of
his tragic character

and part of his drinking
and part of the fact

that he found any kind
of sexual relationship

with women almost impossible,
and this was the only way

he could find to satisfy
those desires that he had.

-The West German press
were fascinated with Honka.

Photographer Lutz Jaffé managed
to capture a photograph

of the mysterious killer.

-[ Speaking German ]

-Back then, you could have
pretty good contacts

within the police,
and I knew that Honka

would be taken either to prison
or to appear in front

of the Magistrate
at a specific time.

Someone from the police
had told me about it.

Well, and then I lay in wait
for him to arrive.

That's how this photo
came about,

as he turned around
when I called, "Mr. Honka!"

That's how I managed
to catch him.

-The police were trying to
determine a motive

for the murders.

Interviews
with local prostitutes

who'd been with Honka
and lived to tell the tale

revealed shocking facts about
his perverse sexual tastes.

-[ Speaking German ]

-The women who escaped
from his home were very lucky.

The interrogation of these women
hinted at his sexual practices,

and these were
sometimes catastrophic.

I don't want to go into
every detail here,

but it was pretty terrible.

It's possible these sexual
practices got out of hand

and became excessive,
which, I have to say,

might have led
to the death of a women.

-One of the surviving victims
showed the police a scar

she'd received in a brutal
sexual encounter with Honka.

-[ Speaking German ]

-Because she was so upset
about Fritz Honka,

that dirty old swine,
as she called him,

she pulled up her skirt,
took off her underwear

and pointed to a scar
beside her vagina.

"What is that?" I asked her.

She then told us that during
a sexual encounter

with Fritz Honka,
he had penetrated her

with a broom handle.

That's where the injury
had come from,

and she ended up in hospital.

She was furious, angry
beyond belief, you could say.

-And she wasn't the only one
who needed medical treatment

after spending the night
with Honka.

-[ Speaking German ]

-For example, one of the women
he took back to his place,

he sat her with a bare bum
on top of a hot plate.

As a result, the woman ran
semi-naked out of the flat.

This is an example,

a sort of thing
where he became violent.

This may have resulted
in these deaths,

but, of course,
it's also possible

that the women weren't complying
with his demands

and he became
violent towards them.

-The investigation
was drawing to an end,

but some questions
remained unanswered.

-He had, unbelievable
though it may seem,

escaped under the radar for
five years, killing four women

and basically keeping them
around the flat as trophies.

Now, there's no suggestion
that Honka had sex

with them postmortem.

There's no suggestion that he
was some kind of necrophiliac.

I think he was just
a dreadfully lazy drunk

who didn't know what else to do
and just convinced himself

it would be perfectly all right.

-In November, 1976, the trial
of Fritz Honka began in Hamburg.

He had retracted his
initial confession

and was now denying
all the charges against him.

-Well, his defense strategy
when he was arrested and charged

with the crimes
was an incredibly bizarre one.

He decided to blame
Jack the Ripper,

who was sending him messages
to kill these women.

Now, this appears to be
something that is, you know,

completely bizarre
and very odd,

but it could be evidence
of somebody

who is experiencing
some kind of mental ill health.

We know that people who
experience episodes of psychosis

feel very strongly compelled
to act in a particular way,

and they're not really fully
in control of their actions,

but equally, at the same time,

if you are reading
the newspapers,

if you are listening
to the radio,

and you know that
this is something

that is available to you,

that you're able to
come out with this

and it perhaps
be taken seriously,

then you're going to
give it a go.

-The psychiatrists
who examined Honka

during the court case concluded

that he'd acted with diminished
criminal responsibility.

On the 20th of December, 1976,
the jury found him guilty

of three counts of manslaughter
and one of murder,

that of 54-year-old
Anna Beuschel,

who he had strangled
in his apartment in August 1974.

Honka was sentenced to 15 years
in a psychiatric hospital.

-He might have been described
at the time as a big slow.

That affects the amount
of culpability

that we assign to his crimes.

So was he in control
of what he was doing?

Did he know what he was doing
was wrong?

And if that can't
be established,

then perhaps he is treated
in a mental-health facility

rather than a prison,
and, indeed, he served 15 years

in a hospital,
in a hospital setting.

-The crimes of Fritz Honka left
the entire country in shock,

especially the city of Hamburg.

-[ Speaking German ]

-I believe after
the Second World War,

such a murder case
has never happened again

in the history of crimes
in Hamburg.

It was a unique case,
that someone killed four women,

dismembered them,
and left them in his flat.

-[ Speaking German ]

-After that, we became very,
very well-known beyond Hamburg,

famous for the murder,
as unpleasant as it was,

and as sorry as I felt
for the women, especially Rita.

Rita really didn't deserve it.

-Honka was released from
the psychiatric hospital

in 1993.

He spend the final years
of his life

in a nursing home
under the name Peter Jensen.

He died in Hamburg
on the 19th of November, 1998.

He was 63 years old.

Today, Fritz Honka has become
something of a cult figure

in Hamburg.

The Golden Glove continues
to capitalize

on its most infamous
former customer,

with the words "Honka Saloon"
emblazoned above the entrance.

-[ Speaking German ]

-These bars were a no-go zone.

Not in a million years would a
normal Hamburg citizen go there.

Only after the series of murders
was made public

did it become
an interesting place

for people in fur coats
to visit after the opera,

so they could see for themselves
how well-off they were

and how miserable the others.

"Well, I'm going to be
really generous

and pay for a round of beer."

It was just to boost
their own ego.

-But it should never be
forgotten that Honka was

a violent killer who took away

the lives of four
innocent women.

-I think he's somebody
who did evil things,

but if we call him evil,
we let him off the hook.

We just simply
explain it away as,

"Well, this kind of
subhuman monster

that just does these things
because they're evil,"

and that removes
the possibility

that they've chosen
to do these things.

-It's entirely possible
that Honka would have got away

with it a little longer.

No one really had
complained particularly.

He'd had bodies in the flat
for almost five years.

He could well have had them
for another two years.

It is inevitable, however,

that eventually justice
would've caught up with Honka.

-Fritz Honka callously
killed four women

between 1970 and 1975.

He strangled them before
dismembering their bodies.

By attacking prostitutes,

he hoped his crimes
would never be revealed.

Had it not been for a fire
in his apartment block,

who knows just how many victims
may have been murdered

at the hands of Fritz Honka,

one of the world's
most evil killers.

♪

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