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World's Most Evil Killers S01E06
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00:00On July the 17th, 1975, firefighters sifting through the remains of a fire in a Hamburg apartment block made a gruesome discovery.
00:18We found all different kinds of body parts and had to examine them.
00:24We were asking ourselves what was going on.
00:27At first, nothing made sense.
00:30And as the police began to search the small attic flat, the true horror of the discovery became apparent.
00:38We found a corpse.
00:40We found two corpses.
00:42We found three corpses.
00:44We have found four corpses.
00:46It was a huge story because things like this don't exactly happen often in Hamburg.
00:52A man named Fritz Honka had been murdering women and dismembering their bodies in his home for the past five years.
01:01He claimed that Jack the Ripper had told him to do it.
01:05I think it was simply crimes of opportunity but with a horrible edge.
01:12He showed no compassion for the victims.
01:15He didn't respect their bodies or feel remorse, clearly.
01:20He just cut them up.
01:21Fritz Honka had carved his name in history as one of the world's most evil killers.
01:28The brutal murders of 39-year-old Fritz Honka left the whole of West Germany reeling.
01:57When 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.
02:10Nobody knew they'd been missing from the streets of Hamburg.
02:14It was a shocking crime scene, even for the hardened murder squad.
02:19The lead investigators on the case were Jürgen Fieler and Karl Priess.
02:25They told us where the body parts were.
02:30So inside the building we went up to the attic and there were two flats.
02:34Mr Honka's flat and another one.
02:37And then there was a toilet and a loft.
02:40And in this loft were the body parts.
02:51We were standing outside the door when a small man walked up the stairs.
02:55The flat he lived in was completely filled with smoke.
02:58It was right next to the attic that had caught fire.
03:02I just happened to be standing right by the front door of his flat.
03:06And he goes, what's going on here?
03:09As you can see, there's been a fire, I said.
03:12Oh, he said.
03:14That's really bad.
03:15Looks like I won't be able to live here anymore.
03:18I then asked him, who has the key to this attic room and who owns it?
03:23To which he replied, this is my attic room and I am the only one who's got access to it.
03:29And in that moment, there were reasonable grounds to suspect him of a crime.
03:34Consequently, we took him to the offices of the police headquarters at Berliner Tor.
03:44The story of this illusive serial killer begins over 80 years ago.
03:50Fritz Honke was born into a working class family in Leipzig, East Germany, on the 31st of July, 1935.
04:05He had eight siblings.
04:07The relationship with his father was very difficult.
04:10He mentions an incident where his father supposedly wanted to kill him.
04:14And the connection to his mother was also rather cold.
04:18When he was 11 years old, she left the family.
04:22So he always had a rather crushing relationship with his parents.
04:32All the children were given away, which will have had quite an effect on him.
04:38After his father died in 1946,
04:4111-year-old Honke was left to grow up in an orphanage.
04:45His childhood was far from ideal.
04:48I think he had quite a hard time growing up.
04:51These were quite turbulent times in Germany.
04:55But for a young lad who was considerably shorter than his peers,
04:59he didn't always fit in very well at school.
05:01And that made him a target for bullies.
05:04So he was always the brunt of someone else's joke.
05:08So I don't think he had a very easy time of it at all.
05:11After leaving school,
05:14Honke began work as a bricklayer's apprentice,
05:17but it didn't last long.
05:19In 1951, aged 16,
05:22he fled from communist East Germany and headed west.
05:26He then came over here to West Germany
05:31and worked in the farming industry before relocating to Hamburg.
05:35And here in Hamburg,
05:37he worked for a security service company as a night watchman.
05:40So this means he always had a steady income,
05:47which, of course, gave him socially an advantage
05:49with the crowds he hung out with.
05:52At age 22, he meets his wife and they get married
05:58and things are quite normal and quite regular.
06:01But both of them have a bit of an issue with alcohol.
06:05Both of them tend to drink to excess
06:07and their relationship becomes quite volatile
06:10and quite chaotic.
06:11They attract the attention of neighbours and the authorities
06:14when they're arguing
06:16and they're overheard having domestic disputes.
06:18So it's not a particularly nice household for very long.
06:24After separating from his wife in 1967,
06:2832-year-old Honke was alone
06:31and working the graveyard shift as a night watchman.
06:34So he rented a small one-bedroom apartment
06:37which was very close to the red light district in Hamburg.
06:41And in this apartment, he created his own little world, basically.
06:45He wasn't subject to any kind of informal surveillance
06:48of other people who would question, you know,
06:51what are you doing?
06:52So it was his own little zone, essentially.
06:55And this is the place where he would live in something
06:58of a little bubble, to be honest.
07:00So I think this is a recipe for disaster for someone like him.
07:04Honke spent his free time drinking in 24-hour bars
07:08around the raper barn in the city's notorious red light district.
07:13There will be lots of reasons why people turn to alcohol,
07:17but I think in this case, here's an individual
07:19who didn't have a lot of control over his life as a child.
07:23There was a lot going on around him that he had very little power over whatsoever.
07:28And what can happen with people who experience circumstances like these
07:31is that in adulthood, they develop an intense need
07:34to be in control of what's going on around them.
07:36And for some people, that will manifest itself in self-medication.
07:40One of the bars was the famous goldene handschuhe, the golden glove.
07:50It was named like that because it belonged to a famous boxer.
07:53And right across was the Elbschlosskeller, a bar where mainly homeless alcoholics or drifters hung out.
08:00Well, they drank plenty of alcohol.
08:03The preferred drink was grain schnapps with lemonade.
08:06There was dancing, and it didn't get cleaned very often.
08:13It was open all hours, round the clock, and looked accordingly.
08:17You had to be careful not to stick to the floor.
08:20And those were the surroundings and conditions.
08:23These people had reached rock bottom, at least the women who went there.
08:33And now and then, the men would take the women home with them to play sex games.
08:38The golden glove soon became one of Honka's favorite haunts.
08:45He would regularly visit after finishing his shift as a night watchman.
08:50The owner of the bar, Jörn Nernberg, became friendly with the man his regulars knew, Asfite.
09:01When he came in wearing his uniform, you could see that he was very proud of himself.
09:06But he was never pushy.
09:08People who didn't know him, who just saw him briefly, thought he looked a bit odd.
09:13Because Fite wasn't exactly a pin-up.
09:16At times, he looked a bit creepy.
09:22A traffic accident in his twenties had left Honka with a crooked nose and a pronounced squint.
09:28Well, here's an individual who has never really had a very positive relationship when it comes to women.
09:35So, he was abandoned by his mother.
09:37The relationship that he had with his wife was quite chaotic and quite unstable.
09:40So, there isn't a really positive association with women in his mind at this point in time.
09:47Honka is a mentally unstable, intellectually challenged runt of a man who has profound sexual problems.
09:56He finds sex with a woman almost impossible and therefore demands oral sex.
10:00He is a drunk, a loner, who has had almost no paternal, maternal caring as a child.
10:09He was no one's idea of Mr Universe, but he was clearly, or at least able, and could afford to hire prostitutes.
10:20Honka had taken a liking to older prostitutes who could often be found in the bars around the Reperbahn.
10:29These were homeless women who had no income.
10:34He had money.
10:35He could offer alcohol.
10:38He could offer a place to stay, and that made it quite easy for him.
10:41I wouldn't say to make friends, but certainly to make the acquaintance of people, whether that will be female or male.
10:48And as a result, he was well known in these circles he moved in, the lowest class of society.
10:53That was his world.
11:01And it was a world that was about to implode.
11:04On the 17th of July, 1975, a fire in Honka's apartment block would lead to a startling revelation.
11:12The dismembered bodies of four women.
11:17The fire service responded to the fire incident, and when they found the bodies in the attic, they called us the Homicide Squad.
11:28So myself and the rest of the on-duty team made our way to the crime scene.
11:35The police waited for Honka to arrive home from his shift as a night watchman.
11:40He was immediately arrested and taken to the police station for questioning.
11:45We set out to do our work and walk through the crime scene, and during the crime scene investigation, a mummified corpse was found.
11:58And underneath this mummified corpse lay a partly decomposed torso.
12:04We broke down walls, broke through the floor and searched.
12:19Throughout the whole flat, we noticed this very strong smell.
12:23I'd say the typical smell of decay mixed with that of burning was very unpleasant.
12:28And so this led us to search more, and we found a hatch facing the side of the roof that had been covered with wallpaper.
12:36And then we broke into the side of the roof and found a large object wrapped in bed linen with a corpse inside.
12:42We took it out and announced that we had discovered another body.
12:56The press soon got wind of this shocking discovery and headed for the crime scene.
13:01Lutz Jaffe was a newspaper photographer at the time.
13:05We always listened to the police radio.
13:11Back then it was possible to do that, and you could hear where things were happening.
13:16That's how we found out about the fire in Zeistrasse.
13:19We heard a residential building was burning, and of course I headed right out.
13:26The fire brigade was already there.
13:33You obviously wait a little, because you never know what's going on inside the house.
13:38Is anyone hurt? Did someone die?
13:41Well, firefighters have a good nose, and they can of course pick up the smell of decaying bodies.
13:48And then I think they found Honka's bags.
13:55We were downstairs getting information from the police.
14:02We have found a corpse. We have found two corpses.
14:06We've found three corpses. We've found four corpses.
14:11Well, of course, for us, it was a huge story, because things like this don't happen very often in Hamburg.
14:17Up and down the street, the news that this wasn't just a fire spread quickly, and a lot of people turned up.
14:30You can see in the photo that they looked into the police car, this cluster of people left and right.
14:36It was just sensational. Also for the people who lived there, it was simply unbelievable.
14:43They probably knew him. They knew Honka. The following day, it was on the front page of all of Hamburg's newspapers.
14:51As forensic experts worked tirelessly at the crime scene, detectives at the police station were beginning to question Honka about the gruesome discovery.
15:04During 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.
15:17Only this evidence from the crime scene can help to confront him with allegations that eventually lead to charging him.
15:24So I explained the situation. We had found four bodies in his living room and the adjoining rooms of his flat.
15:37And I confronted him with that. He had nothing to say about it.
15:44Then he said, I don't know. I've got nothing to say about this, and I don't know what you want from me.
15:50Of 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?
16:03And what about the two body parts we found in the covered hole behind your toilet? The mummified corpse and the torso? You see?
16:11And 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?
16:22So is the mummified body, just as the chopped up body we found under the coals also belongs to a woman.
16:29When we confronted him and asked him, what have you got to say to that? He just shrugged his shoulders and said, no idea.
16:36And there you are. The officer leading the interrogation and you need to prove to him that he does have something to do with it.
16:54With Honka not giving them any information, the police began the arduous task of trying to identify the remains of all four women.
17:03And they got a big break early on. Missing parts of one of the bodies had been discovered four years previously.
17:10In November 1971, a worker at a factory yard in the Gaustrasse came across some junk and when he rummaged through it, he found body parts.
17:23He saw a hand sticking out of a pile of rubbish. He immediately informed the police.
17:32And the local officers on duty, who were the first to arrive at the scene, informed us that the findings were indeed body parts.
17:39We 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.
17:54Beside the body parts, we found breasts that had been cut off, suggesting that this was in all probability related to a sex offence.
18:04Although 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.
18:16The victim was identified as 42 year old prostitute Gertrude Breuer.
18:22Before the fire at Honka's apartment, the case had remained unsolved.
18:27We had come full circle, from the body parts found in the Gaustrasse to the torso found on the premises of Honka's living quarters.
18:39And subsequently, we could charge him with this crime.
18:42Honka had murdered Gertrude in December 1970 after picking her up in the Golden Glove.
18:51It 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.
19:01He dismembered her body using a saw.
19:04To simply cut off a limb is a fairly straightforward procedure.
19:09You need a knife to get through the flesh and a saw to get through the bone.
19:14It doesn't have to be a complex thing to do. It's not like you're a surgeon doing an operation.
19:21Golden Glove barman Jörn Nernberg had unknowingly assisted Honka in meeting his victims.
19:28He always said in a sneaky way,
19:32Hey Jörn, give that one a little drink, but don't tell her it's from me.
19:36Okay, Vita. No problem. Gave the drink.
19:39Who's that from? From someone.
19:41Oh, okay. Good.
19:43They didn't ask much, as long as they had something to drink.
19:46Gertrude Breuer, a hairdresser and part-time prostitute, was a regular in the bar.
19:54Time after time, prostitutes are killed because no-one reports them missing.
20:01They live on the edge of the law.
20:03They're long past in connection with their families.
20:08They are living in a twilight world.
20:11And, well, you miss a prostitute.
20:15Well, she could have given up or she could have gone to another city
20:18or she could have gone back to her mother or whatever it may have been.
20:21And so they're very seldom tracked.
20:24Even though Honka refused to cooperate with the police,
20:27they had now identified one of his victims.
20:30Each time they interrogated him, detectives tried to find out more
20:35about the other three women.
20:37You frequently go to San Paoli.
20:42You're still going to the Elbschgloss Keller and other bars in San Paoli.
20:48You drink vast amounts of alcohol.
20:50We found a lot of alcohol in your flat.
20:53And we've seen the walls in your place.
20:57They're full of pornographic posters.
21:00Well, we also found a plastic doll he probably used to satisfy himself
21:04when no woman was around.
21:06The aim was to unsettle him.
21:09The uncertainty produced insecurity.
21:11His replies to specific questions were different
21:14to those he had given the previous day.
21:17After taking the life of another human for the first time in December 1970,
21:28Honka wouldn't kill again for almost four years.
21:32What happened to start him off again in August 1974?
21:36I would argue that Honka's alcoholism had probably got so intense
21:41by that time that he was desperately out of control.
21:47And perhaps he just had genuinely some kind of psychotic break,
21:52some kind of brainstorm that led him to kill.
21:57The police had a wealth of evidence against Honka,
22:01but they were desperate for him to make a full confession.
22:05If he continued with his silence,
22:07they may never identify the other three murdered women.
22:19It smelled really odd in the house.
22:21There were also foreigners living there,
22:23and Honka always said,
22:24the foreigners cook in a funny way.
22:26They use strange spices in their food,
22:28and that's why it stinks.
22:30None of the neighbours suspected that it wasn't the foreigners,
22:33that the smell came from the body parts in Honka's flat,
22:36and they had started to reek.
22:39Once somebody dies, decomposition will begin.
22:46There will be an increase to start with in particularly the smell that comes from the body.
22:55As the body functions render down, things start to decompose.
23:04Everywhere in the flat were scented stones, all around the skirting boards.
23:08The toilet was full of them.
23:10They were everywhere.
23:14The longer the bodies had remained in Honka's attic,
23:17the harder it was to get rid of them.
23:20A dead body is difficult to move,
23:22and once rigor mortis starts to set in and the body becomes stiff,
23:26it's not even flexible to move.
23:28It can be very hard to do.
23:29This is really illustrative of the type of serial killer he was.
23:34He wasn't massively organized in terms of covering up his crimes.
23:38You know, he would have the corpses of his victims right there in his flat.
23:42He didn't actually dispose of them.
23:44So this was something that he was doing just kind of short-term, reactionary,
23:49just kind of coping with each day as it arose.
23:52When the police went to Honka's favourite bars
23:56and broke the news that bodies had been found in his flat,
23:59they were met with complete disbelief.
24:05No-one expected that of him. No-one.
24:08Even if you'd met him, you'd definitely have said,
24:10him? Nah, he's too armless. Really shocking.
24:17Journalists also went round the bars
24:19to get background colour for their stories.
24:27Part of the story was to look around and find out
24:29where did Honka meet his women?
24:31And that was in the goldene handschuhe.
24:34It was unimaginable.
24:36This was pure poverty.
24:38People, human wrecks, women as well as men,
24:41whose fate had taken a sad turn for the worse.
24:44These people had reached the very bottom of society.
24:54This doesn't mean they had to be criminals.
24:57But they were very poor creatures.
25:03As a consequence, it smelled pretty bad in the goldene handschuhe.
25:09As these people weren't able to wash, they had nowhere to go,
25:13as many of them were homeless.
25:20The police had identified one of Honka's victims as Gertroud Breuer.
25:25But the other three remained a mystery.
25:27Establishing their identities would not be simple.
25:31Even in the modern era of DNA,
25:35identifying victims can be incredibly challenging.
25:39By and large, you have to have something to compare your victim to.
25:45So dental records, evidence of missing people,
25:49have they got defining characteristics that's unique to them?
25:54The police found a pile of women's ID cards in Honka's flat,
26:04and set about the complicated task of trying to find the rightful owners
26:08among the prostitutes who frequented the bars around the Raper Barn.
26:13Each time they found a woman alive,
26:15they were able to cross her off the list of potential victims.
26:19One of the local officers at the time was Peter Reichardt.
26:26We were able to work our way through all the names on this list,
26:29and we realised that our women all seemed to be alive.
26:35The Hamburg police also put out a call to colleagues across Germany
26:39for details of missing women in their mid-40s to mid-50s.
26:44How many missing persons reports do you think they get in Germany?
26:51I had stacks of them on my desk and I had to look through all of them
26:55and somehow still wasn't making progress.
27:01Well, so we catalogued the clothes we had found in his flat,
27:05hung them up, numbered them and photographed each item.
27:09These clothes were really the only thing we had at that moment.
27:13Detectives would have to go to the bars Honka went to around the Raper Barn
27:22to see if anyone could help them.
27:29You try going to San Paoli when you don't have a name.
27:32You don't have an address.
27:34All you have is clothes and nothing else.
27:36You have the name of Mr Honka and with that you go to a bar and ask people,
27:40what kind of girlfriends did he have?
27:47What do you think the people in these bars tell you?
27:49Yes, he had many women, you know.
27:51One was called Annie, the other Gerda and the next Erika.
27:56But that's all we know.
27:57Well, what are you going to do with that?
27:59What are you going to do with that?
28:04So you go round all the bars showing the outfits
28:06and if you're lucky you might get a name.
28:08Yes, such and such always wore these kind of clothes.
28:16As soon as you get a first name you can make progress.
28:18At that point we were established that we were probably dealing with ageing prostitutes.
28:30Using the list of missing persons, the clothes found in Honka's apartment
28:34and the names gathered from the local bars,
28:37detectives were able to draw up a short list of possible victims.
28:42Armed with photographs, they headed out onto the Raper Barn once more.
28:48And with these pictures we went back to show them around
28:51and were finally able to establish,
28:53yes, he had a thing with her.
28:58It was a major breakthrough for the police.
29:01They had linked a number of women to Honka.
29:07As soon as we knew who these women were,
29:09we could confront him again and again during the interrogations.
29:13And we kept insisting until he'd say,
29:15yes, I knew her and she'd been over at my place.
29:20So at least now we had admitted that they'd been with him.
29:25Some stayed longer with him for days, even weeks.
29:29It was nice for the women.
29:30Suddenly they had somewhere to live.
29:32The question was, what happened next?
29:36Well, we obviously had to confront him with the fact that he had killed the woman.
29:39And all he said, I can't remember.
29:47We had no choice but to accept that.
29:49However, there was evidence that the women who had been identified
29:53and who had also lived with him were found dead in his flat.
29:58And that exactly was the point.
30:03But the police still needed a confession.
30:06Now we just had to hear from him that he killed them.
30:13And how he killed them.
30:15And what he did with the bodies.
30:18And that's difficult.
30:19That's very difficult.
30:21As I remember, he always made it sound like it was a possibility.
30:25But he never admitted it 100%.
30:27It is interesting that he didn't deny the killings.
30:35He wasn't a particularly, oh no, it's got nothing to do with me.
30:39Mind you, it would have been very difficult for him to deny the killings.
30:42He was living with the body parts of four women.
30:44I mean, how they got there, he was the only person who truly knew.
30:47We kept pushing him, but you chopped up the bodies.
30:53You cut the women up with a saw.
30:55And so on.
30:57He just said, I can't remember.
31:02It was further frustration for the police.
31:06For example, he would say, yeah, I slept with that woman.
31:12And in the morning, she was lying dead next to me.
31:15Well, how she died, the way she died, I simply can't say.
31:22Although Honka continued to deny killing the three women,
31:26the detectives were at least able to finally identify them.
31:30They were 54-year-old Anna Boichel, 52-year-old Ruth Schulte,
31:36and 57-year-old Frieda Roblich, a regular in the Golden Glove
31:40who went by the name of Rita.
31:42I had a cleaning lady who always helped out.
31:50Her name was Zofie.
31:52And Zofie was friends with Rita.
31:55Now and then, Zofie would take Rita home with her,
31:59so she could have a wash, bathe or even sleep.
32:01But, I don't know, I think she had nowhere to live.
32:08She was gone for a while.
32:11One day she came back wearing nice clothes, really quite fancy.
32:17And I said, where have you been?
32:20I really thought you were dead.
32:21No, I have a new boyfriend and he's wonderful.
32:29But that new boyfriend was Fritz Honka,
32:32who strangled her to death in December 1974.
32:35Honka always seems to me to be kind of an accidental serial killer.
32:41He didn't fit what the BAU, the FBI's behavioural unit call, organised.
32:47He was completely disorganised.
32:49These were crimes of opportunity.
32:51He wasn't stalking these women.
32:54He wasn't planning their killings.
32:56They happened.
32:58They were part of his tragic character.
33:01And part of his drinking.
33:03And part of the fact that he found any kind of sexual relationship with women almost impossible.
33:08And this was the only way he could find to satisfy those desires that he had.
33:14The West German press were fascinated with Honka.
33:18Photographer Lutz Jaffe managed to capture a photograph of the mysterious killer.
33:22Back then, you could have pretty good contacts within the police.
33:28And I knew that Honka would be taken either to prison
33:33or to appear in front of the magistrate at a specific time.
33:37Someone from the police had told me about it.
33:44Well, and then I lay in wait for him to arrive.
33:48That's how this photo came about.
33:49As he turned around when I called, Mr Honka.
33:53That's how I managed to catch him.
33:56The police were trying to determine a motive for the murders.
34:02Interviews with local prostitutes, who'd been with Honka and lived to tell the tale,
34:07revealed shocking facts about his perverse sexual tastes.
34:10The women who escaped from his home were very lucky.
34:21The interrogation of these women hinted at his sexual practices.
34:26And these were sometimes catastrophic.
34:28I don't want to go into every detail here, but it was pretty terrible.
34:33I don't want to go into every detail here, but it was pretty terrible.
34:37It's possible these sexual practices got out of hand and became excessive.
34:43Which, I have to say, might have led to the death of a woman.
34:48One of the surviving victims showed the police a scar she'd received in a brutal sexual encounter with Honka.
35:01Because 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.
35:17What is that? I asked her.
35:18She then told us that, during a sexual encounter with Fritz Honka, he had penetrated her with a broom handle.
35:26That's where the injury had come from, and she ended up in hospital.
35:30She was furious, angry beyond belief, you could say.
35:37And she wasn't the only one who needed medical treatment after spending the night with Honka.
35:42For example, one of the women he took back to his place, he sat her with a bare bum on top of a hot plate.
35:56As a result, the woman ran semi-naked out of the flat.
35:59This is an example, the sort of thing where he became violent.
36:03This 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.
36:23The investigation was drawing to an end, but some questions remained unanswered.
36:28He 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.
36:42Now, there's no suggestion that Honka had sex with them post-mortem.
36:46There's no suggestion that he was some kind of necrophiliac.
36:49I 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.
36:56In November 1976, the trial of Fritz Honka began in Hamburg.
37:03He had retracted his initial confession and was now denying all the charges against him.
37:09Well, his defence strategy when he was arrested and charged with the crimes was an incredibly bizarre one.
37:15He decided to blame Jack the Ripper, who was sending him messages to kill these women.
37:20Now, 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.
37:32We 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.
37:43But 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.
37:58The psychiatrist who examined Honka during the court case concluded that he'd acted with diminished criminal responsibility.
38:07On 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 Boychel, who he had strangled in his apartment in August 1974.
38:24Honka was sentenced to 15 years in a psychiatric hospital.
38:29He might have been described at the time as a bit slow.
38:32So that affects the amount of culpability that we assign to his crime.
38:38So was he in control of what he was doing? Did he know what he was doing was wrong?
38:41And if that can't be established, then perhaps he is treated in a mental health facility rather than a prison.
38:49And indeed he served 15 years in a hospital, in a hospital setting.
38:53The crimes of Fritz Honka left the entire country in shock, especially the city of Hamburg.
39:04I believe after the Second World War such a murder case has never happened again in the history of crimes in Hamburg.
39:10It was a unique case that someone killed four women, dismembered them, and left them in his flat.
39:23After that, we became very, very well known beyond Hamburg.
39:28Famous for the murder, as unpleasant as it was, and as sorry as I felt for the women.
39:33Especially Rita. Rita really didn't deserve it.
39:41Honka was released from the psychiatric hospital in 1993.
39:46He spent the final years of his life in a nursing home under the name Peter Jensen.
39:51He died in Hamburg on the 19th of October 1998.
39:54He was 63 years old.
39:57Today, Fritz Honka has become something of a cult figure in Hamburg.
40:03The Golden Glove continues to capitalize on its most infamous former customer,
40:09with the words Honka Saloon emblazoned above the entrance.
40:16These bars were a no-go zone.
40:19Not in a million years would a normal Hamburg citizen go there.
40:22Only after the series of murders was made public,
40:26did it become an interesting place for people in fur coats to visit after the opera,
40:31so they could see for themselves how well off they were and how miserable the others.
40:36Well, I'm going to be really generous and pay for a round of beer.
40:40It was just to boost their own ego.
40:43But it should never be forgotten that Honka was a violent killer
40:48who took away the lives of four innocent women.
40:52I think he's somebody who did evil things.
40:55But if we call him evil, we let him off the hook,
40:59we just simply explain it away as well.
41:01This kind of subhuman monster that just does these things because they're evil.
41:05And that removes the possibility that they've chosen to do these things.
41:08It's entirely possible that Honka would have got away with it a little longer.
41:14No one really had complained particularly.
41:17He'd had bodies in the flat for almost five years.
41:20He could well have had them for another two years.
41:23It is inevitable, however, that eventually justice would have caught up with Honka.
41:29Fritz Honka callously killed four women between 1970 and 1975.
41:37He strangled them before dismembering their bodies.
41:41By attacking prostitutes, he hoped his crimes would never be revealed.
41:46Had it not been for a fire in his apartment block,
41:49who knows just how many victims may have been murdered at the hands of Fritz Honka,
41:55one of the world's most evil killers.
41:59We'll see you next time.
42:29Here we are.
42:31We'll see you next time.
42:32How many chickens are wondering where we are located?
42:36This 2009 can have moved to our bodies.
42:39We'll see you next time.
42:41Here we go.
42:43This is avenario kinda only 12 RD.
42:46The ship says he is dry.
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