Killers: Behind the Myth (2013–2015): Season 1, Episode 4 - Honka: The Ripper of St Pauli - full transcript
Fritz Honka quietly lived in Hamburg's red light district of St Pauli, picking up elderly prostitutes for the price of a glass of schnapps and a bed for the night. He began to lose his temper when the women declined his sexual perversions. He retaliated by strangling his victims. Disposing of the bodies presented a problem until he came up with the idea of dismembering them and storing the body parts in the roof space next to his flat. Had a freak house fire not crept up the building to expose his collection he might never have been caught. He claimed he had been instructed by London's Victorian Jack The Ripper to perform the murders. He was sectioned at a mental institute after being convicted of 1 murder and 4 manslaughters.
The most notoriouskillers hide in plain sight,
free to kill and kill again.
Most are not the criminalmasterminds of fiction.
In their minds, theycommit the perfect murder.
In reality, it's their foolishmistakes that get them caught.
Hamburg, Germany, the mid-'70s.
Over the last five years,four women have gone missing
from the red light district.
Police are unaware a serialkiller is on the loose
until a house fire
leads them to his door--
a killer nicknamed the
Ripper of St. Pauli.
17th of July, 1975--
a fire breaks out in anold apartment block close
to the red light district.
Gerd Mahnke led the fire crew.
It was hard toreach for the fire engines
since the streets
were very narrow.
A lot of fires happened there,especially fires in flats.
Whilst
extinguishing it,
the firefighters make
a gruesome discovery.
We
broke into the flat
and were able to extinguishthe fire, and while doing that,
we noticed a very unpleasantsmell, like burnt flesh
or petrification.
Of course, that's when
the alarm bells rang.
Had we missed a person or a pet?
The sickly
smell comes from
the empty, unoccupied attic.
We discovered aplastic bag which contained
parts of a human body.
Of course,that immediately clarified
the origin of the smell.
After that, we found
further plastic bags
in quick succession.
Jurgen Vierle
was a detective chief
inspector in Hamburg's police.
I remember thatthe phone rang at 4:00 AM,
and we were called out
to that deployment.
There had been a fire
in... Strasse,
and bodies had been found.
The house fire isnow treated as a crime scene.
- I
- only knew that two
bodies had been found,strongly decomposed, charred,
and very smelly.
And then the fire brigadetook off the tiles of the roof
in order to have more light.
The firemen thenmake another grisly discovery--
a mangled collection ofdissected, female body parts.
We figured
out that the body
parts were a torso withcut-off breasts and a thigh.
Immediately,
Jurgen Vierle
is reminded of a peculiarunsolved murder case four years
earlier, where a workman
discovered a woman's
partial remains
in a waste ground
300 meters away from the
suspected crime scene.
We didn't lookat the parts any further,
but immediately
informed the police.
A woman
had been dismembered,
and some of her body partshad been individually wrapped
and buried together in a hole.
Among therubbish were the body parts,
which were a head,
arms, and hands,
cut-off breasts, one thigh.
The police launcha murder investigation,
but they have a problem.
No one is able to
identify the body.
It had decomposed so badlythat visual identification and
fingerprinting was impossible.
Because of thelong periods lying outside,
the fingertips were
no longer of use,
so we had to
concentrate on the head.
The
police forensic team
comes up with a groundbreakingprocess they hope will help.
We
injected the head
with paraffin wax, whichallowed it to take on a more
human shape once again.
This temporarily reversedthe mummification
long enough to put on somemakeup and take a photo.
The outlandish
procedure works.
The victim is identifiedas a part-time hairdresser
and prostitute, 43-year-old
Gertraud Brauer.
Back
then, we weren't
able to find any leadson who could be connected
to Frau Brauer's death.
In the red lightdistrict of St. Pauli,
no one reports Gertraud
Brauer's disappearance.
Usually,
prostitutes and people
at the lower etches oflife are simply not missed,
and often not reported.
And if they are, it's
not for very long.
And it means that
they are easier
victims than anyone else.
The investigation ishampered by only having part
of a body, as Otto Kohn, along-serving police officer,
recalls.
It's always betterfor the investigating detective
to find the body, since thereare always leads on the body.
From the body you can
deduce how it was done,
sometimes even why it was done.
You can deduce the motivefrom the killing method,
but a murder case without abody is very hard to solve.
But the dismemberedbody does provide some clues
as to who might be responsible.
The police believe
it has been cut up
so it could be carried on foot.
From the
beginning, we were aware
that the perpetrator
must be living
close by because transportinga body would not remain
unobserved because
somebody is always
bound to notice something.
So we drew a circle
of 500 meters
around the place ofdiscovery and then checked
who lived in this areathat might have something
to do with the murder.
The crime
remains unsolved.
Four years later, when Vierlediscovers the body parts
in the attic fire, he makesan immediate connection
to a previous crime scene.
I was the officialin charge in the Gertraud
Brauer case, and of course,I was aware of which body
parts were missing.
And when the firemen saidhere is a torso and a thigh,
I knew immediately thatthese were the missing body
parts of Frau Brauer's body.
And this apartment isonly 300 meters from the waste
ground where four years
earlier, the other body
parts were found.
Could the murderer bethe occupant of the flat?
And while I wasstill standing there, suddenly,
a small figure
came up the stairs
wearing some type of uniform,like a security guard.
He asked me, what happened here?
I said, as you can see,
there has been a fire,
and your flat has been
affected quite badly.
You probably won't be able tolive here in the near future.
The small
figure is a night
watchman, 40-year-old
Fritz Honka, a man
well-known to the authorities.
I was a regularpatrol car policeman working
my beat when I met Fritz Honka.
He stuck in my memory.
Some people do.
He wasn't a particularly
notorious criminal.
He was just dodgy.
In the top flatof 76... Strasse,
the police suspect
they might have
just uncovered a serial killer.
Fritz Honka is duly arrested.
Police questioning
would eventually
reveal the diminutive
night watchman is
responsible for a series ofthe most gruesome and bloody
murders Hamburg had ever seen.
On the 17th of July
1975, in the midst
of Germany's red light
district in Hamburg,
there's been a house fire.
In the attic, bodies
and body parts have
been found charred and burnt.
The tenant of the flat nextto the attic, Fritz Honka,
has been arrested.
Fritz Honka was born in 1935,the third of nine children.
His mother struggled
with such a big family,
and so he was sent
to an orphanage.
Honka was kind of brought upin post-war Germany, where it
was very barren, very uncaring.
There was a lot of chaos,a lot of instability.
If you back-trace many,
many serial killers,
you will find that theyhave problems in childhood.
However, you will often find
that they have siblings.
In Honka's case, there were manynormal siblings who didn't go
on to have a career in crime.
Fritz Honkastruggles to fit in at school.
He has a speech
impediment and is teased
about his physical appearance.
He spends much of hischildhood in the orphanage.
On the occasional home visits,
he's frequently berated
by his father, a heavy drinker.
Hisupbringing was particularly
emotionally feral
in terms of the fact
that his mother sent him away.
He didn't see her again.
His father was alcoholic.
Possibly the only thing
that his father did
give him was alcoholism.
As a young
adult, there was still
little stability in his life.
He traveled the country
working as a laborer.
It was only at the age of21, when he moved to Hamburg
and landed a well-paidjob in the docks, that he
had any kind of security.
The following year, in1957, he meets and marries
his wife, Inge...
Honka seemed to have aneed to establish himself
with a normal relationshiphaving a normal background,
so he chose a wife.
And inappropriately,
however, this
was not where his desires lay.
This was not, obviously,where Honka's future lay.
Just like Honka, is a heavy drinker.
Together, the two tour thebars and pubs of Hamburg.
There are peoplethat you'll always remember.
I remember that woman.
She was strongly intoxicated.
His wife did not help
his drinking problem--
in fact, accelerated this.
And Honka's life becamesaturated with alcohol, which
made things that we
wouldn't normally
approach fairly approachable.
During a
turbulent relationship,
the couple have a son,
but their drinking
spirals out of control.
They lose their apartment,Honka loses his job,
and the three of
them end up living
in sheltered accommodation.
A lot of thingshappened in those shelters,
especially during the weekend--
a lot of beatings amongmarried couples or friends.
Alcohol played a
major part in it.
Policeman Otto
Kohn vividly remembers
one particular patrol.
We
entered the room,
and she immediately
slapped my colleague.
He fell badly
against the fridge.
That was the sort of situationthat happened all the time.
Their
relationship is on/off.
They divorce and marry again.
But when... discoversHonka was having an affair,
she leaves him for good.
It filled
him with hatred--
hatred of women in general.
He admitted that he wanted totake women that were below him.
He felt he'd been fleeced.
He was very angry.
Honka
returns to the docks
and begins work as a
lowly night watchman.
With some financial
security, he's
able to rent a smallsingle bedroomed apartment
in the eaves of a three
story townhouse close
to the red light district.
He decorates the small roomwith pornography and dolls.
Honka behaved almost
like a little adolescent
let off the loose.
He began to display pornographicmaterial on his walls,
and he showed no
particular restraint
in terms of his
indulgence of himself
with this kind of paraphernalia.
To meet
women, Honka frequented
the Golden Glove pub and
the Elbschloss Keller
in the red light district.
Today, the bars are popularwith tourists and locals alike.
40 years ago, they werefrequented by prostitutes.
Kacper Gradon, crime scientist,has looked into the Honka case.
They frequentlychange their identity
and deliberately avoid anycontact with law enforcement,
and the people they
work with often
don't know anything abouttheir identity or whereabouts.
So it's probable that
if they went missing,
no one would look for
them for a long time.
Honka foundhimself in the area of Hamburg
which could be describedas a kind of social Bermuda
Triangle, where
very few people knew
anybody, and certainly
didn't know people
continuously for a period.
Honka finds anaffinity with the prostitutes.
He may havefound a symbiotic relationship
with them because he was aquiet, withdrawn individual
and kept himself to himself,
and this was somebody
who could almost compensate.
In 1969, hemeets 43-year-old Gertraud
Brauer, an attractive part-timehairdresser and prostitute.
Heiko Schwart, a regular inthe St. Pauli bars at the time,
remembers Honka chatting
with the local girls.
But he
searched out the people.
He simply sat down next tothem and put down two beers.
Back then, it was only one mark.
And then he talked to the peoplein a kind of friendly way.
He wasn't serious
or straight-faced.
Somehow, he was
quite a funny person.
And then he said,
well, sweetheart,
don't you want to
come back with me?
My flat isn't that far.
And that's how it happened.
Gertraud Brauerand Honka make a deal,
and she goes back to Honka'sapartment and stays the night.
But the next morning,
her mood changes.
For a quiet,highly controlled person
such as Honka, this rathergregarious prostitute was a bit
too vocal for him to contain.
This frustrated him, and
when she refused him sex
in the morning, somethingsnapped within Honka,
and his real self did come out.
And he strangles the lady.
Gertraud Brauerbecomes Honka's first victim.
Honka chose to stranglea lady I think because that
was immediately available.
It didn't require
him to find anything.
But also, it meant that he couldstop the noise immediately,
and it put him in total
control over the killing
of this person.
But now he has adead body lying in his flat.
So this
is his first homicide.
He's not experienced.
And as he's never doneanything like this before,
he doesn't know what
to do with the victim.
With no car andunable to use public transport,
Honka has a problem.
To kill aperson is easy and quick,
but to get rid of the body
is quite a big problem.
Firstly, the risk of
discovery, and secondly,
the risk of transporting thebody parts without them being
discovered.
But he has a solution.
Most people do not
realize how difficult
it is to dispose of a body.
They are very, very heavywhen dead, somewhat limp,
and even more of a dead weight.
His decision was
almost foregone.
He did not have a vehicle.
He did not really have
the strength to drag
this body around the streets.
He had to dismember it.
There was no choice
in this, so he did.
He cuts thevictim into smaller pieces.
He wraps a leg, the
arms, and the head
and then takes them
to the waste ground.
He didn't
dig a large grave
or make sure she wascovered properly to ensure
she'd never be discovered.
The remaining partsof Gertraud Brauer's body
were still in his apartment.
I think he balks at
the idea of carrying
the rest of the body parts,which are increasingly large.
He was a slight person.
It probably, given his levelof frustration at the corpse,
seemed like too much effortfor him to expend on something
he actually hated at that point.
And he had to find, really,an alternative method
of storing body parts.
He
would have to bring
the body or the large torsodown a steep staircase
and wrap it in something.
It seems impossible
for no one to notice.
I think he was being
practical by keeping
the body in his flat.
Instead of buryingthe body, he has another idea.
So hedecided to hide the bodies
in the nearest place possible.
That's his attic.
He was practical, but
he was also very unwise.
Having
hidden the body parts,
Honka expects to be caughtout and waits for the police
to arrest him, but no one comes.
To Honka's relief,
of course, the lady--
the prostitute-- was not
missed by the police,
by anyone, in fact.
It seems Honkamight get away with murder.
After awhile, he must have thought
the bodies wouldn't be found.
He didn't think of himself asa particularly clever person.
So most probably, he
got rid of the bodies
just like people
get rid of rubbish.
He just threw them away.
With neither themurder nor the body parts
discovered, Honka was
free to kill again.
In this anonymous,
wretched sea
of humanity that
Honka found himself,
he began to look for victims.
He began to, as it were, becomeforensically aware enough
to actually stalk them andcheck whether anybody who came
into that bar had any furtherconnections, possible family,
were known there.
And if they didn't,
he would identify
those and perhaps target them.
But Honka's secretwas about to be rumbled.
Gertraud Brauer's
buried limbs remain
undiscovered until
almost a year later,
when a laborer accidentallystumbles on them.
It
was on a site which
used to be a chocolate
factory and which
was now used as a landfill.
The neighbors had all
their rubbish there.
From the
remains, police
are able to create an Identikitpicture of the victim.
The discovery must have
left Honka panicked.
Honka's reaction to body partsbeing found that he'd dumped
was probably one of
resentment that he'd
gone through all the troubleof trying to dispose of them,
and they've become a liability.
Whilst the buriedbody parts were found,
the rest of the corpse,hidden close by in his attic,
remained undetected.
When still no one
came looking for him,
Honka realized he
was in the clear.
Murder, it seemed, was simple.
And worryingly, he was aboutto develop a taste for it.
1970.
Fritz Honka is living nearHamburg's red light district.
He's killed a local prostitute,43-year-old Gertraud Brauer.
Parts of her body
have been found buried
at a nearby waste ground.
The rest is hidden
next to his apartment.
It lies undisturbed for
the next four years.
We should rememberthat after this first killing,
Honka doesn't fall into thecategory of serial killer.
The long cooling down period isnot typical of a serial killer.
So far, he
has evaded detection,
but he starts to
get a reputation
for violent outbreaks.
Honka
was quite angry.
He was very moody, and wheneverhe didn't like something
or something didn't work
out the way he expected,
he became aggressive.
Schwart knows
of at least one woman
who was on the receiving
end of Honka's tempers.
And I know a woman.
She's still alive.
She's over 88 years old.
I know that she went
with him to his flat
and had to tear
herself loose from him.
She ran off.
She escaped because sherealized that he intended
to do something to her.
He hit her.
He tore her tights, wrappedthem around her neck.
She was able to
prevent strangulation
by getting a hand betweenthe tights and her neck.
And subsequently, she
escaped from the flat.
He was lookingfor strong and perverse
sexual experiences.
One of the prostitutes
he brought home later
accused him of rape.
She was probably referringto very pervasive and violent
sexual acts.
Honka is found guiltyof raping Ruth...
and fined 4,000deutschmarks, the equivalent
of around 8,000 eurostoday, but he avoids jail.
Honka's reaction to being
charged with an offense
was probably one of
anger, frustration,
and to some degree, aggression.
And I think this probablyfueled him into the next stage
in his killing spree.
This is oneway that serial killers tend
to evolve, as they increase
the level of violence
they inflict on their victims.
It quite simplyincreased his level of anger,
increased his level ofaggression against females,
and also confirmed to
him that his ability
to interact normally
with females
was just simply not there.
So we
can say that Honka's
actions are a maturing processin becoming a serial killer.
Even if we forgot about
the first killing,
this tendency to commit strongersexual and aggressive acts
towards the prostitutes areforming a way, leading Honka
to become a serial murderer.
On the 6th
of September, 1974,
he meets anotherprostitute, Anna Beuschel.
She would become
Honka's second victim.
But whether he felt
the need to kill
or if he simply killed throughfrustration is open to debate.
Even though FritzHonka is obsessed with sex,
surprisingly at this stage,I don't think that he's
a sexual serial killer.
All of his victims were
invited to his flat,
and he made them participatein very perverse and aggressive
sexual acts.
But when they refused
or didn't listen to him,
he became furious.
And because of this
alleged disobedience,
he would hit them, and thatwould lead to their death.
Once again, he'sfaced with the problem
of disposing of the body.
Honka's inability to disposeof body parts in a forensically
correct way away
from his residence
was probably aconsequence of his slight
build and ability to
carry heavy objects.
And possibly, it was much easierto keep the bodies in the flat.
He wraps
up her body and hides
it deep in the recesses
of the attic space.
He's
being very practical.
He's a small man who
lives on the top floor
of an apartment block withsteep stairs leading up to it.
Butpracticality is not enough
where murder is concerned.
Even though
he's being practical,
he's not too intelligent,and he doesn't
think what might happen to thosebodies in a couple of months.
Over time, the
body of Anna Beuschel
begins to decompose.
The smell of rotting fleshfills the apartment block.
Decomposing bodieshave a very, very strong smell.
You have to bear in mind
that Honka was keeping
those body parts in the attic.
And especially in the summer,the decomposition process
would be rapid.
So the smell must
have been horrible.
A neighborcomplains about the smell,
and the police are
called to investigate.
As they question Honka,they are just meters away
from the decomposing bodies.
But Honka has anexplanation for the smell.
He had said, well, there areforeigners living in the flat,
and they're always
cooking weird stuff,
and that's why it smells.
The detectives at the sceneaccepted his explanation.
It's likely that Honkawas not bothered by the smell.
Honka's possible
alcoholism may
have made him
insensitive to smells,
and he would not have
actually picked up
on the extreme, disgustingnature of rotting corpses.
His way of coping with
this would probably
be to increase his
alcohol intake so he
became even more insensitive.
But Honka is awarethat the smell is now becoming
an issue for the other tenants.
Rather than getting
rid of the bodies,
he tries to disguise the smell.
He's using
some toilet fresheners
around the flat,
hoping it would mask
the smell of decomposing body.
It wasn't the most
effective method,
and probably it made
the stench even worse.
Yet thedisappearance of Anna Beuschel
goes almost unnoticed.
Three months later, anothervictim falls to his prey.
December 1974, he brings
57-year-old Frieda
Roblick back to his apartment.
He strangles her after sheallegedly tries to rob him.
Honka places her
body in the attic.
It's possible thatafter those three killings,
he realized that he wasgetting more skilled and more
confident in what he was doing.
He probably thought thatif he invited a prostitute
and she didn't agree to hissexual and aggressive demands,
he would kill her and hide
her body in the attic.
The time frame betweeneach murder is getting shorter.
His next attack takesplace just one month later.
By now, Honka is becoming
forensically aware.
He knows his limitations
to some degree.
He has a method, and he has amethod of disposing of bodies.
So there's very little toprevent him from continuing
his only means of sexual
pursuit with females,
which is, in fact, to kill.
In January 1975, hetakes home 52-year-old Ruth
Schult. As they're
having some drinks,
Schult finds something
in Honka to ridicule.
Regardless of any
psychiatric background,
Honka's mental state did
change over the period
of his killings.
By the end, maybe Honkawas actually taking risks
that the Honka at the
start of this career
would never have taken.
Honka snaps.
He hits Schult with a ginbottle and then strangles her.
Her body is larger
than the rest.
He decides to hide her behinda panel in his apartment.
The remains of four bodiesnow lie in Honka's flat
and the adjacent attic.
They would remain
undiscovered were it
not for an accident downstairs.
While Honka is on night
shift at the docks,
the tenant in the apartmentbelow lights a candle.
It gets knocked
over when he leaves.
A fire quickly spreads.
We
tried immediately
to extinguish all the remainingfires and to air the room.
And we aired the room byremoving the tiles of the roof,
and we were able to find aplastic bag among a still
smoldering pile of
coals containing
the remains of a human body.
The police arebrought in to investigate
just as Honka arrives home.
It's difficult
to absolutely ascertain,
but Honka's reaction, hisdispassionate reaction
to the police being absolutelyadjacent to charred bodies
which could incriminate
was possibly
to do with him being
forensically aware
and realizing that
any kind of reaction
would be spotted by
the police, and he
would be suspect immediately.
The police discoverdismembered body parts
alongside two whole corpses.
And once we figuredout what the body parts were--
a torso with cut-off
breasts and a thigh--
we realized that
they had belonged
to the Gertraud Brauer
case, parts of which I
had found four years ago.
The police believethey have a breakthrough.
Charging Honka with murderis merely a formality,
but the attic is actuallyaccessible by all residents
of the building.
Anyone could havedeposited the bodies there.
If Honka is to be charged, moreevidence needs to be found.
Body parts and corpses
have been found
in the attic of a burnt-outapartment building.
The chief suspect is FritzHonka, who lives next door.
Although the evidence
is circumstantial,
the police take him
in for questioning.
Back then, wealready had blood tracing.
We already had
secretion tracing.
We had fingerprinting.
Of course, we didn't
have modern equipment--
no machines, no computers.
Advanced policeforensics, such as DNA
analysis, didn't exist.
The only way to link
Honka to the crime
is through a confession.
Otto Kohn, the
interrogator on the day,
knew he needed to be prepared.
Before I
start an interrogation,
I figure out what type ofperson I'm dealing with
to try and just talk
to him as if we've
been friends for a while.
It's a great mistake, especiallywith capital offenses,
to jump straight to thesubject of the killing itself,
to immediately talk
about the victims.
You have to slowly
edge your way forward
to talk about anything
at all at first.
It's a method thatexperienced interrogators
like Kohn have
successfully used,
but with Honka, he struggles.
He only
spoke in monosyllables.
He never spoke in
coherent sentences.
Fritz
Honka's IQ is so low,
he's deemed
borderline deficient.
This, along with his
speech impediment,
means getting a
confession is difficult.
When interrogatinga suspect such as Fritz Honka,
who's difficult because
he's of low intelligence
and a hardened criminalresponsible for heinous crimes,
you have to be really
careful in choosing
your interrogation strategy.
The police
change tactics.
Otto Kohn appeals to
Honka's sensitive side.
OK,...
I'm so tired, I could breakdown right here because I've
been on the guy all day.
Well, he did
appreciate that fact.
Strangely, he agreed
and said, me too.
Well then, tell me how
many bodies did we find?
Then we can finish.
Two or three?
Did we really find two
or three, not more?
No, no more.
It's a breakthrough.
Honka admits he knows
of bodies in the attic.
However, he stops
short of admitting
to murdering the women.
But as other people
in the building
also had access
to the roof space,
anyone could have
left the bodies there.
Although it seems an
extraordinary mistake
to leave bodies
on your doorstep,
with no directly
incriminating evidence,
it looks as if Honka
might get away with it.
Detectives Jurgen
Vierle and...
are sent back to carry
out a thorough search
of Honka's flat to secureenough evidence for prosecution.
And I can rememberquite well sitting next to Herr
on the couchin the smoke-filled flat,
and there was still
some peculiar smell
in the flat itself that wasfurther away from the attic.
And I just said to
Herr...
there must be another
body somewhere.
We started tapping the walls,and one sounded hollow,
so we tore off the wallpaper.
And then there appeared
a wallpaper door,
and behind that wallpaper doll,there was the fourth body.
The police feel thatthey have enough circumstantial
evidence to prove
in a court of law
that he murdered all four women.
Returning to the
interrogation room,
the police still needed
clarification as to how
the murders were committed.
We demonstratedit to him by twisting a towel
and asking him, where
did you apply it?
Here?
Here?
Or there, possibly?
Did you shoot all of them?
Stab them all?
Strangled them, possibly?
That took all day
again until I had
the fourth body, until
I had his statement
that he'd strangled her.
Finally,
Honka admits that he
was responsible for
all four deaths,
but he never
revealed why he kept
the bodies so close to home.
Since Honkaonly talked in monosyllables,
one can only assume
that hiding the bodies
there was the easiest option.
There is no evidenceof Honka's motivation, either.
He nevercommented on his motives.
He never said yes or no.
The only words he ever saidwere "possible" or "could be."
I think that if the
fire had not broken out,
if this discovery
had not been made,
we wouldn't have
discovered four bodies.
We would have
probably discovered
six, seven, eight, nine bodies,until the attic space was full.
He would definitely
have continued.
I'm convinced of that.
Well, the
experts said later on
that he was a dangerous person.
He would have continued ifhe hadn't been discovered.
But Honka hasone last roll of the dice.
Out of the blue, he claims thatalthough he killed the women,
he wasn't responsible
for their deaths.
Instead, it was all down toa Victorian serial killer--
London's Jack the Ripper.
Honka's means of re-graspingthe situation when he had been
caught was to claim
that he had, as it were,
messages from Jack the Ripper.
Claiming
Victorian London's
mass murderer ofprostitutes had contacted
him was clearly preposterous.
This may have beenHonka quite simply displacing
the blame and trying
to claim basically
that he was perhaps
insane, perhaps not
responsible for his actions.
And in a simplistic
way, he possibly thought
this might dispense with it.
The ripper labelstuck, but the charges didn't.
Honka's defense counsel
managed to persuade
the judge that Honka haddiminished responsibility.
When convicted,
Honka is found guilty
of only one count of murder butthree counts of manslaughter.
He did
understand the harm
he inflicted on his victims,and he understood his actions.
So he wasn't insane fromthe criminal point of view,
but he did have
limited mental ability.
Aided by
psychiatric experts,
he is classified as having asevere mental abnormality--
in other words, an illness,a controversial diagnosis.
I believe thatHonka was not a criminally
insane person, because
he was aware of the harm
he was doing to his victims.
He was able to distinguishand differentiate
between good and evil andunderstood the consequences
of his actions.
Despite
confessing to killing,
dismembering, and
mutilating four women,
Honka controversiallyescapes a prison sentence.
The only
solution was to admit
him to a mental institution.
Honka serves 15years in a mental institution.
After which he is
released from hospital
and changes his name
to Peter Jensen.
His health deteriorates, andhe lives out his final years
in a nursing home.
In 1998, Honka dies aged
63, those around him
unaware of his gruesome past.
free to kill and kill again.
Most are not the criminalmasterminds of fiction.
In their minds, theycommit the perfect murder.
In reality, it's their foolishmistakes that get them caught.
Hamburg, Germany, the mid-'70s.
Over the last five years,four women have gone missing
from the red light district.
Police are unaware a serialkiller is on the loose
until a house fire
leads them to his door--
a killer nicknamed the
Ripper of St. Pauli.
17th of July, 1975--
a fire breaks out in anold apartment block close
to the red light district.
Gerd Mahnke led the fire crew.
It was hard toreach for the fire engines
since the streets
were very narrow.
A lot of fires happened there,especially fires in flats.
Whilst
extinguishing it,
the firefighters make
a gruesome discovery.
We
broke into the flat
and were able to extinguishthe fire, and while doing that,
we noticed a very unpleasantsmell, like burnt flesh
or petrification.
Of course, that's when
the alarm bells rang.
Had we missed a person or a pet?
The sickly
smell comes from
the empty, unoccupied attic.
We discovered aplastic bag which contained
parts of a human body.
Of course,that immediately clarified
the origin of the smell.
After that, we found
further plastic bags
in quick succession.
Jurgen Vierle
was a detective chief
inspector in Hamburg's police.
I remember thatthe phone rang at 4:00 AM,
and we were called out
to that deployment.
There had been a fire
in... Strasse,
and bodies had been found.
The house fire isnow treated as a crime scene.
- I
- only knew that two
bodies had been found,strongly decomposed, charred,
and very smelly.
And then the fire brigadetook off the tiles of the roof
in order to have more light.
The firemen thenmake another grisly discovery--
a mangled collection ofdissected, female body parts.
We figured
out that the body
parts were a torso withcut-off breasts and a thigh.
Immediately,
Jurgen Vierle
is reminded of a peculiarunsolved murder case four years
earlier, where a workman
discovered a woman's
partial remains
in a waste ground
300 meters away from the
suspected crime scene.
We didn't lookat the parts any further,
but immediately
informed the police.
A woman
had been dismembered,
and some of her body partshad been individually wrapped
and buried together in a hole.
Among therubbish were the body parts,
which were a head,
arms, and hands,
cut-off breasts, one thigh.
The police launcha murder investigation,
but they have a problem.
No one is able to
identify the body.
It had decomposed so badlythat visual identification and
fingerprinting was impossible.
Because of thelong periods lying outside,
the fingertips were
no longer of use,
so we had to
concentrate on the head.
The
police forensic team
comes up with a groundbreakingprocess they hope will help.
We
injected the head
with paraffin wax, whichallowed it to take on a more
human shape once again.
This temporarily reversedthe mummification
long enough to put on somemakeup and take a photo.
The outlandish
procedure works.
The victim is identifiedas a part-time hairdresser
and prostitute, 43-year-old
Gertraud Brauer.
Back
then, we weren't
able to find any leadson who could be connected
to Frau Brauer's death.
In the red lightdistrict of St. Pauli,
no one reports Gertraud
Brauer's disappearance.
Usually,
prostitutes and people
at the lower etches oflife are simply not missed,
and often not reported.
And if they are, it's
not for very long.
And it means that
they are easier
victims than anyone else.
The investigation ishampered by only having part
of a body, as Otto Kohn, along-serving police officer,
recalls.
It's always betterfor the investigating detective
to find the body, since thereare always leads on the body.
From the body you can
deduce how it was done,
sometimes even why it was done.
You can deduce the motivefrom the killing method,
but a murder case without abody is very hard to solve.
But the dismemberedbody does provide some clues
as to who might be responsible.
The police believe
it has been cut up
so it could be carried on foot.
From the
beginning, we were aware
that the perpetrator
must be living
close by because transportinga body would not remain
unobserved because
somebody is always
bound to notice something.
So we drew a circle
of 500 meters
around the place ofdiscovery and then checked
who lived in this areathat might have something
to do with the murder.
The crime
remains unsolved.
Four years later, when Vierlediscovers the body parts
in the attic fire, he makesan immediate connection
to a previous crime scene.
I was the officialin charge in the Gertraud
Brauer case, and of course,I was aware of which body
parts were missing.
And when the firemen saidhere is a torso and a thigh,
I knew immediately thatthese were the missing body
parts of Frau Brauer's body.
And this apartment isonly 300 meters from the waste
ground where four years
earlier, the other body
parts were found.
Could the murderer bethe occupant of the flat?
And while I wasstill standing there, suddenly,
a small figure
came up the stairs
wearing some type of uniform,like a security guard.
He asked me, what happened here?
I said, as you can see,
there has been a fire,
and your flat has been
affected quite badly.
You probably won't be able tolive here in the near future.
The small
figure is a night
watchman, 40-year-old
Fritz Honka, a man
well-known to the authorities.
I was a regularpatrol car policeman working
my beat when I met Fritz Honka.
He stuck in my memory.
Some people do.
He wasn't a particularly
notorious criminal.
He was just dodgy.
In the top flatof 76... Strasse,
the police suspect
they might have
just uncovered a serial killer.
Fritz Honka is duly arrested.
Police questioning
would eventually
reveal the diminutive
night watchman is
responsible for a series ofthe most gruesome and bloody
murders Hamburg had ever seen.
On the 17th of July
1975, in the midst
of Germany's red light
district in Hamburg,
there's been a house fire.
In the attic, bodies
and body parts have
been found charred and burnt.
The tenant of the flat nextto the attic, Fritz Honka,
has been arrested.
Fritz Honka was born in 1935,the third of nine children.
His mother struggled
with such a big family,
and so he was sent
to an orphanage.
Honka was kind of brought upin post-war Germany, where it
was very barren, very uncaring.
There was a lot of chaos,a lot of instability.
If you back-trace many,
many serial killers,
you will find that theyhave problems in childhood.
However, you will often find
that they have siblings.
In Honka's case, there were manynormal siblings who didn't go
on to have a career in crime.
Fritz Honkastruggles to fit in at school.
He has a speech
impediment and is teased
about his physical appearance.
He spends much of hischildhood in the orphanage.
On the occasional home visits,
he's frequently berated
by his father, a heavy drinker.
Hisupbringing was particularly
emotionally feral
in terms of the fact
that his mother sent him away.
He didn't see her again.
His father was alcoholic.
Possibly the only thing
that his father did
give him was alcoholism.
As a young
adult, there was still
little stability in his life.
He traveled the country
working as a laborer.
It was only at the age of21, when he moved to Hamburg
and landed a well-paidjob in the docks, that he
had any kind of security.
The following year, in1957, he meets and marries
his wife, Inge...
Honka seemed to have aneed to establish himself
with a normal relationshiphaving a normal background,
so he chose a wife.
And inappropriately,
however, this
was not where his desires lay.
This was not, obviously,where Honka's future lay.
Just like Honka, is a heavy drinker.
Together, the two tour thebars and pubs of Hamburg.
There are peoplethat you'll always remember.
I remember that woman.
She was strongly intoxicated.
His wife did not help
his drinking problem--
in fact, accelerated this.
And Honka's life becamesaturated with alcohol, which
made things that we
wouldn't normally
approach fairly approachable.
During a
turbulent relationship,
the couple have a son,
but their drinking
spirals out of control.
They lose their apartment,Honka loses his job,
and the three of
them end up living
in sheltered accommodation.
A lot of thingshappened in those shelters,
especially during the weekend--
a lot of beatings amongmarried couples or friends.
Alcohol played a
major part in it.
Policeman Otto
Kohn vividly remembers
one particular patrol.
We
entered the room,
and she immediately
slapped my colleague.
He fell badly
against the fridge.
That was the sort of situationthat happened all the time.
Their
relationship is on/off.
They divorce and marry again.
But when... discoversHonka was having an affair,
she leaves him for good.
It filled
him with hatred--
hatred of women in general.
He admitted that he wanted totake women that were below him.
He felt he'd been fleeced.
He was very angry.
Honka
returns to the docks
and begins work as a
lowly night watchman.
With some financial
security, he's
able to rent a smallsingle bedroomed apartment
in the eaves of a three
story townhouse close
to the red light district.
He decorates the small roomwith pornography and dolls.
Honka behaved almost
like a little adolescent
let off the loose.
He began to display pornographicmaterial on his walls,
and he showed no
particular restraint
in terms of his
indulgence of himself
with this kind of paraphernalia.
To meet
women, Honka frequented
the Golden Glove pub and
the Elbschloss Keller
in the red light district.
Today, the bars are popularwith tourists and locals alike.
40 years ago, they werefrequented by prostitutes.
Kacper Gradon, crime scientist,has looked into the Honka case.
They frequentlychange their identity
and deliberately avoid anycontact with law enforcement,
and the people they
work with often
don't know anything abouttheir identity or whereabouts.
So it's probable that
if they went missing,
no one would look for
them for a long time.
Honka foundhimself in the area of Hamburg
which could be describedas a kind of social Bermuda
Triangle, where
very few people knew
anybody, and certainly
didn't know people
continuously for a period.
Honka finds anaffinity with the prostitutes.
He may havefound a symbiotic relationship
with them because he was aquiet, withdrawn individual
and kept himself to himself,
and this was somebody
who could almost compensate.
In 1969, hemeets 43-year-old Gertraud
Brauer, an attractive part-timehairdresser and prostitute.
Heiko Schwart, a regular inthe St. Pauli bars at the time,
remembers Honka chatting
with the local girls.
But he
searched out the people.
He simply sat down next tothem and put down two beers.
Back then, it was only one mark.
And then he talked to the peoplein a kind of friendly way.
He wasn't serious
or straight-faced.
Somehow, he was
quite a funny person.
And then he said,
well, sweetheart,
don't you want to
come back with me?
My flat isn't that far.
And that's how it happened.
Gertraud Brauerand Honka make a deal,
and she goes back to Honka'sapartment and stays the night.
But the next morning,
her mood changes.
For a quiet,highly controlled person
such as Honka, this rathergregarious prostitute was a bit
too vocal for him to contain.
This frustrated him, and
when she refused him sex
in the morning, somethingsnapped within Honka,
and his real self did come out.
And he strangles the lady.
Gertraud Brauerbecomes Honka's first victim.
Honka chose to stranglea lady I think because that
was immediately available.
It didn't require
him to find anything.
But also, it meant that he couldstop the noise immediately,
and it put him in total
control over the killing
of this person.
But now he has adead body lying in his flat.
So this
is his first homicide.
He's not experienced.
And as he's never doneanything like this before,
he doesn't know what
to do with the victim.
With no car andunable to use public transport,
Honka has a problem.
To kill aperson is easy and quick,
but to get rid of the body
is quite a big problem.
Firstly, the risk of
discovery, and secondly,
the risk of transporting thebody parts without them being
discovered.
But he has a solution.
Most people do not
realize how difficult
it is to dispose of a body.
They are very, very heavywhen dead, somewhat limp,
and even more of a dead weight.
His decision was
almost foregone.
He did not have a vehicle.
He did not really have
the strength to drag
this body around the streets.
He had to dismember it.
There was no choice
in this, so he did.
He cuts thevictim into smaller pieces.
He wraps a leg, the
arms, and the head
and then takes them
to the waste ground.
He didn't
dig a large grave
or make sure she wascovered properly to ensure
she'd never be discovered.
The remaining partsof Gertraud Brauer's body
were still in his apartment.
I think he balks at
the idea of carrying
the rest of the body parts,which are increasingly large.
He was a slight person.
It probably, given his levelof frustration at the corpse,
seemed like too much effortfor him to expend on something
he actually hated at that point.
And he had to find, really,an alternative method
of storing body parts.
He
would have to bring
the body or the large torsodown a steep staircase
and wrap it in something.
It seems impossible
for no one to notice.
I think he was being
practical by keeping
the body in his flat.
Instead of buryingthe body, he has another idea.
So hedecided to hide the bodies
in the nearest place possible.
That's his attic.
He was practical, but
he was also very unwise.
Having
hidden the body parts,
Honka expects to be caughtout and waits for the police
to arrest him, but no one comes.
To Honka's relief,
of course, the lady--
the prostitute-- was not
missed by the police,
by anyone, in fact.
It seems Honkamight get away with murder.
After awhile, he must have thought
the bodies wouldn't be found.
He didn't think of himself asa particularly clever person.
So most probably, he
got rid of the bodies
just like people
get rid of rubbish.
He just threw them away.
With neither themurder nor the body parts
discovered, Honka was
free to kill again.
In this anonymous,
wretched sea
of humanity that
Honka found himself,
he began to look for victims.
He began to, as it were, becomeforensically aware enough
to actually stalk them andcheck whether anybody who came
into that bar had any furtherconnections, possible family,
were known there.
And if they didn't,
he would identify
those and perhaps target them.
But Honka's secretwas about to be rumbled.
Gertraud Brauer's
buried limbs remain
undiscovered until
almost a year later,
when a laborer accidentallystumbles on them.
It
was on a site which
used to be a chocolate
factory and which
was now used as a landfill.
The neighbors had all
their rubbish there.
From the
remains, police
are able to create an Identikitpicture of the victim.
The discovery must have
left Honka panicked.
Honka's reaction to body partsbeing found that he'd dumped
was probably one of
resentment that he'd
gone through all the troubleof trying to dispose of them,
and they've become a liability.
Whilst the buriedbody parts were found,
the rest of the corpse,hidden close by in his attic,
remained undetected.
When still no one
came looking for him,
Honka realized he
was in the clear.
Murder, it seemed, was simple.
And worryingly, he was aboutto develop a taste for it.
1970.
Fritz Honka is living nearHamburg's red light district.
He's killed a local prostitute,43-year-old Gertraud Brauer.
Parts of her body
have been found buried
at a nearby waste ground.
The rest is hidden
next to his apartment.
It lies undisturbed for
the next four years.
We should rememberthat after this first killing,
Honka doesn't fall into thecategory of serial killer.
The long cooling down period isnot typical of a serial killer.
So far, he
has evaded detection,
but he starts to
get a reputation
for violent outbreaks.
Honka
was quite angry.
He was very moody, and wheneverhe didn't like something
or something didn't work
out the way he expected,
he became aggressive.
Schwart knows
of at least one woman
who was on the receiving
end of Honka's tempers.
And I know a woman.
She's still alive.
She's over 88 years old.
I know that she went
with him to his flat
and had to tear
herself loose from him.
She ran off.
She escaped because sherealized that he intended
to do something to her.
He hit her.
He tore her tights, wrappedthem around her neck.
She was able to
prevent strangulation
by getting a hand betweenthe tights and her neck.
And subsequently, she
escaped from the flat.
He was lookingfor strong and perverse
sexual experiences.
One of the prostitutes
he brought home later
accused him of rape.
She was probably referringto very pervasive and violent
sexual acts.
Honka is found guiltyof raping Ruth...
and fined 4,000deutschmarks, the equivalent
of around 8,000 eurostoday, but he avoids jail.
Honka's reaction to being
charged with an offense
was probably one of
anger, frustration,
and to some degree, aggression.
And I think this probablyfueled him into the next stage
in his killing spree.
This is oneway that serial killers tend
to evolve, as they increase
the level of violence
they inflict on their victims.
It quite simplyincreased his level of anger,
increased his level ofaggression against females,
and also confirmed to
him that his ability
to interact normally
with females
was just simply not there.
So we
can say that Honka's
actions are a maturing processin becoming a serial killer.
Even if we forgot about
the first killing,
this tendency to commit strongersexual and aggressive acts
towards the prostitutes areforming a way, leading Honka
to become a serial murderer.
On the 6th
of September, 1974,
he meets anotherprostitute, Anna Beuschel.
She would become
Honka's second victim.
But whether he felt
the need to kill
or if he simply killed throughfrustration is open to debate.
Even though FritzHonka is obsessed with sex,
surprisingly at this stage,I don't think that he's
a sexual serial killer.
All of his victims were
invited to his flat,
and he made them participatein very perverse and aggressive
sexual acts.
But when they refused
or didn't listen to him,
he became furious.
And because of this
alleged disobedience,
he would hit them, and thatwould lead to their death.
Once again, he'sfaced with the problem
of disposing of the body.
Honka's inability to disposeof body parts in a forensically
correct way away
from his residence
was probably aconsequence of his slight
build and ability to
carry heavy objects.
And possibly, it was much easierto keep the bodies in the flat.
He wraps
up her body and hides
it deep in the recesses
of the attic space.
He's
being very practical.
He's a small man who
lives on the top floor
of an apartment block withsteep stairs leading up to it.
Butpracticality is not enough
where murder is concerned.
Even though
he's being practical,
he's not too intelligent,and he doesn't
think what might happen to thosebodies in a couple of months.
Over time, the
body of Anna Beuschel
begins to decompose.
The smell of rotting fleshfills the apartment block.
Decomposing bodieshave a very, very strong smell.
You have to bear in mind
that Honka was keeping
those body parts in the attic.
And especially in the summer,the decomposition process
would be rapid.
So the smell must
have been horrible.
A neighborcomplains about the smell,
and the police are
called to investigate.
As they question Honka,they are just meters away
from the decomposing bodies.
But Honka has anexplanation for the smell.
He had said, well, there areforeigners living in the flat,
and they're always
cooking weird stuff,
and that's why it smells.
The detectives at the sceneaccepted his explanation.
It's likely that Honkawas not bothered by the smell.
Honka's possible
alcoholism may
have made him
insensitive to smells,
and he would not have
actually picked up
on the extreme, disgustingnature of rotting corpses.
His way of coping with
this would probably
be to increase his
alcohol intake so he
became even more insensitive.
But Honka is awarethat the smell is now becoming
an issue for the other tenants.
Rather than getting
rid of the bodies,
he tries to disguise the smell.
He's using
some toilet fresheners
around the flat,
hoping it would mask
the smell of decomposing body.
It wasn't the most
effective method,
and probably it made
the stench even worse.
Yet thedisappearance of Anna Beuschel
goes almost unnoticed.
Three months later, anothervictim falls to his prey.
December 1974, he brings
57-year-old Frieda
Roblick back to his apartment.
He strangles her after sheallegedly tries to rob him.
Honka places her
body in the attic.
It's possible thatafter those three killings,
he realized that he wasgetting more skilled and more
confident in what he was doing.
He probably thought thatif he invited a prostitute
and she didn't agree to hissexual and aggressive demands,
he would kill her and hide
her body in the attic.
The time frame betweeneach murder is getting shorter.
His next attack takesplace just one month later.
By now, Honka is becoming
forensically aware.
He knows his limitations
to some degree.
He has a method, and he has amethod of disposing of bodies.
So there's very little toprevent him from continuing
his only means of sexual
pursuit with females,
which is, in fact, to kill.
In January 1975, hetakes home 52-year-old Ruth
Schult. As they're
having some drinks,
Schult finds something
in Honka to ridicule.
Regardless of any
psychiatric background,
Honka's mental state did
change over the period
of his killings.
By the end, maybe Honkawas actually taking risks
that the Honka at the
start of this career
would never have taken.
Honka snaps.
He hits Schult with a ginbottle and then strangles her.
Her body is larger
than the rest.
He decides to hide her behinda panel in his apartment.
The remains of four bodiesnow lie in Honka's flat
and the adjacent attic.
They would remain
undiscovered were it
not for an accident downstairs.
While Honka is on night
shift at the docks,
the tenant in the apartmentbelow lights a candle.
It gets knocked
over when he leaves.
A fire quickly spreads.
We
tried immediately
to extinguish all the remainingfires and to air the room.
And we aired the room byremoving the tiles of the roof,
and we were able to find aplastic bag among a still
smoldering pile of
coals containing
the remains of a human body.
The police arebrought in to investigate
just as Honka arrives home.
It's difficult
to absolutely ascertain,
but Honka's reaction, hisdispassionate reaction
to the police being absolutelyadjacent to charred bodies
which could incriminate
was possibly
to do with him being
forensically aware
and realizing that
any kind of reaction
would be spotted by
the police, and he
would be suspect immediately.
The police discoverdismembered body parts
alongside two whole corpses.
And once we figuredout what the body parts were--
a torso with cut-off
breasts and a thigh--
we realized that
they had belonged
to the Gertraud Brauer
case, parts of which I
had found four years ago.
The police believethey have a breakthrough.
Charging Honka with murderis merely a formality,
but the attic is actuallyaccessible by all residents
of the building.
Anyone could havedeposited the bodies there.
If Honka is to be charged, moreevidence needs to be found.
Body parts and corpses
have been found
in the attic of a burnt-outapartment building.
The chief suspect is FritzHonka, who lives next door.
Although the evidence
is circumstantial,
the police take him
in for questioning.
Back then, wealready had blood tracing.
We already had
secretion tracing.
We had fingerprinting.
Of course, we didn't
have modern equipment--
no machines, no computers.
Advanced policeforensics, such as DNA
analysis, didn't exist.
The only way to link
Honka to the crime
is through a confession.
Otto Kohn, the
interrogator on the day,
knew he needed to be prepared.
Before I
start an interrogation,
I figure out what type ofperson I'm dealing with
to try and just talk
to him as if we've
been friends for a while.
It's a great mistake, especiallywith capital offenses,
to jump straight to thesubject of the killing itself,
to immediately talk
about the victims.
You have to slowly
edge your way forward
to talk about anything
at all at first.
It's a method thatexperienced interrogators
like Kohn have
successfully used,
but with Honka, he struggles.
He only
spoke in monosyllables.
He never spoke in
coherent sentences.
Fritz
Honka's IQ is so low,
he's deemed
borderline deficient.
This, along with his
speech impediment,
means getting a
confession is difficult.
When interrogatinga suspect such as Fritz Honka,
who's difficult because
he's of low intelligence
and a hardened criminalresponsible for heinous crimes,
you have to be really
careful in choosing
your interrogation strategy.
The police
change tactics.
Otto Kohn appeals to
Honka's sensitive side.
OK,...
I'm so tired, I could breakdown right here because I've
been on the guy all day.
Well, he did
appreciate that fact.
Strangely, he agreed
and said, me too.
Well then, tell me how
many bodies did we find?
Then we can finish.
Two or three?
Did we really find two
or three, not more?
No, no more.
It's a breakthrough.
Honka admits he knows
of bodies in the attic.
However, he stops
short of admitting
to murdering the women.
But as other people
in the building
also had access
to the roof space,
anyone could have
left the bodies there.
Although it seems an
extraordinary mistake
to leave bodies
on your doorstep,
with no directly
incriminating evidence,
it looks as if Honka
might get away with it.
Detectives Jurgen
Vierle and...
are sent back to carry
out a thorough search
of Honka's flat to secureenough evidence for prosecution.
And I can rememberquite well sitting next to Herr
on the couchin the smoke-filled flat,
and there was still
some peculiar smell
in the flat itself that wasfurther away from the attic.
And I just said to
Herr...
there must be another
body somewhere.
We started tapping the walls,and one sounded hollow,
so we tore off the wallpaper.
And then there appeared
a wallpaper door,
and behind that wallpaper doll,there was the fourth body.
The police feel thatthey have enough circumstantial
evidence to prove
in a court of law
that he murdered all four women.
Returning to the
interrogation room,
the police still needed
clarification as to how
the murders were committed.
We demonstratedit to him by twisting a towel
and asking him, where
did you apply it?
Here?
Here?
Or there, possibly?
Did you shoot all of them?
Stab them all?
Strangled them, possibly?
That took all day
again until I had
the fourth body, until
I had his statement
that he'd strangled her.
Finally,
Honka admits that he
was responsible for
all four deaths,
but he never
revealed why he kept
the bodies so close to home.
Since Honkaonly talked in monosyllables,
one can only assume
that hiding the bodies
there was the easiest option.
There is no evidenceof Honka's motivation, either.
He nevercommented on his motives.
He never said yes or no.
The only words he ever saidwere "possible" or "could be."
I think that if the
fire had not broken out,
if this discovery
had not been made,
we wouldn't have
discovered four bodies.
We would have
probably discovered
six, seven, eight, nine bodies,until the attic space was full.
He would definitely
have continued.
I'm convinced of that.
Well, the
experts said later on
that he was a dangerous person.
He would have continued ifhe hadn't been discovered.
But Honka hasone last roll of the dice.
Out of the blue, he claims thatalthough he killed the women,
he wasn't responsible
for their deaths.
Instead, it was all down toa Victorian serial killer--
London's Jack the Ripper.
Honka's means of re-graspingthe situation when he had been
caught was to claim
that he had, as it were,
messages from Jack the Ripper.
Claiming
Victorian London's
mass murderer ofprostitutes had contacted
him was clearly preposterous.
This may have beenHonka quite simply displacing
the blame and trying
to claim basically
that he was perhaps
insane, perhaps not
responsible for his actions.
And in a simplistic
way, he possibly thought
this might dispense with it.
The ripper labelstuck, but the charges didn't.
Honka's defense counsel
managed to persuade
the judge that Honka haddiminished responsibility.
When convicted,
Honka is found guilty
of only one count of murder butthree counts of manslaughter.
He did
understand the harm
he inflicted on his victims,and he understood his actions.
So he wasn't insane fromthe criminal point of view,
but he did have
limited mental ability.
Aided by
psychiatric experts,
he is classified as having asevere mental abnormality--
in other words, an illness,a controversial diagnosis.
I believe thatHonka was not a criminally
insane person, because
he was aware of the harm
he was doing to his victims.
He was able to distinguishand differentiate
between good and evil andunderstood the consequences
of his actions.
Despite
confessing to killing,
dismembering, and
mutilating four women,
Honka controversiallyescapes a prison sentence.
The only
solution was to admit
him to a mental institution.
Honka serves 15years in a mental institution.
After which he is
released from hospital
and changes his name
to Peter Jensen.
His health deteriorates, andhe lives out his final years
in a nursing home.
In 1998, Honka dies aged
63, those around him
unaware of his gruesome past.