Corpse finds from Hanover

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The corpses found in Hanover are an unsolved criminal case in German criminal history. In the 1970s, body parts of at least four women and two men were found in Hanover and the surrounding area. None of these people could be identified. The criminal case, which has not yet been clarified to this day, was attributed by the press to the "Hanover sawmiller". The "Soko Torso" of the Hanoverian police under the direction of Inspector Günter Nowatius was busy with the investigation work.

Corpse finds

A total of 13 body parts were found between 1975 and 1977, including a severed forearm at the power station, a lower body in the city forest and a torso on a dirt road.

  • On September 26, 1975 , the first body in the series was found at the Schneller Graben hydropower station near Maschsee . A young woman's torso was found by a worker. The dead body's breasts were severed and the abdomen cleared. The body must have been in the water for about 10 to 14 days. The woman was around 23 to 25 years old and 155 centimeters tall. She had a scar on her stomach and had at least one child. The corpse was tied up with a striking decorative cord. The special commission designated the find as Torso 1; The woman's arms and legs were probably cut off with a saw (circular or band saw) or a sharp spoon . Despite fingerprints, the victim could not be identified.
  • In the period from February 21 to 28, 1976, two halves of the torso and one leg of a woman about 25 years old and about 170 centimeters tall were found. The time of death must have occurred two to three weeks before the body parts were found. The two halves of the thorax were discovered between parked cars at the Hanover radio station . Pupils at a girls' school on Bonner Strasse found the leg in a dumpster. Other body parts were floating in the leash on Rudolf-von-Bennigsen-Ufer or were found near the Maschsee.
  • In the period from May 28 to June 11, 1977, six body parts of a young man were found at the “Am Schnell Graben” hydroelectric power station on weekends. The victim was estimated to be 17 to 18 years old and 170 centimeters tall. It had an iron cross tattoo on its upper body .
  • On June 5, 1977, the arm of a 50-year-old man was found again at the “Am Schnell Graben” hydroelectric power station.
  • On July 10, 1977, the lower body of a woman was found by a walker in the Eilenriede city ​​park . The deceased was at least 40 years old and about 150 to 160 centimeters tall, had shoe size 36, had an appendix operation, had at least one child and suffered from arteriosclerosis . The lower body had been cut off with a machine saw. According to forensic medicine, the findings of 1977 gave certainty that these victims must have died by violence.
  • On December 18, 1977, the last body of the series was found on a dirt road near Hanover. The upper body of a 50- to 60-year-old woman, which was wrapped in an old cotton blanket, had strangle marks on the neck, and arms and legs were severed. The woman was between 160 and 170 centimeters tall and had also had an appendix operation and had at least one child. An autopsy revealed that her death was from asphyxiation.

Investigations

The common pattern of all body finds is that the cause of death could not be determined for most of the victims. They were dead for a short time when they were discovered and were cut up with a saw. The whereabouts of the remaining bodies remained unknown. The body parts were always deposited in conspicuous places on a Saturday so that there was a high probability that they could be found by walkers. According to Chief Inspector Günter Nowatius, the investigative work was made more difficult by the fact that the police had "no crime scene, no time, no perpetrator and no identity of the victims" and that the eleven individual body parts first had to be anatomically assigned to the six victims. According to the Soko “Torso”, the perpetrator did not even have to have in-depth anatomical knowledge; the cuts that cut the joints could have been made by a butcher. It is noticeable that the perpetrator made no effort to hide the body parts of his victims, but even deposited them with a certain " exhibitionist tendency " within two kilometers of the nearby Maschsee , which is also near the Hanover Police Headquarters .

The main obstacle to the investigation was the fact that none of the victims could be identified. In the opinion of Nowatius, the perpetrator would otherwise have "hardly had a chance of remaining undetected". The perpetrator-victim relationships remained an unknown quantity. Investigations in morgues, interviews with undertakers and the systematic comparison of missing persons reports did not reveal any trace. No person was missed who would have matched the body parts.

A possible motive could be the intention to put the residents of Hanover in fear and panic. The criminalist Stephan Harbort suspected that this person was a "highly pathological" perpetrator. The police assumed that the perpetrator was employed on weekdays and that the corpses had to be stored in a cool place in the meantime, so that they could then be transported by car at the weekend and draped in conspicuous places with as much public traffic as possible.

After the broadcast of Aktenzeichen XY ... unresolved, the case aroused very strong audience interest and resulted in a high level of audience participation. The fact that the serial offense came to an abrupt end in 1977 could have something to do with the fact that the perpetrator changed his place of residence, had to serve a sentence in a correctional facility for another offense or died.

Recent developments: Olaf W. and case Andrea B.

More than 20 years later, in 1999, the case regained relevance when a female torso was found in Isenbüttel . This body find led to the traces of the former butcher's apprentice Olaf Weinert from Walkenried , who confessed to this murder and was also convicted of other homicides. The first murder involved a pensioner from Celle who had been killed and dismembered by him. The perpetrator looked for his victims, among other things, from the street prostitute on Moorwaldweg, which was then near the garbage dump on Altwarmbüchener See . However, a connection to the corpses from the 1970s could not be established.

In autumn 2012 a similar case occurred in which the murderer Alexander K. was referred to in the press as a “ Maschsee murderer ”. Here, too, the victim was dismembered. The police convicted the 25-year-old violent criminal who was then admitted to psychiatry . The motive for murdering a 44-year-old prostitute had been lust for murder. Andrea B. was probably a random victim.

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ mainly in forests, meadows and on the banks of the river Leine
  2. ^ A b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Body parts in Lower Saxony , time of the crime: September 1975, February 1976, May 1977, July 1977 and December 1977. Crime scene: Presumably in the city area or in the vicinity of Hanover. Responsible: Hanover criminal police. File number XY unsolved ... broadcast on May 12, 1978
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k crime. Hand and foot. Body parts have been found in Hanover for two years - a new hair man at work? Der Spiegel, July 25, 1977
  4. ↑ a b c d e f The unmounted serial killer from Hanover. The "Hanoverian sawmiller" caused fear and horror with body parts scattered around the city. The investigating commissioner tells of the scary case. 20 minutes, November 22, 2016
  5. ↑ Stephan Harbort, Kriminalistik - On the trail of serial killers
  6. ↑ Body without arms, head and legs. The trial of the "torso murder". Hamburger Abendblatt, October 7, 1999
  7. ↑ Saw murderer: 9 other victims, Berliner Kurier, January 10, 2000
  8. ↑ Murder Commission "Torch". Hanover police find alleged tools in the Maschsee murder. Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, November 9, 2012
  9. ↑ "Maschsee Murderer" instructed in psychiatry. Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 13, 2013
  10. ↑ Hanover. Twelve years imprisonment for the murderer from the Maschsee. Frankfurter Allgemeine, October 23, 2013
  11. ↑ "Killed out of lust for murder". Richter sentenced Maschsee murderers to twelve years in prison. Focus, October 23, 2013
  12. ↑ Suspected Maschsee killer in court from today. Andrea, now your cruel death will be atoned for. BILD newspaper, August 12, 2013