The Butcher of Hannover

Halloween is approaching. Today I unpacked our Dracula nutcracker and hung the trusty orange skeleton on the living room door. It seems appropriate, then, to tell you the story of the Butcher of Hannover. His name was Fritz Haarman, and he was one of the worst serial killers of all time - right here in quiet little Hannover.

Warning: This is a gruesome story. If you can't make it through an episode of Dexter, you should not read on.

Haarman enlisted in the army as a young man but was discharged for his mental instability. Soon after getting a job at a cigar factory, he was arrested for molesting children and committed to a mental hospital, but he managed to escape and flee to Switzerland. He enlisted in the military again under an alias, but was again discharged for medical reasons. Haarman tried working again but seemed to adjust better to life as a thief and a con-man in Hannover.

After serving four years in prison for theft and fraud, Haarman was released in 1918 at the end of World War 1. All of Germany was struggling, and many young men came from the country to Hannover in search of work. Haarman would seek out teenage job-seekers, runaways and vagrants. He lured them back to his apartment with a promise of food and a place to stay. After seducing them, he killed his victims by biting through their throats (yes, with his teeth). He then dismembered their bodies and dumped the bones in the Leine River that runs right through the middle of town.

During this time Haarman met Hans Grans, who became his romantic partner as well as his partner in crime. Grans would help Haarman choose some of his victims, and later sold their clothing on the black market. Though it hasn't been proven, Grans is also believed to have sold the victims' flesh as pork.

In 1924, children playing along the Leine found a human skull. Another turned up a few weeks later. Police dragged the river and found over 500 human bones, belonging to at least 22 different people. They suspected Haarman and got him to confess after finding blood-stained walls and victims' belongings in his apartment. After a two week trial, he was convicted and sentenced to death by beheading. His head was kept for scientific study and is now preserved in a jar at the medical school in Goettingen. Grans served 12 years in jail and lived in Hannover until his death in 1980.

It's a creepy story, and a true one. Haarman, who lived before there was a term for 'serial killer', was called a werewolf, a vampire and the Butcher of Hannover. He makes Dexter seem tame, and might have you thinking twice before you take another bite of pork.