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You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author.
Dan Zufanski, Good Evening. Butcher of Hanover focuses on the serial killer of at least twenty seven young men and boys in Germany in the post World War One era. At the center of this murder case where Fritz Harmon and Hans Grott, who were lovers while committing these murders. It wasn't until the skulls and bones start washing ashore from the Leon River in Hanover that Germany realized they
had a cold blooded serial killer in their country. As you read the exploration of this case in this book, ask yourself, did Harmon murder each victim to keep his lover Hans Granz to stay with him? Did Granz decide who it was that was to be murdered? The evidence on this case will keep you on the edge of your seat trying to determine who was really behind these
gruesome murders. The book they were featuring this evening is Butcher of Hanover Fritz Harmon, with my special guest, journalist, author and host of House of Mystery, Alan R. Warren. Welcome back to the program, and thank you so much for this interview. Alan R. Warren.
Well, thank you for having me at the pleasure.
Thank you so much for joining us once again, and again you've picked an incredible subject to be able to write about in Butcher of Hanover. Let's talk about Fritz Harmon. Right in the beginning, you say he was born in Hanover, Germany, October twenty fifth, eighteen seventy nine, and his father was Alie and his mother Johannah. Tell us a little bit about his parents, He had five siblings. Tell us a little bit about his early life, what that was like in Hanover.
Well, his early life, the family was middle class. His father was a worker, and you know, they didn't have a whole lot of money, but they were comfortable. They were kind of a middle class, a little upper middle class. He was the sixth of the children, the last and when it happened, his mother became a little bit ill and she was having problems being mobile, so she was stuck to her dad a lot more than normal, so
she didn't get around too much. She had married Olie and only was a younger guy and better I don't want to say better looking, but he was young and sort of healthy, and she was a little bit a little bit older than him, like seven eight years older, and so so that that kind of was a little different in their personalities. You know, it's kind of referred
to that. Why why Allie married her was because she had a pretty good dowry, which is what the husband would get back in those days when a couple got married like this. So he was a playboy. He was constantly out with other women, he was carousing, and he didn't spend a lot of time at home. So that was kind of the start for you how Fritz came into the world.
How did his mother treat Fritz and tell us what she liked to do and have him do as a boy.
Well, you know, that was kind of because she was kind of stuck to her room a lot in her bedroom and didn't get out too much. She had him placed right in her bedroom with her, and she spent all of her time with him, and she was raising him as like a little girl. She dressed him in a lot of his sister's clothing, taught him how to sew, he played with dolls. He was growing up very very feminine, very much like a little girl had grown up. So
she didn't really treat him like a boy. And then the father being away from home so much and not being interested in him or the kids, any of them, he didn't really learn how to do sports or anything sort of that a boy would be doing in those times, and it really hit him hard by the time he got into school, because when he got into school, of course, all the other boys would tease him and make fun of him because he was into dolls and a lot of girl things, and he didn't like sports, and he
didn't like doing anything that the boys liked to do.
You say that he was apparently or supposedly molested by a teacher at eight years old, but then you write that he became more physically fit and strong as a teenager. Regardless, he quit school at fifteen years old and enrolled in the military in April eighteen ninety five. You write what was his military service like and what happened in that eighteen ninety five.
Yeah, Yeah, he kind of becomes stronger from being constant. He picked on and he became pretty athletic. He was pretty fit, and so when his father give him permission to quit school at fifteen, he joined the military and he jumped right in. Now, at the beginning, he was considered quite good. He wasn't a bad trainer or trainee,
and he was doing quite well. But about five months or so into the service, he started having memory lapses and losing periods of time where he didn't know what happened, and there was a thought that he was passing out and having short you know, I don't know what, seizures of some sort. And it wasn't until I think in the fall of that same year, eighteen ninety five, while they were on an exercise, he actually collapsed, and so they took him to the military hospital and they diagnosed
him back then with an anxiety neurosis. He sort of, you know, they thought they could treat him, but their treatment and even their diagnosis was not really the best back then, they didn't really understand what was going on. They treated him for about four months and really with no successful outcome or no cure. So he actually discharged himself.
He walked away from the military and they let him go not a problem, and that was because he just wasn't functioning and they couldn't seem to get him back at her at the hospital, so they couldn't cure him in their mind.
Yeah, you write that he returns to Hanover and a lot of this psychiatric evaluation they used terms like irreversible brain damage, also having epilepsy or early dementia, or as you write it was known as schizophrenia, so they were it was all considered some form of mental illness, dehabilitating mental illness. So he was really he got a pension, however, but he returned to Hanover and his dad's cigar factory. You write that as early as July eighteen ninety six,
he committed his first known of many sex offenses. What did all these sex offenses involved and what were some of the characteristics of his.
M Well, he would meet other boys really around his age, maybe a little younger, maybe even a year or two older.
He would become friends, and he would lure them back to private place and he would have sex with him, and a lot of cases they said he was affaulting them, he was forcing them, right, And so that was the first thing that he got arrested for was with I believe it was a fourteen year old and so yeah, so of course they sent him to be evaluated again, and again he was diagnosed with an incurable incurability ranged like they you know, and so this side he would
be unfit to stand trial. So he never had to go to court and jail per se or something like that, and the little things like this kept on happening. This went on for at least another year.
You say that he was ordered confined to the institution indefinitely, but however, seven months later, what happens and where does he go?
Yeah, he was confined there, and it was kind of strange because his mother actually came and helped him break out in essence, and so he got away and he ended up going to I believe Switzerland. I think he went right into Zurich, and he ended up staying with a friend of his mother's, like a really close friend, almost like an uncle. And so that's where he ended up, and that was by I think Christmas of eighteen ninety seven,
which is it's kind of it's kind of stilly. But then he just started to work on the shipyards there and he was a handyman and he was fairly quiet private. He never really got into trouble. He never got out into the society into Zurich very much. He was a loner and he was I think he was a little bit scared too as well.
By then, in April eighteen ninety nine, he's back. He stays sixteen months in Zurich before returning to Hanover. You right, And then then eighteen ninety nine he becomes engaged to a woman named Erna Lowert and she becomes pregnant shortly after. But you talk about October nineteen ninety he gets a notification. What's this notification for? And where does he go?
Yeah, in the early nineteen hundred, France had become a threat to Germany military and so they ordered conscription. So they wanted all young men to go serve, and so he was served a letter it was mandatory you're in the military. So when he got that, he had to go serve his compulsory time essays say, so that he left, he left his girlfriend soon to be wife with her soon to have child type thing and father and went to the military.
And what was his service this time characterized by you say that he had a comment after this term of service. So what was his experience like in the military this time?
Well, you know that actually wasn't much different from the first one in the sense that he was able to perform as do. He started out doing a fairly good job. He had a fairly good record, just like in the first time. When he was with the military, he didn't have any problems and all of a sudden, it was just it was maybe a year into it, in I believe October of one that he found out that his mother died and he was very close to her, and he got into a terrible depression and he was unable
to do anything. They could hardly get him up. They could do anything, he wouldn't do anything. He would eat. Then he started coming back with the dizzy spells and there was times where he said he couldn't see, he couldn't see what his eyes were all gone blurry. And again during an exercise, same as the first time, he collapsed and like the first time he was sent to the hospital, and this time the military had diagnosed him with unable to serve. It wasn't like he pulled himself
out like in the first time. This time they said, sorry, we're dismissing you. You cannot serve for us. And that's when he actually started getting his pension and then returned back to the field and say in Hanover and his father and that whole scenario. So we returned home and picked up where he left off.
Now you talk about the relationship he has with his father after he comes back from the military. Tell us about these lawsuits and this discourse or this disenchant over each other, father and son.
Yeah, oh yeah, his father didn't like him from the beginning. There was some sort of issue and there's something behind this of his mother keeping him in the bedroom from the beginning. And they were never really they never really got along. But this time, now that he was older, stronger and was more had more courage, I guess, and
wasn't scared of his father, they started fighting. They would fight over all sorts of things, and it was so bad initially that the father decided to give his fiance a business like it was a fish laundery, and he put it all in her name. He refused to put any of it in his own son's name. It's his money and what he got from Fritz's mother, and he gave it to the future you know, daughter in law, to the fiance and say this is your business. So he would have to work there. That was a terrible,
terrible insult, and so they would fight. He would fight with his fiance, he would fight with his father, and he walked out on his father as because his father wanted to keep working at his cigar shop and he wouldn't. So the living situation was just awful, and they thought constantly and eventually Fritz would sue his own father, you know, he would he would walk off the job and he
sued him. And I think that was again in fall of nineteen oh two, and he was saying that his father was making his workplace unbearable and he couldn't work there because of his father, and he couldn't perform his job and it was hard, and his father knew of his mental condition, so he really worked that but he lost. That was the case that they didn't hear for very long, and they kind of they were a little They were a little less caring in a way of people saying
that they had mental illness. That was not considered anything of sympathy back then, you know, but even with psychologists, because you know that they called alienists and stuff, and they didn't really think of him as serious medicine here, like this is a real condition. This is just all made up. So he ended up losing it, and he ended up coming back to the other and all that again. But then they got into a huge fight assault. He assaulted his father and he threatened him and he it
was terrible. The police had to come and take him away, and again he was placed in jail this time, but the father ended up working out a deal where he would drop the charges, but he wanted Fritz to see a proper psychologist and he needed help, and so this was ordered by the judge, and in the following year, nineteen o three, he did see a doctor by the court and he was ruled mentally unstable and morally inferior whatever that means, and with that in itself, but they
didn't place them in any institute. They let him go. They said, well, yeah, you have these conditions, but were not forcing you to get treatment for it. So he came to back out and there we go. He's back in the same situation again, and the two of them would continue fighting.
You talk about a siance who was pregnant. She terminates their engagement. She's had enough the fish mungery, like you say, the business was in her name. She told him to leave, and so you say. For the next decade, Fritz Harmon lives as a petty thief, burglar, and con artist and in nineteen oh five served several short jail terms sentences for larceny, embezzlman and assault, and in nineteen thirteen arrested for a series of burglaries, sentenced to five years and
released in nineteen eighteen and went to Hanover. Tell us what happens in nineteen eighteen when he goes and rents his a single room apartment.
Yeah, they let him out. He was getting out in the last year in the daytime because everyone had gone to the military with the upcoming and with the war and everything happening, and so they didn't have enough mail workers in the cities. So from prison he would be allowed to come out and work, and eventually he got out in New York. You're right, he got his own apartment. It's just a one bedroom in the downtown. And it's really important to understand that Germany was in a terrible depression,
you know, awful poverty. There was just no money, no jobs for a lot of people were were just wondering, you know, place to place, looking for money or anything like that. And so what he would do was he went right back into the life of crime that he had left when he went into prison. He went right back into you know, sieving and stealing and doing whatever he had to to get by. And he had a
good amount of it experience. He was getting really good at stealing people's properties and getting what he needed to get food and to get his rent paid and stuff like that. He kind of rose to the top of the criminal breed. On the streets, you might say. One of the biggest hangouts was, of course the stations, the train station, like Hanover station, where a lot of the homeless kids, our kids were going station to station and hang it out and they would get what they could
for food, some of them would. It was just it was a really really bad time for things like that. And so he started hanging out there and he could work with some criminals and some others. He would offer them a place to stay or he started getting really integrated. He was really in with that whole criminal you know, kind of element back then, and he become very successful at this life of crime, and he started to make
a good amount of money. And at the same time, you have to look at the with all of the men gone to the war, Like the police station in Hannover, I think they had twelve officers left to run the whole town, the whole city, all the crime, so they
were really overrun. They were very short on support, and a lot of crimes they were just kind of letting go by because they just didn't they didn't have the time, they didn't have a lot of these guys were working six seven days a week and they could not keep up with it. So they were trying to keep the most popular or probably the most serious crimes in order. And eventually Harmon worked his way in with the police where he ended up being a kind of an informant.
Was he became very close and they would rely on anybody like that because they needed all the help could get.
Right now. In September nineteen, nineteen eighteen, Harmon, who's thirty nine years old at that time. He meets a young man at seventeen Freedo or Oath, in a coffee in a coffee shop, and Roath is a runaway and needs a place to sleep. Tell us about what happens. He also introduces to Harmon his classmate Fred. Tell us what happens here and how this leads to the meeting of Hans. His meeting with Hans Groans.
Yeah, that was his typical he's meeting guys and he would often them place to stay of food, and that's how he got with Ross and then Roth himself and his friend, like Fred you were saying, they would all sort of hang out and he would end up having sex with them, that you know, sex for food and her or for money and a place to stay and stuff like that. And that's kind of how what the
three of them had. But the main thing is that Fritz Harmon was really he liked Roth and that was sort of so he was kind of trying to keep him around and be more of a let's go for dinner, let's do something, and he tried to use him a little bit more. And Ross claimed, I guess at the time and from what we hear that he wasn't homosexual, but he only did it for money and for food. He would only have sex with men. That is, so he wasn't really in that. And eventually, back at the apartment,
Fritz's apartment, he made advances to Roll. He didn't want to do this, so he attacked him. He ended up killing him, raping him and killing him. And that was the very first time that we know or there's any record of him actually uh biting the app Adam's apple, but biting that part of the neck while they're engaged in sex, and he would rip it off with his teeth and this caused a lot of blood and it also caused a kind of a paralyzation with the arms.
So and that that that was kind of the story and how it came out as the vampire Hanover because of the blood and the neck. And that's kind of where one of his names that he was tagged with eventually came from, because he did this quite often with a lot of his victims.
Mm hm. You write that that he later says that this murder or this pardon me, this rape away awakened the murderous urge in him never felt before and he and he goes on. You get this information via him that he was butchered and beheaded before breaking up the bones, and he took after he took several overnight trips to the cemetery over the next few weeks and put the body in a suitcase to be able to do that,
but he kept some human remains behind the stove. You write in the apartment, what happens with this Roth's friends they report him missing. Tell us a little bit about their behavior and their initiative.
Yeah, when he went missing, he just didn't show off. He was no longer around. Of course, I believe they told his mother originally and she went to the police, but nothing was really happening. The police, like I said, they were overrun. They had tons of runaway reports people
you know, all over the streets. It was not a high priority, and they didn't have the resources to go looking for this runaway kid who was prostituting himself at the train station going missing because there were several of them, there wasn't just one. So they didn't really pursue it very much. And so eventually the friends looked around and they tracked down Harmon and where he lived, and they knew it was him, and because they weren't, you know,
there was nothing being done. So they went and pushed the police even harder, and they even got both of Roth's parents to come to the police station and also pushed this thing. And so it was just it was a really tough go for them. This took a little while and it was only after a fair bit of time. I think it was like October or something. It was like probably a good month later that they finally decided
they would go question Harmon at this apartment. You remember that they also considered Harmon to be an informer and someone that they that kind of trusted and was kind of one of the boys so to speak. You know, he was part of their team, so they weren't really looking to do like maybe they didn't believe it. The hard thing is they kind of knew he was homosexual, which was a big deal then that was like a crime,
but they didn't want to believe it. But anyway, eventually two of the officers came and when they went to the door and they got no answer, and they and they broke in through the door and they eventually found they found Harmon there with a young boy who was. I believe he was thirteen, and he was in bed with Harmon who was naked and the boy was almost naked. So they arrested him and they charged him with the sexual assault of a miner and he was taken to jail.
And so that's how it happened with Roth. That's what that's what came out of it. And when you mentioned the body part, yeah, he had. He had cut up the body and disposed of everything except for the head and he had that rap in a lot of newspaper and little sack sort of thing that he had, and that was kind of in a cupboard where they normally kept wood and stuff that was behind the stove. So
that was in the house. Now, they didn't have an arrest warrant, and again they were sort of not really all that into searching the house or anything like that because they still didn't believe that he killed anybody. He was just a homosexual. So he ended up serving I believe nine months. I think he got a year or something and he served nine months in prison to that.
Yeah, you talk about during his time that he's trying to avoid that sentence, and so by doing that, he's for a year he's changing addresses. But during this time, you say, this is when he met an eighteen year old man on the run that was living on the streets selling clothing and things. Hans Groans And apparently Hans knew of Fritz Harmon. He knew who he was. Tell us a little bit more about this important meeting.
Yeah, a lot of a lot of the younger guys knew who Fritz was. Fritz was he had a little pass that he had from the police, and he was at the train stations all the time, and he would go waiting room to waiting room, and he would ask people for papers, and he was constantly involved with all the street kids and all the gangsters and so to speak and stuff. So, yeah, Hans knew who he was. Hans was a runaway and he knew that the rumor
was that he was homosexual. And if you, you know, put out for him, you would get food or a place to stay. He would treat you really nice. Sometimes he'd give you money or you know whatever, stuff like that. So that was in Hans's mind when they first met, and that was kind of what Hans quite often declared that he was not gay, he was a straight man. And he had several girlfriends and and this is true, he did have quite a string of girlfriends throughout the
whole time, so that is believable. But he had no problem staying with Fritz and having sex with him and being part of the Fritz sort of thing. And and with with with Fritz, he was immediately attracted. Hans was a you know, kind of a nice looking, well well dressed, very very handsome man, and he really was attracted to him and you know, charming. It's just he just had it all. So it was it was kind of like the perfect combination at the time.
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quip dot com slash shocking Quip the Good Habits Company. Now, Alan, we were just talking about this very faithful meeting of Hans Granz and Fritz Harmon, and they both have a interest. They both have an interest in each other for different reasons. You write that in nineteen nineteen they moved into a house together. They only stayed about six months. They kept moving, but eventually they moved to an apartment near the Leanne River. Tell us what happens at this apartment and then there's
another address as well. There's three addresses in total that are important. Tell us about some of their time behavior. What was it characterized by and when does this partnership turn into something much different?
Well, it was. It was kind of an interesting relationship because for Hans, it was just a you know, a one night stand where he could get some money or food or something. He wasn't looking at it anymore than that. But Fritz was totally, you know, enamored with him. He's totally in love with with him. So he eventually got him to come stay with him at first, and you know, and they ended up having a lot of fights, a lot of art arguments between the two. Hans was kind
of on the lazy side. He wanted to sleep in and he just wanted to smoke, you know, drink, hang out and not really he didn't really have any I don't know, any initiative or anything. So it's that sort of bothered Fritz. So they had a lot of fights over this sort of situation. Fritz was sometimes more violent. He would slap Hans. They would have a huge breakup. He would leave and then Harmon would go out and find him, apologize and bring him back home. So they
kind of had that type of relationship. It was up and down and happy and angry all at the same time. So when they've moved into that apartment I believe in December of nineteen, within six months, he had to serve that sentence for his as salt you know of that thirteen year old boy just a few maybe it was two years earlier. So they actually sent him away. So he gave up the apartment and then that's where he went to jail, and Hans had to go live at
the train station again. When he got out in nineteen twenty, he went to a hotel and then he went into this first apartment, which was really kind of a dark, one room. It was like a basement floor apartment with just it was just one room. Everything was all in one room. It wasn't that was a new strab and
so that's where they started getting back together again. And that's the two of them moved in I believe July of twenty one, and so that's kind of where it started from there, and that's where things started getting he might say, to the dark side of what happened with the couple, You.
Right, though, that skulls are not our Skulls are found in nineteen twenty four by some young people, and they've determined that the ages of these people eighteen to twenty. Another skull is found. Tell us about the newspaper reports and these skulls being found and what it stirs up in Germany.
Yeah, it was pretty scary for a lot of people. There was just a couple of kids that were hanging out. A lot of people hung along the river and there was nothing to do, so they would hang out and they skull washed up and they told I believe the mother who told the police. And then two weeks later another skull came up. It started becoming a real panic
in the area. So the police would end up eventually dragging the river and where they would have I believe it was well over four hundred bones and body parts and stuff, you know, centered around that skulls and things like that. So kind of a real fear started taking over the community because like who was like what was all this? And so everyone got scared and there was kind of this terror in the in the city, and that's kind of where it all started falling apart too.
You write about that, You say that Hans is a heterosexual and as such he has a girlfriend named Dorchin Maturgic, and she has a friend and she's also you write that she's a prostitute as well, and also cleans up a housekeeper. But she has a friend named Ellie Schultz,
and they are at the apartment of Fritz Harmon. And fitz Harmon, there's another person that's a seventeen year old piano player, a young man tell us about this incredible scene that they find out much later, but you have via this information this extraordinary, horrific scene.
Yeah, the seventeen year old he was a piano player. I think he was from Berlin, about seventeen at the time, and he was traveling around playing for just money and food. He wasn't getting a whole lot of money, but he was. He was surviving, and of course they spotted him. And the story is slightly different on each case, but basically they spot him and they ended up partying with him,
drinking and bringing them back home. Now, the two girls and Hans Grons and Fritz were all back at the apartment, so with this piano player, and that's how it was. When the ladies and Gron's left. When they come back, apparently have the say, so they come back and they were going to clean his apartment, because they cleaned every apartment in that building. He kept on telling them, well, you can have to come back later, I'm busy and stuff like that, and so they didn't really know what
was going on. And then of course Hans when he came in, saw the seventeen year old laying in the bed, but at the time didn't know he was dead, or
claimed he didn't know. And then later the house papers come back and they're cleaning, and of course they're very snoopy, and they ended up going through a cupboard and finding what they considered to be meat that had hair on it, and they believed it was part of the boy, and so they wrote a letter and they actually went to the police and they wrote an actual complaint to the police saying that because because he would give them meat sometimes in payment, he would give a lot of people meat.
You know, meat was a really tough thing to come by at that time, and it was very expensive and some people couldn't even get it, so this was a big deal. And I guess there was some hair on it. And then when they found that little apart, they complained to the police that in their mind they thought that Fritz had killed this boy and cut him up and was using his meat to sell and give to people. Now, in this particular case, I don't think there's really any
truth to it. And later when they tested it, it was, in fact port it wasn't human. So we know that the meat that they the housekeepers had brought forward to say it was human wasn't right.
You also write, though, that what would lead them to believe that possibly this would be meat too is the odd behavior when they came to clean, they said later in the afternoon. When they came, the door was locked. He said, I'm busy, come back later. And then when they came in the place was spotless, like it had been cleaned, and then he asked questions like does it smell in here? So their suspicion was warranted, I would say certainly.
So, oh yeah, for sure. It was suspicious behavior, for sure. But you know whether how far he would go with the meat and cutting and butchering and giving to them and it was human or was he just having sex with the boys because he was known as a homosexual, which they all knew. What made them jump to he's actually not only having sex with these boys, but he's killing them than using their meat. I don't know what
the jump was. I don't know what made them do that, because you know, it's hard to say, you know what their relationship was, So I don't know why they suspected that.
Yeah, well he was a seller of contraband meat, you say, And then you say the contra band meat as well, was was boneless and diced very much like ground meat. And so anybody reading that and anybody knowing that would, I would imagine, would be suspicious as well, because you say, some neighbors wrote that. Some neighbors testified as well that it seemed like he came he left the home with
big bags looking like it was meat packaged. But he didn't come into the home with very many parcels of meat packed you know, So there was reports later when jumping ahead, But so let's talk about what leads to his arrest and then what happens.
Well, yeah, you know that sort of lifestyle kept He kept on doing this even though at the time, and I tried to put that in here. How while things were going on, like they were finding a skull, then another pile of bones, and they were doing all these things, and the terror was still kind of you know, people were talking and it was becoming a fearful thing about
all this. He continued to start picking out bringing boys home, and things kept on happening and they would go missing, and you know, he continued doing this, having sex with young men and killing them basically, and he started quite often they would not only were they suspected of taking them the body for meat, but he would also take a lot of the clothing and he would use it, sell it and re sownew buttons on it, and he
would make slight changes to it. But if he wanted something that someone was wearing, he would take it for himself.
Hans Gron's was really big on this, and that seemed to be a lot of the reports tended to lead that Hans would see someone at a train station that was dressed really well in a suit and he wanted that suit, and he would tell Fritz, oh, I want that, You've got to get that, mommy, and suggest to Fritz to take that boy home kill him so that he could get his suit or clothing or whatever he wanted. So that was behind a lot of this behavior as well,
and so he continued to do this. And I've kind of gone through the twenty seven victims that he was convicted of or charged with killing, and there's also some other ones that you know, but there was no proof of it or there wasn't enough to convict him or Hans.
So that's kind of what the next group and I did the best I could in finding out who the victim was, anything about their parents, their family, what they did, how they ended up on the street, or how they ended up meeting him, and we put together the best
that I could. It was a lot of research because a lot of these documents and a lot of the papers are all in German, and so I had to go through a whole translation period and go through everything took that took a really long time to get through, and it seems kind of light on some of the victims, but it's only because there was very little information on the victims. So that kept on going. He didn't seem to be he didn't seem to be in fear of
being caught. While he went through all this stuff. He just continued, Now I believe it.
Sorry, let's just an opportunity to stop for a second for these messages.
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Oh so he yeah, he kept on doing it, and then it moved up, and then it was It wasn't until June of twenty four that the kind of the beginning of the end started for him, with the missing children and all of the things going on.
So you write that when the police decide to arrest Harmon and bring him to the police station, several relatives of the missing boys and men uh waited outside the interview room. Tell us a little bit about this. This is another incredible scene.
Yeah, when when when they arrested him, they kind of paraded him through the street and it was a big, big deal, like everyone was just waiting for this to happen.
So there's just crowded, and it's amazing because there was there was a lot of reports and it was even brought to the court and the and the judge had to give heck to some of the policemen because they apparently stripped him and they beat him, hung him and caused a lot of damage to his to his body during the interrogations, and a lot of people listened to
it outside the door. Some claimed that they saw through the keyhole and stuff, and they saw that he had his pants down and that they were doing these things to him and trying to make him confess and stuff. And so I was a pretty big scandal at this time, not so much like it would be today, because it wasn't unusual for the police to use physical means to try and get you, you know, slap you and punch you and stuff. That was not an unusual behavior for
that time. But they seemed like they went they went much further than they expected and it became a real frenzy, and of course everyone that was really upset about what he had done to all of these loved ones, all
these kids, these boys. It caused a big controversy. And with that, when they raided his apartment and they a lot of the neighbors and people, they had four or five hundred pieces of clothing and like satchels and shoes and all sorts of things that they had confiscated, and they decided to put it all in a place and anybody that had any young family member missing, they invited them to come down and see if they could identify any of the clothing or items that they found, books
or papers or anything, and so they did, and that's sort of how they started putting together who it was that was murdered, and who different things belonged to and who disappeared and put together the story. And that's sort of why it was really difficult, because you have runaways with very little information out there and living on the streets and going missing. And if their jacket and bicycle showed up at their place, does that mean told them?
And I think that was kind of the more than likely that he did so, But it wasn't easy for them to put this all together. And that's sort of how they did it.
You say he was arrested and charged for the twenty seven use and the crimes being committed between nineteen eighteen and nineteen twenty four, and Hans Grans is charged as an accomplice as well. What is his behavior, Prince Harmon's behavior in regarding his guilt and any kind of details regarding the murders themselves and the difference with Hans Gruns and his attitude towards his innocence.
Yeah, they were quite different people, There is no doubt. And Fittz, how do you he actually had no problem admitting. He seemed to be much more open about things. But he also he cried a lot, He broke down a lot. He had to have a sister in with him during the detective interviews, and and he had a lot of problems. But and some some suggest it was the sister that got him to do the confessions. But I don't think
he had a huge problem admitting. But he wanted to make sure that they understood that he never premeditated anything, that it just happened that his intention was never to murder anyone. He would have to, he would have them home and if they got into some sort of you know, sexual thing. Something took over and and he couldn't stop from from killing them, like biting their neck, you know, and and doing the whole procedure. And then once he had that done, he had to get rid of the victim.
And so he wanted people, he wanted the court to understand that. But he had no problem cutting up a body. But then he also said that he would be sick for two or three days after he cut up a body like it. Really it made him physically ill. So there seemed to be this thing about he wanted he wanted them to know that he uh it caused a lot of stress and terror for him. It was not an easy thing, and he was he was as much a victim of some sort of possessing uh that that
made him do this. So so that was kind of and he wrote his confession that way, and I've included his confession now. Hans Gron's, of course, was more of the I don't know how to describe him, but he sort of he wasn't taking responsibility for anything. He put everything on on Fritz and he had nothing to do
with any of it. But during the trial you heard a lot about these different cases Fritz was pretty convincing at saying, well, I had nothing to do with that, I don't know anything about that, or I don't know that person. I killed him because I was asked to. And it's kind of as you go through each one and the victims, she started to realize that there was definitely the economy here, there was something going on between
these two that would create these murders. It was much more than we could see on the surface.
You're right that he wasn't arrested right away, Hans, but Fritz said immediately that some of the murders were at the insistence of Hans. And so a week later after Fritz was arrested and start talking that Hans was arrested. Now both of these people are set for trial, and you talk about the trial in December nineteen twenty four, and Harmon insists on defending himself at this trial. Tell us a little bit more about this trial with Fritz Harmon and Hans ground.
Yeah, you're right, And at the end of the day, Harmon admitted to killing fourteen of the young men, and so that was kind of his kind of thing. And of course the prosecution would show all of the evidence of the clothing that was found, and Fritz would come back and say, well, okay, maybe I did kill him, like it was so nonchalant. He didn't really There were some victims he really recognized, and some that he would step up and say, yeah, I did this or did that,
but others he wouldn't. And then he had no problem talking about how how he would cut up the bodies and how he would, you know, use a rolling pin or a potail masher. He would have descriptions and stuff. So he was he was intimately involved in it, but yet he wasn't premeditated, according to him, So it was kind of weird, and a lot of the lot of the people that were involved as well, like his landlady at the time and and other people around him and stuff.
It was it was pretty obvious what he was involved in. The worst thing was the two of them kind of trying to pin on who was responsible for the murder, you know, and if he didn't do a premeditator, which was kind of a counterproductive because he says it was just an accident, an urge that took over he was possessed. If Fritz in fact had said to him, oh, kill that guy, or get that guy because I want his jacket, and then if he takes him home, he knows he's
going to kill him. So that premeditation, right, Sure, it wasn't right. So that was a big, big problem with that case. And yeah, and he was not a lawyer, so I think that it was a mistake. But I don't know where do you go from there? It was bound to be convicted.
Yes, you're right. The incredible detail and of course the gruesome, almost unparalleled crimes that this guy did. At this time, he said, I had no intention of killing the young people that happened. The boys kept coming back, and I wanted to protect them from myself. I knew when I had my tour again, something would happen. Just don't make me wild all the time. And so he talks about I opened the abdominal cavity with two cuts and put
the intestines in a bucket. Now I could grab the heart, lungs Kidney's cut them up and put them in the bucket, broke up the skull, the brain went in the buck getting the chopped bones in the LeAnn River. It's so it's unprecedented, the kinds of things he's testifying to in court, there would be public reaction other than that, the court is filled with people wanting to get in and hear the testimony. What's the public reaction at this time and tell us what happens the verdict?
Well, of course there are you know, people, there's every type of reaction. They're devastated, there's people that are upset and stressed, and people that are happy that he's done. It was just amazing. It was kind of the trial of cediary. Really. I guess we hear that a lot, but for that time period, it was it was amazing. And you can remember too that most of these people had to be there and be around the court and in the streets in order to hear what was going
on because there was no other way. It's not like now you can just turn on the TV and watch the coverage. You know. It's it's quite a bit different. Right, So that was it. Well, yeah, so he got convicted, of course, of all I believe twenty seven of them. The hans Groans got convicted of just I believe six. It's been a while now, so's he got convicted of
just a few of them. But after this, a letter turned up that was apparently written by Fritz and I believe it was, but it turned up and it was basically he was saying that Hans Gruns had nothing to do with anything, that it was all him, and that he just said that he did because he was angry.
And so Gronz ended up getting a whole new trial which would take place just over a year later, and he no longer was facing the death sentence with this, and he actually thought he was going to just get off Scott three, but he ended up getting sentenced to two twelve year sentences to serve concurrently, which he served in prison, and then he got out and they actually ended up in a concentration camp until the end of
the war, and then he was released. He went back to Hanover and he lived out his life there and died in seventy five, I believe.
Yeah, so the letter did really help because he was slated for execution, so it really did work. So you said that after the.
Pardon it saved his life.
Yeah, you write about a letter that after the execution, another letter surfaced. What was the content of that letter?
Essentially it was the same sort of it was, It was much the same sort of theme. I think that there was a real there's a real guilt that Harmon had and you can sort of understand the wreck how their relationship was, and so it was kind of the same thing. But he sent that I believe was that that letter was the one who went to Hans Grand's father, Albert. Yes, and yeah, so that was it was much the same, you know, I saw. That's the most I can remember
about it. He was really kind of trying to help Hans out.
You right, that when he was asked how many victims he had, it was more than the twenty four that he was convicted of the twenty seven. But how many did he say? What did he say regarding victims?
Well, there was one time he said fifty, the other time it was seventy. I don't think he really knows, to be honest. I think he just sort of did what he did. And he didn't he didn't keep track because he didn't care about the victim themselves. It was about what he was getting out of it, right, And and they and they kept his head too, right, Yeah, after the convection and execution, they kept his head, uh, in order to analyze it scientifically.
Right, and what was the reaction or what what did it create in Germany after this as a result of this trial? What was the attitude towards homosexuality then?
Oh, it was hard uh and and I and I put that in there, and this is a very particular part of it because at the beginning I talked about Germany in that in that time period, and kind of a little bit about the government, the setting, how it was run, because it wasn't like it is now, and and kind of the things that were going on with the with the gay community, so to speak, and how with the Sexual Institute in Germany they were giving out day passes for trans people or people that were wearing
opposite clothes for their sexuality and stuff so that it wouldn't be arrested. And it was all it was all sort of okay. And within ten years of that, Berlin became kind of a big cabaret festive. It was by drag shows and all of these things going on. Everybody of any stature wanted to see these gay clubs and these gay shows. It was really trendy, and the police were in'tterresting and it was sort of it was a totally different atmosphere going on with it. So when this happened.
It jumped right back into the well, he's a dirty homosexual, homosexuals kill people, they're bad. It sort of connected that. So there was a huge amount of controversy and talk and fighting old for the forwarding of homosexuals. A lot of people had the opinion this because we let them be free, that they're they're killing and they're probably going to do all sorts of things. They need to be
put away, they need to be arrested. So it kind of there's a little backlash on the community that led right into the Nazism, which ended up kind of taking over Germany in the thirties. So it was just it sort of fed right into the whole change in the atmosphere.
Yeah, certainly, certainly. I want to thank you very much, Alan for coming on and talking about Butcher of Hanover, of Fritz Harmon. For those people that might want to take a look at your other several other books that you've written and your House of Mystery, tell us a little bit about House a Mystery radio program, and where they might look at other books.
Well, my website Alanrwarren dot com has everything. It has the show, it has all the books, any information, anything to do with me all my social media house and mystery. We talked to writers and all sorts of genres, from true crime to fiction to everything. So it's kind of a if you're a writer, you live in mystery, so kind of follow that. So you know, just go to that, and of course you know bookstores, Mamazon, Kerry all the books as well.
Absolutely, thank you so much, Alan R. Warren Butcher have handover Fritz Harmon. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. You have a great evening.
Good night, thank you, good night.