Disturbing Details About The Serial Killer Fritz Honka

The United States and England don't exactly have the market cornered when it comes to notorious serial murderers. For every Ted Bundy and Jack the Ripper, there's a German equivalent that was just as brutal and equally as horrifying. Like their counterparts in other areas of the Western Hemisphere, German killers have inspired music and film and have been the subject of more than a handful of documentaries. 

Those who follow true crime podcasts will surely be familiar with Peter Kurten, a serial murderer, rapist, and arsonist that terrorized Germany in the 1910s and 1920s. He was convicted of nine murders in 1931 and beheaded shortly after his trial (via Biography). The world got a fictionalized account of Kurten (known as the Vampire of Dusseldorf) in the 1931 Fritz Lang film "M" (per IMDb). 

While not all of Germany's killers have been deemed worthy of inspiring film, there have been others whose savage deeds have been acted out on the big screen. The 2019 film "The Golden Glove" follows a serial killer that stalked and killed his prey in Hamburg in the early 1970s (per IMDb). Based on a novel of the same name, the Fatih Akin movie tells the tale of a man named Fritz Honka who killed sex workers. 

The real-life Honka was perhaps more violent than he was depicted on the screen. He is known to have killed at least four women during a five-year stretch, carefully dismembering their bodies afterward. Though his number of casualties is far less than many other human monsters, his story is still shocking.

Fritz Honka left school and pursued a job as a tradesman. Crime + Investigation U.K. tells of how he first trained as a bricklayer. This endeavor was short-lived, as he soon discovered that he had a severe allergy to the materials used on the job. At 16, Honka took a job as a farmhand before landing a better job in a Hamburg shipyard when he was 21. It was here that Honka met Inga Bossleman. The two of them began dating when he was 22 and soon married. Like Honka, Bossleman was an alcoholic, and their experiences with the disease often caused arguments and violence between them. The couple did manage to have a child together, but their marriage wasn't meant to last. When Bossleman learned of an affair Honka had with another woman, she left him.

When he was in the throes of his unstable marriage, Honka lost his job at the shipyard. He managed to get a job there again as a night watchman but still frequented the bars in Hamburg. The alcoholism worsened. The few friends he had were slowly moving out of his life due to his drinking, and he began spending time with sex workers in an attempt to stave off the loneliness. Honka pursued women in the trade who would stay entire nights with him in exchange for alcohol and shelter. It was only a matter of time before the killer in him emerged. And sex workers became his target.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Fritz Honka's known victims after Gertrude Bräuer was 50-year-old Anne Beuschel (killed in August 1974), 57-year-old Frieda Roblick (killed in December 1974), and 52-year-old Ruth Schult (killed in January 1975). Crime + Investigation U.K. reports that each victim was a sex worker, and all were strangled in a rage by Honka. Honka dismembered their bodies in his apartment and stashed their remains in the attic. This storage method put off quite an odor after a while. Neighbors from the apartment building complained about the smells, leading police to question Honka. The killer told authorities that the scents were from the food his foreign neighbors routinely cooked. Police believed him, but after that, Honka used deodorizers to help mask the stench of decaying corpses.

One night, when Honka was at work at the shipyard, fate intervened most unusually. A fire broke out in his apartment building, caused by candles left unattended by one of his neighbors. Firefighters made a gruesome discovery in the attic — the remains of several women. But who killed them?

Police knew that anyone in the building had access to the attic. But they had their sites set on Honka. Maybe it was his prior arrest for sexually assaulting a sex worker or the fact that Bräuer's body had been found so close by several years before. Honka broke under pressure from the interrogation and confessed to killing the four women. He gave no motive for the killings but did tell police that Jack the Ripper told him to kill.