Hawker of smuggled meat in post-First World War Germany who became a mass murderer.

Haarmann was a native of Hanover, and he returned there after being discharged from the army. He suffered from epileptic fits, and these may have accounted for his degenerate social behaviour. He served sentences for petty thieving, picking pockets and indecent behaviour with small children. Haarmann lived in Hanover’s thieves’ quarter, where he existed by stealing food and ingratiating himself with the police through informing.

In 1918 Haarmann pretended to be a policeman, and preyed on the young refugees at the railway station, offering them food and shelter. In September he was joined by a 24-year-old criminal, Hans Grans, and together they preyed on the human flotsam of the war. They lured teenage boys from the station to Haarmann’s den in Neuestrasse, where they killed them and sold their clothes, after disposing of their bodies for meat. It was estimated that they claimed two victims a week over a sixteen-month period of murder.

On 22 July 1924 the meat trader was accused of indecent behaviour. His lodgings were searched, and articles belonging to the missing boys were found. Meanwhile human bones, the relics of twenty-three bodies, were discovered on the foreshore of a river. Haarmann confessed to the murders, and implicated Grans, who was promptly arrested.

Haarmann was tried at Hanover Assizes in 1924. He made a second confession giving expression to his sexual perversion, and admitting his surprise that he had only been charged with 27 murders, when he thought the total was nearer to 40. Haarmann, who was 45, was found guilty and beheaded. Grans was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment.