WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT Fritz Honka murdered four women and kept three of their chopped up bodies in his flat using pine-scented perfume blocks to mask the stench
A sick serial killer with strange sexual preferences hired prostitutes with no teeth before murdering them.
Fritz Honka would most likely have got away with his evil crimes if his flat hadn’t caught fire. The German murdered four sex workers from Hamburg’s red right district in the early 1970s. He kept three of their bodies in his flat after dismembering them.
Honka was one of 10 siblings who grew up in children’s homes in Leipzig after his mother couldn’t cope. He moved to Hamburg in 1956 and was a harbour worker before he was involved in a bad crash that left him with a smashed nose and a pronounced squint. He already had a speech impediment and developed issues with alcohol.
Married and father to two children by 1972, Honka tried to force a woman to have sex with him. He was brought to court and ordered to pay a fine before turning to prostitutes for sex.
When his relationship failed, Honka, then a night watchman for Shell, committed his first proven murder, strangling Gertraud Bräuer, a 42-year-old hairdresser and occasional sex worker, in his flat.
He sawed her body into pieces and hid the parts in different areas nearby. They were found and identified but the killer was not.
Then, four years later, Honka strangled the 54-year-old sex worker Anna Beuschel in his flat in August 1974. He claimed that she had not been passionate enough when they had sex.
In December 1974 he killed 57-year-old Frieda Roblick in the same way and in January 1975 he murdered the 52-year-old sex worker Ruth Schult.
It was reported that he would only hire prostitutes shorter than his 5ft 6″ frame who were often toothless to alleviate his fears of mutilation during oral sex.
In all three cases, Honka cut the corpses into small pieces and hid them in his flat and in the attic. The disappearance of the three women was not reported to the police.
Complaints of other people living in the house regarding the stench of rotting flesh were disregarded. Honka used large numbers of pine-scented perfume blocks in an attempt to mask the odour.
But in 1975, the apartment block went up in flames. Firefighters discovered a partially decomposed female torso in a plastic bag which prompted a police search when the blaze was out.
When Honka was arrested, he admitted murdering the women, but later withdrew his confession claiming he couldn’t remember anything.
In custody, he said he killed the women after they mocked his preference for oral sex over “straight” intercourse.
He was found guilty of one count of murder and three counts of manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment at a psychiatric hospital.
His habitual use of alcohol was considered a mitigating factor as it diminished his mental capacity.
Honka was released from prison in 1993 and lived out his final years at a nursing home under the name of Peter Jensen. He died in 1998.
German musician Karl-Heinz Blumenberg recorded a black humour single about Honka in the 70s which quickly became an underground hit in Hamburg clubs, but his record label refused to release it due to its controversial theme.
In 2017, the song was covered by the German rock band Kneipenterroristen.
In 2020 the German band Ost+Front released the song Honka Honka.
The novel Der goldene Handschuh (The Golden Glove) was also published and was made into a movie adaptation with Jonas Dassler playing the role of Honka.
Meanwhile, on social media, images have been shared of what are claimed to be Honka’s hands.
In a thread on Reddit, many users compared them to the character Gollum from Lord of the Rings.
One said: “The condition is called clubbing, and is caused by chronically low blood oxygen levels…. Either a congenital heart condition or respiratory condition is usually the cause, sometimes even lung cancer.”
Another added: “Damn, of all the hands to be serial killed by these have got to be the grossest.”
While one wrote: “That’s some serious Gollum hands right there.”
Source: Daily Star
