For awhile, he attempted to lead a respectable life, taking a job in a cigar factory, getting engaged to a young woman. But this period of normalcy didn't last. Deserting his fiancee, he ran off and joined the army. When he returned to Hanover in 1903, he launched into a life of petty crime. Throughout his twenties, he was in and out of jail for offenses ranging from being a pickpocket to burglary. He spent World War I behind bars.
Released in 1918, he returned to his native city and joined a postwar smuggling ring that trafficked, among other things, in black-market beef. He also served as a police stool pigeon, a sideline that afforded him protection for his illicit activities. In 1919, however, after being caught in bed with a young boy, Haarmann was shipped back to prison.
It was after his release nine months later that Haarmann launched into his career of unparalleled depravity. Living in Hanover's seamy Old Quarter, he fell under the thrall of a homosexual prostitute named Hans Grans. Together, the 2 set about preying on the young male refugees who were flooding into the war-ravaged city. Though Haarmann was ultimately charged with 27 murders, it seems likely he was responsible for as many as 50. The method he employed to kill his victims was always the same.
After luring the hungry boy to his room, Haarmann would feed him a meal, then overpower him (often with Grans's assistance) and fall upon the boy's throat, chewing through the flesh until he had nearly separated the head from the body. Generally, he would experience a sexual climax while battening on the boy.
Afterward, Haarmann and Grans would butcher the body and dispose of the flesh by peddling it as black-market beef. The victim's clothes would also be sold, and the inedible portions of the body dumped in a canal.
As the # of missing boys mounted, police suspicion began to fall on Haarmann. A woman who had purchased one of his black-market "steaks" became convinced it was human flesh and turned it over to the police. In the summer of 1924, several skulls and a sackful of bones were found on the banks of the canal. Searching Haarmann's rooms, detectives found bundles of boys' clothing. The landlady's son was wearing a coat--given to him by Haarmann--that belonged to one of the missing boys.
In the end, Haarmann confessed. He was tried in 1924, found guilty, and sentenced to death. While awaiting execution, the "Vampire of Hanover" (as he'd been dubbed by the press) produced a written confession in which he described, with undisguised relish, the pleasure he had derived from his atrocities. At his own request, he was beheaded with a sword in the city marketplace. Afterward, his brain was removed from his skull and shipped to Goettingen University for study. Unfortunately, nothing came of this effort. Seventy years later, science is still no closer to comprehending the reasoning behind the crimes committed by people like Fritz Haarmann.
