He was arrested for various burglaries and frauds, and also admitted to an assortment of other crimes, including stealing tombstones and robbing graves with a female accomplice between 1905 and 1913. By 1919, Haarmann had struck up a relationship with the Hanover police—this despite his status as both a known criminal and a homosexual, which was, at the time, a crime in Germany punishable by imprisonment.

Haarmann worked as an informant, offering to fence or store stolen property while actually luring criminals into police stings. In order to avoid suspicion, Haarmann himself was also arrested during these raids. He spent much of his time in and around Hanover’s central railway station. There he sold black market property to travelers while occasionally performing citizen’s arrests on individuals traveling with forged documents. It is believed that his relationship with the Hanover police later helped Haarmann to avoid detection for his grisly crimes.

Related: 9 SERIAL KILLERS AND THE SPECIFIC WAY THEY SELECTED THEIR VICTIMS

The first known victim of the Vampire of Hanover was Friedel Rothe, a 17-year-old runaway who disappeared from home in 1918. If young Rothe was indeed Haarmann’s first, he was the first of many. In the years to follow, Haarmann killed at least 24 young men and boys between the ages of 10 and 22, most of them in their teens. When he was finally arrested in 1924, Haarmann said that he was unsure how many victims he had claimed; the death count ranged from 30 to 70.

Fritz Haarmann: The Vampire of Hanover

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