PSYCHOKILLER... QU’EST-CE QUE C’EST?

As a young police student in the early 90s

Stephan Harbort

became aware of the void in the German serial killer research. Since then he hasn't let us down when there's something we've wanted to know about people who like to murder lots of other people. He's got an extensive archive of like 250,000 sheets of paper by now, he's interviewed 70 serial killers, he's talked to tons of victims who escaped/survived, he's had heart-to-hearts with relatives and lovers of the killers, and he's thoroughly gone through every court record he could get his hands on, as well as read the entire library of American serial killer literature. He has written 16 books and he works as an advisor for all these creepy TV shows we Germans love to watch late at night on Sunday, when we can't fall asleep after sleeping all day. His latest book,

Ich liebte eine Bestie—Die Frauen der Serienmörder

, is devoted exclusively to the lovers of German serial killers and we wanted to know why on earth people date monsters like that.

Vice: Mr. Harbort, what kind of person would date a serial killer?

Stephan Harbort:

Well, just imagine a woman, who's repeatedly suffering from pangs of jealousy…

Hmm, so pretty much every woman I've ever met?

OK, so now imagine there's someone who no one wants to have anything to do with and who—which is a massive plus—can't run away from you. A guy who simply doesn't have a chance to cheat. That prerequisite is insanely attractive to some women.

So it's not at all about the whole charismatic Manson-kind of charm that's driving women crazy?

Strangely, all these women I interviewed repeated the same thing. They said, "He was the first and only man who'd love me the way I am." So it was less about the whole crime thing, but more about treating the women in a certain way.

Sounds like Bridget Jones somehow. Anyways, did these couples commit murders together too?

There were some "killer couples," if you want to put it that way, but one thing is striking--apart from one exception, the male partner was always the driving force. The perpetrator likes to involve his girlfriend/wife by taking away jewelry from his victims and presenting his lover with it. So each time they're at a party together the killer secretly celebrates a triumph.

There's one thing I always wanted to know. Are there crucial experiences that will trigger people and make them kill for the first time? Yeah, there's a vast variety of those, but if you look at serial killers, especially the sadist kind, then it seems like witnessing the slaughter of animals sets many of them off.

Can you give us an example of something that made one of these guys start his killing spree?

Yes, this young guy who was totally low-key. His father got divorced because he fell in love with another woman who never accepted the adolescent boy. They kept getting into conflicts and each time they'd fight, he'd be overwhelmed with hate and feel like he wanted to kill her. He'd run away and look for women who looked similar to his father's new wife and stab them. He'd block out the murders, but once they caught him and asked him why he didn't just kill his father's new wife he was like, "I didn't want to hurt my father." That's a typical situation where someone who's been completely unsuspicious gets stuck in a situation where they feel like the only way out is to brutally murder someone.

That sounds pretty twisted. Do you find this kind of logic in these people a lot? I talked to this one guy who'd routinely kill elderly women who looked well off. He'd follow them to their apartments, pretend he's a mailman or something, and then kill and rob them. He said it was like a "job."

You mean, just like I go to the office that guy set out to stab women?

I've hardly ever spoken to a person who was as rational and cold-hearted as this guy. He said, "I needed the money and that's why I did it, that was all."

And he never had any qualms?

Well, once he was in this old lady's apartment. She was handicapped and walking on a stick and she was annoyingly fidgeting with that stick, so he tied her to a chair in the kitchen. Then he put a plastic bag over her head and tried to choke her. All of a sudden he saw a photo of her with her grandchildren and he said, "When I saw she has grandchildren, I had to stop."

So he left her in peace?

He put away the photo, somewhere where he couldn't see it anymore, and then was like, "Now that that was done I could resume and get it over with. That wasn't a problem any more." You know, every perpetrator has a soft spot. If you manage to find it, you might just have the chance to survive.

So what should I do when I meet a lunatic like that?

One guy who was clearly sadist released some of his victims, so I asked him why. He said, "Well, I wanted the women to fear me and I wanted to see that physical reaction. I wanted to see it in their eyes. They had to tremble from fear. That was what turned me on. The women who showed that reaction were goners. But some women offered to kiss me or to talk to me about my problems, and when they did that, I felt really inferior and realized how disgusting I am. I felt so small; I had to get out of there."

Having met so many of these sick people, do you sometimes stop and think, "Wooow, there's something wrong with this person…" when you meet people in your private life? I beware of utilizing all of that experience in my private life. That'd be too much. It's a pretty heavy burden and sometimes you just need a break.

I kind of imagine your job like that of Clarice Starling. Do the murderers play games with you like that?

Sometimes they do. My first interview in 1997 was one of these cases. The killer committed suicide six years later. It was a very weird conversation that went on for six hours. It happened in a maximum security prison. The guy had killed three people (two women). The social worker had warned me and told me he was still trying to break out, because his mercy petitions had all been rejected and he knew he'd have to die in prison. They described him as highly dangerous and he had tried to kill two people while being in prison. That's why he spent 20 years in solitary confinement because they couldn't integrate him anywhere. The room I met him in seemed completely lost in time, it had no clock, no pictures on the walls. There was merely a table, two chairs and a bright red alarm button.

Creepy.

Indeed. So this guard took me to that room and was like, "Be careful, he's still dangerous." And I was like, "If there's anything I have to know, then tell me NOW, before I'll sit in one room with him." "Don't worry, there's a bright red alarm button in there, just take a seat right next to it and if anything happens, just push it." That didn't exactly calm me down.

So what did the guy do? He kept jumping up and taking away my pen and saying stuff like, "Look, I'll ram it through your eye, right into your brain." I felt like a rabbit in front of a snake. What really made a lasting impression was when he tried to laugh and his face contorted into this scary grimace. Completely void of emotion, cynical, evil. That was 12 years ago, but I still can't come up with the right words to describe this.

Do they release serial killers in Germany? It's not like you can't redeem serial killers at all. I'm in touch with a couple of killers like that, who have been released a couple years ago and their behavior is flawless so far. But what they all say is that "the first time is relatively difficult, the second time is easier already, and then the third time is not that big of a deal anymore." Those who've crossed the killing boundary once can do it again and again.

How do the German killers kill? That's a broad spectrum. There's like five to six ways of killing, with each representing about 15% of the murders, like choking, strangling, stabbing, shooting, and slaying. There's no difference to the normal murderers, really.

What about cannibalism? That happens, but only in one percent of the cases, which is literally nothing. That Hannibal Lecter kind of scenario doesn't really happen in real life. And if it does happen, then it's usually not cannibalism in the original sense, but it's more like they're trying something out.

"Ruhr Cannibal"

?

Exactly. Joachim Kroll, a cleaning guy, murdered for about 20 years and killed 20 people in the Ruhr area before they finally caught him.

Did he try to eat people from the very beginning?

The thing with him was, he didn't know how to approach women. He looked kind of weird, too. Kroll committed his first murder with the intention to have intercourse with that woman. That didn't work out because he also suffered from some kind of sexual dysfunctionality. But during this first crime he realized there's a certain course of events that's really interesting to him. Watching the death struggle. So his murders were all about getting a kick out of watching the person struggle before dying. Finally his fantasy evolved towards cutting open a human body to see what it looks like on the inside. That was extremely tempting to him. In the first 19 years of his murders he didn't get around to realizing this fantasy because it "didn't work out," like he said.

So then in year 20 it "worked out"? He lured a four-year-old into his apartment. Then he boiled parts of the child, her hands and slices from her thighs, in a broth with carrots and potatoes. Basically preparing a meal. "I just wanted to know what human flesh tastes like," he reasoned. It was a morbid sort of fascination, the culmination of his perverted development. Everything he had done up to that day didn't fulfill him any more and he was looking for new facets.

I read that he was incredibly dumb. How high was his IQ? 76, which means he was like borderline retarded. So this completely dumb person just thought to himself, "If I make sure I'm far enough from my hometown and the victims don't know me, then how on earth are they supposed to connect the murders to me?" And this simple strategy saved him from being arrested for like 20 years.

What about the victims? Is there anything that makes you especially prone to becoming a victim? There's six types of victims; for example the killer and victim just meet by chance. Being "available" is what makes these victims attractive. It doesn't matter if it's a man, a woman, or a child—as long as it's just "there." Then there's victims who die because they're in some kind of relationship with the killer, for example a newborn who's a threat to its mother. These people die because of what they represent to the killer. Then there's also the rare cases where the killer has an actual pattern, like for example Jürgen Bartsch who said, "You know, I was always after the boys aged 8 to 10 with fair hair and they had to be slim and only if they looked exactly like that, I was attracted to them."

Armin Meiwes

being a serial killer too, but he just killed one guy. What do you think about that?

Technically that's a no from my side, because it was just one victim. But this case shows that the label "serial killer" is not a comprehensive one. There are tons of killers who were caught after their first murder, but there's no doubt they would have continued killing—so actually they are serial killers, just without the series. Arno Meiwes definitely belongs to this category. I guess the appropriate label for this group of killers has yet to be defined.

Photos by Christoph Voy