Heinrich Pommerenke

Heinrich Pommerenke (July 6, 1937 – December 27, 2008) was a German serial killer.

Pommerenke was born in Bentwisch, Mecklenburg. His father was killed during the war. After his mother left her two children in 1949 and moved to Switzerland, Pommerenke grew up with his grandparents. He committed his first rape as a student. In 1953 Pommerenke fled East Germany. He temporarily lived with his mother, but was expelled from Switzerland because he had raped another woman.

Between February and June 1959 Pommerenke killed four women ages 16 to 49 in the Black Forest area in southern Germany. He at that time lived in Hornberg. Pommerenke later stated that a screening of the movie The Ten Commandments triggered the series of murders. The depiction of scantily clad women dancing around the Golden calf made him realize that women were the root of all evil and had to be punished, he claimed. On the very same day he committed his first murder. The body of 49-year-old Hilde Konter was found in Karlsruhe on February 26, 1959. Pommerenke had raped her and killed her by slitting her throat.

In March 1959 Pommerenke abused 18-year-old Karin Wädle and slayed her with a stone. Her body was found on the banks of the Gutach river.

On May 30, 1959 Pommerenke tried to strangle an 18-year-old woman in her bedroom in Singen, but he fled after the woman called for help. She gave the police a description of the man, but the incident wasn't brought in connection with the two murders.

On May 31, 1959 Pommerenke got on a train and killed 21-year-old Dagmar Klimek with a stab in the breast. He threw her from the train and applied the emergency brake shortly after. He got off the train, went to his victim and sexually abused the dead body. Her body was found near the railway station Ebringen on June 5.

On June 8, 1959 Pommerenke entered the room of a 15-year-old girl through an open window. She was seriousy hurt with three stabs into the neck, but Pommerenke fled the scene as the girl's father came to her rescue. Police later found a footprint of the perpetrator at the scene.

On June 9, 1959 16-year-old Rita Walterspacher was raped and strangled by Pommerenke near Baden-Baden. Her body was found on the following day in a forest area.

On June 10, 1959 Pommerenke broke into a gun shop and stole a small bore rifle and an air gun. With this gun he robbed 540 Deutsche Mark from a counter clerk at a railway station in Karlsruhe on June 18. On the same day he went to a tailor in Hornberg. Besides his clothes he left a packet with the stolen small bore rifle there, which he wanted to pick up in a few days.

A footprint was found at the station in Karlsruhe and it matched the footprint from June 8. This and the description of the gun were the evidence of a connection between the robbery and the series of murders. On June 19 the tailor reported the finding of the rifle and gave the police Pommerenke's personal data. He was arrested on the same day.

Pommerenke confessed to overall 65 criminal acts, among them were the four murders, seven attempted murders, two accomplished and 25 attempted rapes, six robberies, ten burglaries and six petit larcenies. In October 1960 he was sentenced to six life sentences by the High Court (Landgericht) Freiburg. He died of leukemia in a prison hospital in Asperg in December 2008. At the time of his death he was the longest-serving prison inmate in Germany.

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