Martina Cimmerman Maniac Country: Germany

The Story of Martina Zimmermann: A Disturbing Crime in Munich

In the small, quiet, and clean German town of Mönchengladbach, life flows calmly and leisurely. When it snows, the city park, Bürten Garten, catches the attention of passersby. It is not the homeless and beggars seeking shelter from the cold wind and snow that stand out, but rather their rummaging through the park's garbage containers in search of something edible. Just like those two paupers hoping to find sustenance, they reached into a garbage container on that winter day. To their delight, they managed to retrieve what appeared to be a large package of sausages. However, upon closer inspection, they recoiled in horror and discarded the find. It turned out that what they initially mistook for sausages were severed human fingers. Shocked, the homeless men ran to the nearest police station, eager to report their gruesome discovery. A group of police officers promptly went to the scene, and their search led to the discovery of other human remains scattered throughout the park. In total, 44 parts of a male body were found, meticulously dissected and packaged. These pieces of human flesh were spread over a significant area within and beyond the park's boundaries.
Naturally, the best investigators took on the case, and the subsequent events became a classic example of criminal investigation in the Federal Republic of Germany. The severed fingers found in the package were so disfigured that obtaining fingerprints from them proved impossible. The victim's head was never found, which complicated the identification of the body. Based on the remains that were found and assembled, it was estimated that the deceased weighed approximately 65-70 kilograms, including the head. Experts also determined that the victim was likely no older than 30 years old. Strangely, there were no signs of a violent death on the remains. With this limited information, the police began to study lists of missing men from the past few years. It was a meticulous and monotonous task, involving tracing addresses and visiting the homes of the missing individuals. These measures, coupled with an effective system of maintaining a police database, eventually narrowed down the investigation to four potential candidates.
Among those still under police scrutiny after thorough elimination, one name stood out: Hans Josef Wirtz. The investigation revealed that this 30-year-old hairdresser had disappeared around six months ago. It was possible that Wirtz had simply left Mönchengladbach, as he had taken a few days off from work and never returned. His colleagues adhered to this version of events, but the police needed to uncover everything. According to people who knew Hans Josef, he was a rather introverted young man with a limited social circle. He had no friends, but he did have a lover. They frequently met, and many people were aware of their relationship. The 35-year-old attractive brunette's name was Martina Zimmermann. She was divorced.
As the police began to gather information about Martina Zimmermann, they proceeded with extreme caution. They discovered several shocking details about her life. It turned out that she had an interest in occultism and witchcraft rituals, collecting books about violent sexual crimes, witches, and sexual maniacs. Her bookshelves were filled with literature on medieval alchemy, vampirism, and resurrection from the dead. People who were aware of Martina Zimmermann's peculiarities gossiped that she conducted constant experiments, making cocktails, magic potions, and concoctions. She believed that these concoctions could ignite passion and preserve female attractiveness. Martina's character traits and quirks increasingly attracted the attention of the investigators. Another detail emerged: she regularly purchased buckets of fresh blood from a local butcher for unknown purposes. In addition to her emotional fascination with the world of witchcraft, she avidly watched horror films, renting or borrowing them from acquaintances. She also avidly read books about gruesome murders, particularly of a sexual nature.
Combining witchcraft, rituals, screen and literary passions with copious amounts of pills and hallucinogenic drugs, Martina, according to the psychiatrist who interviewed her, had lost touch with reality and lived in her own surreal world created by her disturbed imagination. Despite her outward attractiveness, there was something zombie-like about her, reminiscent of the creatures she had read about.
The police, increasingly focused on Martina Zimmermann, uncovered some rather unconventional details about her intimate life. It turned out that she was remarkably inventive and insatiable in her sexual pursuits. However, sex was not merely a source of pleasure for her. It was revealed that she had been subjected to deviant acts at the age of five by a man she trusted as a child and had been raped at the age of thirteen. These traumas from her childhood and adolescence had left an indelible mark on her psyche.
Martina Zimmermann was considered a good fortune teller in the district, predicting people's destinies. However, ironically, she failed to predict her own fate when the police knocked on her door one winter day. They asked her about her relationship with Hans Josef Wirtz, and without denying their acquaintance, she invited them into her home to hear her story. She explained that she had had many lovers, but they all took advantage of her, greedily devouring her defenseless flesh. She detested this. Hans was different from the others in that he did not seek dominance in love or violate her, satisfying only his own carnal desires. On the contrary, he offered himself completely to Martina for her pleasure. He trusted her unconditionally, catering to her every whim.
The shocked and bewildered police officers continued to listen to the details of Martina's sexual life. She openly revealed that she particularly enjoyed engaging in sexual activities in the bathtub, where, at the peak of ecstasy, she would immerse her partner's head in water, after which Hans, resurfacing, would receive an apple prepared by her in advance. These were the erotic games she enjoyed.
What did they mean? Psychologists later attempted to explain that they were a perverse variation of Adam and Eve's games before their expulsion from paradise: deviant sexual acts inspired by biblical themes. Martina herself did not attempt to explain the meaning of these rituals.
The pleasures were boundless, and happiness seemed endless. However, Martina, insatiable in her sexual desires, suggested to her lover that they experience an even more exquisite pleasure: "to embark on a journey to paradise," meaning to simultaneously end their lives by committing suicide after one of their sexual encounters.
"On that final night," Martina later recounted, "Hans Josef, lying in the bathtub, brought up the idea of journeying to paradise again. We decided that the time had come. So, after his head submerged in the water as usual during ecstasy, I wrapped a piece of wire around his neck and tightened the noose.
When he was dead, I planned to follow him into paradise right away. However, I decided to delay and undertake the journey a little later, hoping that once there, in paradise, Hans Josef would understand me and not be upset."
Martina calmly and matter-of-factly narrated all these details. She also revealed that after sending her lover's soul to paradise, she promptly proceeded to handle his lifeless body. She acted with cold-bloodedness and indifference. She casually phoned her ex-husband and asked him to bring an electric saw, without disclosing the purpose, but explaining that she needed to trim the bushes near her house.
The ex-husband delivered the saw the next morning. Martina engaged in a friendly conversation with him, smiling, even though there was a corpse in her bathtub. When her ex-husband left, Martina undressed completely, turned on the saw, and began dismembering the body.
Throughout the gruesome process, she remained remarkably methodical and composed. She began by decapitating Hans Josef and, packaging his head in a hat box lined with velvet, placed it under the bed. She then meticulously cut the body into numerous small pieces, folding them into two large suitcases, which she dragged to the attic. She hadn't yet decided what to do with the remains. While contemplating how to dispose of the human flesh that had once been her lover, Martina could not ignore the foul smell that had permeated her home, despite open windows and generous use of deodorants. In an attempt to alleviate the odor, she brought the suitcases back into her room, unpacked them, rinsed the meat pieces, and spent the next few days frying them, carefully placing them in the freezer.
As for the head, Martina had an especially macabre plan. She first removed the scalp and then boiled the head in a large pot until only the bare skull remained. She meticulously cleaned and washed it, placing it back in the hat box and tucking it under the bed.
"Why?" the detective exclaimed in disbelief.
"I wanted Hans to always be with me in this way," Martina replied with absolute seriousness and composure. "And when I brought other men to my bed after that, I was certain that Hans was here, nearby, beneath us, watching from above and wondering what we were doing. Then, when the lover left, I would take out the skull, place it beside me on the pillow, confess my sins to Hans, and fall asleep. When I opened my eyes in the morning, I felt much better, as if I had been absolved."
For almost nine months, Martina Zimmermann kept the remains of her lover in the refrigerator. However, this created certain inconveniences, and they took up too much space in the freezer. She decided to get rid of them, to dispose of them. And so she did—she took them outside to the park, scattered them among the garbage containers and hidden spots.
Martina kept the skull for herself and continued her horrific "confessions." This continued until the day the police knocked on her door, hoping to gather more details about Hans Josef. The tangled web unraveled.
Martina Zimmermann's case captivated not only the residents of Mönchengladbach but all of Germany. During the trial at the Palace of Justice, crowds gathered, hoping to witness this priestess of love with their own eyes.
Journalists and those lucky enough to enter the courtroom eagerly sought every detail of this gruesome crime, which the prosecutor, Dieter Hannes, described as an entirely unique chapter in the history of German criminalistics.
Prior to the trial, there was a long and intense debate among forensic psychiatrists about whether the killer should face criminal prosecution or be placed in a psychiatric institution. The experts were divided in their opinions. Those who argued for Martina Zimmermann's psychiatric evaluation failed to provide sufficient evidence and compelling arguments, so the trial proceeded.
After the court proceedings and lengthy discussions about all the circumstances surrounding this gruesome murder, Martina Zimmermann was sentenced to eight years in prison, with intensive psychotherapy conducted concurrently.
Despite the evident pathology of this case, the judges repeatedly urged people to seriously consider whether horror films, occult sciences, and witchcraft rituals, which young people nowadays are so fascinated by, are truly harmless. Particularly in recent times.
Source: The Most Dangerous Maniacs