Fritz Honka, the "Golden Glove" Killer

A night watchman in Hamburg

Fritz Honka was born in Leipzig and grew up partly in children's homes before fleeing to West Germany at the age of 16. A traffic accident in 1956 left him with lasting facial injuries. By the 1970s he was working as a night watchman in Hamburg and living in a flat in the Ottensen district. Much of his free time was spent at his regular bar, Zum Goldenen Handschuh ("The Golden Glove"), a pub near the Reeperbahn in St. Pauli. There he met women living in precarious circumstances, many of them homeless or surviving through occasional sex work, some of whom he gave temporary shelter.

The victims

Between 1970 and 1975 Honka killed four women in his flat: Gertraud Bräuer, aged 42; Anna Beuschel, 54, who was killed in 1974; Frieda Roblick, 57; and Ruth Schult, 52. According to ZDF, all four were known to the police. Remains of the first victim, Gertraud Bräuer, had been found elsewhere in Hamburg years before the case was solved, but she could not be identified then.

Discovery after a fire

The crimes came to light by chance. On 17 July 1975 a fire broke out in the apartment building at Zeißstraße 74 in Ottensen, near Altona station. While fighting it, firefighters found human remains in Honka's flat. He returned home while police were still at the scene and said he knew nothing about them. He was arrested and, on 29 July 1975, confessed. Police then used a facial reconstruction made years earlier to confirm that Bräuer was his first victim.

Identifying the women was difficult. Honka told investigators he could not name them or remember how they had died. According to WEB.DE, Bräuer had been brought to his flat by another woman who was living with him at the time. The reconstruction of a head found almost four years before the fire, made by investigators long before Honka was a suspect, finally allowed them to match those earlier remains to the evidence in his flat. In 1970, when the first killing took place, Honka was 35 years old.

Trial and sentence

Honka's trial began on 12 November 1976 before a jury court in Hamburg. Shortly before the end of the proceedings he withdrew his confession, and he told investigators he could not remember how he had killed the women. On 20 December 1976 the court convicted him of one murder, that of Gertraud Bräuer, and of three counts of manslaughter for the other killings. It found that his criminal responsibility had been diminished by a severe mental disorder and sentenced him to an overall term of 15 years, together with placement in a psychiatric hospital. The court's finding of diminished responsibility explains why the prison term was comparatively short for four killings.

Release and death

Honka remained in custody, including in a psychiatric hospital, until 1993. After his release he lived in a care home on the Baltic coast under a new name, Peter Jensen, which his defence lawyer had obtained for him so that he could live unrecognised. As he became increasingly confused he was readmitted to psychiatric care in Hamburg. He died in hospital on 19 October 1998, aged 63. Sources differ on the cause: ZDF reports asthma and heart failure, while other German outlets attribute his death to decades of heavy drinking and smoking.

A case that still fascinates Germany

The Honka case has become part of Hamburg's cultural memory, partly because of the bar where he met the women. It inspired Heinz Strunk's novel Der goldene Handschuh and the 2019 film of the same name by director Fatih Akin, which follows the documented facts closely and has been streamed on Netflix since 2021. In July 2025, on the fiftieth anniversary of the fire, ZDF revisited how investigators traced the killer. Beyond its notoriety, the case is a reminder that the four victims were real women whose lives were already hard, and that the killings came to light not through a search for them but through an accidental fire.