Lutz Reinstrom

Lutz Reinstrom (born 29 March 1948) is a German murderer known as The Acid Killer. He has been in custody since 17 September 1991 and was sentenced on 22 May 1996 by the Hamburg Regional Court for the murder of two women, attempted robbery coinciding with deprivation of liberty and extortionate robbery to life imprisonment followed by preventative detention. He is serving his sentence in a high-security Hamburg prison.

The crimes The sadomasochistically inclined furrier had built an underground "nuclear bunker" on the property of his terraced house on Dompfaffenweg in Rahlstedt in 1983. In there he kidnapped 61-year-old Hildegard K., the wife of his teacher, on 12 March 1986. As well as kidnapping her, he took money and jewellery worth a total of about 40,000 Deutsche Mark. He tortured the woman before he killed and dismembered her after a week had passed.

On 5 October 1988, Reinstrom locked 31-year-old Annegret B. in the dungeon. He cleared her accounts, tortured and abused her sexually, recording her torture on tape and photos until he killed and dismembered her after about four weeks.

Outside the basement, Reinstrom led the life of a blameless and affable family man. Although the police, at the behest of Annegret's mother, an acquaintance of her daughter and a potential whistleblower, interviewed Reinstrom, but due to the fact that he knew the interviewing police officer from a swimming club they attended, he persuaded the man that he knew nothing and further investigations were omitted. Presumably, Annegret was still alive at the time. Reinstrom had forced his victims to write farewell letters and postcards to their relatives, which were gradually sent from abroad: they wanted to start a new life abroad and no longer wanted any contact. Subsequently, it was recognized that the victims had hidden cries for help in some of the cards.

On 6 September 1991, Reinstrom kidnapped 53-year-old Christa S., his teacher's new partner, from her own car and dragged her into his bunker using a stun gun. He handcuffed her and showed her perverse torture photographs of Annegret. Reinstrom demanded 300,000 marks in ransom. However, since the transfer was delayed and his wife had prematurely come home from vacation, he gave up his plan and took Christa to the police station in Langenhorn on September 13.

After 93 days of negotiations, on 22 May 1996, the jury handed down a sentence containing the most severe penalties foreseen in German criminal law: life imprisonment for a special severity of guilt and preventative detention. Unlike the case of Annegret, in the case of Hildegard, the court found it impossible to have been killed for sexual reasons; Reinstrom had killed out of murder lust or for satisfaction of his sexual urges, but to be regarded as proven, the killing was made out at least out of greed and to cover a criminal offence.

Literature Heinrich Thies: Cries for help from the torture cellar. The Hamburg acid barrel murders. Jump: to Klampen 2014.