Werner Pinzner

Werner Pinzner (27 April 1947, Bramfeld – 29 July 1986, Hamburg), also called "Mucki", was a German contract killer who became known as the "St. Pauli Killer". In 1986, he was responsible for a series of contract killings and gained nationwide attention when, during interrogation at the Hamburg police headquarters, he fatally shot the investigating public prosecutor, his own wife, and himself. The case had political consequences in the city of Hamburg and is considered one of the most "spectacular" cases in the criminal history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Pinzner is also believed to have killed between seven and ten people before the Hamburg police headquarters incident.

Early life Werner Pinzner was born on 27 April 1947 in Bramfeld, the son of a radio mechanic and a grocery chain store manager. In 1964, after dropping out of school without a degree, he went to sea with the International Christian Maritime Association for two years. In 1966 he worked as a driver for a few weeks and then briefly went to sea again. He attempted to become a regular soldier in the German Armed Forces but failed due to prior convictions. He met his first wife shortly afterwards. In 1970, he was sentenced to imprisonment for the first time, and his daughter was born the following year. After her birth, Pinzner worked as a scaffolder, tiler, and butcher. In August 1975, he took part in an armed robbery at a supermarket, where one of the perpetrators shot the store manager.

Pinzner was arrested in September 1975 and sentenced to ten years in prison. Before he was sentenced, he met his second wife, Jutta. He served nine years of sentence in Fuhlsbüttel prison; then moved to the . During his stay in prison, he made contacts in the red-light district of Hamburg and came into contact with drugs. While in prison, Pinzner was able to buy a .38 Special calibre Arminius revolver

In June 1984, while he was on day release, he took part in a robbery with two accomplices from the red-light district and committed his first contract killing the following month, just before his release in July 1984.

St. Pauli at the time of Pinzner's murders The pimps of Hamburg's red-light district operated brothels in Hamburg and nationwide. However, prostitution experienced a significant decline in the 1980s as fears of HIV infection increased. The pimps initially reacted by brutally intensifying the exploitation of the prostitutes. Drug trafficking also increased, as did other illegal activities such as arms dealing or fencing. Disputes related to the criminal activity increased as a consequence, leading as well to the contract killings committed by Pinzner.

Mediated by "Wiener Peter", Arzi's ex-wife and daughter first asked Pinzner - still serving his sentence at the - to cut off one of Arzi's fingers to intimidate him; however, later, they asked Pinzner to kill Arzi. For a fee of 40,000 DM (equivalent to approximately €125,430 in 2025 or roughly 245,000 Deutsche Mark if accounted for inflation), Pinzner traveled to Kiel with an accomplice, Hockauf, and shot Arzi in his apartment on 7 July 1984. Although Arzi's former wife and daughter were identified relatively quickly as suspects, the proceedings against the two were discontinued due to a lack of evidence. After the crime, Pinzner returned to Vierlande prison and deposited his weapon back in his locker.

Pinzner was commissioned to assassinate Pfeilmaier. He was to receive DM 15,000 from each of the two new partners and a share in a brothel. On 12 September 1984, with the help of an accomplice, and under the pretense of a large, secluded drug deal, Pinzner lured Pfeilmaier to a garage complex at Hirsekamp in Hamburg's Bramfeld quarter, where Pfeilmaier was shot in the head.

However, Pinzner did not receive the promised share in the brothel; rather, he was to work as a collector at the "Hammer Deich". His accomplice kept part of the promised money.

In November 1984, Traub went to Munich to check on a prostitute. Pinzner followed him with an accomplice who had just been released from prison. The two stopped in Heilbronn, where they obtained an alibi from a brothel known as the "Chief of Heilbronn". They proceeded to Munich and, as with Pfeilmaier, offered the later victim a fictitious drug deal. With Traub, they went to the Hohenbrunn forest in a rental car, faked a car breakdown, and shot Traub after he exited the vehicle.

Waldemar Dammer and Ralf Kühne Waldemar Dammer, known as "Neger [German for Negro] Waldi", ran two brothels that were in competition with "Wiener Peter". Shortly before Easter 1985, Dammer had "Wiener Peter" beaten by two of his thugs in his "Palais d'Amour" brothel, publicly humiliating him. Pinzner and an accomplice were commissioned to kill Dammer and the two thugs for a fee of DM 60,000. Pinzner assumed Dammer would meet with the thugs at his home in Schnelsen, so he and his accomplice went to Dammer's house on Easter Monday and were allowed inside. Dammer and his manager Ralf Kühne were shot there, but not the thugs.

Although Pinzner later confessed to these murders, it was proven that his accomplice, rather than Pinzner, had shot the two men. was established under Interior Senator Alfons Pawelczyk at the end of the 1970s. It was the first such agency to combat organised crime in Germany. This police unit worked with informants and wiretapping methods and were also shielded internally by the police. Fachdirektion 65 achieved some success against the GMBH, the Nutella gang, and the Hells Angels, among others.

The ballistic evidence found at the crime scenes indicated that the .38 calibre projecticles, although a common calibre, were shot from a gun with a distinctive feature - namely right-handed ten rifling (one twist every ten inches). Owing to this peculiarity and the similar background of the victims (all connected to St. Pauli pimps), the murders were quickly identified as a series with a common perpetrator.

Arrest Due to the identification of a series of murders, a special commission was formed under the leadership of Fachdirektion 65, using undercover investigations and the questioning of potential witnesses. Pinzner immediately demanded to speak to the investigating public prosecutor, Wolfgang Bistry. During the first interrogation, Pinzner testified that he had committed eight murders. He later told the prosecutor that he had killed eleven people and was ready to testify under the condition that he could spend another two days undisturbed with his wife, Jutta. The journalist Thomas Osterkorn obtained private pictures and notes of Pinzner, found by his neighbors in his attic, which had not been searched by police. Present at the questioning were Pinzner, his wife, his lawyer - Isolde Oechsle-Misfeld - two police officers, a typist, and the public prosecutor, Wolfgang Bistry. With the help of Pinzner's lawyer, Pinzner's wife had smuggled a revolver into the headquarters. The police officers escaped the room to sound the alarm

Prosecutor Wolfgang Bistry, with a critical wound to the head, was flown to Eppendorf University Hospital, but died of his injury the next day. He was buried at the Burgtor Cemetery in Lübeck. The murder weapon is exhibited at Hamburg Police Museum. Police

Extensive investigations followed to catch the suspected accomplices of the crime, including a search of Pinzner's attorney's office. In December 1986, around 350 police officers and several public prosecutors simultaneously carried out a major raid in Hamburg, Ahrensburg, Braunschweig, and Mallorca, leading to multiple arrests. Brothel owner , a suspect in the case, escaped and left Germany for Costa Rica, but was extradited after considerable diplomatic efforts.

Press After Pinzner's death, a censor was imposed on the press for the first time since the kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer, but this only fueled media speculation. The judicial scandal intensified when it became known that cocaine and puncture marks were found on Pinzner's body, and that paraphernalia for heroin consumption had been found in his cell.

The contract killings and the double murder-suicide attracted considerable public attention. Documentation of the case was exhibited as one of the best-known criminal cases in Hamburg's criminal history. The case was included in series on major criminal cases by both NDR and ARD. ZDF also addressed the series of murders in 2016 in the documentary Murder without Conscience: The St. Pauli Killer in the series Enlightened – Spectacular Criminal Cases. The Pinzner case was presented at the exhibition A Police Museum for Hamburg in 2007 alongside other Hamburg criminal cases – such as the serial murders of Fritz Honkas or the department store blackmailer "Dagobert" - at the Hamburg Police Museum. It is also the subject of guided tours through St. Pauli. In 2011, Norddeutscher Rundfunk took the 25th anniversary of the murder-suicide as an opportunity for renewed documentation.

Politics The sensationalized murder-suicide brought the topic of organised crime into the political debate while a judicial scandal followed in the wake of the case, focused on the insufficient security precautions in Hamburg prisons and the leniency of investigators towards Pinzner. , the minister for justice, was publicly criticized because of the penal system she represented, while , the interior minister, was criticized because of the so-called , and both were criticized due to public concern about increases in crime.

To prevent similar incidents, security gates were installed at the entrances to the police headquarters. General investigations of Hamburger defence lawyers followed the incident, but were met with considerable resistance from the Hamburg Bar Association, the Hamburg Criminal Defense Lawyers' Working Group and the Republican Lawyers' Association.

Arrests Charges were brought against Pinzner's lawyer - Isolde Oechsle-Misfeld - and three of her clients. In 1989, two of Pinzner's accomplices, Armin Hockauf and Siegfried Träger, as well as "Wiener Peter", received life sentences.

In addition to the criminal proceedings, the judiciary repeatedly dealt with the consequences of Pinzner's actions in terms of press law. For example, Der Spiegel had to print a half-page reply after reports about an alleged man behind the murders. In 1994, the prohibited the journalist Dagobert Lindlau from naming Pinzner's lawyer in his book Der Lohnkiller.

In popular culture The events surrounding Werner Pinzner were seen as material for a screenplay soon after the suicide. and Dagobert Lindlau, in his 1994 book, The Hire Killer an organised crime figure''. and was awarded the Television Film Prize of the German Academy of Performing Arts.