The Berlin Pizza Murder

Pizza is a classic Italian dish that is enjoyed all over the world. In fact, pizza played an important role in one of Germany’s most famous criminal cases. It was the last meal eaten by two Norwegian schoolgirls who were brutally murdered during a school trip to Berlin in 1982. It was March 15, 1982, when a forest ranger was making his usual rounds in the Grunewald forest. As the sun’s rays tentatively fought their way through the dense canopy, he noticed something hidden between the branches of a bush. When he approached, he found the body of a young woman. The sight of the body made his blood run cold. The body turned out to be that of 19-year-old Carmen P. from Norway. She was part of a group of students exploring Berlin. The autopsy revealed that Carmen had been run over by a car several times. At that time, Carmen’s 18-year-old friend Elin M. was also missing, whose body was found two days later 2.7 kilometers from where the first body was found. Elin had not only been sexually abused, but also tortured before her throat was slashed with a hatchet. Both friends were reported missing after leaving the jazz bar “Quasimodo” on Kantstraße. It seemed as if they had simply gotten lost in the big city. The news of the two murders caused horror not only nationwide, but worldwide. The investigation was in full swing and the largest manhunt in Berlin was launched. The last meal the two young women had eaten, a pizza with salami, pepperoni, and fried egg, played an important role in the investigation. Over 100 pizzerias between Kurfürstendamm and Kaiserdamm, as well as between the Gedächtniskirche and Theodor-Heuss-Platz, were searched. Residents, passersby, and even members of the red-light district were questioned. But the killer seemed to be like a ghost, impossible to catch. Two years passed before chance provided the decisive clue to the murderer. In June 1984, a 19-year-old woman from Ottobrunn near Munich was found in the basement of the Europa Center. She had been brutally raped and tortured. The perpetrator did not think that his victim would be found in time, but that she would die from her severe abuse. However, the young woman survived and was able to give an accurate description of the perpetrator and remember a purple business card that the man with a narrow face, glasses, and a mustache had been carrying. The purple business card belonged to a bar on Joachimthaler Straße. A 24-year-old bouncer named Fredi R. worked there, and he matched the description of the perpetrator exactly. Fredi R., a friendly man who was popular with everyone and seemed to lead a completely normal life, was arrested. What he confessed during the subsequent interrogations shocked even the hardened investigators. Fredi not only confessed to the rape and two murders of the Norwegian schoolgirls, but also to a third murder. At the beginning of March 1982, he had tortured, raped, and killed a young woman with several knife wounds in his apartment in Tiergarten. He threw the body, which was never found, into a dumpster. The container was emptied and the body was presumably burned at the Ruhleben waste incineration plant. Fredi recounted without any emotion that a few days later he had met the two young women in front of his workplace, who asked him where they could go to eat pizza. Fredi suggested the pizzeria La Bohéme, to which he wanted to drive both women in his Ford Escort. The young women agreed without hesitation. After they had eaten there, Fredi offered to drive them back. Once again, the two women unsuspectingly got into Fredi’s car, but he drove them to Grunewald. There he raped Elin in front of Carmen. When Carmen tried to escape, he ran her over several times in a frenzy. He then locked Elin in the trunk and drove aimlessly through Berlin for hours until he returned to Grunewald, where he slit Elin’s throat with a hatchet. In his confession, he revealed his depravity, which was much deeper than it initially appeared. The psychologist who examined him spoke of a severe mental abnormality that society feared. Despite his diminished responsibility, Fredi was sentenced to two life sentences plus an additional fifteen years in prison by the Berlin Regional Court in March 1985 for his horrific series of rapes and murders. It was a verdict that offered hope for justice for the families affected, but also left a grim reminder that such acts could happen in our midst. Fredi R. has remained in a psychiatric institution ever since and has shown no signs of improvement. The possibility that he would ever be released was negligible. The criminal case, which went down in history as the “pizza murder,” shows in a frightening way that dark abysses can hide behind a seemingly normal facade and that the wolf can hide in sheep’s clothing.