00:00:06
-On December the 2nd, 2015,
Bavarian Horst Kroener boarded a plane. He was heading to Thailand
looking for easy sex.
00:00:16
Two days earlier,
the 52-year-old German IT technician had viciously murdered
his wife while she slept.
00:00:23
-I can think of few more
depraved acts than dispatching someone
with a hammer after you've climbed
into bed with them.
00:00:35
-After killing his wife,
Kroener chopped up her body, packed the pieces
in four large boxes,
00:00:41
and then stashed them
in a storage unit. -To actually dismember a body
12 hours after death,
00:00:48
without that detailed
knowledge of anatomy, would be a very difficult task. -Many domestic homicides
are carried out
00:00:56
in the heat of an argument, but this was cold
and calculated. -When we look at cases
like the Kroener case,
00:01:03
it's just the extreme end
of the wedge. It's the tip of the iceberg. -The brutality of the crime
and the indifference displayed
00:01:11
after he murdered his wife
makes Horst Kroener one of the world's
most evil killers.
00:01:18
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It was a murder that shocked
the small town of Friedberg in southern Germany.
00:01:43
♪♪ The brutality of the crime
committed by Horst Kroener on November the 30th, 2015,
was extraordinary.
00:01:55
His motive was simply
to be able to satisfy his growing sexual needs without his wife
getting in his way.
00:02:03
-When we look back and we say,
"Well, what was the trigger, "or what was the thing
that made him decide
00:02:09
that he was going
to kill Grace?" -- basically, Grace stopped
playing ball.
00:02:14
She stopped being the wife
that he wanted her to be. -She was no more than a toy.
00:02:21
She was there to solve
his problems for him because, after all,
he had so many problems.
00:02:26
That construct of the very caring Filipino, Grace, and this cold,
self-obsessed,
00:02:39
indulgent German proved to be fatal. -This killer's story began
a little over 50 years ago.
00:02:50
Horst Kroener was born in 1963 in the small town of Friedberg
in Bavaria, Germany.
00:02:57
Kroener himself described
his childhood as unhappy and miserable, and in later years blamed this
for all his troubles.
00:03:05
-What is clear, however,
is that Kroener, from a very early age,
felt the world was against him.
00:03:11
"Oh, I was so miserable.
I was suicidal. My life was a misery." ♪♪ -[ Speaking German ]
00:03:22
-He said, "Yes, obviously,
I had parents, "but in a narrower sense,
I have never received love.
00:03:30
"And what bothered me most was
that in my parents' home, "I basically did not receive
any recognition.
00:03:37
"I was a human being too. I had the feeling
that I was not counted as such."
00:03:42
-[ Continues in German ] -And that resulted in his low
self-esteem and, in fact,
made him a social outsider.
00:03:50
-[ Concludes in German ] -Jorg Heinzle was
a local journalist who covered the case.
00:03:56
-[ Speaking German ]
-He talked about himself, that he got little
from his parents.
00:04:02
They were both at work. They both worked a lot,
and therefore he spent the majority of his time
as a child with his grandmother
00:04:09
and was brought up
by his grandmother. -Kroener worked as
an IT technician, but he was not happy
with his life.
00:04:19
-[ Speaking German ] -Horst Kroener says
that every so often he had suicidal thoughts
00:04:28
because he believed he could not
survive in everyday social life. He was always stressed, he said.
00:04:35
This is, to some extent,
understandable. He had changed his place of work
a total of 10 times.
00:04:41
He sometimes felt bullied
at work, but sometimes he resigned
out of his own free will.
00:04:48
Essentially, he led an unsettled
life for a very long time. -Kroener had a fascination
with women from Southeast Asia
00:04:58
and was married twice before. -[ Speaking German ] -He had met his wives through a dating agency,
newspaper adverts,
00:05:11
or in the last case,
on the Internet. He clearly did not have
the confidence to approach a woman at a party
00:05:19
or maybe in a supermarket
or through other opportunities. I assumed that this man, indeed,
had problems with women.
00:05:29
-Kroener wanted to be
in a relationship, and met his third wife,
again, on the Internet.
00:05:36
27-year-old Grace
was from the Philippines. She moved to Germany
and married 42-year-old
00:05:43
Kroener in March 2005. -That suggests to me that he's
targeting a particular group
00:05:51
of women
from particular cultures, where they have
a more traditional idea of femininity and masculinity,
00:05:59
women who take that traditional
nurturer, caregiver role, that he's going to find easier
to be in control of.
00:06:06
-Grace embraced her new life. She learned to speak German
and fully integrated into the small town
of Friedberg.
00:06:14
-She worked as a shop
assistant in a supermarket, mainly at the meat counter, and she actually had
a good relationship
00:06:21
with all her colleagues. She was described as nice,
friendly, helpful, very sociable
00:06:28
and was very much liked there. -On the surface, they appeared
to have had a blissful marriage.
00:06:37
-[ Speaking German ] -Both strangers
and acquaintances had the impression
that they had a happy marriage
00:06:44
and were both very content
with their situation. -[ Concludes in German ] -[ Speaking German ]
00:06:53
-Over time, however, more
and more problems accumulated, but neither Horst nor Grace were
able to admit to the problems,
00:07:00
to discuss them
and find solutions. -[ Concludes in German ] -Grace joined
the Jehovah's Witnesses
00:07:07
and persuaded her husband to come along
to the church meetings. However, cracks began to appear
in the picture-perfect union.
00:07:18
-I think, perhaps,
because it gave her a family, a place to have
a stable relationship.
00:07:24
She knew she was married
to a cold, calculating man. She'd realized that. -Horst Kroener exhibited
extreme mood swings.
00:07:32
Analysts later connected this
to his overarching narcissism. -Narcissists can swing
between two extremes.
00:07:40
They swing between seeing
themselves as worthless and then thinking they're really
special at the same time,
00:07:47
so they have
a sense of entitlement. They think that they're better
than everybody else,
00:07:51
but that underneath it all, they're fundamentally
ashamed of who they are. So it's this constant state
of conflict with them.
00:07:58
-For Grace, Kroener's behavior
would soon prove fatal. Even though he was married,
00:08:04
Horst Kroener was determined
to have sex with other women. -He feels that he should have
his cake and eat it.
00:08:12
He feels that
he should have Grace at home looking after his needs,
doing his laundry,
00:08:17
putting dinner on the table,
but at the same time, he wants to be engaging
in sexual encounters
00:08:22
with other women. -He said that, basically,
he led a kind of double life. On the one hand, he was a member
of Jehovah's Witnesses.
00:08:32
On the other hand,
this double life where he was unfaithful
to his wife and searched the Internet
for acquaintances
00:08:38
and new adventures. -The stress of Kroener's
infidelity took a toll on their marriage.
-[ Speaking German ]
00:08:47
-He had reasoned that whenever
he had problems or felt stressed,
professionally, privately,
00:08:53
when things weren't going well, he would withdraw and busy
himself more with the Internet,
00:08:58
with exchanging online chats. And he was always
in search of women, Asian women
who lived in Thailand,
00:09:05
and these acquaintances
resulted in his desire to meet these women in person. -[ Concludes in German ]
00:09:11
-Making matters worse,
Kroener had financial problems. He was constantly struggling
to pay the child support
00:09:19
that he owed
to his two former wives. -He was spending money
quite unsparingly and was then so short of cash
00:09:27
that once he had
to file for bankruptcy. -In 2007, Kroener decided
to satisfy his sexual urges
00:09:36
and booked a holiday
for himself. It would not be the last time that Kroener
would cheat on Grace.
00:09:45
-[ Speaking German ] -The second time that he flew
to Thailand again was in 2013.
00:09:51
-[ Continues in German ] -The deceitful thing
about this flight was that Grace, at the time,
00:09:57
had flown back to her home
in the Philippines because her mother had died
and was to be buried there,
00:10:05
and he used that time to fly
to Thailand for a sex holiday. -[ Concludes in German ]
00:10:11
-By 2013, Grace discovered
that Kroener had formed relationships online
with several women.
00:10:19
Bernd Scharinger was Kroener's
defense lawyer. -He once said that his
favorite time was 2013,
00:10:26
when he had such a trip
to Thailand. And that's why he wanted
to do it once more before
ending his life.
00:10:35
He wanted to have
a nice time again and then to kill himself
as the final act. -Then, in the autumn of 2015,
came the final straw.
00:10:47
Horst Kroener had planned another solo sex trip
to Thailand, but this time,
Grace had had enough.
00:10:55
The strain of her husband's
infidelity was more than she was willing to bear.
00:11:00
Grace now threatened
to leave Kroener, and it pushed him over the edge. -[ Speaking German ]
00:11:13
-If Grace had done
what she had threatened, "If you go one more time
to Thailand
00:11:17
to have sex with other women,
then I will file for a divorce," that would have been the
financial ruin of Horst Kroener,
00:11:26
and he would have no longer
been able to pursue his pastime of having sex
with Thai women.
00:11:32
And those were already
two solid reasons to think of a radical solution. ♪♪ -Faced with his wife's
ultimatum,
00:11:41
Kroener decided to kill her. His calculating plan included
murder, disposing of the body,
00:11:49
and then flying to Thailand
to have sex. For his wife Grace,
her husband's cheating
00:11:56
was just too much to accept. -He saw women as objects. He saw them simply as trophies,
00:12:03
objects that could be
dispensed with. The same was his attitude
for sex tourism.
00:12:09
He would make arrangements
to visit Thailand, make appointments and say,
"Oh, this is the woman
00:12:14
who's going to
fulfill my fantasies." -Many people will look
at this case and say,
00:12:18
"Well, why didn't he simply
just ask for a divorce?" And the simple reason is that,
when you ask for a divorce,
00:12:26
your control over that situation
is dissolved a little bit. And here we've got an individual
who likes to be fully in control
00:12:34
of everything that's
going on around him, especially the woman
in his life. So by taking matters
into his own hands,
00:12:42
he's fully in control. He's 100 percent
in the driving seat, and nobody else is going
to be interfering with that.
00:12:49
-She had said, "If you go one more time
to Thailand "and make contact
with other women,
00:12:55
"or if you do that in Germany, "then you will lose me. We will get divorced."
00:13:01
-[ Continues in German ] -He had already gone
through bankruptcy. He was on the brink
of financial ruin,
00:13:15
which was already, for someone with a narcissistic
disposition like him, a very solid reason to come up
with an extreme solution --
00:13:24
"Either her or me." ♪♪ -Kroener booked his trip
for December the 2nd, and he used Grace's money
to do it.
00:13:37
♪♪ -[ Speaking German ] -The fact that he made
these withdrawals from his wife's account,
and that she could possibly see
00:13:50
the account statements
the following Monday, meant on that weekend
on which the act happened
00:13:56
was the signal
for the beginning. The decision was made
to commit the act. -With the ticket to Thailand
booked, for Kroener,
00:14:06
there was now no going back, and no one, not even his wife,
was going to stop him.
00:14:14
-The final trigger,
the final trip wire, was actually booking
a hotel room in Thailand,
00:14:23
because he knew
that his wife would discover that he'd done that
the following day.
00:14:29
It was that that provided
the timeline for the killing. -The smart IT tech had formed
00:14:37
what he thought
was a foolproof plan to kill his wife
and get away with it. -I think that the fact
he has a high IQ,
00:14:46
and he's an intelligent man, is significant in relation
to this crime. He's going to be thinking
through the process more.
00:14:52
He's going to be trying
to cover up. He's going to be thinking about
all of those things
00:14:57
that could potentially trip up somebody
who wasn't as intelligent. -Kroener didn't just
plan the murder.
00:15:04
He also needed to ensure the
body would not be discovered. -[ Speaking German ] -After Horst Kroener had decided
to kill his wife,
00:15:19
he searched the Internet
looking for possibilities for an airtight way
to pack the corpse
00:15:25
so the body
wouldn't start to smell. -[ Continues in German ] -He wanted to know
how to kill his wife,
00:15:32
so he made related searches. -[ Continues in German ] -He wanted to kill her as quickly and as painlessly
as possible.
00:15:42
He looked up,
"If I cut up her body, "which I will have to do
if I kill her in our apartment,
00:15:47
where can I dispose
of the body?" -[ Concludes in German ] -By analyzing
his search records,
00:15:56
investigators later discovered that Kroener had made
a grim to-do list. The first thing he did
was to buy a 5-pound hammer
00:16:05
and duct tape. For ease of access, he hid the hammer
in the dining room cabinet.
00:16:12
-[ Speaking German ] -He didn't have a weapon
readily available in the basement,
00:16:16
as in cases where
spontaneous murders happen. Instead, he had bought
one specifically
00:16:21
from the hardware store. -[ Continues in German ] -He had also searched and read
information on the Internet
00:16:27
on the subject
of storage rental. He didn't buy everything
in advance. Some things he only bought right
after the murder took place.
00:16:35
-[ Concludes in German ] -Kroener later revealed
his twisted justification behind the callous decision
to murder his wife.
00:16:45
-Actually, the reasons
he gave as to why he came up with the idea that he had to kill his wife
were not really comprehensible.
00:16:52
He always said that he actually
wanted to kill himself because he had so many problems
00:16:57
and his life
was too hard for him. ♪♪ -On Sunday, November the 29th,
2015, the day of reckoning had come.
00:17:09
Kroener waited until
the early hours of the morning to be sure
that his wife was asleep.
00:17:16
Then, he took the hammer
out of the dining room cabinet, walked into the bedroom,
00:17:22
and hit Grace
as hard as he could on the head. -What we have to hope
is that that first blow
00:17:32
would leave her unconscious. But if you are intending
to murder somebody, then repeated blows --
00:17:41
essentially, you're
making sure of the job. -He then waited until
his wife fell asleep,
00:17:47
and in the early hours
of the morning, grabbed a hammer and beat her over the head
a total of six times.
00:17:54
-I can think of few more
depraved acts than dispatching someone
with a hammer after you've climbed
into bed with them,
00:18:08
but, nevertheless,
Kroener did exactly that. -Even after many blows,
Grace still seemed to be moving.
00:18:16
-You sometimes get these
muscular spasms, even when somebody's just died, because as
the electrical impulses
00:18:24
are just starting to fail, they will spark off
little nerve fibers, spark off muscular twitches.
00:18:31
So it can just be
the effect of the brain dying. -To ensure she was dead, Kroener pulled a bin liner
over his wife's head,
00:18:40
wrapped duct tape
around her neck, and then suffocated her
with a pillow. Examiners later determined he
did this for 15 to 20 minutes.
00:18:51
-In his case, he did
three types of murders. You know, it was blunt force,
then suffocation
00:18:58
with a plastic, and then
suffocation with a pillow. People will go through
different emotions,
00:19:04
especially when you plan
a crime like that, and then you think
you can go ahead with it,
00:19:08
and sometimes people
get overwhelmed by different emotions, and then they will do things
that are, like, unnatural.
00:19:16
They'll carry on doing things. That's why some people
do the overkill. -After he was satisfied
his wife was dead,
00:19:24
Kroener went into the next phase
of his plan -- to dispose of Grace's body. The killer went to a local
hardware store
00:19:33
and bought some supplies in
order to dismember the corpse. -He went out and bought
materials that he needed,
00:19:41
including a saw,
including plastic storage boxes, including building foam,
including salt.
00:19:47
-When Kroener returned home, he wrapped Grace's lifeless body
in a blanket and dragged it
onto the rug in the bedroom.
00:19:55
-To actually dismember a body
12 hours after death, without that detailed
knowledge of anatomy,
00:20:03
would be a very difficult task. -But Kroener was prepared
for any eventuality. He bought a tub
to cut the body up in
00:20:13
and carefully covered the whole
of the bedroom floor with plastic sheets. ♪♪ He had worked out
that the best time
00:20:23
to cut up a body
was 12 hours after death. -I think that there is
an element in which he feels
00:20:30
this is a challenge
that he's going to rise to, that he's going to do well,
though this is somebody
00:20:36
who is treating it
almost like a project, and that is incredibly cold
and incredibly chilling.
00:20:43
-Kroener then proceeded to cut
his wife's body into eight pieces with a saw.
00:20:49
-I would expect that
the actual process would be relatively clean. The blood is not flowing
around the body.
00:21:01
So as you cut through blood
vessels and other structures, blood would leak,
but it wouldn't spray
00:21:08
as it would
if someone was still alive. -He put each part of the corpse
into a large plastic bag
00:21:14
and then added salt to the mix. He did this to slow
the decomposition of the body.
00:21:21
Next, Kroener placed the bags,
tools, rug, and bed linen in four plastic boxes and filled them
with construction foam.
00:21:30
He hoped this routine would mask
any smell that may lead the authorities
to discover his heinous crime.
00:21:39
-The way to prevent
decomposition, if you were preserving meat, so salt would
slow down the process.
00:21:47
It would desiccate the tissues. Keeping it cold would slow down
the rate of decomposition,
00:21:53
and these things
will slow the process but by no means
prevent it completely. -Kroener then drove the boxes
00:22:01
containing his wife's
dismembered body parts to a self-storage unit
in Friedberg.
00:22:08
-He said himself
that he was quite nervous, not that it was outwardly
noticeable looking at him.
00:22:14
He then described that,
whilst unloading the boxes, one box had fallen on the floor,
and it almost opened.
00:22:22
-He had murdered his wife
and was now finally free to satisfy
his selfish appetites.
00:22:28
-He just wanted his holiday. And for that holiday,
he didn't care he had to kill her,
chop her up,
00:22:35
put her inside a box,
fill the box with foam, and then try to hide
the box somewhere.
00:22:39
He did not care
what he had to do. So it's a complete
lack of emotion towards somebody
00:22:45
that he actually
shared a life with, and to me, that is the worst
type of psychopath you can have.
00:22:52
-There are an awful lot of men
who kill their wives and then seek to take
a terrible revenge on the body.
00:23:00
Not always going to the lengths
that Kroener went to of meticulously cutting it up
00:23:05
and storing it in plastic boxes
that didn't smell, but the level of rage
and the level of anger
00:23:10
that killing your wife
means is very, very difficult
to quantify from the outside.
00:23:17
It's beyond most people's
wildest imaginings. -It is a problem
all over the world
00:23:23
that there will be women
everywhere losing their lives at the hands of their partner
or their ex-partner.
00:23:28
So when we look at cases
like the Kroener case, it's just the extreme end
of the wedge.
00:23:33
It's the tip of the iceberg. -The next day, he set about
covering his tracks.
00:23:40
First, Kroener stashed the body
parts in a storage unit in his hometown of Friedberg.
00:23:46
Determined to get away
with murder, Kroener then put his escape plan
into motion.
00:23:52
He had carefully
prepared reasons why he and Grace were absent. -[ Speaking German ]
00:24:00
-There was, of course, the fact
that they had requested leave from their
respective employers
00:24:05
because they wanted
to go on holiday together to the Philippines... -[ Continues in German ]
00:24:10
-...and he had also
laid false tracks when he dropped a note
to the neighbors. He wrote that Grace
had left him,
00:24:16
and he was now flying after her to see what was left
of their marriage to save...
00:24:21
-[ Continues in German ] -...and he would
get in touch again. -On the 2nd of December, 2015,
00:24:30
three days
after he murdered his wife, Kroener boarded a plane
to Thailand. -He spent most of the time
in Pattaya,
00:24:38
which is a known place
for sex tourism. And there, he met
with several women, including one he had already
contacted over the Internet,
00:24:48
and he admitted himself that he also had had sex
with these women. -Back home in the small town
of Friedberg, at first,
00:24:55
no one suspected a thing.
-[ Speaking German ] -There were already different
false tracks laid
00:25:01
so that only after
Mrs. Kroener's holiday ended did her colleagues from work
start to get worried,
00:25:07
as well as members
of their church congregation, who questioned
why they had not turned up.
00:25:12
People then tried to make
contact but were unsuccessful. -When the usually reliable
Grace did not show up for work
00:25:21
or for her regular church
services, suspicions grew. Finally, just before Christmas
in December 2015,
00:25:31
a concerned friend
reported Grace missing to the local police. -[ Speaking German ]
00:25:40
-Actually, at the beginning
of the inquiries, there was no evidence
that Grace had indeed traveled.
00:25:46
People had also
contacted her family. She wasn't there, and nobody
knew of a holiday trip
00:25:51
or a visit home, and so it became
ever more apparent that she had practically
disappeared without a trace.
00:25:58
-A search of the flat
that Horst Kroener and his wife Grace shared
drew a blank.
00:26:04
There were no clues
to indicate foul play or to the couple's whereabouts. -After the act, he tidied up
00:26:11
and cleaned up
everything very thoroughly. He put the rug,
on which he cut up the body,
00:26:15
on the balcony, rolled up, but nobody noticed
that at first. However, a small blood splatter
was found in the bedroom,
00:26:23
but no one knew
that a murder had taken place. ♪♪ -Police soon discovered
that Horst Kroener
00:26:32
had booked a ticket
for himself alone to Thailand. But with no body found, the case against Kroener
was circumstantial.
00:26:42
Nonetheless,
for investigators, Kroener was the prime suspect. -Well, it is almost
the classic question --
00:26:51
whether it's murder fact
or murder fiction, isn't it? Who's the first person you're
likely to die at the hands of?
00:26:57
It's almost certainly to be
your husband. That's why most murderers
know their victims
00:27:02
and most victims
know their murderers. Probably the most likely victim
of all is a wife,
00:27:08
and the most likely
killer of all is a husband. -On the 8th of January, 2016, Horst Kroener returned
to Germany
00:27:17
and was arrested the next day. Then, in a curious twist,
Kroener confessed to his crimes
00:27:24
and led police
to the storage unit where they recovered
Grace's body. -Most people are quite
surprised to hear that,
00:27:32
as soon as he's apprehended,
he completely spills the beans. He tells the police everything.
00:27:37
But that doesn't surprise me
at all because he's aware, "Okay. I've been caught,
so I'm in a situation now
00:27:44
"which is largely out
of my control. "So to get some
of that control back,
00:27:49
"I'm going to be the one
who sets the narrative. I'm going to be the one
that decides what happens."
00:27:53
So in confessing everything, he has that feeling
of being in control again. -Horst Kroener's trial began
nine months later
00:28:02
on the 25th of October, 2016, at the courthouse
in Augsburg. Journalist Jorg Heinzle
closely followed the trial.
00:28:13
-The interest in this case
was naturally huge. There were various media
involved,
00:28:19
lots of reporters who wanted
to follow the process. Because of the crime scene, the dismemberment and the
storing of the body alone
00:28:27
meant that this case
was indeed out of the ordinary. -Representing
Kroener at the trial
00:28:34
was Bernd Scharinger. -[ Speaking German ]
-I had made the request that the court make sure
that, initially,
00:28:41
in the context of the trial, he would be pixelated,
which most of the media did.
00:28:48
-Kroener had decided on
a bizarre defense strategy, one that would see
the wife-killer paint himself
00:28:55
as the victim. -[ Speaking German ] -The story that he told
in court, in my view,
00:29:03
is actually
more of a late defense claim. I do think that the murder
of his wife was planned
00:29:08
and also executed in cold blood, and that his suicidal thoughts
at that point were certainly not acute
00:29:14
because, what would
have actually kept him from putting those thoughts
into action?
00:29:18
-[ Continues in German ] -[ Speaking German ] -Even if it sounds very,
very strange,
00:29:30
I think he actually
had it in him. He also said that the decision
to murder his wife
00:29:36
was made on that night
when he grabbed the hammer. In other words, only after
the first blow of the hammer
00:29:42
did the intent
to kill manifest itself... -[ Continues in German ] -...according to him.
00:29:49
-[ Speaking German ] -Here is someone trying
to conceal his serious guilt so as not to be seen
as a monster.
00:30:00
♪♪ -In a letter written
by the killer after his conviction
to the makers of this program,
00:30:11
Kroener lays out the plea
that he made to the jury. -I allowed family, work,
and financial problems
00:30:19
as well as several
miscalculations, to influence me to such an extent
that I completely blocked out
00:30:25
everything
that was good in my life. I increasingly got myself into
a kind of state of desperation.
00:30:33
This situation became so extreme
that I was convinced my life has no meaning anymore.
00:30:39
I wanted to die. In the end, it was the only
thing I could think of. ♪♪ I believed,
to the very last moment,
00:30:49
that I would not be able
to do such a dreadful thing. The idea she could feel
something was awful.
00:30:56
I didn't want her to feel
anything, and for this reason,
I did it while she was asleep.
00:31:02
I never hated her. We hadn't argued on that day. It was only sheer desperation
00:31:07
that made me commit
this offense. ♪♪ -The self-serving defense
stunned observers of the case.
00:31:18
-He's almost presenting
Grace's murder as something that he started
for her own good,
00:31:23
which is incredulous. But when you look at the logic and the decision-making
of somebody like Kroener,
00:31:31
he's always going to want
to present himself as the victim and present
himself in a favorable light.
00:31:36
You can see how he gets
to the point. It's all to protect himself. -The case rocked Friedberg
and the whole of Germany.
00:31:44
-He didn't give an impression
of coldness. He was rather reserved
and subdued,
00:31:50
but he had answered
the questions and also tried to clarify
how things came to that point.
00:31:55
He was quite open about it. He was also emotional
the whole time, to the extent
that it was said,
00:32:02
"One cannot imagine that
there is a case being handled where he is
the brutal murderer."
00:32:08
-[ Speaking German ] -He had been labeled
with three characteristics -- a lack of motivation
because he had such low morals.
00:32:18
He himself admitted
that he wanted once more to go to Thailand to have a good time,
00:32:22
and I suggested that this was
his motivation to murder -- in order to be able
to have a good time in Thailand.
00:32:29
Then, he was accused of greed because he had stolen money
from his wife's account.
00:32:34
And, of course, insidiousness because he had killed her
in her sleep. ♪♪ -Having confessed to the crime,
00:32:42
at stake now
was how long Kroener would serve for
the callous murder of his wife.
00:32:49
At the trial, Kroener had
devised a cunning defense, a strategy calculated
to keep himself out of prison.
00:32:56
The fight to save his own skin
had just begun. If found guilty, Kroener would
serve life imprisonment
00:33:06
with a 15-year minimum before he could be
considered for parole. Supported by a wealth
of evidence and a confession,
00:33:15
prosecutors presented
a strong case for murder against the 53-year-old
Bavarian wife-killer.
00:33:22
-When Kroener eventually
comes to trial, he has confessed
to the killings. So there is no question
of proving his guilt.
00:33:31
There is simply a question
of how he will be treated. Is he sane? Yes. Did he plan it?
Yes.
00:33:41
Did he kill his wife when she
was asleep and defenseless? Yes. Did he then dismember her body?
Yes.
00:33:48
Did he then conceal the body
parts in storage boxes? Yes. Quite often in German law,
00:33:56
you can be considered
for release for a life sentence
after 15 years. ♪♪ -There is a big
contradiction here.
00:34:05
He himself tried to present it as if everything had
taken place impulsively, as if he had thought about it
relatively spontaneously.
00:34:12
What goes against this, however,
is that he thought a lot about it and had planned a lot
beforehand,
00:34:19
which could be gleaned from
the information on his computer. -Determined to lessen
his sentence,
00:34:24
Kroener's lawyers try
to convince the jury that the killing
was not premeditated.
00:34:30
Rather, the attack
was an impulsive act. He even had to muster
the courage to do it.
00:34:37
♪♪ -So there is a story
that he had a few drinks, that he summoned up
a bit of Dutch courage
00:34:44
by having
some alcohol beforehand. I don't think that he would have
needed to do that
00:34:49
because he hasn't got
those emotions or those feelings there
that he needs to numb.
00:34:53
So I'm skeptical of the fact
that he felt he had to have a drink to summon up
the courage to do it.
00:34:59
He didn't need to do
that at all. -Listening to it in retrospect, he lists all the trivial things
that led him to take that step.
00:35:06
He explained in court,
for example, that his wife once burned food
in the kitchen,
00:35:11
and that had really annoyed him because he had to air
the house for two days, and that was a sign
that she wasn't concentrating,
00:35:20
that maybe she was also
searching for someone new and that she no longer took
their relationship seriously.
00:35:28
He also described
another example, where shortly before the murder,
his car also broke down.
00:35:35
The alternator had broken, and that had been so awful
for him that he fell into
a deep hole again,
00:35:40
and he more or less
made the decision then that it must end now,
and he has to kill Grace.
00:35:47
-In the letter written
to the makers of this program from jail, Kroener reiterated the story
that he told in court.
00:35:55
-All the horrible things
I did afterwards, I could only do under the
continuing influence of alcohol.
00:36:01
Today, when I look back,
I feel nauseated, and I can't understand myself. Every action after the offense
had only one purpose --
00:36:10
to provide myself with
enough time to commit suicide. -Kroener does, however, express
some remorse for his actions.
00:36:18
-What I did to her
and to our families is the worst someone can do
to another human being,
00:36:23
especially in the case
of a loved one. To this day, I can't comprehend
how I could have suppressed
00:36:29
my love for her
before and during the act. -For some, Kroener's apology and his diminished
responsibility defense
00:36:37
is still hard to believe. -Is it true what the defendant
tells us here? Yes. He is legally
allowed to lie.
00:36:46
He is allowed to,
in a purely legal way, tell us the greatest
fairy tales. And one always asks oneself,
00:36:53
"Is this really the defendant,
or is he telling us a story?" I did have the impression
that he tried, in his way,
00:37:00
to answer the questions
openly and honestly. Although, for me,
there was a feeling
00:37:04
that he was trying to make
everything sound nicer. ♪♪ In hindsight, he describes it
as being so bad
00:37:12
that it was
almost unbearable for him. So you hear in the plot again
his self-pity,
00:37:18
which is probably shaping him. -I think, when we look
at Kroener's claims that he's felt suicidal
throughout his life,
00:37:26
we've got to take a step back
and say, "Well, what effect does
that have on us
00:37:29
when we hear somebody say to us
that they feel suicidal?" It helps us kind of empathize
with them.
00:37:35
It makes us feel sympathy
for them, and we see them as the victim. So I think he's aware
of the effect
00:37:42
that this narrative will have when he presents it
to other people. -The conclusions of
the prosecution's psychiatrist
00:37:50
did not support
Kroener's assessment of himself. -[ Speaking German ] -He was very self-centered.
00:37:57
He was scared of losing Grace, and this anxiety,
this fear of losing Grace, probably then led him
to become so aggressive
00:38:04
and to turn to
these murderous thoughts. -[ Concludes in German ] -[ Speaking German ]
00:38:13
-The report also came
to the conclusion that he is the type of person
that avoided dealing
00:38:18
with problems
when they arose, and he is also probably
very introverted. As a result, the report came
to the conclusion
00:38:26
that he is actually,
so to speak, a normal person... -[ Continues in German ] -...that he also doesn't have
any illness --
00:38:34
in particular, that he does not have
any mental illness. -The jury was convinced
that Kroener,
00:38:42
driven by his
narcissistic urges, killed his wife and carefully
disposed of her body.
00:38:48
On the 17th of November, 2016,
he was found guilty of the murder of his wife,
37-year-old Grace.
00:38:57
But rather than the mandatory
15 years before he could be
considered for parole,
00:39:03
Kroener was sentenced
to serve 20 years minimum. -The severity of the guilt
prompted the judge
00:39:11
in Kroener's case to say, "There has to be a minimum
sentence of at least 20 years
00:39:18
before he can be
considered for release." -[ Speaking German ] -He showed relatively
little emotion
00:39:23
during the whole process. He faltered once
and burst into tears a bit, but he took
the verdict quite well.
00:39:30
-[ Concludes in German ] -Kroener reportedly apologized
to Grace's sisters, who traveled from the
Philippines to attend the trial.
00:39:39
-I'm delighted
if Kroener's apparent remorse helped Grace's family
deal with her killing.
00:39:46
And I'm delighted that they were
able to take her ashes with them back
to the Philippines from Germany.
00:39:54
I have just never believed that Kroener had
the slightest remorse, and I believed he was simply
putting on appearances,
00:40:04
or rather
keeping up appearances as a respectable
German citizen. I think it was an absolute
charade from beginning to end.
00:40:13
-Horst Kroener murdered
his wife, and he did it in one of the most
cruel and callous ways possible.
00:40:20
-Here's somebody who is
very cold, who is very calculating, who doesn't have genuine
feelings of love or warmth
00:40:27
or respect for his wife. She's useful to him
at one point in time, and then she ceases
being useful to him.
00:40:34
So he's going to absolutely
obliterate her. -[ Speaking German ] -Let me put it this way --
00:40:42
The man had indeed gone
through life unpunished, had committed an act
that is so incomprehensible,
00:40:48
even for him. -[ Continues in German ] -Is 15 years appropriate?
Is 20 years appropriate?
00:40:58
I think what will transpire
in the end is whether he processes
his actions to the extent
00:41:04
that one can say, "This man
will never do it again." -For me, it was a type of crime
00:41:11
that I'd never
experienced before. And for me, what is still
until today incomprehensible
00:41:17
is this really terrible cruelty,
this brutality on the one hand, and this cold, methodical
procedure on the other hand.
00:41:25
One simply imagines
a perpetrator that gets some pleasure
out of the crime, that wants to torment
the victim.
00:41:32
And that doesn't fit together,
not even now. -[ Continues in German ] -The crime doesn't fit with his
personality, and that is,
00:41:41
for me, what has made this crime
so very extraordinary. -We've got somebody
who carried out a cold
00:41:47
and a calculated
and a planned murder and somebody who tried
to get away with it,
00:41:53
so there are absolutely
no redeeming qualities of this individual whatsoever. ♪♪
00:42:02
-Grace was just 37 years old when she died
at the hands of her husband. She was an innocent victim
of an extraordinary killer,
00:42:13
one who maliciously
murdered his wife so he could satisfy
his selfish primal urges,
00:42:20
making Horst Kroener one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪