For most serial killers, the biggest challenge isn’t the act itself. It’s what to do with the bodies afterward. But one twisted killer came up with a method that was as horrifying as it was resourceful. Instead of hiding the remains of his victims, he marketed them literally by grinding their flesh down and selling it to unsuspecting towns people as hot dogs.
So, in erasing evidence, he made money on the side and fed his community for years until one little mistake exposed his twisted secret, one that had been simmering beneath the surface the whole time. Here’s the story of the serial killer who sold his victims as hot dogs. Between 1918 and 1921, a disturbing wave of disappearances swept through Berlin, then part of the VHimar Republic.
Countless women vanished without a trace. So many in fact that the exact number remains unknown to this day. However, the mystery began to unravel when dismembered body parts started appearing in various parts of the city. And strangely, many of the missing women had been reported by the same man, their employer, Carl Gman, who, as it turned out, was the very person responsible for their deaths.
But believe it or not, Gman didn’t start out as a killer. In fact, his early life painted a very different picture. Born in 1863 in the town of Norupin, Grossman was one of seven children raised in a troubled household. His father, a local merchant, was known for being a mean-spirited drunk. People in town often saw him getting into fights.
And at home, he was even worse, frequently lashing out at his wife and kids in violent alcohol-fueled attacks, sometimes even using a fire poker to do it. But as for Carl himself, he didn’t exactly win any popularity contests growing up. He was ridiculed for his unpleasant looks and terrible body odor, and most people simply didn’t like being around him.
But according to his brother, France, Carl began expressing disturbing violent fantasies and twisted sexual urges when he was still just a kid. He also showed an unusual interest in animal, completely unfazed by the violence. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it. Blood and death didn’t horrify him. They fascinated him.
One particularly unsettling moment came when he was just 6 years old. Grossman and his half-brother had been helping out during the of a pig at a local butchery. Their job was simple. Collect the blood in a bowl. But when the pig’s throat was cut and blood started gushing out, Grossman shoved his brother aside and started drinking straight from the stream of blood pouring out of the pig.
It was disturbing. Yes. But from that day on, Grossman confided in his brother, telling him that he just couldn’t feel any arousal without the presence of blood. But before he started acting out his secret degenerate fetishes, Gman went to school for a bit. He stayed until he turned 14, then left to take a job at a textile mill to help his struggling family.
By 16, he’d left Nurupin with a friend and headed for Berlin. And it was there in 1876 that he started an apprenticeship at the butcher shop of Ferdinand Cleth. Now despite Grossman’s reputation for being odd and difficult, Cleoff saw potential in the boy, mostly due to his skill with a blade and his love foring animals.
But Gman’s motives weren’t entirely professional. He later confessed to his brother, who we now know was his confidant, that the real reason he took the job with Cleoth was to get close to Kifoth’s wife, Dora. He often fantasized about her in violent disturbing ways. And that fantasy took a dark turn in 1879 when he was caught attempting to assault Dora.
Cleoth beat the living daylight out of him and immediately fired Grossman. However, after that disgraceful exit, Grossman went back to working with his father in the cloth business, occasionally picking up work at the textile factory. But things didn’t stay calm for long because again in 1880 after stealing money from his father he was thrown out of the house for good.
And that’s when something inside Grossman shifted. Whatever darkness had been brewing finally started to take over. In 1894 after repeatedly failing to secure stable work, Gman left Berlin and drifted across southern Germany. He survived mainly through petty crimes like begging, stealing, and selling goods illegally.
And over the years, he got arrested a plethora of times for a plethora of offenses. However, one particularly disturbing incident happened on January 3rd, 1896 when a couple working as gardeners called the police after hearing their nanny goat screeching. When officers arrived, they found Grossman in the stable crouched beneath an iness coat and hiding at the animals hooves.
Initially, he claimed he’d only broken in to find shelter for the night, but the goat was discovered to have severe genital swelling, and Grossman himself was wet around the knees with his pants slightly open. A court in Mannheim later sentenced him to 10 months in prison for sodomy. But that was only the beginning because 3 years after that incident, Gman was found guilty of molesting a minor and ended up receiving his longest sentence up to that point, 15 months in prison, and he served the time in Nuremberg.
But things got even worse after his release on April 1st, 1899. Because not long after, Grossman assaulted another girl, this time with far more brutality. He didn’t see her as a person, but as just another one of the animals he used to in his earlier years. He had a disturbing fascination with watching them twitch as their life slipped away.
So during the attack, the violence escalated to such a horrific level that the girl later passed away from a severe infection caused by internal injuries. Subsequently, on October 4th, 1899, a court in Broy sentenced him to 15 years behind bars for that attack. And even while imprisoned, Grossman regularly picked fights with other inmates, earning 55 separate citations for misconduct.
Now, following his release in August 1914, just as World War I began, Gman returned to Berlin. Because of his age, he wasn’t drafted into the military, so he went back to pedalling for income and ended up renting a small kitchen space in an apartment located close to Berlin’s Ostanhoff. This area at the time was plagued by crime, high unemployment, and rampant prostitution.
And though he was only a tenant in one room, Grossman was often alone in the apartment since the landlord and his family were rarely there. Neighbors remembered him as a quiet and rather repulsive man, both in appearance and smell. Many admitted they’d heard disturbing sounds, shouting, thuds, and even screaming coming from his flat, but they dismissed it, assuming he was simply having rough encounters with sex workers, which wasn’t unusual in that part of the city.
Meanwhile, Grossman also supplemented his income from petty jobs by selling meat on the black market and running a sausage stand at Andreas Plots just outside the train station. He was making a couple thousand marks a week, but wanted to be more financially free. So he decided to merge his dark fetishes with his growing business of selling hot dogs by adding a special new ingredient, human flesh.
So starting around 1918, Gman began using his close proximity to the train station to scout for women, especially new arrivals from rural areas looking for work. He’d approached them with offers of employment, typically as live-in housekeepers. Some women assumed this was a veiled offer for sex work, while others genuinely believed they were about to start domestic jobs.
Either way, once they were inside his apartment, Grossman would either overpower and rape them immediately or allow them to stay in work for a time before drugging and sexually assaulting them. Some victims were let go, often under the condition they remained silent, while others were murdered. and whether the woman lived or died, Grossman would frequently report them to the police, falsely claiming they’d stolen from him and run off, either to cover up their disappearance or preemptively discredit any accusations
they might make. And he didn’t just target strangers from out of town either. His victims also included local women, factory workers, housewives, and prostitutes, all of whom were living in poverty. And although there had been occasional complaints made about Grossman to authorities, no formal investigation was ever opened, not until March 24th, 1920, when a 66-year-old neighbor named Gertrude Grabowski, who lived downstairs, became concerned after hearing crying sounds from Grossman’s apartment above. Initially, she assumed
he had once again brought a sex worker home. But as she listened more closely, she realized the voice sounded much younger, like that of a child. She became worried and immediately contacted a social worker. Now, when the social worker arrived, she found a girl inside Grossman’s apartment.
The girl explained that he had brought her in and assaulted her while she slept, specifically saying he had touched her inappropriately. Grossman, on the other hand, claimed he was merely trying to help her take a bath. The case didn’t go anywhere because the girl was homeless and chose not to press charges. But that social worker became suspicious.
She noticed women’s clothing inside his home, which Grossman claimed had belonged to his deceased wife. She pushed for a full search of the apartment, suspecting he was lying, but the police didn’t follow up. Then, months later, on October 21st, 1920, Grossman’s name came up again. This time, a woman named Martha Balzer reported him to the police, saying he had killed her friend Freda Schubert, a 33-year-old sex worker who had vanished earlier that month.
Schubert’s fianceé, Otto Tannenbomb, also backed up that claim, saying he remembered that she had last been seen with Grossman. And when police searched his home, they found two women staying there, but said there wasn’t enough evidence to tie him to Schubert’s disappearance. Fast forward to early August 1921. Grossman approached a homeless woman, invited her to lunch, and later offered her a place to stay for the night.
Once they were inside, he told her he had a fetish involving bondage and asked to tie her up, promising he would just watch and pleasure himself. But when she refused, he turned violent, trying to force himself on her. She managed to dodge him and ran for the door, but he struck her in the face with a heavy object, dragged her back to the bed, and gagged her with a towel before watching her suffocate.
Now, at that moment, Helen Sig, the wife of Grusman’s landlord, happened to walk in unannounced. At first, she thought she had interrupted a sexual encounter, but when she pulled back the blanket, she saw the woman’s face, bloody, motionless, and clearly dead. Its fled in horror, but didn’t report what she saw because Grossman had told her he just drugged the woman to spend more time with her.
And given the social stigma surrounding sex workers at that time, didn’t question his excuse. Instead, she accepted 50 marks from him, supposedly to keep quiet about his habit of hiring prostitutes and left. Grossman later dismembered the woman’s body and stored her parts in his fridge. But the allegations against him just kept piling up.
On August 14th, 1921, Gman was again arrested following an altercation with a man who had accused him of having something to do with the disappearance of his sister, Johanna Sosnowski, a 29-year-old woman who had gone missing just days earlier. Grossman later confessed to killing her on August 3rd, but was released without any trial date. And again, the authorities failed to pursue the case further.
And keep in mind, several other women spoke out against Grossman, too. One described how Grossman had drugged her coffee, causing her to lose consciousness, and when she woke up, she was tied to the bed and in pain, particularly in her genital area. She believed he had done something deeply disturbing to her while she was out.
while another woman who visited his apartment said he restrained her and violently shoved his hand into her private part, leaving her bleeding heavily. And you might be wondering if all of this was happening, why didn’t the police just step in and carry out a proper investigation? Well, the answer isn’t so straightforward because despite how disturbing some of the stories were, authorities mostly ignored them due to Grossman’s claims that they had actually robbed him.
And because many of them were sex workers, their claims weren’t taken seriously. Plus, he didn’t harm every woman he encountered, and not all of them were involved in sex work. Some victims also felt too humiliated by what Grossman had done to them and initially lied about having any connection to him. In one case, a woman avoided going to the police entirely because the injuries he caused during what had begun as consensual sex were too difficult to explain without also exposing herself to judgment or blame.
At that time, the justice system had little room for women in their position to seek real help. If a woman was even suspected of soliciting, she could be labeled a prostitute by the morals police and forced to undergo routine medical checkups as outlined in the German criminal code. While this kind of labeling didn’t carry quite the same level of social shame in Germany as it did in countries like France, Britain, or Italy, it still came with consequences.
Being registered limited a woman’s freedom to move around the city, made finding decent housing harder, and created obstacles if she wanted to leave sex work behind. Even women who weren’t worried about being seen as proutes might have been afraid of getting in trouble for living unregistered in Grossman’s apartment.
Back then, people were legally required to register their addresses with the local police. So, for many of these women, the police didn’t feel like allies. They felt more like a threat. And to make matters worse, law enforcement didn’t treat their accounts as evidence of personal abuse or assault.
Instead, they only looked at these stories in the context of murder investigations, ignoring the violence these women endured. Grossman, of course, understood this dynamic perfectly. He knew how mistrustful these women were of the authorities, and he used that fear and disconnect to shield himself from scrutiny. That is until his victims were just too many to hide in plain sight.
Beginning in May 1921, human body parts began surfacing in the Spree River, particularly in the Luisen Canal area. At times, new remains were discovered almost daily, and only two of the victims were ever conclusively identified. Forensics estimated that the remains had been in the water anywhere from 8 to 14 days.
But while at least 23 different victims were confirmed through the body parts recovered, some investigators believe the real number of victims could be as high as 100. Dismembered corpses had been showing up since March 1920, but earlier investigations were compromised by the cap push when Reichkesare soldiers bodies were also dumped into the spree, making it hard to distinguish murder victims from political casualties.
Nevertheless, authorities offered a 5,000 mark reward to anyone who could help identify the unknown victims. Notices were placed in newspapers asking the public to assist. And by August 1921, at least a dozen people responded, leading to the identification of some victims. However, none of that immediately led them to Grossman.
Instead, another man, Ernst Brandt, was accused by someone of being the perpetrator. But police never followed up on that lead. Because on the night of August 21st, 1921, something far more concrete happened. Hela Sig, the wife of Grossman’s landlord, and someone already suspicious of him, woke her husband in a panic.
She told him she was hearing loud banging and screams coming from Grossman’s apartment just above them. The noise suddenly stopped around 9:30 p.m. and feeling deeply uneasy, she urged her husband to take action. At her insistence, Robert Iglitzky went to the Andreaswalk Police Station and persuaded two officers, Carl Clay and Erin Stangaser, to come back with him and check things out.
When they reached Grossman’s apartment, the source of the disturbance, he refused to open the door despite repeated knocking. The officers eventually forced their way in, and what they found inside was beyond anything they could have imagined. Officer Clay discovered Grossman with bloodied hands just moments away from drinking a cup of muka [ __ ] a coffee substitute laced with cyanide.
Clan managed to knock the cup out of his hand just in time. But as Enesser placed Grossman in handcuffs, Clay spotted the body of a woman lying on the bed. She was still breathing when they found her, but died only seconds later. Authorities later identified her as 34year-old Marie Nija, a part-time worker from Dresden, who had just been released from Moabitete prison earlier that same day.
Witnesses told police that Nicha had been seen with Grossman that evening. He had picked her up on Copenstrasa and the two were later spotted at a local fairground riding attractions and drinking beer until about 91 p.m. Now, since Grossman was very popular in the area, word of his arrest traveled fast, and within an hour, hundreds of people had gathered outside his apartment complex.
Then, by the time Grossman was escorted on foot to the precinct around midnight, police had to hold back a growing crowd, many of them armed and furious. He was transferred to the homicide division at Alexander Plots and officially charged with murder. It was also at this point that they got a partial confession from Grossman with details about how he killed his victims.
Most of them had either been suffocated or beaten to death while restrained on his bed. In many cases, he reportedly shoved a hand into their mouths and watched as they died. Neighbors had also noticed a steady flow of women entering his apartment over the years, mostly young and destitute. Locals estimated they’d seen as many as 150 different women with him, often assumed to be there for a housekeeping job he was known to advertise, but no one really knew for sure how many didn’t make it out alive.
Also, at the time of his arrest, only Nich’s body had been found. However, blood evidence suggested that at least two other individuals had recently been killed and dis in the apartment. Police later estimated that about 50 women and teenage girls had gone to Grossman’s place and lived to tell the tale.
The first known survivor to come forward was Gertrred Hog who showed up the day after his arrest. She claimed she had been drugged andly assaulted during her stay and after her many other survivors gave mixed accounts. Some said they were. Others claimed they were simply offered shelter, food, coffee, or small payments in exchange for housekeeping or while some longtime workers in the neighborhood had even given Grossman the nickname mysterious Carl because his behavior seemed off.
They even warned newer girls to avoid him and never accept his so-called kindness. Meanwhile, there were widespread rumors amplified by the press that Grossman had been using his victim’s flesh in the meat products he sold because he used the same locations to prepare both fish and animal meat for his small business and to dispose of body parts.
The idea spread like wildfire. Newspapers nicknamed it, loosely translating to bride on a sandwich. And despite how sensational the rumor was, even with some locals saying his sausages and hot dogs tasted weird, both the police and later historians refused to believe this theory. Regardless, Grossman was officially tied to three confirmed murders and loosely linked to a fourth, possibly 19-year-old worker Emma Bowman from Meckllinburgg, whom her family had described to the local press.
Authorities never confirmed this connection. However, during his arrest and in the early stages of custody, Grossman tried to argue that he hadn’t murdered Marie Nitcha out of cold blood. Instead, he claimed she’d stolen from him, hoping police would reduce the murder charge to manslaughter. Though, a few hundred mark notes were found on Nit, making it unclear if they belonged to her or Grossman or if they had been placed there after the fact.
And after seeing the growing amount of evidence against him, Gman finally cracked. But keep in mind that it wasn’t entirely about the evidence. A detective named Ludvik Verberg offered Grossman access to his pet ciscan hensen, the small bird he kept in his apartment. Verberg even treated the bird for mites and let Grossman spend time with it unrestrained.
That gesture built enough trust for Grossman to finally admit to his crimes. He also opened up about how he couldn’t control himself around women. But not long after, Grossman requested legal representation and specifically asked for attorney Eric Fry, who had previously defended serial killer Friedrich Schuman. And then on September 24th, Grossman was officially charged by the Charlottenberg court with three counts of firstdegree murder.
But in court, he shifted strategy, telling prosecutor Seagreed Lindo he should be declared insane to avoid execution. He even filed a written complaint claiming the women had all consented to and that their deaths were accidental caused while he was caressing their tongues and insisted that witness testimonies were either blown out of proportion or entirely false.
Yet, his record behind bars wasn’t helping him either. Because while in custody, Grossman attempted to strangle one of the guards, which led to him being chained during meetings with his lawyer. By June 1922, he had reportedly begun writing a sort of autobiography, explaining his killings by labeling his victims as surplus women, a phrase he used to describe them as social burdens.
At the same time, the court was trying to see if he could actually stand trial. So, a medical evaluation was conducted by Dr. Robert Sturmer, who also met Grossman in person. Stormer explored the killer’s family history, including both parents and extended relatives, leading to the discovery that Grossman’s younger brother, Wilhelm, had died in 1911 at the age of 39 in a psychiatric hospital, reportedly due to a work-related head injury compounded by untreated syphilis.
One of Wilhelm’s children had also been labeled feeble-minded and a maternal half-brother, August Schultz, had a violent criminal past, serving a 15-year sentence for and then dying during a second prison term after assaulting a other relatives reportedly exhibited strange behaviors such as night terrors and uncontrollable rage, but were not officially diagnosed with mental illness, and the theory that he was insane in those years, killing those innocent women, fell apart.
So on July 3rd, 1922, Grossman’s trial kicked off, and witnesses included neighbors, former co-workers, and more than a dozen women who had survived his attacks. And believe me when I say emotions in the courtroom ran high. One witness hurled a set of keys at Grossman, nearly hitting his defense attorney, while a surviving victim tried to physically attack him after being accused of lying.
Many of the survivors broke down in tears while recounting their experiences. But keep in mind that at this stage, Grossman had walked back his earlier confessions. Like we mentioned, he returned to the claim that his victims had stolen from him and that the witnesses were fabricating stories out of spite or betrayal of his so-called generosity.
However, on the third day of the trial, Gman was found dead in his cell at the Moabitet prison. He had torn up his bed sheet, fashioned a noose, and hung himself from a protruding nail in the door frame. He never got to tell his full story. And after his death, a death mask of his head was cast and stored by the police, though it’s believed to have been destroyed during the Allied bombing of Berlin in World War II.
Yet, the one thing we’ll probably never get an answer to is how many victims Carl Gman truly murdered.
