World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 16 - Horst Kroner - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

In December 2015, Horst Kroner boarded a plane. He had brutally murdered his wife while she slept and was now headed to Thailand for easy sex.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Horst Kroener murdered his wife Grace in a premeditated act to pursue sexual freedom, leading to his arrest and conviction.

Key points

The Murder of Grace Kroener. Horst Kroener brutally murdered his wife Grace in a cold, calculated act.
Kroener's Double Life. Despite being a Jehovah's Witness, Kroener led a double life, seeking sex with other women.
The Final Ultimatum. Grace threatened to leave Kroener, pushing him to commit murder.
Kroener's Confession. After being apprehended, Kroener confessed to the murder and led police to the body.
The Crime's Impact. The case shocked Friedberg and Germany, revealing the brutality of Kroener's actions.
Trial and Sentencing. Kroener was sentenced to 20 years minimum for the murder of his wife Grace.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Oh, I was so miserable. I was suicidal. My life was a misery.

Kroener reflecting on his unhappy childhood.

3:08WatchJul 20, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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