A notorious German serial killer and necrophiliac who murdered five women and a three-month-old infant in a series of sexually-motivated attacks is now being identified as a “female serial killer” on Wikipedia.
Wolfgang Schmidt, who while incarcerated claimed a female identity and legally changed his name to ‘Beate’ in 2001, was dubbed alternatively “The Beast of Beelitz” and “The Pink Giant” (Der Rosa Riese) by German tabloids due to his 6-foot-3-inch stature and his perverted preference for pink lingerie, which he incorporated in his attacks. One of his victims was found strangled to death with a bra, her body discarded in a pile of lingerie, including a pink skirt.
Schmidt’s first known victim was a 50-year-old woman named Edeltraut Nixdorf, whom he targeted while she was gardening outside her home. Schmidt had broken into her house to steal her undergarments, committing a sexual offense known as a fetish burglary. As he was leaving, he noticed her outside, and would later describe this as the moment he realized she was “the person [he] was hoping for.”
Schmidt dragged Nixdorf indoors and bludgeoned her head with a hammer before strangling her. He said he wanted to hide her corpse “so that [he] can later satisfy [himself] with her.” The woman’s husband would go on to poison himself, being unable to cope with the traumatic murder of his wife.
Seven months later, in May of 1990, Schmidt saw 45 year-old Christa Naujoks, who was living in a trailer in the area near a trash collection where he was scrounging for used lingerie. After his arrest, he admitted to the killing.
“I grabbed a cable and strangled the woman. I undressed her, put on her underwear, sexually assaulted the dead woman.”
During court proceedings in 1992, Schmidt described how sexual violence thrilled him, saying, “I had her breast in my hand. I got so excited I couldn’t stop myself.” When Naujoks’ corpse was found a day later, she was covered in rags, her sweatpants pulled down, and her bra pushed up, exposing her body.
A few months later, in July of 1990, Schmidt unsuccessfully attempted his first murder. He stabbed a 58-year-old woman at a garbage dump near after knocking her down with a stake. He said: “I was obsessed with having the woman under my control.” Thankfully, the woman survived as construction workers unloading rubble among the trash found her between bed feathers and broken glass. She was also covered in rags.
In March of 1991, 34-year-old Inge Fischer was walking home from visiting a friend when Schmidt choked and stabbed the woman after kicking her in the face. He then raped her corpse. Her body was found the following week in lingerie that did not belong to her. Her skirt was similarly pushed up and her body was covered in feces and moss. Schmidt had been waiting for her in a small cave where he hoarded his stash of porn magazines and used lingerie.
About a week later, in a forest in Beelitz, 44 year-old Tamara Petrowskaja was walking her three-month-old infant when Schmidt strangled the woman with a bra and violently smashed the infant against a tree stump, murdering both. In court, he said he grabbed her immediately, “so excited that he couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t hold on.”
German outlet Bild, who has reported extensively on Schmidt for years, reported that the woman’s body was then dragged to a pile of lingerie, “including a pink skirt, which earned the psychopath the name [Pink Giant].”
In April 1991, Schmidt had his second two failed attempts against his youngest victims. He attacked two 12-year-old girls playing near the forest and attempted to kill them by stabbing them. The girls fiercely fought back, scratching his face, and managed to flee. The young girls’ surviving description of the event and location of the attack helped aid investigators in finding his hiding place with porn magazines and women’s underwear.
The next day, Schmidt broke into 66-year-old Talita Bremer’s home and strangled the woman before raping her corpse. As he was fleeing the scene, he stole her blouses, skirts, and underwear.
In August of 1991, two men out for a jog saw Schmidt masturbating in a green camouflage jacket while using binoculars to scout for potential victims. Suspicious of Schmidt and aware of the presence of a serial killer in the town of Beelitz, the two men apprehended him. They discovered women’s clothing and a crowbar hidden underneath his jacket. The men overpowered him and handed him over to police, finally putting an end to his killing spree.
Two court journalists, Gisela Friedrichsen and Gerhard Mauz, reported thoroughly on the trial of Schmidt in late 1992. Friedrichsen went into great detail to disclose to the public all the details that Schmidt had admitted to in front of the court, especially in regards to his sick fetishes that he claimed he could not help but act out on unsuspecting women.
According to his own recount, Schmidt was only six or seven when he began wearing his mother’s bras, underwear, and petticoats. He recalled feeling excited about this, and over time, his behavior escalated to masturbating, urinating, and defecating in her intimate clothing. Schmidt would hide the dirty laundry in the garden or barn – until one day, his father discovered some of the clothes and told his mother about his exploits. Schmidt would also stuff the bras while he wore them to increase his sense of excitement while he self-pleasured.
After his mother began to lock her clothes in a chest to keep her son from using them to fulfill his fetish, he began searching through garbage dumps, obsessively searching for women’s underwear.
He recalled that age ten, his mother caught him half-naked; he had just enough time to get rid of the women’s garments and wipe off the excrement that covered him. He would put panties on backwards, defecate in them, and turn them around so the excrement was at his genitals.
His ritual of searching through garbage bins became an addiction and he obsessively made sure each bin he passed was completely empty of any feminine undergarments. He hid his findings in various outdoor deposits so he could later wear them, defecate in them, and masturbate.
Fredrichsen wrote: “In the garbage he finds lingerie catalogs with pictures of women’s bodies, magazines, porn magazines, which also increase the feeling. But it’s not enough. He wants more – a woman. Having a woman who will join in, willingly, a woman who wants the same. The urge keeps getting stronger. Fantasies haunt and torment him. A woman. A female person. For years he was plagued by ever more horribly rampant dreams that the feelings could be even greater, even more attractive.”
Friedrichsen also noted that when Schmidt went on his hunt for victims, he was looking for any “female person,” to “carry out these actions.”
Mauz deviated from Friedrichen’s reporting slightly in that he did not delve into the details of his crimes as much as the pseudo-scientific perspective of Schmidt’s perverted, violent behavior.
Mauz did report that Wilfried Rasch, a forensic psychiatrist, assessed the fetishistic serial killer in court, describing “a sex-pathological development in which ‘fetishistic, coprophilic, transvestite and sadistic elements can be found,’ a ‘severe other mental abnormality in the legal sense.’”
He began stealing and wearing his mother’s underwear at age six and “had overwhelming, comforting feelings about it.”
In kindergarten, he rummaged through a closet and urinated in it.
Mauz also disclosed, like Friedrichsen, that his ritual “eventually irresistibly demanded the involvement of other people who wanted fellatio, anal intercourse, and defecating fantasies to be realized. Being able to do ‘everything’ became a central theme, that is, having a woman fully available to fulfill special wishes.”
In 1992, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. His sentence ensured that he was kept in a closed psychiatric ward, where he currently resides, in Brandenburg. Every year, doctors confirm that he is still a danger to society.
Schmidt is now reported to wear skirts, heels, and blouses. He has been taking hormones since 2010 and requested a sex change operation, which was denied.
While in prison, he is believed to have raped another trans-identified male “Jasmin F,” who then tried to commit suicide by swallowing two razor blades. “Jasmin,” formerly Jens, was in prison for raping a woman and later attempted to rape a prison psychologist. Jasmin is said to have also murdered his mother and assaulted her corpse.
Even Schmidt’s brother said: “I know my brother. He doesn’t change. He’s always dangerous! Lock him up, build his wall twice as high and throw away the key!”
In a 2010 interview, Schmidt spoke to Bild and wore his fingernails painted red with a “pink ringed top” that “emphasize[d] the first steps of his breasts.” He told Bild, “For almost 20 years I have had to face the fact that six people died on my conscience. I couldn’t help it, I was so out of control. Free again? I didn’t deserve that.”
He also recounted that he had wanted to be a “girl” since he was four years old, and that he often stole his mother’s laundry to wear it without her knowledge.
In addition, he said: “My biggest pride right now are my boobs. I have an A cup. A little will come. My beard has stopped growing. The only thing missing is the sex change.” He said he likes wearing skirts and heels and “jams [his] penis in his panties.”
Finally, he admitted, “I don’t get visitors. My father was with me for the last time in 1995 and promised to come back. I am disappointed in my family. Other patients have also done bad things, but the family is behind it. I blame my mother for never trying to help me.”
Prior to the murders, Schmidt had been a police officer. In 1985 he signed up for the riot and anti-insurgency police force, but was dismissed just four years later after celebrating Hitler’s birthday while drunk.
On the Wikipedia page dedicated to Schmidt and his haunting history, several users have made edits sympathetic to his identity as a “trans woman.” In April 2020, user “Greyjoy” removed the entry on Schmidt from the category “male serial killers” and classified him under the label “female serial killers.” Wiki user “Greyjoy,” who is one of the top 1500 editors on the site based on the number of revisions made, has also created two pages for a snuff film and “sexploitation film.”
Later that year, another user “pmjenk talk” deleted Schmidt’s birth name “because including it violates the Wikipedia policy on the naming of transgender people.”
Other edits include users changing pronouns and fixing “misgendering.”
Reduxx reported on a similar incident last month in which a Finnish serial killer who targeted young girls and women had quietly been categorized as a “female” serial killer by Wikipedia, prompting criticism on social media.
Michael Maria Penttilä, 57, has been described by national media as the “only Finn to meet the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) definition of a serial killer,” having sexually abused and strangled multiple female victims to death, including children. Penttilä was born Jukka Torsten Lindholm, but is also known as Michael Pentholm.
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