‘House of horror’ couple who killed two women and tortured at least eight are jailed
‘I did not know what was right or wrong. That’s why therapy would not be so bad for me’
A GERMAN couple who tortured and killed women they had lured to their home were sentenced to prison and psychiatric treatment yesterday.
In a case that horrified Germany, the court was told how Wilfried and Angelika Wagener enticed at least eight women to their home in the village of Höxter with personal ads. Once there, the women were beaten, strangled, burned with red-hot metal, scalded with boiling water, and tortured with electric stun guns and pepper spray.
Two of the victims died of their injuries. Angelika Wagener admitted the couple had disposed of the body of one their victims by dismembering it with a saw and burning it in their fireplace before scattering the ashes on local roads. Wagener was sentenced to 13 years in prison for her part in the crimes.
She smiled as the verdict was read out, and embraced her lawyer in apparent relief. Wilfried Wagener was sentenced to 11 years in a locked psychiatric ward.
“I would like to apologise formally to all the women I have harmed,” Angelika Wagener said in a final statement to the court before the verdict.
“I did not know what was right or wrong. That’s why therapy would not be so bad for me,” her husband said, before turning on his wife. “I have no more words about Angelika and her lies.”
The case, which became known in the German press as the “Höxter house of horror”, only emerged in 2016 because one of the Wageners’ victims fell into a coma from her injuries.
Desperate to get rid of the 41-yearold woman, the couple tried to drive her back to her flat but their car broke down and witnesses called an ambulance to help what was obviously a seriously injured woman.
Doctors were unable to revive the woman and she died in hospital of her injuries. The hospital alerted the police, and the couple were arrested.
Several of the couple’s surviving victims were severely traumatised and only willing to speak out once they knew the Wageners were in custody.