Hermann Duft and Hans Wilhelm Bassenauer

Hermann Duft and Hans Wilhelm Bassenauer
Mug shot of Bassenauer (left) and Duft at the time of their arrest, from Macedonia newspaper, 17 April 1969
Born	1938, both Frankfurt (Duft) Darmstadt (Bassenauer), Germany
Died	1969, both Greece
Cause of death	Executed (firing squad)
Conviction(s)	Murder Robbery Attempted murder
Criminal penalty	Death
Details
Victims	6
Span of crimes	5 March 1969 – 12 April 1969
Country	Greece

Hermann Duft and Hans Wilhelm Bassenauer were a pair of German serial killers who murdered six persons in Greece, within a short period in 1969, were captured, tried, sentenced to death and executed.

Background

Duft was born in Frankfurt and Bassenauer in Darmstadt, Germany, both in 1938. They were both plumbers. Duft was single, while Bassenauer was married, with three children. Duft had briefly served in the Foreign Legion during the war in Algeria.

Crimes

Duft and Bassenauer arrived in Greece by car on 17 February 1969. Within the next few weeks, posing as tourists, they murdered six people, using a gun or a knife. The reason for most of their murders was robbery. On the 5 March, they killed the night watchman of a gas station near Thebes and a soldier who was present. On 13 March, they murdered a Greek-American stockbroker in Voula, on 7 April a taxi driver and on 9 April a gas station attendant near Athens. Finally, on 12 April, they murdered, on the road from Athens to Patras a Greek who was living in Germany and vacationing in his homeland. They abandoned their car and took the victim's to return to Athens.

The dictatorial regime in Greece at the time forbade newspapers from publishing news about this series of murders, until the two perpetrators were captured.

Capture

The police were alerted, on the 16 April, by a Greek woman who saw "small specks of blood" on a car with German license plates parked outside her house, which was, in fact, the car of the pair's last victim. Duft and Bassenauer were apprehended when they showed up to pick up the car, questioned and then arrested by the police. They confessed to their crimes and put to trial, accused of murder, robbery, and related charges.

Trial and punishment

The trial of Duft and Bassenauer was held shortly thereafter at the Appeals Court. They were found guilty and sentenced to death for each one of the murders. Their appeal was rejected by the Areopagus Supreme Court, as was their request to the Council of Pardons to reduce their sentence to life imprisonment. They were executed by firing squad on 15 December 1969, Bassenauer in Corfu and Duft in Aegina, in whose prisons they were respectively being held.

Bassenauer's widow subsequently stated, "my husband got a just punishment," but objected to the execution taking place near Christmas time. An article in a German magazine observed that "once again, Germans are being executed in Greece for murder."

See also

• Antonis Daglis, the "Athens Ripper"

References

• "Zür Stärkung Unserer Basis Erforderlich" ("To Strengthen Our Basics") by Gerhard Mauz, Der Spiegel, 22 December 1969 (in German)
• Historia ("History") magazine, issue 464, February 2007 (in Greek)
• "The execution of Duft & Bassenauer", Palmographos, 15 December 2013 (in Greek)

External links

• Smells Like Blood, novel based on the Duft/Bassenauer murders