Frank Gust - The Rhein-Ruhr Ripper - Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Before the world knew his name, Frank Gust sat at
his mother's kitchen table and quietly admitted that he killed
a woman, a confession she and no one else believed
until the truth tore through Western Germany. Behind that facade
of a quiet family man was a sadistic murderer who
hunted women, desecrated their bodies in the most horrific ways,

(00:32):
and reveled in death. Eventually he would be caught, but
his warnings about killing again, if ever released, rang loud
across the country, and it sent chills down everyone's spines
when they learned he may be released as early as
twenty twenty six. This story forces a chilling question what

(00:55):
happens when a self proclaimed killer insists he should never
walk free. This is the story of Frank Gust, aka
the Rhinerue Ripper.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
And Grim, a true crime podcasting. The following material intend
more Matural audience listener discretion. It's beginning to look a

(01:47):
lot like Christmas?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Is it now?

Speaker 1 (01:51):
It's snowed.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, we have snow now officially it's stay.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
And I think I think so. We have snow it's December,
it's right around the corner and then the New year everything.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
So yeah, we're decorating. Actually tonight finally we.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Need to get rum and eggnog though, I'll get some. Yeah, okay, good,
I'm glad we have the rum.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
We have the rum.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
We have one of the ingredients. We just need the
other one. So and that also, it's good. I've got
a question, maybe we should put a poll out there
or something sometime. What are people's opinion on eggnog, because
I know that's a very big divide on some people
with the holidays. Is some love eggnog and others hate it.
I don't know if there's anyone who's like really in between.
It's just two sides to the coin.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah. Well, and I recently started drinking it again because
I didn't drink it forever for years, remember mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
And then I added rum to it, and you're like, okay,
I can get down with this.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Well, I think it's because I got I was like,
I got sick one time and I had drank eggnog
or something. You know how that is.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, it just ruins the tap or something it does.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
But now I'm all for eggnog.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
All for eggnog. There's another thing too that some people
like really seem to love and other people are not
so so much for it. And that's paid And we
know we have some amazing people who definitely love Patreon,
such as Xander Reagan, Lindsey Pearson, Tara Brown, Jason Rubio,
and Tina Stansbury who all signed up to our Patreon
and are amazing people supporting the show right on. Did

(03:16):
you like that segue?

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah, it was quite a segue.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Did you see it coming?

Speaker 2 (03:19):
No? I did, yes at all.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
I was aiming for you to not see it coming.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
So this intro gave me the chills?

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Did it?

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Why is that? I don't What about it gave you
the chills? Is there something that stood out?

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Uh? Yeah, for someone themselves to literally think that they
should not be leaving prison but they still may. Oh
that is I don't know, that's not okay.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, there's a lot about that in this story. It
is a heavy, heavy aspect to it, and if you're ready,
maybe we should just dive right into it.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, I guess so. I mean them themselves is saying
they're not rehabilitated. So it's like Okay, Yeah, let's just
get into it, because I'm already on the edge of
my seat here.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Well, I will tell you there's more to it than
him just saying he's not rehabilitated. Okay, I'll put it
that way. It's even darker than that.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
On a quiet evening in nineteen ninety nine, long before
most people had ever heard his name, Frank Gust sat
across from his mother, Dagmar, at her kitchen table while
she laid out a spread of tarot cards. It was
a ritual that she often turned to, and it was
nothing mystical or dramatic per se, nothing that plays out
in the grand scheme of this story. It was just

(04:37):
something that she did, something that gave her comfort after
a hard day. Now, the house was dim and calm,
the kind of place where you know heavy truths should
have echoed, should have actually hit home, but somehow the
truth today never did. She was flipping over cards, and
with one she paused. The death card had flipped over

(05:00):
and was staring up at her. She laughed it off
at first, the way people do when you know something
feels a little heavy to acknowledge, and she began to
reshuffle the deck and now here. I have read some
conflicting reports where potentially she shuffled, redealt the deck again
and the death card came up a second time, but
I was unable to confirm it. But there are reports

(05:22):
that that possibly played out that way regardless, she was
shuffling the deck, and across from her her son Frank
watched quietly, and then in a cold voice, he just
simply said, I killed a woman. He said it so casually,
just a fact that he just placed on the table,
as if her mother was placing his mother, sorry, was

(05:43):
placing cards on the table. No different now his mother,
Dagmar blinked. She was confused. She knew her son was
a little different. She waited for the punchline, like it
was a joke, but there wasn't one, not even a smile,
as if he were waiting for a reaction. He just
simply he sat there. She shook her head and waved

(06:04):
her hand, told him, you're always telling such stories. But Frank, well,
he didn't argue. He just nodded slightly, kind of agreeing,
and stood up from the table and carried that truth
back into whatever private world he lived in. Whoa, And
that was it. What his mother didn't realize, what no
one in his family realized or understood at the time,

(06:26):
was that Frank wasn't making anything up. This wasn't a joke,
he wasn't confused, he wasn't being dramatic, And by the
time he spoke those words, he had in fact already killed.
He had been living a double life for years, in fact,
slipping through shadows no one even thought to look into.
In the coming months, the press would give him the

(06:47):
nickname the Ryan were a Ripper, a nod to Jack
the Ripper, not because he copied the crimes, but because
he seemed to take satisfaction in making sure his victims
were found posed in ways that jolted the entire community.
And decades later, long after he would eventually confess, long
after investigators would finally piece together the truth, Germany would

(07:11):
set a date on the calendar twenty twenty six, the
year that he might walk out of prison. But to
understand how someone becomes this kind of monster, we need
to go back, We need to start at the beginning.
Frank Gust entered the world in May of nineteen sixty nine,

(07:31):
May twenty fourth, in fact, in Oberhausen, Germany, it was
an industrial region where life often felt heavier than the
steel it produced. From the very first hours of his life,
the foundation was already cracked. His father was a chronic
alcoholic who didn't bother showing up for the hospital where
he was birthed until three days later.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Holy heck.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, most parents, you know what, they Russian with excitement,
but while instead his dad spent those days drinking at
lawe bars.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Well, and so then his mom also just had to
deliver this baby all alone.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Correct, So she's sitting there in hospital and well, he's
wasting what little money they had, and she's alone. And yeah,
that was that. That's terrible. Within three months of this happening,
Frank's mother, Dagmar, filed for divorce, and she suddenly found
herself raising two young boys alone, juggling poverty, exhaustion, and
emotional fallout from you know what, a husband simply drifting

(08:27):
out of their lives. She worked constantly to keep them afloat,
leaving long stretches of time where Frank was left in
the care of others, or at times even simply being
left alone. For a brief period. His grandmother stepped in, though,
offering some stability and affection as well, you know, things
that were missing at home. But when her health declined,

(08:48):
Dagmar had no choice but to place Frank in a
full time nursery. The facility kept him fed, clothed, and supervised,
yet it lacked something essential warmth. The caretakers for context,
They weren't exactly cruel, but they were distant. There wasn't
hugging there. There wasn't soothing, something like something a child

(09:10):
was already deprived of in this situation. Something that Frank
was missing was that constant love. And now the cold
atmosphere left a mark that would never truly fade. By
nineteen seventy three, Dagmar managed to pull together enough savings
to move her small family into a modest but comfortable home.
It should have been a fresh start, and for a

(09:31):
short while it even felt like one. Frank especially loved
quiet Sunday mornings. He would crawl into bed beside his mother,
something he would later remember as one of the only
times he felt safe in school. Frank was small, thin,
and emotionally fragile, exactly the type of child that bullies
would seek out. Things continued to deteriorate around him, not

(09:55):
just at school, though, but at home too. When Frank
was eight, Dagmar began a relationship with a man, man
who moved into the house and immediately asserted control. He
believed emotions were weakness and discipline was the cure for everything.
Frank Sunday mornings with his mother soon vanished. Overnight. His
grandmother moved out, and his older brother eventually left as well,

(10:17):
and the house grew quieter, colder, and more oppressive. Under
his new stepfather's strict rule, Frank's childhood anxieties intensified. He
began wetting the bed, withdrawing emotionally and avoiding confrontation because
he knew punishment waited around every single corner. The home
that should have felt safe while it became a place

(10:39):
where he tiptoed through his own life. Outside those walls,
something even darker took hold. While escaping his home to
spend time with his grandmother on the street and is
where he often hung out, Frank met an older neighbor
who seemed friendly at first, a sympathetic ear during a
time when he desperately needed someone. However, the man wasn't

(11:00):
exactly offering kindness. He had something else going on. See
he was an opportunist, and Frank became a victim. The
neighbor's friendliness quickly turned into grooming, and within weeks he
began sexually abusing Frank, taking advantage of a lonely and
emotionally neglected child who didn't understand what was happening. Now,
that man eventually brought in other adults into the home too,

(11:22):
and the abuse became something coordinated and repeated, with many
of these individuals taking advantage of a child, a circle
of predators, exploiting a boy who had no protection and
no one to confide in.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
So he's basically just the poster child of I'm going
to be a serial killer when I.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Grow up, really basically. And what's something that's really common
in children who grew up to become serial killers.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Abuse?

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Well, yes, yes, but there's usually a telltale sign when
the child does something, a specific telltale sign hurts an animal.
There you go.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Okay. I was like, please don't be that.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
The last piece of the puzzle is exactly that, and yeah,
we're about to get to that.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
No, okay, well right now it's so terrible, Like I'm
just sitting here feeling bad for him, and I hate
that because he's going to go on to do horrendous things. Yes,
and that feeling bad for him will probably go away.
But no one really does deserve to grow up this
way either.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
No, I agree, But there is something different about this
case though. With Frank, he went through some abuse, don't
get me wrong, and it's horrific shit that he went through,
something no one, no child, should have to ever endure.
But still there seems to be a strange disconnect from
what he commits as an adult to what he went through.

(12:56):
I personally don't see a connection between the two. It's
almost like, yeah, he went through that stuff, but it
did not make him who he was. It's almost like
he was that already. Okay, And with this which can
be for sure, oh definitely. But with this animal situation
we're about to discuss here, is it kind of I

(13:18):
wrote it and I'll explain it. It really kind of
starts to show that that flip side of the coin.
You'll get it when I talk about it.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Don't worry, Okay, is it a dog?

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Don't worry.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
We're all oh, okay.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Now, all these events, the abuse, the sexual abuse, particularly,
they were all buried deep inside Frank for years never
spoken aloud, but they were affecting and potentially shaping his
developing mind. Then came the moment that psychologist would later
describe as his turning point, and this is a very
important point in his story. I round eight or nine

(13:51):
years old, Frank bought a guinea pig with his pocket money.
It was small, harmless, and entirely his. But when he
brought it home, his father refused to let it stay.
Frank tried to, you know, take it to his grandmother's,
another place that he would go to, but she too
dismissed it basically as being a filthy rodent and told
him to get rid of it now. Instead of returning

(14:13):
it or trying to hide it, Frank took the guinea
pig outside. He pinned it down, and he smashed it
with a large stone, killing it instead. Now, what happened
afterwards revealed the first undeniable sign of what he was becoming,
or potentially what he already was. Instead of being broken,

(14:37):
instead of being scared and torn over this and upset,
he reached into this smashed dead animal's warm body and
felt a rush, the sensation of the heat, the texture,
the act itself. It did something to him. He didn't recoil,
he didn't panic, He studied and reveled in the situation.

(15:03):
Later he admitted that it was the moment he realized
he wanted more, a lot more.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Okay, that's really fucking alarming.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
And for that reason alone, I have trouble connecting his
abuse as a child to this because he didn't cry
or was upset over the death of his guinea pig.
He loved it. That's something that an eight or nine
year old you don't.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
You can't instill that well at getting a rush from
feeling the inside of this thing's warm body. That is
too much.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Yes, the only way you can instill that in a
person is if you surround them with that as soon
as their birth. And he wasn't. He was surrounded with
other violence, yes, yeah, but certainly not blood, the textures,
the visceral gore, and that's what he.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Loved, I guess. But it was also his upbringing that
led him to that moment, right, I mean if he didn't,
if he was allowed to keep this guinea pig, he
would never have, you know, smashed its head open and
had the opportunity, I guess, to feel inside and get
this rush.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
You don't know that for sure.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
Well I'm going to I feel like that might be
the case, but I don't know.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
I don't know anyways. By the time Frank reached his
early teens, whatever innocence he once had was shrinking fast.
The world had taught him that vulnerability was dangerous, that
affection was inconsistent, and that pain was predictable. But something
else had taken route to a curiosity that had already
crossed one boundary with the guinea pig, and now it

(16:41):
was looking for a new place to grow. At around
thirteen years old is when Frank discovered the local morgue.
The morgue became a place where no one judged him,
no one hit him, and no one left him. The
dead couldn't hurt him, and they couldn't stop him either.
He even began breaking in at night, slipping through windows

(17:03):
or doors he'd left prompt open during staff shifts. Sometimes
the bodies were somewhat fresh, sometimes not. It didn't matter
to him. What mattered was the ritual, the privacy, the stillness,
and the complete lack of resistance. He didn't just touch
the bodies, he altered them. One night, he took a

(17:28):
corpse apart, cutting it, repositioning it, and placing it in
a way that would horrify the next person to walk
into the morgue. He decapitated the body, laid the head
by the entrance, and arranged the torso on a bench
as if waiting to be discovered. And the next morning

(17:48):
a grave digger opened the door and nearly collapsed from
the shock of the site he found.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
No kidding, You have to be shitting me that he
just did this. Yes, he did, in the middle of
the night. Yeah, to some poor deceased body.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
And he reveled in doing this too. It was also
like he liked the idea of someone finding his work.
It wasn't just dissecting the remains. He liked the thought
of like the terror going through another person's mind because
of something he had created. Okay, so outside the morgue,
though his life had become a strange mix of isolation

(18:25):
and secret gratification, he spent long afternoons wandering cemeteries too,
just that calming silence was everything, and when the weather
was mild enough, he would even sleep there, curled up
between graves, surrounded by the one environment he felt something
close to peace. So it's clear that his abuse and

(18:48):
upbringing certainly pushed him towards this, this life of you know,
the graves, the morgues, the bodies, the silence, that sort
of situation. But the connection I have yet to see
is where he gets that and then enjoys visceral body massacres. Yeah,

(19:09):
and the enjoyment of terrorizing other people.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
This is pretty messed up. But I can understand the
whole cemetery thing and thinking, you know, it's like a
place of peace and quiet in a sense for sure.
So there's certain bits in there, especially at home where
he has to walk on eggshells and stuff. He's allowed
to just be.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
There, I agree, But where it jumps from that to
the horrors because graveyards they're a place of peace, they
really are. Yes, there's dead there, but they're in peace.
They're laying, they're resting. It's a place of love and peace.
And he takes that and he turns it into this
obsession with blood, the obsession with instilling fear in other people.

(19:52):
That's the connection that I think he was born with
that love and lust for that.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, it definitely it goes way too far next level.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
So now back in town, he scavenged animal carcasses too,
and leftovers from butchers or veterinarians, and he'd take them
home in bags. In private, he relived the same sensations
that started with that guinea pig, the warmth, texture, and
the control. But soon even those dark actions would morph again.

(20:21):
He didn't just want to handle organs. He wanted the
thrill of a body still holding its pure warmth, of
a heart that had only recently stopped beating, or perhaps
was even still beating.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Oh gosh, this is getting scary.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
He began imagining what it would feel like to do
everything he'd done only with a fresh body, a fresh
human body, one that hadn't grown cold. Now, however, he
did carry a strange fear of horses, and that is
important for this. But with his new fascination, that would

(21:00):
turn around, and while it quickly became a curiosity. Instead,
he imagined what it would feel like to cut into
a body that size, one that could potentially mimic the
warmth and even the weight of a human torso. So,
in nineteen ninety two, under the guise of taking up hunting,
Frank applied for a license. It wasn't dear or a

(21:22):
small game he was interested in, though the moment the
license was approved, he purchased a firearm, and any illusion
of hunting as a hobby vanished. One afternoon, deep and
wooded area, far from anyone who might intervene, Frank found
exactly what he was waiting for. A lone horse grazing quietly.

(21:45):
He pulled up his rifle and pulled the trigger, shooting once,
watching the horse collapse to the ground, and approaching the
trembling body with calm, he knelt beside the horse, cut
it open, and reached deep inside the still warm cavity.

(22:06):
Later he described the experience as calming and almost peaceful,
as though the warmth around him soothed something violent inside
his chest. It was another moment that changed him, and
now he'd crossed that line with a large animal, the
barrier between him and his ultimate fantasy, well, at this

(22:28):
point it had all but vanished.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
That is so freak and disturbing. Oh my goodness, I
can't I can't even like handle listening to that, to
be honest. Fair enough, shit, was this a wild horse
or like someone's horse.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
I'm not actually too certain of that. I don't know,
Oh man, I'm assuming it was probably not a wild horse.
I don't know if Germany has wild horses, but I'm
assuming it was a domesticated horse.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Oh okay, because for some reason, I'm just getting like
such vivid visuals of this, which I just hate, and
that should not be something that's calming or soothing.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
No it's not. And I'm glad that you're getting those
visuals because that's what I'm trying to pay.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Oh well, thank you for that.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
You're welcome for that. So Frank began carrying his pistol
that he had everywhere with him. He began driving back
roads at night for no reason other than to see
who might be walking alone. If he saw someone standing
on the side of the highway, you know what, he
might slow down. And if he spotted a woman alone,
he might watch her. The truth was, harming animals had

(23:32):
become too easy, it was too predictable, and it wasn't enough,
not anymore, and by nineteen ninety four, the distance between
fantasy and reality had narrowed to a single choice. He
didn't exactly know when it was going to happen or
who it was going to be, but he knew the
opportunity would eventually walk right into his path and one

(23:55):
rainy day it did. That night, Catherine told Umps and
Cross Paths with Frank gust and it didn't begin like
the opening scene of a horror story. It was ordinary,
damp and uneventful, an evening where people hurry home through
rain without giving anyone around them much thought. Catherine was
twenty eight, a South African woman living in the Netherlands

(24:17):
and traveling through Europe. She was smart, independent, and used
to navigating unfamiliar places on her own. On a particular
evening in nineteen ninety four, when she found herself stranded
near a quiet stretch of rural road in Germany, she
was hoping someone would give her a lift back towards
town where she was staying, and when Frank pulled his
car over, well, he didn't look dangerous. He looked like

(24:39):
any other passing driver willing to help a traveler stuck
in bad weather. Catherine climbed in his car, grateful for
the ride, and the two of them made small talk
while the wipers dragged across the windshield. From the outside,
it could have been any casual interaction from strangers, but
inside Frank's mind, the moment felt entirely different. Everything he'd

(25:02):
imagined was finally within reach, and the rain, well, it
made it even easier. No witnesses or traffic, and no
one to question why a stranger had pulled over. He
drove her off the main route, turning down a smaller
lane that cut through a wooded area. Now Catherine assumed
he just knew a short cut or was avoiding a

(25:22):
flooded road, and that's why he was driving this way.
She didn't question it. At some point, Frank pulled the
car over on a quiet stretch of forest road and
stepped out for an unknown reason. Then he claimed he
dropped his keys outside and he was looking for them.
Catherine joined him to help, bending towards the ground in search,

(25:42):
and in that moment, when she was down into the
dirt looking around for those keys, he drew his pistol
and shot her from behind.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
That was too easy for him.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Hey, yep, one moment she's just simply helping look for keys,
and the next she's gone.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
That's fricking and sad, so to Frank.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
The murder itself wasn't the climax of this situation, though.
This was just the beginning of it all. He dragged
her deeper into the forest where the trees hid everything
he was about to do. He removed her clothing, sexually
violated her corpse. Then, moving with a calmness, he took

(26:23):
out his knife and opened her abdomen, sinking his hands
into the warmth. He'd imagined since childhood, the fantasies he
had practiced on animals and more corpses. It was all
now real, and the thrill was everything he dreamed of.
When he finished, he began staging her body. He severed

(26:46):
her head and hands, scattering them in different parts of
the woods. It wasn't just to hide her identity, though,
as it is in many other cases. Frank wanted whoever
it was who was going to find her to feel shaken, confused, horror,
all of it. And then he placed her torso where
it would be noticed sooner rather than later, letting nature

(27:08):
and chance do the rest, and it wouldn't take long
for her to be found. In fact, Catherine's remains were
discovered the very next day.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Goodness, gracious, this guy is about as messed up as
you get.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
Exactly why I'm trying to say. I don't think you
can teach or instill this into a person. I think
this was already in him.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, I'm just sitting here wide. I'd like just shocked.
I don't feel like a case has shocked me to
this extent for a while, because this is really really
fucked up.

Speaker 1 (27:40):
Yeah, it is so the state in which she'd been
left shocked. Everyone police believed at first that whoever did
this had medical training, and others assumed that there must
be more than one person involved. The level of violence
felt unreal, and it was extremely theatrical. Now, in the
days after Catherine's murder, something strange happened. Frank didn't try

(28:03):
to hide. He didn't go quiet or act paranoid. If anything,
he became a little more talkative. The killing had given
him the sensation he'd been chasing for years, but it
also left him buzzing with a need to share it,
almost like he wanted someone to pull the truth out
of them, like he needed to brag about it.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
It's like it gave him life.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, So instead of staying silent, he chose the one
person he believed might listen, his girlfriend. Her name was Asyl,
and she'd never seen anything violent or vicious from him.
Frank was withdrawn at times, awkward and brooding, but nothing
about him suggested he was capable of brutality, nothing like

(28:46):
what unfolded in the forest. So when he sat down
one day with her and calmly said that he had
killed a woman, she laughed it off. How else is
someone supposed to react when their quiet, strange boyfriend calmly said,
you know what, I'm a murderer.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Well, to be honest, I'm kind of surprised he even
has a girlfriend.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Fair now, she assumed he was just trying to shock her,
you know, maybe fishing for attention or attempting some sort
of dark joke. So Frank doubled down, and he tried
to tell her again, and he even showed her Catherine's
ID card that he had taken, proof that would have
settled off alarms for it, like basically anyone for most people.
But Azel still didn't believe him. The ID must be fake,

(29:29):
she thought, part of some odd disturbing prank. He's going
the extra mile to really sell this, And when the
disbelief well didn't fade, Frank took her to the very
place that he buried Catherine's severed hands.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Oh whoa, Okay, he really wants her to believe this.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
He does, He took her out there and began digging
in the dirt until he resurfaced her remains, or part
of her remains. Azel froze staring at these severed hands
coming out of the dirt, but not in fear. The
site paralyzed her even deeper into denial. She told herself

(30:07):
the hands couldn't be real. It had to belong to
a mannequin, or a prop or something. She went home
shaken and unsure what exactly to believe or even to do,
and instead of calling the police, she told a few
friends what Frank had said, and they too shrugged it off.
Frank was odd, sure, but a serial killer, no, impossible.

(30:28):
They dismissed him the same way that she did, and
they did nothing about it.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Oh, I do not like this because I'm assuming he
goes on to hurt more people and they literally could
have stopped this.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Uh wrong, Okay, that is that's a piss off right there.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
So meanwhile, Frank kept pushing outwards, almost as though he
were begging someone to intervene. He confessed again, not to
a stranger, but this time to his mother. It happened
during a casual evening at home when his mother Dagmar
was eating tarot cards. The death card appeared and Frank
blurted out that he had killed this woman, a hitchhiker,

(31:07):
and he framed it as an accident at first, but
the details spilled out in a way that didn't fit
any sort of accident. His mother listened, confused and brushed
it off, just like everyone else did so far. Frank
was dramatic. Sometimes he told odd stories. Surely he didn't
mean this literally. Frank had essentially waved a crimson red
flag of blood in front of other people. He gave

(31:30):
them details, he showed them evidence, He walked one to
the actual crime scene and dug up body parts. But
each time he reached out, people recoiled from the truth
and chose denial over action. No one filed a report,
no one asked follow up questions. They simply went back
to their lives, believing that the real monsters in the

(31:51):
world were far away from them.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
Well, I mean, he did choose people that loved him, right,
so true, they of course wouldn't want to believe this.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
But if you have severed hands, oh okay, well that
being from the dirt, I know at that.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Point, like even if it was you and we've been
together a long time. I'd be like, you fucked up.
I'm phone at the police now.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
In the following weeks, Frank slid back into a version
of everyday life that looked perfectly ordinary from the outside,
as though he simply stepped over line and then continued walking.
After separating from Azel, Frank moved into the next phase
of his life, one that looked somewhat stable. At some
point he began a new relationship, though her name was

(32:36):
never released publicly, and the two eventually married. Two neighbors.
He looked settled, a man with a steady job, a husband,
someone who blended into the rhythm of the working class
life without attracting any sort of attention. Nothing about his
domestic routine hinted at the violence brewing under the surface.
If he came home withdrawn her irritable, people assumed it

(32:57):
was work stress. We all go through that. When he
claimed the basement of his house as his private space,
no one questioned it either. Behind that closed door, his
fantasies would continue to evolve. That basement was his private world,
the only space where the facade dropped. While his wife

(33:17):
tended to their daughter upstairs, Frank dissected animals behind a
locked door. He hunted at night, returned home with carcasses,
and used the quiet hours to peel back the layers
of fantasies that had been with him since childhood. The
violence didn't fade after Catherine's murder. In fact, it's no
surprise to say it only intensified instead. Being a husband

(33:41):
didn't steadi him. Being a father didn't anchor him. If anything,
the contrast made the violence sharper and more necessary. By
the mid nineties, the double life was fully formed. One
Frank kissed his daughter good night, and the other began
driving through red light districts after dark. He didn't outwardly
stalk anyone yet, but he was one and waiting, letting

(34:02):
his mind fill in the details of the scenario he
wanted to create, and he soon began spending more time
near Essen's Central station, a busy hub where people came
and went without leaving much of a footprint. Frank blended
in easily.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
There.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
A man waiting in a car raised no suspicions, and
one evening he spotted a woman Savena. She was thirty
years old. The sex trade in Germany was legal, but dangerous.
And women working around the station were used to cars
pulling up, windows rolling down, and quick negotiations would be
decided in seconds. When Frank eased his vehicle towards her,

(34:40):
she stepped closer without hesitation. To her, it was just
another routine job. She discussed a price, climbed into the
passenger seat, and the car pulled away. He drove towards
a quieter industrial zone, far from the bustle of the
station and the patrol patterns of police. There were no
witnesses or cameras, darkened side streets, and the low hum

(35:02):
of passing freight trains. Once he stopped the car, the
shift happened quickly. He reached for his weapon and shot
her before she could ever react. The moment she slumped
against the seat, the familiar script took over. The necrophiliac
compulsions and horror all unfolded in that car, and then

(35:25):
he pulled her out, dragged her to a nearby clearing,
and set to work. He mutilated her body in the
same cold precision, working quietly and methodically, and when he
was done, he positioned her remains, deliberately, arranging her in
a way that was designed to force attention He wanted

(35:45):
the scene to be found quickly, and he wanted the
horror to spread. Someone discovering the body was part of
that ritual and part of his satisfaction, and by morning,
a passerby stumbled upon the scene. Police officers arrived soon,
and it didn't take long to notice the similarities between

(36:05):
this murder and Catherine's. The brutality, the staging, the intentional
shock value. It all matched. While they were not prepared
to declare a serial killer outright, the idea certainly lingered,
and the investigators knew they weren't dealing with an impulsive,
one time killer. It was too violent and too personal.

(36:26):
Frank watched the news coverage the way other people might
watch sports highlights of their favorite team, with quiet satisfaction.
The police were beginning to see a pattern, sure, but
the pattern recognition meant nothing when the man responsible looked
like everyone else and no one believed that he was
a killer. Two years passed before he would kill again,

(36:47):
but the pause didn't signal restraint. Frank had settled deeper
into the illusion of normalcy. He went to work, came home,
shared meals, and slept in sane bed as his wife.
Yet underneath that routine. This compulsion hadn't faded. In fact,
he'd simply been waiting for the right moment when it
would resurface once again. Her name was Sandra, a twenty

(37:09):
six year old sex worker who operated around the same
red light district where Savena had operated On most nights.
Women worked the strip. They knew which clients were safe,
They knew which were regulars, and which should be better
off left alone. But like any other time in his life,
Frank didn't stand out as dangerous. Sandra approached his car,

(37:31):
He offered payment, and she accepted. He drove them out
of the city the way he did in the past,
following familiar roads until the glow of the street lamps
faded behind them, and this time, though he didn't rush,
he wanted the build up. When he pulled over and
turned off the ignition of the vehicle, he asked if
she would agree to being tied up now. Sandra didn't

(37:54):
flinch at the request, though some clients, well, they like
to use restraints. It's not exactly uncommon, really, and so
what she did was negotiate a higher price, and Frank
quickly agreed, knowing that he wouldn't be paying it.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Anyways, Yeah, it didn't matter to him at all.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Once she was in the back seat, he used rope,
tape and cable ties, the exact tools that he'd been
using when rehearsing in his basement for years. In private,
Sanders still thought she was fulfilling just a simple request,
a fantasy, not stepping into a trap. It was only
when she was fully restrained to the tone shift Frank

(38:30):
began talking with a strange calmness, describing to her what
he wanted to do, what he really wanted to do,
how he imagined opening her chest, and what he thought
of beating heart might feel like in his hands.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Oh man.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
Now she was, of course terrified, but still she thought, well,
he might just be role playing again, that's kind of
part of her job. The fantasy is all that is,
very much so part of sex work. She didn't realized
what he was speaking was truthful. And then something else happened.
In the middle of the assault, Frank suddenly stopped. He

(39:09):
pulled out his own rifle and placed it against his throat,
and he told her to pull the trigger. Things were
all too real at this point, and Sandra tried to
talk him down. Terrified but still hoping that she could just,
you know, get out of this situation if she stayed calm,
and for a moment it seemed like he might just
unravel completely. But whatever crack had opened closed again just

(39:32):
as quickly. He removed the gun from her hands, cut
the restraints, stepped back, as if he had suddenly decided
to just let her go, and she didn't hesitate. She
bolted from the car, with her clothes torn, running barefoot
towards the road, and she only got a few meters
before Frank lifted the rifle and fired three shots, and

(39:54):
Sandra collapsed dead.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
I thought that she might get away.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Unlike the earlier murders, he didn't spend long at this scene.
He mutilated her, but not in the same ritualistic detail
he had given Catherine or Sphenia. The staging was simpler,
a little rushed, as if the emotional tone had you know,
it had upset his pattern. Still, the signatures remained. It

(40:21):
was unmistakable enough for investigators to link it. Within minutes
of arriving. News of a third victim spread fast. The
public was already on edge and slipped into full on panic.
Women avoided traveling alone at night patrols were increasing, and
investigators privately admitted they were, in fact now dealing with
a serial killer who showed no signs of slowing down.

(40:42):
The brutality, staging, the way the victims were left to
be found, all of it pointed towards a twisted spree.
Frank meanwhile, returned home before dawn, cleaning himself up, and
slipped back into the quiet rhythms of family life once again.
In fact, Sandra's murder should have been the point where
Frank lost control, where you know, those cracks begin to

(41:04):
show more and more, where someone grows bolder, they get sloppier,
where someone close to him might spot something that didn't
add up. But instead, life carried on with its usual rhythm.
He still went to work, came home with his wife
and daughter, still blended into everyday life so convincingly that
no one questioned the long hours he spent alone or
you know, away at nights. Around this time, his wife's aunt, Girlinde,

(41:28):
entered the picture more closely, i should say, Newly divorced
and struggling with loneliness. She reached out to Frank and
his wife for support. She'd always being close to them,
especially their daughter, and the idea of having family nearby
felt comforting. When she suggested that, you know what, they
could stay for a while with her. It was family
pulling together during a difficult time. Frank agreed, and within

(41:52):
days the three of them had settled into Gerlinda's home.
The arrangement was temporary, but it created a sense of
closeness was needed, and one Frank quietly used to his advantage.
Shortly after they arrived, he laid down one condition he
needed the basement. The basement was to be off limits.

(42:13):
No one was to enter, no matter what. His explanation
was vague, something about privacy, needing a personal space. But Girlnde, well,
she didn't question it. Neither did his wife. The basement
became his sanctuary, and whatever he did down there remained hidden.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
How do you not question that? I'd be like, hell, no,
you're not getting a full basement just to yourself, and
I can't even know what is going on down there.
Fair Yeah, you would not be okay with that either.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
No, I'd be like, what I want to go down there?

Speaker 2 (42:41):
What's down there?

Speaker 1 (42:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (42:42):
It would make both of us go and like have
to look.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Probably definitely Now Frank's compulsions were still operating in that basement.
He was still killing animals, still reenacting the fantasies, and
the longer he stayed in her home, the more openly
he seemed to carry those urges. And one night, long
after the others had gone to bed, Girlinde and Frank
found themselves alone in the living room. The divorce had

(43:06):
shaken her confidence, and she began talking openly about her loneliness.
Frank listened as she spoke, and he began describing parts
of his own past too, not the sanitized versions that
he would tell most people, but the darker ones that
he had mentioned before. At first, she didn't understand what
he was saying, the cruelty to animals, the more break ins,

(43:27):
the violence that he claimed to be committing. It sounded impossible,
and when he began describing the murders in detail, she
dismissed it as morbid fantasies or disturbing attempts at humor,
just like anyone else had did before. However, he didn't
stop talking, and the more that she pushed back on
the topic, the more serious he became, and eventually she

(43:51):
came to realize he wasn't joking. Something shifted in her expression,
a flicker of fear, disbelief maybe, whatever it was, Frank
read it instantly, and in that moment his internal balance changed.
After that Girlnde disappeared within days.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Oh okay, here, I was finally thinking this shit was
going to stop. But no, she.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
Wasn't the kind of person to vanish without explanation. Her
car was still home, belongings were untouched, and her routine
had just while it ended abruptly, Frank and his wife
claimed they had no idea where she had gone, And
in the months after she vanished, the tension inside the
family changed in subtle but noticeable ways. His wife avoided
the basement well entirely. Sure she had asked questions or

(44:42):
something before, but she was not even wanting to go
near it, it seemed now.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
And sorry, this was the wife's act. Or yeah, the
wife's act correct, okay now.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Meanwhile, his mother, Dagmar she also grew increasingly uneasy. The
confession he had made during their terarot session still in
her mind, refusing to fade no matter how many times
she tried to convince herself that he'd only been joking
or she was rationalizing it. She replayed the moment constantly,
the shuffle of the cards, the death card rising to
the top, and Frank watching her move and deal this,

(45:16):
and then saying he had killed a woman. It sat
in her stomach like a stone. Everyone else dismissed it.
His girlfriend, everyone, even she herself, had chosen not to
believe something so unthinkable. But now his wife's aunt, Gerlinda,
had vanished, and the timing gnawed at her. She didn't
go to police, though she couldn't bring herself to not

(45:39):
to cross that line. But she did something she hadn't
done before. She told a trusted friend exactly what Frank
had once confessed to her. She told her about the
day the tarot cards, and then about how Girlinde had vanished,
and how the coincidence it no longer felt like a coincidence. Thankfully,
the friend didn't dismiss her, She didn't laugh or wave

(46:02):
it off like every single other person had so far. Instead,
she went straight to the police.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Finally someone has some sense to them. Hey, yes, well
the aunt would have done something too, for sure. Yes,
and he saw that.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Which is why he put a stop to it. Now
the police listened, and the brutality of the recent murders,
the victim profiles. All of these things seemed to align
too precisely to ignore, and for the first time, Frank
Gerse landed squarely on the investigator's radar. They approached Frank calmly.
At first. They just asked a few questions, and they
said they wanted a DNA sample. It was a small request,

(46:39):
standard procedure, nothing to worry about if he's innocent, right,
But Frank said no. He didn't hesitate either, it was
just a flat out refusal. And then he added a
sentence that froze them where they stood, saying, quote, you
don't need my DNA. I'm the man you're looking for.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Oh okay, I wasn't an expecting that.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
Yeah. The admission came so calmly that one of the
officers actually like thought they'd misheard him. They're like, wait,
what'd you say?

Speaker 2 (47:08):
Well, that doesn't happen.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Yeah, But Frank didn't stop. He began talking about the murders,
about picking up the women at essen station, about the
forest clearings, about where he left bodies, all of it.
He described details that had never been released publicly, angles
of cuts, objects left behind, the way the remains were arranged.
He spoke with the same flat tone that anyone would

(47:31):
use when discussing I don't know the weather in small
talk with a coworker standing at the water cooler. It
was just a matter of fact to him. When officers
entered the basement at Gerlundy's home for the first time,
everything fell into place. The walls were lined with animal hides,
carefully scraped and preserved. Tools were laid out on tables,

(47:53):
a collection of knives, saws, restraints, tapes, and even components
of beginnings of homemade explosives. The scene was well, it
was organized, methodical. It was the private studio of a
man who'd spent years refining his violence in secrecy. What

(48:14):
they didn't find was Girlinde. Her disappearance remained the one
piece Frank never fully explained. He hinted many times at
what he had done, and investigators believed that she was
dismembered and discarded across multiple locations, but her remains were
never recovered.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
That's interesting that he would just be so free with
everything else. But I guess because you know, she was
kind of family, and he just decided that he would
not share the full details of that one.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
I don't know. For some reason yet might have been
more personal or who knows.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
Yeah, or he didn't want his wife to know the
extent of what he did to her or something. I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah, I'm not too sure. I don't think he would
have been that personal. I don't think he has that
in him. I think he's too much of a psychopath
to really care about his wife's emotions, honestly, I really do.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Well, or maybe even I just had this thought, like
he wasn't super present for that one, right, It wasn't
like a planned out one. It was sort of spur
of the moment, and so it didn't have the meaning
to him.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
All of them were spur of the moment, I.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Guess, but hers was less then. I feel like he.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
Waited for an opportunity to present itself to him, and
yet in this case he was forced to act.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
Yeah, so it is a bit different.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
It is different, yes. Now, When detectives brought him in
for formal questioning, there was no struggle or bargaining. In fact,
they tried to begin with procedural questions, but Frank took
control almost immediately. He didn't wait for accusations, He didn't
wait for evidence. He simply repeated what he'd already told them.
He was responsible all of it. The women at the

(49:51):
essen station, the hitchhiker, the staging dismemberment. He listed dates, locations, movements,
and tools with clarity that made it obvious he had
reheard first these events in his mind over and over.
He wasn't boasting, though, he was just spilling it all,
like pressure had built up and it was simply time
to let it out. One investigator slid crime scene photos

(50:14):
across the table, asking him to confirm which images of
remains and body parts matched which victim. Frank nodded without emotion,
naming each woman quietly and matching photos of each part
to a person so matter of factly, Even though the
authorities had struggled for years to identify some of them,

(50:36):
he knew.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
It was just easy for him.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
Yeah, And when asked why he had positioned and arranged
a body so deliberately, he explained that he liked the
moment someone discovered what he'd done. He liked knowing that
the horror spread outward, affecting strangers he'd never met. It
wasn't just the killing alone, it was the aftermath of
all of it. That satisfied him. They asked him about Linde, too,

(51:01):
but that was the one topic he danced around. He
didn't deny harming her, he didn't deny disposing of her,
but he never offered specifics, not where she was, not
what happened, not whether there was a struggle or anything.
It was as though he considered that different as we
were discussing, maybe more of a private story, who knows,
but he had no intention of sharing it. Regardless, with

(51:24):
all of this, before they even had time to carry
the evidence out of that basement, investigators knew for certain
they had finally unmasked the killer. But the mystery was
no longer who he was. It was why he decided
to confess so openly, and when asked, Frank gave a
very simple answer, quote, no one ever believed me before

(51:46):
I told them, all of them, but they laughed or
ignored me. You're the first people who listened. In that moment,
police realized he hadn't just suddenly confessed to this. He'd
been dropping confessions for years. This wasn't something out of
the blue. It wasn't a surprise, something that no one
could have predicted. People knew, but the problem was not

(52:09):
a single one of them had taken him seriously. Now
at least someone finally had. The trial for Frank gust
began in September of the year two thousand and By
the time he entered the courtroom, the case against him
was overwhelming, to say the least. The confessions alone were
enough to secure conviction, but the physical evidence taken from

(52:29):
the basement, DNA matches, from crime scenes, all of it
aligned with his own chilling account. There was no loopholes
to exploit and no arguments that could soften what he
had done. Even his own lawyers, well, they seemed to
understand that the proceedings were little more than a formality.
There was nothing they could do. Frank walked into that
courtroom and he offered the same quiet expression that he

(52:50):
maintained during his arrest. What unsettled observers most was the
absence of emotion, no remorse or theatrics, just a man
sitting almost comfortably in the space where his violence had
finally been acknowledged. Psychiatrists testified in the early trial, and
their conclusions were stark. Frank was a sexual sadist with

(53:12):
necrophilia tendencies so deeply rooted that treatment offered little hope
of change. One expert described his compulsions as chronically anchored,
meaning they weren't impulses that he could outgrow or suppress
long term. Another stated plainly that he posed quote an
ongoing and extreme risk to society end quote, with a

(53:33):
psychological profile that made rehabilitation nearly impossible. Now, Frank didn't
attempt to dispute any of this either. In fact, when
given a chance to address the court, he didn't apologize.
He didn't express guilt. Instead, he made a request. He
asked for the death penalty. Unfortunately for him, though Germany

(53:53):
had abolished capital punishment decades earlier, long before he was
even born, but Frank still asked for it. He told
the court that being alive was dangerous.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Okay, someone even asking for this.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Though, Yeah, he's telling them. He's like, this is dangerous
me being alive and is not for him either. He's
saying it's dangerous for others.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
So, he explained that his fantasies hadn't faded during the
months in custody, and that he doubted they ever would.
He if ever released, he warned he would kill again.
He said it without anger, without drama, without an attempt
of shock. This wasn't a man trying to enlist a reaction.
It was simple and honest.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Yeah, it was just the way it was.

Speaker 1 (54:38):
Yep. But the judge reminded him that the execution, while
it wasn't an option, the harshest penalty available was life
in prison, and even then parole reviews were in fact
part of the system. Frank responded by saying he hoped
they would never let him out. He said it would
be a mistake, one that would cost another life.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
What, Oh my goodness, I can't okay, And okay, I'll
just keep listening for now, all.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Right, Okay. So the courtroom sat in uneasy silence as
he spoke, very much so as you're trying to sit
here in uneasy silence right now.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
Family members of victims watched him with a mixture of
grief and disbelief, trying to process the fact that the
man responsible for their nightmares was sitting so calmly in
front of them and warning them of a future to come.
On September twenty first, two thousand, Frank gust was convicted
of four murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. Officials emphasized

(55:39):
the severity of his crimes, calling them amongst the most
brutal the region had ever seen. Reporters outside the courthouse
struggled to summarize the case in neat headlines. Some focused
on the comparison to Jack the Ripper, others with his
necrophilia confessions, and a few on his request for his
own execution inside the prison system. While Frank briefly agreed

(56:01):
to therapy, he lasted six months before abruptly quitting. His
explanation was as flat as everything else. He said therapy
wouldn't change him, and he didn't want people wasting resources
on someone who wasn't fixable. After the sentencing, Frank was
transferred to j VA Whirl, a high security prison known
for housing some of Germany's most dangerous offenders. His marriage

(56:24):
unsurprisingly collapsed after the weight of the truth, with his
wife cutting off contact, divorcing him, and left to rebuild
a life outside the shadow of what he had done.
For most people, that would have marked the end of
any intimate connection, but Frank found one of those people
who were willing to connect with a killer in prison,
someone willing to write him, and over time those letters

(56:46):
shifted into something resembling a relationship, and eventually he remarried
from behind bars. It was a strange continuation of the
double life that he maintained for years, a man capable
of playing partner and monster at the same time. Then,
in twenty twenty came a decision that's done the public

(57:07):
and members of law enforcement. Despite everything he said about himself,
despite his refusal to participate in treatment, and despite the
violent nature of his crimes, Frank was granted escort day release.
Oh no, under German law, even high risk inmates maybe

(57:27):
granted short supervised trips outside prison walls as part of
a gradual reintegration process. For someone like Frank, those crimes
involved sexual sadism, necrophilia, and mutilation, and it felt unthinkable
to let someone like that out for even a day.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
Well, yeah, it can't just be that allowed for everyone
in there.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
Yeah, but that's the thing, it is, Okay. The idea
of him walking through the city streets, even with guards
at his side, sparked absolute outrage. Victims families voiced their
fear of the system was, you know, the system was
forgetting the severity of what he'd done. That's what they
were upset with But German officials they defended the decision.

(58:11):
They're basically saying that, you know what, it's tightly controlled,
it's necessary for long term treatment. And to them, reintegration
was part of a process, not a reward. They're not
rewarding him, They're doing what needs to happen.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
In their mind, and it's like, yeah, rule is a rule.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Yeah, Frank didn't fight the conditions. He followed every single rule,
took every supervised step, and returned to his cell without
any incident. Yet nothing about his compliance reassured the people
who remembered his warnings. According to reports, he never recanted
his claim that he would kill if released again. He

(58:48):
never softened it or tried to convince anyone that he
had changed. Still, the calendar continues to move forward. Under
German sentencing law, even life imprisonment includes a point at
which parole can be considered, and Frank has reached that
threshold years ago already, which means the debate over his
potential release is not hypothetical anymore. His official release date

(59:12):
is listed as potentially being twenty twenty six, depending on
evaluations with officials, and no confirmation has been made publicly
about whether parole will be granted or not. What is
known is this, The applications exist, reviews have been conducted,
and evaluations are ongoing behind closed doors. Even now, decades

(59:38):
after his arrest, the story of Frank Guss doesn't rest quietly.
In fact, it, with the approach of the new year,
is only gaining a louder voice now with a monster
such as him. Investigators have of course mapped his childhood,
psychologists dissected his compulsions, and journalists traced every step of
his crimes, and still the core of his brutality and

(01:00:01):
impulses remain unreachable and a mystery. We don't know how
he got to become what he is. And most interesting
of all, he didn't hide behind excuses. He didn't claim
that he was innocent. He didn't even attempt to have
the pretense of rehabilitation on his side. Instead, he described himself,

(01:00:22):
plainly and factually for what he is. He too, knows
that he's a monster, and he's not pretending otherwise. That
certainly is what unsettles people most about his potential release
as it draws near. It's the awareness that even he
believes nothing in him can change. Cases like this force

(01:00:45):
society to confront a question that is, while it has
no comfortable answer. Is every offender capable of rehabilitation or
are some people simply too dangerous to ever risk setting free.
Frank has stated therapy is pointless, and more than once
that if he ever walks out of prison, he would

(01:01:05):
kill again. It's rare for a criminal to speak so
directly about their own danger, and rareer still for the
possibility of release to appear on the horizon. Anyways. That
is why his name sparks so much fear. It isn't
because people have forgotten what he did. It's because they
remember all too well, and because that threat of that

(01:01:26):
he once posed it has never been convincingly shut away.
He's still a threat to the public. Whether he is
ultimately granted freedom or kept behind bars is a decision
that is in the hands of courts, psychiatrists, and parole boards.
But for those who followed the case, and for those
who lived through the years of the rhine Ruer Ripper

(01:01:49):
and while he was still out there, one thought remains
long after the details have faded. Some warnings aren't spoken
to frighten others. They're spoken simply because they're true. And
Frank Gerst more than anyone, has made it clear exactly
who he is. And that's the story of the Rhine

(01:02:13):
or Ripper.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
That's it. I feel like I need more because you're
almost just like at this point where you've lost control
and he might be getting out and I don't know
what to think about that, and I feel like I
can't have a story end. I need some more shit.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
He could be free in as little of one month's
one month's time. In one month, he could be free
killing again.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Oh okay, because I can kind of understand in the sense,
like you know, there are rules, right and like yes,
people who commit crimes do fall under like an umbrella
of sorts and they follow, you know, this path or whatever.
But it can't be black and white for everyone in
that situation. It just can't be, because then you're going

(01:03:00):
to have this person who literally they're going to release
him and he is going to do it again.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Yes, I agree. So that's where that line comes in.
Where is that line drawn in the sand? And that's
what that uncomfortable question is, you know, who do we release?
Can everyone be rehabilitated? And that sort of questioning is
right now in the hands in this case of the
law of psychiatrists, of the courts, the parole boards, everyone,

(01:03:25):
they're trying to evaluate that now, whether they evaluate it
to the truest extent of reality and the facts, or
if they're simply going to go through and say, well,
step ABCD and now he gets released and that's that
and they don't do their job or do diligence. I
guess we'll find out.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Well, honestly, yeah, like the people who are on the
parole board or whatever, they can't decide to let him
out because he hasn't been following like all the steps
that he's supposed to be in there right, Like he's
not doing the therapy or trying to like I.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Don't believe the therapy was mandated.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
Oh, for the love of God, I'm trying to in
my head just be like, no, it's not gonna happen, okay,
and you're not allowing me to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
The problem is, as far as the court see, he
was given life in prison, he.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
Served it, he hasn't caused any issues.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
In there, so therefore he has done his time and
gets to walk. Theoretically speaking, I'm not sure that's exactly
what's going to be now, psychiatrists have said in the
past that he is a high risk individual. That's where
the things may change. If they still see him as
a high risk individual, they still see the potential to

(01:04:37):
harm public, in danger for other people. That's where things
can change and they can say, you know what, we
can't let you free because you're just simply too dangerous.
You will hurt again.

Speaker 2 (01:04:46):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
Well yeah, but that's where due diligence matters. If people
just simply are stamping papers because hey, he served time,
he gets to walk, that's just that, then that's gonna,
unfortunately serve as most likely some more people will lose
their lives.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
Why are they doing this to people? It needs to
just be no, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
Not happening, I agree, and hopefully that's going to be
the case.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
Huh holy shit, this is just insane. How old is
this man? Because he actually probably wouldn't be very old
either at this point, fifty sixties, I'm thinking, because yeah,
he was like twenty in his twenties when he was
doing these offenses.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
So he was born in sixty nine, and as of
twenty twenty five, he is fifty six years old, still
very much so young enough to be committing mm hmmm.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
Well, and also that's fairly young that how long can
this go on? I feel, oh my gosh, at some
point like he could very easily get out then, because
that's a lot of years yet left to live.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Yeah, even if they keep him behind for another life sentence,
he'd still walk free.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
Holy okay, Wow, that's really quite terrifying.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
So yeah, we might bring in the New Year with
this monster into the world. Hopefully, hopefully the world has
a strong enough voice to keep him behind bars forever.
Hopefully there's people in positions of power prevent him from
walking free. Yeah, that is my New Year's wish for
him to never be let go.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
I am going to sit here and believe that he
will not be being let out. That's that's my thought.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
I'm crossing my fingers on that for sure. But either way,
hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode, and if you have
any way of, hey, you know what, getting in touch
with maybe people on parrole board, maybe petitions out there.
I'm going to look and if there's any petitions I
can find, I'm going to be putting it in the
description of this podcast because I think if we can
do our part to keep this man locked up forever.

(01:06:44):
We need to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
Yeah, well, especially the thing that's and I said at
the beginning of this that your intro sounded really alarming,
is that it's so the time is so close. And
also like he asked to never be out. Yeah, so
that's what's just so alarming about all this, Like this
was his wish. He wanted to the death penalty. He
hasked to be executed because he knew. Yeah, so that's

(01:07:10):
why this is just yeah, it's really unsettling.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
So anyways, with that, thank you for being here. Check
out the description of this podcast for more. And like
I said, if I can find some sort of petition,
it will be down there. But yeah, we appreciate you.
Thank you for being here, and until next time, stay wicked.

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Frank Gust - The Rhein-Ruhr Ripper

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Frank Gust - The Rhein-Ruhr Ripper