Werner Pinzner was born on April 27, 1947, in Bramfeld, Hamburg, the son of a radio mechanic and a grocery chain store manager. He dropped out of school in 1964 and spent two years at sea with a Christian maritime organization, followed by short stints as a driver and sailor. An early attempt to join the German Armed Forces failed due to previous convictions, and by 1970, Pinzner had already served his first prison sentence. He married young and fathered a daughter, but struggled to build a stable life. After his daughter’s birth, he worked various jobs—scaffolder, tiler, butcher—but also drifted into petty crime. In August 1975, he participated in a supermarket robbery that ended with a fatal shooting by one of his accomplices. Arrested a month later, Pinzner was sentenced to ten years in prison.

While incarcerated, he met his second wife, Jutta, and became connected to Hamburg’s red-light underworld. The open-prison policy at Vierlande Correctional Facility enabled him to acquire drugs and even hide a .38 Special revolver in his locker—security checks were so lax, lockers were never searched. By 1984, while on day release from prison, Pinzner was already mingling with pimps, drug dealers, and organized crime figures from St. Pauli. This world, notorious for its violence and vice, would become the backdrop for Pinzner’s rise as Germany’s most infamous contract killer of the 1980s.

After his release from prison in 1984, Werner Pinzner quickly became the most feared hitman in Hamburg’s red-light district, carrying out contract killings for rival pimps and criminal syndicates. The early-1980s St. Pauli district was locked in violent turf wars between the established GMBH gang and the younger, flashier Nutella Gang, with both sides employing bikers like the Hells Angels for muscle. Pinzner’s main client was the notorious pimp “Wiener Peter,” who commissioned him for several targeted assassinations.

Pinzner’s first confirmed murder was that of Jehuda Arzi on July 7, 1984, in Kiel—a killing ordered by Arzi’s ex-wife and daughter after a failed attempt to simply intimidate him. Over the next year, Pinzner killed brothel partner Peter “Bayern Peter” Pfeilmaier (September 12, 1984), and Dietmar “Lackschuh” Traub (November 1984), both shot after being lured into isolated drug deals. On Easter Monday, April 8, 1985, Pinzner and an accomplice killed rival brothel owner Waldemar Dammer and his manager Ralf Kühne at Dammer’s house in Schnelsen. Police investigations later determined his accomplice actually fired the fatal shots, but Pinzner confessed to the crimes. Throughout his spree, Pinzner used a .38 Special revolver, always returning the weapon to his unsupervised prison locker after each murder.

Hamburg police, under the newly formed Department 65 (Fachdirektion 65), recognized a pattern in the killings—a string of brothel-linked murders with matching ballistics. Undercover work and statements from prostitutes eventually led to the arrest of Pinzner, “Wiener Peter,” and another accomplice on April 15, 1986, with the murder weapon found at the scene. During his initial interrogation, Pinzner confessed to at least eight murders, later raising that number to eleven, and promised more details in exchange for time alone with his wife. He became a media sensation, with reporters paying for exclusive access to his story and personal life.

On July 29, 1986, during questioning at Hamburg police headquarters, Pinzner’s wife—assisted by his lawyer—smuggled in a loaded revolver. Declaring a hostage situation, Pinzner shot the lead prosecutor, Wolfgang Bistry. As police scrambled outside, Pinzner called his daughter to say goodbye, handed his watch to his lawyer for his daughter, and, in a final act, shot his wife Jutta before turning the gun on himself. Bistry died of his injuries the next day. The sensational murder-suicide shocked Germany, exposed serious failures in Hamburg’s justice system, and forced the resignation of top local politicians.