Ten years ago the cruel acts came to lightHere women were tortured and died in agony – RTL reporter in the Höxter horror house

The crimes from the Höxter horror house

The RTL reporter remembers that she was “curious” back in December 2016 when she made her way to Höxter to inspect the house: “What would it look like there? What would it smell like? How would it feel to stand in the place where such incredible suffering was inflicted on women?”

The two had lured several women to the building in the Bosseborn district with personal ads, Spiegel summarizes. Angelika W. had pretended to be her ex-husband's sister, and Wilfried W. swore that she loved each of the women. But then the tide turned for the women and they had to submit to confusing rules of conduct. If they violated the rules, they were punished. Among other things, their hair was torn out, the women were chained to the radiator, beaten, kicked and scalded. Anika W. (†33) and Susanne F. (†41) did not survive the atrocities.

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On April 27, 2016, according to Neue Westfälische, several officers arrested Wilfried and Angelika W. in the rented house at Saatweg 6, and a day later a judge issued an arrest warrant for manslaughter. Over the course of several months, unbelievable, gruesome details about the crimes the ex-couple are accused of continued to come to light.

Women massively tortured – RTL reporter at the scene of the horror

RTL reporter Sarina Sprengelmeyer remembers the shivers that ran down her spine during her filming in the rooms, the stable and the basement. They didn't just have to do with the winter cold: “But also with the horror, disgust and bewilderment that I experienced when I really became aware of what had happened there at the crime scene.”

She found the atmosphere in the house to be uncomfortable and the furnishings were careless. There was disorder and dirt everywhere, lots of boxes standing around. By the time the 38-year-old was allowed to enter the Höxter horror house, the forensics had long since been completed. “But I’m sure that it was similarly oppressive, cramped and run-down before,” she says. Seemingly everyday things in this house told a gruesome story on site: “There was the radiator on the upper floor to which the victims were chained. Then as now, I interpreted abrasion on the heating pipe as a sign that the women may have tried to free themselves.”

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One of the dead women is said to have dismembered the couple and hidden them in the freezer under peas and meat until the body parts were finally burned and spread as ashes on the side of the road, according to Time. Sarina Sprengelmeyer also saw this freezer: “How a person can be capable of killing another and then cutting them up will forever remain a mystery to me.”

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Victim died in the bathroom after being abused

Sarina Sprengelmeyer especially can't forget the bathroom in the basement. It was “cold, dirty, unhygienic” there. The window was bricked up, no sound could come out. Victim Anika W. was chained at this location and ultimately died as a result of the abuse, reports the Westfalen-Blatt. “The thought that the young woman was being tortured here was unbearable and at the same time hard to understand for me at the moment I was actually standing in this room,” said the RTL reporter. “The worst thing for me was that she died in this terrible room all alone and probably without any hope.”

The trial against Anika W's tormentor began on October 26, 2016 in the Paderborn regional court. After two years of trial, Angelika and Wilfried W. were convicted of murder by omission and bodily harm. Sarina Sprengelmeyer was also in the courtroom at the time. “I didn’t feel any remorse or regret from either of them.”explains the experienced journalist. She experienced the defendants as calm and motionless. “I remember it was difficult for me to wrap my head around the fact that these two were the people whose homes I saw and who abused, tortured and killed these poor women,” said the RTL reporter.

Angelika W. received a prison sentence of 13 years, her ex-husband was sent to prison for eleven years, and preventive detention following imprisonment was ordered in October 2023.

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Höxter's horror house was demolished

The Höxter horror house was demolished in 2022but what happened in it is unforgettable. Sarina Sprengelmeyer's life was also lastingly influenced by her reporting on one of Germany's most spectacular criminal cases. “As a journalist, I'm used to reporting on criminal cases from a distance and professional distance. I rarely let details get to me, otherwise I probably wouldn't be able to do the job at all,” says the 38-year-old. But in the course of her job, she rarely comes as close to crime scenes as she did when inspecting a house. For her, this makes the acts “even worse, even more real, even more incomprehensible”.

And one thought has been bothering the RTL reporter personally since her assignment in Höxter: “Because I am a woman myself and I kept asking myself during these shoots: What would have happened if I had been one of the victims?”

Sources used: RTL research, Mirror, Time, New Westphalian, Westfalen-Blatt