A British man has bought the German “house of horror” in which a couple who are currently on trial allegedly tortured and killed women.
Dave Macleod, 50, is a builder who lives near the village of Höxter in northwest Germany. He has lived in the country since 1989.
He purchased the 1930s property for 5,000 euros (about $5,300) despite its grisly past as the venue for a string of crimes which have shocked the public in Germany.
The murders have made national headlines and the defendants, a divorced couple named as Wilfried W, 46, and Angelika W, 48, have been on trial since October.
They are said to have lured women to the house, which they had rented since 2010, using lonely hearts advertisements. Appalling details of the murders emerged at their trial this week.
The judge was shown photographs found on mobile phones and computers in the house in which naked victims with shaved heads lay bound on the floor.
One of the victims, Annika W, 33, married Wilfried W in 2013 and died in August 2014 after a fall in the house. Prosecutors say her body was frozen, cut up, burnt in a fireplace and the ashes scattered from a moving car.
The couple were caught last April after Wilfried W called an ambulance for another woman, Susanne F, 41, who had moved into the house and was so badly beaten that she died in hospital.
Mr Macleod said: “I bought it because it’s got a big shed beside it that’s interesting for my firm, it’s a good place to put materials.”
He added: “My auntie in Scotland said, ‘Dave, there could be lost souls or bad spirits in there. But you walk in and you don’t get a feeling of, ‘I’m not going in there.’ It just stinks of mushrooms and dry rot. The house isn’t a bad house, the people were atrocious.”
He said he plans to put a new roof on the building but beyond that has not decided what to do with it.
