Horst David was a married man and a master painter in Regensburg, a tradesman who, in the words of a 2008 profile in the Abendzeitung, was reliable at work and popular with the women who knew him. Between 1975 and 1993, by his own confession, he killed seven women: two in Munich and five older women in Regensburg. For years almost none of it looked like crime. Doctors had certified most of the Regensburg deaths as natural, and some had been made to look like accidents. The police did not connect the cases until 1994, and it took a fingerprint database to do it.
Horst David was born in November 1938 in Breslau, according to a November 2020 report by Markus Christandl and Lukas Schierlinger. The Abendzeitung wrote in 2008 that near the end of the Second World War his mother left him at a railway station in Bavaria, with a sign around his neck that gave only his name and his date of birth. Josef Wilfling, the Munich homicide detective who later led the investigation against him, described that abandonment as a decisive experience in David's life, and the same report adds that his mother later rejected him.
He learned the painter's trade and became a master painter. He married and had children, and he was known in Regensburg as a family man who worked steadily. Neighbors, employers and the women he painted for knew him as an employee, a neighbor and an acquaintance. The Abendzeitung described him as popular with women, and AFP later said he had done painting work for, or knew personally, five of the women he killed.
Seven women were killed between 1975 and 1993, and David confessed to the killings. Two were killed in Munich in 1975. The other five were older women in Regensburg, among them a neighbor. Two of the reports give financial trouble as the motive in the Regensburg cases. The dates of the individual killings have never been made public.
What made the series hard to see was how the later deaths looked. Doctors had signed off most of them as natural, and some of the killings had been arranged to resemble accidents. Nothing tied the Munich deaths of 1975 to the Regensburg deaths that began later. According to AFP, it was David's confession that revealed all seven killings, since several had not been recognized as homicides.
The cases were linked in 1994. According to AFP, a fingerprint of David's was secured in the case of a neighbor who had been killed. An automated fingerprint identification system, introduced only shortly before, tied the same prints to a killing in Munich that had gone unsolved for 19 years. Reports on his death describe it as the first time in Germany that a case of that age had been cleared this way. Wilfling, quoted by AFP, said that clearing the old Munich case was "a sensation" at the time.
After the match David confessed. His confession revealed all seven killings, including those that had never been treated as crimes. In December 1995 the Landgericht Munich sentenced him to life imprisonment, twice, according to the Christandl and Schierlinger report. How the counts were divided among the seven victims has never been made public, and neither has the length of the trial or any appeal.
Investigators believed David may have killed more women than the seven. No further killings could be proven.
David later cooperated with two writers, Danuta Harrich-Zandberg and Walter Harrich. According to AFP, he gave the filmmakers access to the records of his interrogations and to a psychiatric report, and he set down a confession of his life in about a hundred letters to an author. The Harrichs wrote the ARD television drama "Der Mann, dem die Frauen vertrauten," in which Ulrich Tukur played David and Wilfling's character pursues him. The Abendzeitung previewed it on July 31, 2008, and said it was based on David's own account of his life. AFP gave 2004 as the year of the film; the Abendzeitung's preview, dated 2008, places the broadcast in that year.
On November 12, 2020, the Regensburg public prosecutor's office announced that David had been found dead in his cell at the Straubing prison. He was 81. The prosecutor's office said there was currently no indication of third-party involvement; the cause of death was still being examined. A report published on November 13 said he had been treated in the prison infirmary shortly before. No later finding on the cause of death has been made public.
Two matters are open. First, the number of killings: seven are attributed to David, but investigators told the press they suspected more, and none was proven. Second, accounts differ on small points: the date he was found dead (one report gives November 8, the prosecutors' announcement came on November 12), and the year of the television film.
November 1938: born in Breslau.
1975: two women killed in Munich.
1975 to 1993: five older women killed in Regensburg (individual dates not reported).
1994: the cases are linked after a fingerprint search.
December 1995: sentenced to life imprisonment by the Landgericht Munich.
July 31, 2008: the Abendzeitung previews the ARD film about him.
November 12, 2020: his death in Straubing prison is announced.