Between October 1989 and April 1991, while East Germany was falling apart and then joining the Federal Republic, a man killed five women and a baby in the villages and pine woods south and west of Potsdam. The killings began in Deetz and ended in Fichtenwalde. Police warned women not to walk alone in the forests, and the tabloids gave the unknown attacker two names that stuck: the Beast of Beelitz and the Pink Giant.
The man was Wolfgang Schmidt, a former officer of the East German People's Police. He was about 1.90 meters tall, and he was 25 when two joggers caught him in a forest on August 1, 1991. He confessed that night. In 1992 the Potsdam district court convicted him of six murders and two attempted murders, found that his capacity to control his actions had been considerably reduced, and sentenced him to an overall term of 15 years with placement in a psychiatric hospital. Schmidt later took the name Beate and, according to a 2026 report, lives as a trans woman and is still held in a specialist clinic.
The 1992 press described him as a former citizen of the German Democratic Republic, a former officer of the riot police readiness units (Bereitschaftspolizei) and a crane operator. When the second woman was killed in 1990 he was working as a farm laborer, according to the taz. A 2026 report describes him as a former officer of the People's Police readiness force.
By the summer of 1991 he was engaged, and his fiancee was pregnant when he was arrested.
The first killing came on October 24, 1989, a Tuesday, in Deetz, a village of about 900 people near Brandenburg an der Havel, now part of the municipality of Groß Kreutz. Edeltraud N. was 51, according to the Berliner Zeitung in 1995 and Volksstimme in 2026; the taz gave her age as 50 in 1992. She was killed in broad daylight. The Berliner Zeitung wrote that she was beaten to death; the taz wrote in 1992 that she was strangled. Both papers reported that she was also sexually assaulted.
Police first suspected her husband. Volksstimme reported that he was later ruled out but that rumors in the village did not stop, and that he took his own life the following year, tormented by being presumed guilty. The Berliner Zeitung stated plainly that he was not the killer. At his trial in October 1992 Schmidt told the court he could not remember details of this first killing.
The second victim was Christa N., 55, the daughter of an innkeeper, according to the Berliner Zeitung. She was killed in Ferch on May 24, 1990, and found the next day. She had been strangled and sexually assaulted. Investigators found women's clothing at the scene that did not appear to be hers. Volksstimme reported in 2026 that the police did not at first connect her death with the killing in Deetz.
In July 1990, according to the taz account of the indictment, a woman was seriously injured in another attack.
On March 13, 1991, Inge F., a 34-year-old cook, went missing while walking between Borkheide and Neuendorf, near Beelitz. She was found dead more than a week later, the Berliner Zeitung reported; Volksstimme put it at eight days. She had been sexually assaulted and killed. Police again found women's clothing at the scene that did not belong to her.
Later that month the killer struck again, at Beelitz-Heilstätten. Tamara P., 44, was the wife of a chief physician at the Russian military hospital there. She was out in the forest with her three-month-old son, Stanislaw, who was in his pram. Both were killed. Tamara P. was strangled. The Berliner Zeitung dated the killings to March 22, 1991; the taz, in its 1992 account of the indictment, gave March 23. Women's clothing was again left at the scene.
In April 1991 the taz, citing the news agency dpa, referred to the unknown attacker as the "Beelitz double murderer", and reported that Soviet forces had told police of another Russian woman who was attacked near Beelitz and survived.
In early April 1991 two 12-year-old girls were attacked near Sputendorf, south of Potsdam, near Ludwigsfelde, and both survived, the taz reported on April 10, 1991. Their account gave police their first description of the killer, and a composite sketch was published.
The same evening, according to the taz in 1992, the killer killed Talita B., 66, a pensioner in Fichtenwalde, near Beelitz. She was strangled. The Berliner Zeitung wrote that this happened while the two girls were being questioned by police. The 1992 taz account dates the attack on the girls and the killing of Talita B. to April 5, 1991.
A special commission of the Potsdam criminal police, led by Volker Kelm, took over the hunt. The Berliner Zeitung put its strength at 48 officers; the taz at about 50. Undercover officers patrolled the forests and wanted posters went up across the district. Police warned women not to walk alone in the forests south of Potsdam.
By April 10, 1991, Kelm's commission had received 87 tips from the public and had no strong lead, the taz reported. Overnight, officers had found a campsite in a wooded area south of Potsdam where the suspect had apparently stayed, with a backpack and a purple tracksuit left behind. The killer had left women's clothing at each scene, and investigators found sleeping places nearby. Traces from the scenes were sent to Berlin for DNA analysis, which the paper called a genetic fingerprint. Kelm told reporters he believed the attacker was sexually deviant and attacked in a state of sexual arousal.
The fear in the villages was described by the taz in 1992. Elderly women rode to the cemetery in groups, mothers pushed prams only with a dog beside them, and sales of alarms and tear gas rose sharply. Hundreds of tips arrived. A reward of 20,000 marks was offered, and the Berliner Zeitung reported that the commission received more than 1,000 tips in all, several of them pointing to Wolfgang Schmidt.
One of those tips came from the parents of Schmidt's fiancee, who told police that he looked like the composite sketch. Nothing came of it, the Berliner Zeitung wrote in 1995. The paper quoted an unnamed investigator as saying later that if the relatives' tips had been followed up more intensively, the man might have been caught somewhat earlier. The paper's own judgment was that police had ignored a good composite sketch and numerous tips after the fifth killing.
The case was solved by two private citizens. Volksstimme reported in 2026 that a jogger came upon a suspicious tent in the forest, alerted the police, and wanted the reward. While the police were planning a trap, he and a friend tracked the man down themselves, held him in the forest and handed him over to officers.
The taz, in 1992, described the moment of capture. On August 1, 1991, the two joggers found Schmidt in a forest near Schmertzke, as the taz spelled it, and kept him at bay with a crowbar until police arrived. The Berliner Zeitung placed the arrest near a plantation at Piepersberg and said the two men overpowered him and handed him to police.
He confessed to all the crimes the same night, the taz reported; Volksstimme wrote that the confession came after less than four hours of questioning. The Berliner Zeitung said he confessed in pre-trial custody to the murders of five women and an infant.
In July 1992 Schmidt was being held in the closed ward of the psychiatric hospital in Brandenburg. For weeks after the arrest the tabloids printed his photograph on their front pages, and that of his fiancee, who was pregnant.
His lawyer, Ulrich Bauschulte of Düsseldorf, told the taz that his client was not some inhuman figure who walked around with his head under his arm. The prosecutor, Marianne Böhm, then 29, said Schmidt "is a human being" and was entitled to a fair trial.
The indictment, as the taz described it in July 1992, charged four murders and two counts of manslaughter. Böhm had to charge the first three crimes under the old East German criminal code, which had no separate offense of manslaughter, only murder; under the Unification Treaty, the taz explained, a more finely graded charge was not possible for those acts. The Potsdam prosecutor's office was considering whether to ask for the public to be excluded from the trial.
The court's psychiatric expert was Wilfried Rasch, a forensic psychiatrist who had also assessed the child murderer Jürgen Bartsch. Rasch found that Schmidt understood the gravity of what he had done and was not incapable of criminal responsibility, but he believed the provision on diminished responsibility, section 21 of the German Criminal Code, should apply. He would not say before trial whether the killings were committed in the heat of the moment or with intent. Böhm did not regard Schmidt as insane, though she had suspected a sexual deviance early in the case. The taz noted that even with diminished responsibility, a German court was not obliged to reduce the sentence.
The trial opened before the Potsdam district court on a Tuesday in October 1992; the dpa report of the first day was printed in the taz on October 21. Schmidt, 25, was described as a former riot police officer and crane operator. Prosecutors now charged him with murder in five cases and manslaughter in one. He had confessed to killing five women and a young child between October 1989 and April 1991, and the prosecution assumed that he had been criminally responsible only to a limited degree. On the first day Schmidt told the court that he could not remember details of the killing of the woman in Deetz.
The 1st criminal senate of the Potsdam district court convicted Wolfgang Schmidt, by then 26, of six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder; the dpa report of the verdict was printed in the taz on December 1, 1992, and the Berliner Zeitung later dated the sentencing to the end of November. The court imposed an overall prison term of 15 years and ordered him placed in a psychiatric hospital. In its reasons it found that his capacity to control his conduct had been considerably impaired in every one of the offenses, and it counted that in his favor. It followed the psychiatric experts, who had found diminished criminal responsibility. The presiding judge said Schmidt's chance of being cured of his sexual disorders was "perhaps slim."
The court treated the impaired control as a mitigating factor, not as grounds for acquittal: Schmidt was convicted and sentenced, and the placement in a psychiatric hospital was ordered together with the prison term.
In February 2026 Volksstimme reported that, after hormone therapy, Schmidt lives as a trans woman named Beate. She was then nearly 60 and remained in custody in a specialist clinic. That report accompanied the three-part ARD documentary Rosa Riese: Jagd auf ein Phantom, by the crime writer Sophie Sumburane, which revisits the scenes of the crimes; the first part was broadcast on Das Erste on February 23, 2026.
The tabloid press of the time called the attacker the Bestie von Beelitz, the Beast of Beelitz. The other name, the Rosa Riese or Pink Giant, came from Schmidt's height and from the pink women's underwear found at the scenes, Volksstimme explained. The court reports of 1992 used his full name, Wolfgang Schmidt. The German press shortens the victims' surnames to an initial.
The count of offenses differs between sources. The dpa report of the verdict, printed in the taz on December 1, 1992, gives six murders and two attempted murders. Volksstimme, in 2026, writes of six murders and three attempted murders. The charges themselves changed between the indictment, described in July 1992 as four murders and two counts of manslaughter, and the opening of the trial, described in October 1992 as five murders and one manslaughter.
Some dates and ages differ. Edeltraud N. was 51 in the Berliner Zeitung and Volksstimme, and 50 in the taz in 1992. The killings of Tamara P. and Stanislaw are dated March 22, 1991, by the Berliner Zeitung and March 23 by the taz. The cause of Edeltraud N.'s death is given as beating by the Berliner Zeitung and as strangling by the taz.
Two other attacks appear only briefly in the press reports: the serious injury of a woman in July 1990, from the taz summary of the indictment, and a Russian woman reported by Soviet forces in April 1991 to have survived an attack near Beelitz. Neither is described further, and the reports do not say which attacks the attempted-murder counts in the verdict covered.
October 24, 1989: Edeltraud N., 51, is killed in Deetz.
March 1990: her husband, who had been under suspicion and was not the killer, takes his own life.
May 24, 1990: Christa N., 55, is killed in Ferch.
July 1990: a woman is seriously injured in an attack (indictment, as reported by the taz).
March 13, 1991: Inge F., 34, a cook, disappears in the woods between Borkheide and Neuendorf and is later found dead.
March 22 or 23, 1991: Tamara P., 44, and her son Stanislaw, three months, are killed in the woods at Beelitz-Heilstätten.
April 5, 1991: two 12-year-old girls survive an attack near Sputendorf; the same evening Talita B., 66, is killed in Fichtenwalde.
April 10, 1991: the taz reports police warnings to women, a campsite found, 87 tips and DNA traces sent to Berlin.
August 1, 1991: two joggers catch Wolfgang Schmidt in a forest near Schmerzke and hand him to police; he confesses that night.
July 1992: indictment for four murders and two counts of manslaughter reported; trial expected before the Potsdam jury court.
October 1992: trial opens before the Potsdam district court (reported October 21, 1992).
End of November 1992: convicted of six murders and two attempted murders with diminished responsibility; 15 years and placement in a psychiatric hospital (reported December 1, 1992).
July 1995: the Berliner Zeitung reports that the fiancee's parents' tip and the composite sketch had not been acted on in time.
February 23, 2026: the first part of the ARD documentary Rosa Riese: Jagd auf ein Phantom is broadcast; Volksstimme reports that Beate Schmidt, nearly 60, is still held in a specialist clinic.