According to Chief Detective Günter Nowatius, who investigated the case, the police had "no crime scene, no time of the crime, and neither the perpetrator's nor the victim's identity", and once the eleven individual body parts were assigned anatomically to the six victims, the situation complicated further:[3] According to SOKO "Torso", the offender did not have profound anatomical knowledge, with the cuts being made at the joints suggesting it might be the work of a butcher.
[3] It is striking that the perpetrators had no aspirations to hide body parts of the victims, but even with a certain "exhibitionist tendency" within two kilometres of the city near Maschsee, he dumped them not far from where the police headquarters of Hanover were located.
[2][5] Police suspected that the perpetrator was on weekday employment and had to store the bodies cool in the meantime, and then transport them on the weekend by car and leave them in conspicuous places where there was much traffic.
The fact that the murders ended abruptly in 1977 meant that the culprit probably changed his residence, was jailed at a correctional facility for another offence, or had died.
This discovery led to the trial of a former butcher's apprentice Olaf Weinert from Walkenried, who confessed to this murder and was also convicted of other homicides.
In autumn 2012, a similar case occurred, in which Ukrainian-German rapper and neo-Nazi Sash JM (real name Alexander K.), called the "Maschsee Killer", also dismembered his victim.