Editing Fritz Haarmann (section)

=== Start of the rampage ===
His crime rampage started in September 1918, a time in which Germany was suffering economic deprivation and severe food shortages. Haarmann's first known victim was a 17-year-old runaway named Friedel Rothe. When Rothe disappeared on 27th September 1918, his friends told police he was last seen with Haarmann, who at the time of this first known murder resided in a single room apartment at 27 Cellerstraße. Under pressure from Rothe's family, police raided Haarmann's apartment in October 1918, where they found their informer in the company of a semi-naked 13-year-old boy. He was charged with both the sexual assault and battery of a minor, and sentenced to nine months' imprisonment. 

Haarmann avoided serving his sentence throughout 1919. That October, he met an 18-year-old man named Hans Grans, who had run away from his home in Berlin following an argument with his father on the 1st October. Grans had slept rough in and around Hanover station for approximately two weeks before he encountered Haarmann.