This is Wolfgang “Beate” Schmidt, a German rapist and serial killer who murdered six people during a rampage that lasted from 1989 - 1991. Schmidt is not the only trans serial killer — not even close — but he is one of the most notorious. Born in 1966, Schmidt began crossdressing at age 6, and enjoyed defecating in the garments. He originally stole clothing from his mother, but after she found some of the soiled items, she began locking her clothing up, which drove Schmidt to source his lingerie from local landfills. By the time he was a teenager, Schmidt was 6’3. He was also neglecting school, work, and social activities in favor of his fetishistic behavior. By tenth grade, he’d dropped out of school altogether. In 1985, Schmidt joined the Volkspolizei, but was fired along with three other officers in May of 1989 for holding a 100th birthday celebration in honor of Adolf Hitler. In October of that same year, Schmidt began killing. He originally broke into the home of Edeltraut Nixdorf in order to steal her underwear, but when she confronted him, he choked her and bludgeoned her to death with a hammer. Afterwards he raped her corpse before fleeing the scene. In May of 1990, Schmidt fatally garroted Christa Naujocks with an electrical cord. This victim was also raped after death. Soiled pink lingerie was found at the scene, and police received reports of a tall man harassing women in the area. A search by police found several stashes of women’s lingerie and pornographic magazines buried in nearby ditches. On 13 March 1991, Inge Fischer was attacked while walking home through a forest. She was beaten and kicked before being dragged off the main path, where she was raped and stabbed to death. When the body was found, it was discovered that the killer had replaced the victims underwear with pink ones, and defecated in them. Again, a sweep of the area by police found stashes of lingerie and pornographic material buried nearby, alerting police to the fact that the cases were connected. Just eight days later, Schmidt attacked Tamara Petrowskaja and her 3 month old son Stanislaw while Tamara was walking through the woods. Schmidt tied her up and gagged her with underwear before crushing her baby’s skull against a tree stump, then stomping and kicking his body. He then raped Tamara before strangling her to death with a bra and switching her panties for soiled pink ones. A search again found several caches of hidden lingerie nearby — enough to fill five trash bags. Fifteen days after killing Tamara and Stanislaw, Schmidt struck again. This time he attacked two 12 year old girls with a knife, but fled after the victims fought back, scratching his face. Both girls were seriously injured, but survived. Later that day, Schmidt broke into the apartment of Talita Bremer, whom he strangled to death before raping her corpse, putting soiled pink panties on her body, and rummaging through her underwear drawer. That July, Schmidt was camped illegally, publicly masturbating while wearing a bra over his shirt. A passing jogger, alerted by underwear Schmidt had draped over nearby branches, recognized him from the police sketch which was circulating and alerted authorities. Schmidt was overpowered and arrested, then taken to a Potsdam police station, where he confessed to all six murders, as well as three non-fatal assaults. In December of 1992, Schmidt was sentenced to 15 years in prison, followed by indefinite confinement in a psychiatric unit. During his imprisonment, he began identifying as transgender, and was allowed to take hormone therapy so that he could grow breasts. In 2010 he was investigated for raping another trans-identifying inmate. The victim had committed suicide. In spite of this, by 2013, Schmidt was being allowed unsupervised day trips into town — trips that were halted after the press caught him buying porn at a gas station. This has been “Get to Know a Trans Person.”